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         IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA

                   BY

            S. BARING-GOULD

               AUTHOR OF
  "THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS," "URITH," ETC.

                NEW YORK
         NATIONAL BOOK COMPANY
            6 MISSION PLACE

            Copyright, 1891,
                   BY
      UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY.
        [_All rights reserved._]

CONTENTS.

   CHAPTER                                              PAGE

        I. OVER AND DONE                                   5

       II. A PASSAGE OF ARMS                              12

      III. CAPTAIN CRUEL                                  20

       IV. HOP-O'-MY-THUMB                                24

        V. THE BUTTONS                                    31

       VI. UNCLE ZACHIE                                   39

      VII. A VISIT                                        45

     VIII. A PATCHED PEACE                                52

       IX. C. C.                                          60

        X. EGO ET REGINA MEA                              67

       XI. JESSAMINE                                      75

      XII. THE CAVE                                       85

     XIII. IN THE DUSK                                    93

      XIV. WARNING OF DANGER                             100

       XV. CHAINED                                       109

      XVI. ON THE SHINGLE                                114

     XVII. FOR LIFE OR DEATH                             122

    XVIII. UNA                                           128

      XIX. A GOLDFISH                                    136

       XX. BOUGHT AND SOLD                               144

      XXI. OTHELLO COTTAGE                               151

     XXII. JAMIE'S RIDE                                  158

    XXIII. ALL IS FOR THE BEST IN THE BEST OF WORLDS     166

     XXIV. A NIGHT EXCURSION                             175

      XXV. FOUND                                         182

     XXVI. AN UNWILLING PRISONER                         189

    XXVII. A RESCUE                                      195

   XXVIII. AN EXAMINATION                                203

     XXIX. ON A PEACOCK'S FEATHER                        211

      XXX. THROUGH THE TAMARISKS                         221

     XXXI. AMONG THE SAND-HEAPS                          229

    XXXII. A DANGEROUS GIFT                              237

   XXXIII. HALF A MARRIAGE                               244

    XXXIV. A BREAKFAST                                   252

     XXXV. JACK O' LANTERN                               259

    XXXVI. THE SEA-WOLVES                                269

   XXXVII. BRUISED NOT BROKEN                            275

  XXXVIII. A CHANGE OF WIND                              282

    XXXIX. A FIRST LIE                                   290

       XL. THE DIAMOND BUTTERFLY                         297

      XLI. A DEAD-LOCK                                   306

     XLII. TWO LETTERS                                   313

    XLIII. THE SECOND TIME                               320

     XLIV. THE WHIP FALLS                                327

      XLV. GONE FROM ITS PLACE                           334

     XLVI. A SECOND LIE                                  341

    XLVII. FAST IN HIS HANDS                             349

   XLVIII. TWO ALTERNATIVES                              357

     XLIX. NOTHING LIKE GROG                             364

        L. PLAYING FORFEITS                              372

       LI. SURRENDER                                     380

      LII. TO JUDITH                                     387

     LIII. IN THE SMOKE                                  395

      LIV. SQUAB PIE                                     403

IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA.

CHAPTER I.

OVER AND DONE.

Sitting in the parsonage garden, in a white frock, with a pale green
sash about her waist, leaning back against the red-brick wall, her
glowing copper hair lit by the evening sun, was Judith Trevisa.

She was tossing guelder-roses into the air; some dozens were strewn
about her feet on the gravel, but one remained of the many she had
plucked and thrown and caught, and thrown and caught again for a sunny
afternoon hour. As each greenish-white ball of flowers went up into
the air it diffused a faint but pleasant fragrance.

"When I have done with you, my beauty, I have done altogether," said
Judith.

"With what?"

Her father spoke. He had come up unperceived by the girl, burdened
with a shovel in one hand and a bucket in the other, looking pale,
weary, and worn.

"Papa, you nearly spoiled my game. Let me finish, and I will speak."

"Is it a very serious matter, Judith, and engrossing?"

"Engrossing, but not serious, _Je m'amuse_."

The old rector seated himself on the bench beside her, and he also
leaned back against the red-brick, gold-and-gray-lichen-spotted wall,
and looked into the distance before him, waiting till his daughter was
ready to speak, not, perhaps, sorry to have a little rest first, for
he was overtired. Had Judith not been absorbed in her ball-play with
the guelder-rose bunch she would have noticed his haggard appearance,
the green hue about his mouth, the sunken eyes, the beaded brow. But
she was counting the rebounds of her ball, bent on sustaining her play
as long as was possible to her.

She formed a charming picture, fresh and pure, and had the old man not
been overtired, he would have thought so with a throb of parental
pride.

She was a child in size, slender in build, delicate in bone, with face
and hands of porcelain transparency and whiteness, with, moreover,
that incomparable complexion only seen in the British Isles, and then
only with red-gold hair.

Her bronze-leather shoes were the hue of some large flies that basked
and frisked on the warm wall, only slightly disturbed by the girl's
play, to return again and run and preen themselves again, and glitter
jewel-like as studs on that sun-baked, lichen-enamelled wall. Her
eyes, moreover, were lustrous as the backs of these flies, iridescent
with the changing lights of the declining sun, and the changed
direction of her glance following the dancing ball of guelder-rose.
Her long fingers might have been of china, but that when raised so
that the sun struck their backs they were turned to a translucent
rose. There was no color in her cheek, only the faintest suffusion of
pink on the temples below where the hair was rolled back in waves of
luminous molten copper dashing against the brick wall.

"I have done my work," said the rector.

"And I my play," responded the girl, letting the ball drop into her
lap and rock there from one knee to the other. "Papa, this fellow is
the conqueror; I have made him dance thirty-five great leaps, and he
has not yet fallen--wilfully. I let him go down and get breath just
now. There lie all my dancers dead about me. They failed very
speedily."

"You cannot be forever playing, Ju."

"That is why I play now, papa. When playtime is over I shall be in
earnest indeed."

"Indeed?" the old man sighed.

Judith looked round, and was shocked to see how ill her father
appeared to be.

"Are you very tired, darling papa?"

"Yes--overtired."

"Have you been at your usual task?"

"Yes, Ju--an unprofitable task."

"Oh, papa!"

"Yes, unprofitable. The next wind from the sea that blows--one will
blow in an hour--and all my work is undone."

"But, my dear papa!" Judith stooped and looked into the bucket.
"Why!--what has made you bring a load of sand up here? We want none in
the garden. And such a distance too!--from the church. No wonder you
are tired."

"Have I brought it?" he asked, without looking at the bucket.

"You have, indeed. That, if you please, is unprofitable work, not the
digging of the church out of the sand-heaps that swallow it."

"My dear, I did not know that I had not emptied the pail outside the
church-yard gate. I am very tired; perhaps that explains it."

"No doubt about it, papa. It was work quite as unprofitable but much
more exhausting than my ball-play. Now, papa, while you have been
digging your church out of the sand, which will blow over it again
to-night, you say, I have been pitching and tossing guelder-roses. We
have been both wasting time, one as much as the other."

"One as much as the other," repeated the old man. "Yes, dear, one as
much as the other, and I have been doing it all my time here--morally,
spiritually, as well as materially, digging the church out of the
smothering sands, and all in vain--all profitless work. You are right,
Ju."

"Papa," said Judith hastily, seeing his discouragement and knowing his
tendency to depression, "papa, do you hear the sea how it roars? I
have stood on the bench, more than once, to look out seaward, and find
a reason for it; but there is none--all blue, blue as a larkspur; and
not a cloud in the sky--all blue, blue there too. No wind either, and
that is why I have done well with my ball-play. Do you hear the roar
of the sea, papa?" she repeated.

"Yes, Ju. There will be a storm shortly. The sea is thrown into great
swells of rollers, a sure token that something is coming. Before night
a gale will be on us."

Then ensued silence. Judith with one finger trifled with the
guelder-rose bunch in her lap musingly, not desirous to resume her
play with it. Something in her father's manner was unusual, and made
her uneasy.

"My dear!" he began, after a pause, "one must look out to sea--into
the vast mysterious sea of the future--and prepare for what is coming
from it. Just now the air is still, and we sit in this sweet, sunny
garden, and lean our backs against the warm wall, and smell the
fragrance of the flowers; but we hear the beating of the sea, and know
that a mighty tempest, with clouds and darkness, is coming. So in
other matters we must look out and be ready--count the time till it
comes. My dear, when I am gone----"

"Papa!"

"We were looking out to sea and listening. That must come at some
time--it may come sooner than you anticipate." He paused, heaved a
sigh, and said, "Oh, Jamie! What are we to do about Jamie?"

"Papa, I will always take care of Jamie."

"But who will take care of you?"

"Of me? Oh, papa, surely I can take care of myself!"

He shook his head doubtfully.

"Papa, you know how strong I am in will--how firm I can be with
Jamie."

"But all mankind are not Jamies. It is not for you I fear, as much as
for you and him together. He is a trouble and a difficulty."

"Jamie is not so silly and troublesome as you think. All he needs is
application. He cannot screw his mind down to his books--to any
serious occupation. But that will come. I have heard say that the
stupidest children make the sharpest men. Little by little it will
come, but it will come certainly. I will set myself as my task to make
Jamie apply his mind and become a useful man, and I shall succeed,
papa." She caught her father's hand between hers, and slapped it
joyously, confidently. "How cold your hand is, papa! and yet you look
warm."

"You were always Jamie's champion," said her father, not noticing her
remark relative to himself.

"He is my twin brother, so of course I am his champion. Who else would
be that, were not I?"

"No--no one else. He is mischievous and troublesome--poor, poor
fellow. You will always be to Jamie what you are now, Ju--his
protector or champion? He is weak and foolish, and if he were to fall
into bad hands--I shudder to think what might become of him."

"Rely on me, dearest father."

Then he lifted the hand of his daughter, and looked at it with a faint
smile. "It is very small, it is very weak, to fight for self alone,
let alone yourself encumbered with Jamie."

"I will do it, papa, do not fear."

"Judith, I must talk very gravely with you, for the future is very
dark to me; and I am unable with hand or brain to provide anything
against the evil day. Numbness is on me, and I have been hampered on
every side. For one thing, the living has been so poor, and my
parishioners so difficult to deal with, that I have been able to lay
by but a trifle. I believe I have not a relative in the world--none,
at all events, near enough and known to me that I dare ask him to care
for you----"

"Papa, there is Aunt Dionysia."

"Aunt Dionysia," he repeated, with a hesitating voice. "Yes; but Aunt
Dionysia is--is not herself capable of taking charge of you. She has
nothing but what she earns, and then--Aunt Dionysia is--is--well--Aunt
Dionysia. I don't think you could be happy with her, even if, in the
event of my departure, she were able to take care of you. Then--and
that chiefly--she has chosen, against my express wishes--I may say, in
defiance of me--to go as housekeeper into the service of the man, of
all others, who has been a thorn in my side, a hinderer of God's work,
a--But I will say no more."

"What! Cruel Coppinger?"

"Yes, Cruel Coppinger. I might have been the means of doing a little
good in this place, God knows! I only _think_ I might; but I have been
thwarted, defied, insulted by that man. As I have striven to dig my
buried church out of the overwhelming sands, so have I striven to lift
the souls of my poor parishioners out of the dead engulfing sands of
savagery, brutality, very heathenism of their mode of life, and I have
been frustrated. The winds have blown the sands back with every gale
over my work with spade, and that stormblast Coppinger has devastated
every trace of good that I have done, or tried to do, in spiritual
matters. The Lord reward him according to his works."

Judith felt her father's hand tremble in hers.

"Never mind Coppinger now," she said, soothingly.

"I must mind him," said the old man, with severe vehemence. "And--that
my own sister should go, go--out of defiance, into his house and serve
him! That was too much. I might well say, I have none to whom to look
as your protector." He paused awhile, and wiped his brow. His pale
lips were quivering. "I do not mean to say," said he, "that I acted
with judgment, when first I came to S. Enodoc, when I spoke against
smuggling. I did not understand it then. I thought with the thoughts
of an inlander. Here--the sands sweep over the fields, and agriculture
is in a measure impossible. The bays and creeks seem to
invite--well--I leave it an open question. But with regard to
wrecking--" His voice, which had quavered in feebleness, according
with the feebleness of his judgment relative to smuggling, now gained
sonorousness. "Wrecking, deliberate wrecking, is quite another matter.
I do not say that our people are not justified in gathering the
harvest the sea casts up. There always must be, there will be wrecks
on this terrible coast; but there has been--I know there has been,
though I have not been able to prove it--deliberate provocation of
wrecks, and that is the sin of Cain. Had I been able to prove----"

"Never mind that now, dear papa. Neither I nor Jamie are, or will be,
wreckers. Talk of something else. You over-excite yourself."

Judith was accustomed to hear her father talk in an open manner to
her. She had been his sole companion for several years, since his
wife's death, and she had become the _confidante_ of his inmost
thoughts, his vacillations, his discouragements, not of his hopes--for
he had none, nor of his schemes--for he formed none.

"I do not think I have been of any use in this world," said the old
parson, relapsing into his tone of discouragement, the temporary flame
of anger having died away. "My sowing has produced no harvest. I have
brought light, help, strength to none. I have dug all day in the
vineyard, and not a vine is the better for it; all cankered and
fruitless."

"Papa--and me! Have you done nothing for me!"

"You!"

He had not thought of his child.

"Papa! Do you think that I have gained naught from you? No strength,
no resolution from seeing you toil on in your thankless work, without
apparent results? If I have any energy and principle to carry me
through I owe it to you."

He was moved, and raised his trembling hand and laid it on her golden
head.

He said no more, and was very still.

Presently she spoke. His hands weighed heavily on her head.

"Papa, you are listening to the roar of the sea?"

He made no reply.

"Papa, I felt a cold breath; and see, the sun has a film over it.
Surely the sea is roaring louder!"

His hand slipped from her head and struck her shoulder--roughly, she
thought. She turned, startled, and looked at him. His eyes were open,
he was leaning back, almost fallen against the wall, and was deadly
pale.

"Papa, you are listening to the roar?"

Then a thought struck her like a bullet in the heart.

"Papa! Papa! My papa!--speak--speak!"

She sprang from the bench--was before him. Her left guelder-rose had
rolled, had bounded from her lap, and had fallen on the sand the old
man had listlessly brought up from the church. His work, her play,
were forever over.

CHAPTER II.

A PASSAGE OF ARMS.

The stillness preceding the storm had yielded. A gale had broken over
the coast, raged against the cliffs of Pentyre, and battered the walls
of the parsonage, without disturbing the old rector, whom no storm
would trouble again, soon to be laid under the sands of his buried
church-yard, his very mound to be heaped over in a few years, and
obliterated by waves of additional encroaching sand. Judith had not
slept all night. She--she, a mere child, had to consider and arrange
everything consequent on the death of the master of the house. The
servants--cook and house-maid--had been of little, if any, assistance
to her. When Jane, the house-maid, had rushed into the kitchen with
the tidings that the old parson was dead, cook, in her agitation,
upset the kettle and scalded her foot. The gardener's wife had come in
on hearing the news, and had volunteered help. Judith had given her
the closet-key to fetch from the stores something needed; and Jamie,
finding access to the closet, had taken possession of a pot of
raspberry jam, carried it to bed with him, and spilled it over the
sheets, besides making himself ill. The house-maid, Jane, had
forgotten in her distraction to shut the best bedroom casement, and
the gale during the night had wrenched it from its hinges, flung it
into the garden on the roof of the small conservatory, and smashed
both. Moreover, the casement being open, the rain had driven into the
room unchecked, had swamped the floor, run through and stained the
drawing-room ceiling underneath, the drips had fallen on the mahogany
table and blistered the veneer. A messenger was sent to Pentyre Glaze
for Miss Dionysia Trevisa, and she would probably arrive in an hour or
two.

Mr. Trevisa, as he had told Judith, was solitary, singularly so. He
was of a good Cornish family, but it was one that had dwindled till
it had ceased to have other representative than himself. Once well
estated, at Crockadon, in S. Mellion, all the lands of the family had
been lost; once with merchants in the family, all the fortunes of
these merchants industriously gathered had been dissipated, and
nothing had remained to the Reverend Peter Trevisa but his family name
and family coat, a garb or, on a field gules. It really seemed as
though the tinctures of the shield had been fixed in the crown of
splendor that covered the head of Judith. But she did not derive this
wealth of red-gold hair from her Cornish ancestors, but from a
Scottish mother, a poor governess whom Mr. Peter Trevisa had married,
thereby exciting the wrath of his only sister and relative, Miss
Dionysia, who had hitherto kept house for him, and vexed his soul with
her high-handed proceedings. It was owing to some insolent words used
by her to Mrs. Trevisa that Peter had quarrelled with his sister at
first. Then when his wife died, she had forced herself on him as
housekeeper, but again her presence in the house had become irksome to
him, and when she treated his children--his delicate and dearly loved
Judith--with roughness, and his timid, silly Jamie with harshness,
amounting in his view to cruelty--harsh words had passed between them;
sharp is, however, hardly the expression to use for the carefully
worded remonstrances of the mild rector, though appropriate enough to
her rejoinders. Then she had taken herself off and had become
housekeeper to Curll Coppinger, Cruel Coppinger, as he was usually
called, who occupied Pentyre Glaze, and was a fairly well-to-do single
man.

Mr. Trevisa had not been a person of energy, but one of culture and
refinement; a dispirited, timid man. Finding no neighbors of the same
mental texture, nor sympathetic, he had been driven to make of Judith,
though a child, his companion, and he had poured into her ear all his
troubles, which largely concerned the future of his children. In his
feebleness he took comfort from her sanguine confidence, though he was
well aware that it was bred of ignorance, and he derived a weak
satisfaction from the thought that he had prepared her morally, at all
events, if in no other fashion, for the crisis that must come when he
was withdrawn.

Mr. Peter Trevisa--Peter was a family Christian name--was for
twenty-five years rector of S. Enodoc, on the north coast of Cornwall
at the mouth of the Camel. The sand dunes had encroached on the church
of S. Enodoc, and had enveloped the sacred structure. A hole was
broken through a window, through which the interior could be reached,
where divine service was performed occasionally in the presence of the
church-wardens, so as to establish the right of the rectors, and
through this same hole bridal parties entered to be coupled, with
their feet ankle-deep in sand that filled the interior to above the
pew-tops.

But Mr. Trevisa was not the man to endure such a condition of affairs
without a protest and an effort to remedy it. He had endeavored to
stimulate the farmers and land-owners of the parish to excavate the
buried church, but his endeavors had proved futile. There were several
reasons for this. In the first place, and certainly foremost, stood
this reason: as long as the church was choked with sand and could not
be employed for regular divine service, the tithe-payers could make a
grievance of it, and excuse themselves from paying their tithes in
full, because, as they argued, "Parson don't give us sarvice, so us
ain't obliged to pay'n." They knew their man, that he was
tender-conscienced, and would not bring the law to bear upon them; he
would see that there was a certain measure of justness in the
argument, and would therefore not demand of them a tithe for which he
did not give them the _quid pro quo_. But they had sufficient
shrewdness to pay a portion of their tithes, so as not to drive him to
extremities and exhaust his patience. It will be seen, therefore, that
in the interests of their pockets the tithe-payers did not want to
have their parish church excavated. Excavation meant weekly service
regularly performed, and weekly service regularly performed would be
followed by exaction of the full amount of rent-charge. Then, again,
in the second place, should divine service be resumed in the church of
S. Enodoc, the parishioners would feel a certain uneasiness in their
consciences if they disregarded the summons of the bell; it might not
be a very lively uneasiness, but just such an irritation as might be
caused by a fly crawling over the face. So long as there was no
service they could soothe their consciences with the thought that
there was no call to make an effort to pull on Sunday breeches and
assume a Sunday hat, and trudge to the church. Therefore, secondly,
for the ease of their own consciences, it was undesirable that S.
Enodoc should be dug out of the sand.

Then lastly, and thirdly, the engulfment of the church gave them a
cherished opportunity for being nasty to the rector, and retailing
upon him for his incaution in condemning smuggling and launching out
into anathema against wrecking. As he had made matters disagreeable to
them--tried, as they put it, to take bread out of their mouths, they
saw no reason why they should spend money to please him.

Mr. Trevisa had made very little provision for his children,
principally, if not wholly, because he could not. He had received from
the farmers and land-owners a portion of tithe, and had been contented
with that rather than raise angry feelings by demanding the whole. Out
of that portion he was able to put aside but little.

Aunt Dionysia arrived, a tall, bony woman, with hair turning gray,
light eyes and an aquiline nose, a hard, self-seeking woman, who
congratulated herself that she did not give way to feelings.

"I feel," said she, "as do others, but I don't show my feelings as
beggars expose their bad legs."

She went into the kitchen. "Hoity-toity!" she said to the cook, "fine
story this--scalding yourself. Mind this, you cook meals or no wage
for you." To Jane, "The mischief you have done shall be valued and
deducted from any little trifle my brother may have left you in his
will. Where is Jamie? Give me that joint of fishing-rod; I'll beat him
for stealing raspberry jam."

Jamie, however, on catching a glimpse of his aunt had escaped into the
garden and concealed himself. The cook, offended, began to clatter the
saucepans.

"Now, then," said Mrs. Trevisa--she bore the brevet-rank--"in a house
of mourning what do you mean by making this noise, it is impertinent
to me."

The house-maid swung out of the kitchen, muttering.

Mrs. Trevisa now betook herself up-stairs in quest of her niece, and
found her with red eyes.

"I call it rank _felo-de-se_," said Aunt Dionysia. "Every one
knew--_he_ knew, that he had a feeble heart, and ought not to be
digging and delving in the old church. Who sent the sand upon it? Why,
Providence, I presume. Not man. Then it was a flying in the face of
Providence to try to dig it out. Who wanted the church? He might have
waited till the parishioners asked for it. But there--where is Jamie?
I shall teach him a lesson for stealing raspberry jam."

"Oh, aunt, not now--not now!"

Mrs. Trevisa considered a moment, then laid aside the fishing-rod.

"Perhaps you are right. I am not up to it after my walk from Pentyre
Glaze. Now, then, what about mourning? I do not suppose Jamie can be
measured by guesswork. You must bring him here. Tell him the whipping
is put off till another day. Of course you have seen to black things
for yourself. Not? Why, gracious heavens! is everything to be thrown
on my shoulders? Am I to be made a beast of burden of? Now, no mewling
and pewking. There is no time for that. Whatever _your_ time may be,
_mine_ is valuable. I can't be here forever. Of course every
responsibility has been put on me. Just like Peter--no consideration.
And what can I do with a set of babies? I have to work hard enough to
keep myself. Peter did not want my services at one time; now I am put
upon. Have you sent for the undertaker? What about clothing again? I
suppose you know that you must have mourning? Bless my heart! what a
lot of trouble you give me."

Mrs. Trevisa was in a very bad temper, which even the knowledge that
it was seemly that she should veil it could not make her restrain. She
was, no doubt, to a certain extent fond of her brother--not much,
because he had not been of any advantage to her; and no doubt she was
shocked at his death, but chiefly because it entailed on herself
responsibilities and trouble that she grudged. She would be obliged to
do something for her nephew and niece; she would have to provide a
home for them somewhere. She could not take them with her to
Coppinger's house, as she was there as a salaried servant, and not
entitled to invite thither her young relatives. Moreover, she did not
want to have them near her. She disliked young people; they gave
trouble, they had to be looked after, they entailed expenses. What was
she to do with them? Where was she to put them? What would they have
to live upon? Would they call on her to part-maintain them? Miss
Dionysia had a small sum put away, and she had no intention of
breaking into it for them. It was a nest-egg, and was laid by against
an evil day that might come on herself. She had put the money away for
herself, in her old age, not for the children of her feeble brother
and his lack-penny wife to consume as moth and rust. As these thoughts
and questions passed through her mind, Aunt Dionysia pulled open
drawers, examined cupboards, pried open closets, and searched chests
and wardrobes.

"I wonder now what he has put by for them," she said aloud.

"Do you mean my dear papa?" asked Judith, whose troubled heart and
shaken spirits were becoming angry and restless under the behavior of
the hard, unfeeling woman.

"Yes, I do," answered Mrs. Trevisa, facing round, and glaring
malevolently at her niece. "It is early days to talk of this, but it
must be done sooner or later, and if so, the sooner the better. There
is money in the house, I suppose?"

"I do not know."

"I must know. You will want it--bills must be paid. You will eat and
drink, I suppose? You must be clothed. I'll tell you what: I'll put
the whole case into the hands of Lawyer Jenkyns, and he shall demand
arrears of tithes. I know what quixotish conduct Peter----"

"Aunt, I will not allow this." A light flush came into the girl's
cheek.

"It is all very well talking," said Aunt Dionysia; "but black is not
white, and no power on earth can make me say that it is so. Money must
be found. Money must be paid for expenses, and it is hard that I
should have to find it; so I think. What money is there in the house
for present necessities? I must know."

Suddenly a loud voice was heard shouting through the house--

"Mother Dunes! old Dunes! I want you."

Judith turned cold and white. Who was this that dared to bellow in the
house of death, when her dear, dear father lay up-stairs with the
blinds down, asleep? It was an insult, an outrage. Her nerves had
already been thrilled, and her heart roused into angry revolt by the
cold, unfeeling conduct of the woman who was her sole relative in the
world. And now, as she was thus quivering, there came this boisterous
shout.

"It is the master!" said Mrs. Trevisa, in an awestruck voice, lowered
as much as was possible to her.

To Coppinger alone she was submissive, cringing, obsequious.

"What does he mean by this--this conduct?" asked Judith, trembling
with wrath.

"He wants me."

Again a shout. "Dunes! old fool! the keys!"

Then Judith started forward, and went through the door to the head of
the staircase. At the foot stood a middle-sized, strongly built,
firmly knit man, in a dress half belonging to the land and half to the
sea, with high boots on his legs, and slouched hat on his head. His
complexion was olive, his hair abundant and black, covering cheeks and
chin and upper lip. His eyes were hard and dark. He had one brown hand
on the banister, and a foot on the first step, as though about to
ascend, when arrested by seeing the girl at the head of the stairs
before him. The house was low, and the steps led without a break
directly from the hall to the landing which gave communication to the
bedrooms. There was a skylight in the roof over the staircase, through
which a brilliant flood of pure white light fell over Judith, whereas
every window had been darkened by drawn blinds. The girl had found no
sombre dress suitable to wear, and had been forced to assume the same
white gown as the day before, but she had discarded the green sash and
had bound a black ribbon about her waist, and another about her
abundant hair. A black lace kerchief was drawn over her shoulders
across her breast and tied at her back. She wore long, black mittens.

Judith stood motionless, her bosom rising and falling quickly, her
lips set, the breath racing through her nostrils, and one hand resting
on the banister at the stair-head.

In a moment her eyes met those of Coppinger, and it was at once as
though a thrill of electric force had passed between them.

He desisted from his attempt to ascend, and said, without moving his
eyes from hers, in a subdued tone, "She has taken the keys," but he
said no more. He drew his foot from the step hesitatingly, and
loosened his hand from the banister, down which went a thrill from
Judith's quivering nerves, and he stepped back.

At the same moment she descended a step, still looking steadily into
the dark, threatening pupils, without blinking or lowering her orbs.
Emboldened by her boiling indignation, she stood on the step she had
reached with both feet firmly planted there, and finding that the
banister rattled under her hand she withdrew it, and folded her arms.
Coppinger raised his hand to his head and took off his hat. He had a
profusion of dark, curly, flowing hair, that fell and encircled his
saturnine face.

Then Judith descended another step, and as she did so he retreated a
step backwards. Behind him was the hall door, open; the light lay wan
and white there on the gravel, for no sunshine had succeeded the gale.
At every step that Judith took down the stair Coppinger retreated.
Neither spoke; the hall was still, save for the sound of their breath,
and his came as fast as hers. When Judith had reached the bottom she
turned--Coppinger stood in the doorway now--and signed to her aunt to
come down with the keys.

"Take them to him--Do not give them here--outside."

Mrs. Trevisa, surprised, confounded, descended the stair, went by her,
and out through the door. Then Judith stepped after her, shut the door
to exclude both Aunt Dionysia and that man Coppinger, who had dared,
uninvited, on such a day to invade the house.

She turned now to remount the stairs, but her strength failed her, her
knees yielded, and she sank upon a step, and burst into a flood of
tears and convulsive sobs.

CHAPTER III.

CAPTAIN CRUEL.

Captain Coppinger occupied an old farmhouse, roomy, low-built, granite
quoined and mullioned, called Pentyre Glaze, in a slight dip of the
hills near the cliffs above the thundering Atlantic. One ash shivered
at the end of the house--that was the only tree to be seen near
Pentyre Glaze. And--who was Coppinger? That is more than can be told.
He had come--no one knew whence. His arrival on the north coast of
Cornwall was mysterious. There had been haze over the sea for three
days. When it lifted, a strange vessel of foreign rig was seen lying
off the coast. Had she got there in the fog, not knowing her course;
or had she come there knowingly, and was making for the mouth of the
Camel? A boat was seen to leave the ship, and in it a man came ashore;
the boat returned to the vessel, that thereupon spread sail and
disappeared in the fog that re-descended over the water. The man gave
his name as Coppinger--his Christian name, he said, was Curll, and he
was a Dane; but though his intonation was not that of the Cornish, it
was not foreign. He took up his residence in S. Enodoc at a farm, and
suddenly, to the surprise of every one, became by purchase the
possessor of Pentyre Glaze, then vacant and for sale. Had he known
that the estate was obtainable when he had come suddenly out of the
clouds into the place to secure it? Nobody knew, and Coppinger was
silent.

Thenceforth Pentyre Glaze became the harbor and den of every lawless
character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless
revelry appalled the neighborhood day and night. It was discovered
that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this
house the centre of their operations, and that "Cruel Coppinger" was
their captain. There were at that time--just a century ago--no
resident magistrates or gentry in the immediate neighborhood. The
yeomen were bribed, by kegs of spirits left at their doors, to
acquiesce in a traffic in illicit goods, and in the matter of exchange
they took their shares. It was said that on one occasion a preventive
man named Ewan Wyvill, who had pursued Coppinger in his boat, was
taken by him, and his head chopped off by the captain, with his boat
axe, on the gunwale. Such was the story. It was never proved. Wyvill
had disappeared, and the body was recovered headless on the Doom Bar.
That violence had been used was undoubted, but who had committed the
crime was not known, though suspicion pointed to Coppinger.
Thenceforth none ever called him Curll; by one consent he was named
Cruel. In the West of England every one is given his Christian name.
An old man is Uncle, and an old woman Aunt, and any one in command is
a Captain. So Coppinger was known as Captain Cruel, or as Cruel
Coppinger.

Strange vessels were often seen appearing at regular intervals on the
coast, and signals were flashed from the one window of Pentyre Glaze
that looked out to sea.

Among these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became
ominously conspicuous. She was for long the terror of the Cornish
coast. Her name was The Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board,
she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel among the rocks,
where, from knowledge of the bearings, The Black Prince escaped
scathless, while the king's vessel perished with all on board.

Immunity increased Coppinger's daring. There were certain bridle-roads
along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued
orders that no man should pass over them by night, and accordingly
from that hour none ever did.[A]

    [A] Many stories of Cruel Coppinger may be found in Hawker's
    Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall. I have also told them
    in my Vicar of Morwenstow. I have ventured to translate the
    scene of Coppinger's activity further west, from Wellcombe to
    S. Enodoc. But, indeed, he is told of in many places on this
    coast.

Moreover, if report spoke true--and reports do not arise without
cause--Coppinger was not averse from taking advantage, and that
unlawful advantage, of a wreck. By "lawful" and "unlawful" two
categories of acts are distinguished, not by the laws of the land but
by common consent of the Cornish conscience. That same Cornish
conscience distinguished wrecking into two classes, as it
distinguished then, and distinguishes still, witchcraft into two
classes. The one, white witchcraft, is legitimate and profitable, and
to be upheld; the other, black witchcraft, is reprehensible, unlawful,
and to be put down. So with wrecking. The Bristol Channel teemed with
shipping, flights of white sails passed in the offing, and these
vessels were, when inward bound, laden with sugars and spices from the
Indies, or with spirits and wines from France. If outward bound they
were deep in the water with a cargo of the riches of England.

Now, should a gale spring up suddenly and catch any of these vessels,
and should the gale be--as it usually is, and to the Cornish folk,
favorably is--from the northwest, then there was no harbor of refuge
along that rock-bound coast, and a ship that could not make for the
open was bound inevitably to be pounded to pieces against the
precipitous walls of the peninsula. If such were the case, it was
perfectly legitimate for every householder in the district to come
down on the wreck and strip it of everything it contained.

But, on the other hand, there was wrecking that was disapproved of,
though practised by a few, so rumor said, and that consisted in luring
a vessel that was in doubt as to her course, by false signals, upon a
reef or bar, and then, having made a wreck of her, to pillage her.
When on a morning after a night in which there had been no gale, a
ship was found on the rocks, and picked as clean as the carcase of a
camel in the desert, it was open to suspicion that this ship had not
been driven there by wind or current; and when the survivors, if they
reached the shore, told that they had been led to steer in the
direction where they had been cast away by certain lights that had
wholly deceived them, then it was also open to suspicion that these
lights had been purposely exhibited for the sake of bringing that
vessel to destruction; and when, further, it was proved that a certain
set or gang of men had garnered all the profits, or almost all the
profits, that accrued from a wreck, before the countryside was aware
that a wreck had occurred, then it was certainly no very random
conjecture that the wreck had been contrived in some fashion by those
who profited by it. There were atrocious tales of murder of
shipwrecked men circulating, but these were probably wholly, or at
all events in part, untrue. If when a vessel ran upon the rocks she
was deserted by her crew, if they took to the boats and made for
shore, then there remained no impediment to the wreckers taking
possession; it was only in the event of their finding a skipper on
board to maintain right over the grounded vessel, or the mariners
still on her engaged in getting her off, that any temptation to
violence could arise. But it was improbable that a crew would cling to
a ship on such a coast when once she was on the breakers. It was a
moral certainty that they would desert her, and leave the wreck to be
pillaged by the rats from shore, without offer of resistance. The
character of the coast-wreckers was known to seamen, or rather a
legend full of horror circulated relative to their remorseless
savagery. The fear of wreckers added to the fear of the sea would
combine to drive a crew, to the last man, into the boats.
Consequently, though it is possible that in some cases murder of
castaway men may have occurred, such cases must have been most
exceptional. The wreckers were only too glad to build a golden bridge
by which the wrecked might escape. Morally, without a question, those
who lured a hapless merchantman upon the rocks were guilty of the
deaths of those sailors who were upset in their boats in escaping from
the vessel, or were dashed against the cliffs in their attempts to
land, but there was no direct blood-guiltiness felt in such cases; and
those who had reaped a harvest from the sea counted their gains
individually, and made no estimate of the misery accruing thereby to
others.

CHAPTER IV.

HOP-O'-MY-THUMB.

"Listen to me," said Judith.

"Yes, Ju!"

The orphans were together in the room that had been their father's,
the room in which for some days he had lain with the blinds down, the
atmosphere heavy with the perfume of flowers, and that indescribable,
unmistakable scent of death. Often, every day, almost every hour, had
Judith stolen into the room while he lay there, to wonder with
infinite reverence and admiration at the purity and dignity of the
dead face. It was that of the dear, dear father, but sublimed beyond
her imagination. All the old vacillation was gone, the expression of
distress and discouragement had passed away, and in their place had
come a fixity and a calm, such as one sees in the busts of the ancient
Roman Cæsars, but with a superadded ethereality, if such a word can be
used, that a piece of pagan statuary never reached. Marvellous, past
finding out, it is that death, which takes from man the spiritual
element, should give to the mere clay a look of angelic spirituality,
yet so it is--so it was with the dead Peter Trevisa; and Judith, with
eyes filling as fast as dried, stood, her hands folded, looking into
his face, felt that she had never loved, never admired him half enough
when he was alive. Life had been the simmer in which all the scum of
trivialities, of infirmities, of sordidness had come to and shown
itself on the surface. Now Death had cleared these all away, and in
the peaceful face of the dead was seen the _real_ man, the nobility,
sanctity, delicacy that formed the texture of his soul, and which had
impressed the very clay wrapped about that volatile essence.

As long as the dear father's body lay in the house Judith had not
realized her utter desolation. But now the funeral was over, and she
had returned with her brother to the parsonage, to draw up the
blinds, and let the light once more enter, and search out, and
revivify the dead rooms.

She was very pale, with reddened eyes, and looking more fragile and
transparent than ever she did before, worn and exhausted by tearful,
wakeful nights, and by days of alternating gusts of sorrow and busy
preparation for the funeral, of painful recollections of joyous days
that were past, and of doubtful searchings into a future that was full
of cloud.

Her black frock served to enhance her pallor, and to make her look
thinner, smaller than when in white or in color.

She had taken her place in her father's high-backed leather chair,
studded thick with brass nails, the leather dulled and fretted by
constant use, but the nail-heads burnished by the same treatment.

Her brother was in the same chair with her; both his arms were round
her neck, and his head was on her shoulder. She had her right arm
about his waist, her left was bowed, the elbow leaning on the chair
arm, her hand folded inward, and her weary head rested on its back.

The fine weather broken in upon by the gale had returned; the sun
shone in unhindered at the window, and blazed on the children's hair;
the brass nails, polished by friction, twinkled as little suns, but
were naught in lustre to the gorgeous red of the hair of the twins,
for the first were but brass, and the other of living gold.

Two more lonely beings could hardly be discovered on the face of the
earth--at all events in the peninsula of Cornwall--but the sense of
this loneliness was summed in the heart of Judith, and was there
articulate; Jamie was but dimly conscious of discomfort and
bereavement. She knew what her father's death entailed on her, or knew
in part, and conjectured more. Had she been left absolutely alone in
the world her condition would have been less difficult than it was
actually, encumbered with her helpless brother. Swimming alone in the
tossing sea, she might have struck out with confidence that she could
keep her head above water, but it was quite otherwise when clinging to
her was a poor, half-witted boy, incapable of doing anything to save
himself, and all whose movements tended only to embarrass her. Not
that she regretted for an instant having to care for Jamie, for she
loved him with sisterly and motherly love combined, intensified in
force by fusion; if to her a future seemed inconceivable without
Jamie, a future without him would be one without ambition, pleasure,
or interest.

The twin brother was very like her, with the same beautiful and
abundant hair, delicate in build, and with the same refined face, but
without the flashes of alternating mood that lightened and darkened
her face. His had a searching, bewildered, distressed expression on
it--the only expression it ever bore except when he was out of temper,
and then it mirrored on its surface his inward ill-humor. His was an
appealing face, a face that told of a spirit infantile, innocent, and
ignorant, that would never grow stronger, but which could deteriorate
by loss of innocence--the only charge of which it was capable. The boy
had no inherent naughtiness in him, but was constantly falling into
mischief through thoughtlessness, and he was difficult to manage
because incapable of reasoning.

What every one saw--that he never would be other than what he
was--Judith would not admit. She acknowledged his inaptitude at his
books, his frivolity, his restlessness, but believed that these were
infirmities to be overcome, and that when overcome the boy would be as
other boys are.

Now these children--they were aged eighteen, but Jamie looked four
years younger--sat in their father's chair, clinging to each other,
all in all to one another, for they had no one else to love and who
loved them.

"Listen to me, Jamie."

"Yes, Ju, I be----"

"Don't say 'I be'--say 'I am.'"

"Yes, Ju."

"Jamie, dear!" she drew her arm tighter about him; her heart was
bounding, and every beat caused her pain. "Jamie, dear, you know that,
now dear papa is gone, and you will never see him in this world again,
that----"

"Yes, Ju."

"That I have to look to you, my brother, to stand up for me like a
man, to think and do for me as well as for yourself--a brave, stout,
industrious fellow."

"Yes, Ju."

"I am a girl, and you will soon be a man, and must work for both of
us. You must earn the money, and I will spend it frugally as we both
require it. Then we shall be happy again, and dear papa in Paradise
will be glad and smile on us. You will make an effort, will you not,
Jamie? Hitherto you have been able to run about and play and squander
your time, but now serious days have come upon us, and you must fix
your mind on work and determine--Jamie--mind, screw your heart to a
strong determination to put away childish things and be a man, and a
strength and a comfort to me."

He put up his lips to kiss her cheek, but could not reach it, as her
head was leaning on her hand away from him.

"What are you fidgeting at, my dear?" she asked, without stirring,
feeling his body restless under her arm.

"A nail is coming out," he answered.

It was so; whilst she had been speaking to him he was working at one
of the brass studs, and had loosened its bite in the chair.

"Oh, Jamie! you are making work by thus drawing out a nail. Can you
not help me a little, and reduce the amount one has to think of and
do? You have not been attending to what I said, and I was so much in
earnest." She spoke in a tone of discouragement, and the tone, more
than the words, impressed the susceptible heart of the boy. He began
to cry.

"You are cross."

"I am not cross, my pet; I am never cross with you, I love you too
dearly; but you try my patience sometimes, and just now I am
overstrained--and then I did want to make you understand."

"Now papa's dead I'll do no more lessons, shall I?" asked Jamie,
coaxingly.

"You must, indeed, and with me instead of papa."

"Not _rosa_, _rosæ_?"

"Yes, _rosa_, _rosæ_."

Then he sulked.

"I don't love you a bit. It is not fair. Papa is dead, so I ought not
to have any more lessons. I hate _rosa_, _rosæ_!" He kicked the legs
of the chair peevishly with his heels. As his sister said nothing,
seemed to be inattentive--for she was weary and dispirited--he slapped
her cheek by raising his hand over his head.

"What, Jamie, strike me, your only friend?"

Then he threw his arms round her again, and kissed her. "I'll love
you; only, Ju, say I am not to do _rosa_, _rosæ_!"

"How long have you been working at the first declension in the Latin
grammar, Jamie?"

He tried for an instant to think, gave up the effort, laid his head on
her shoulder, and said:

"I don't know and don't care. Say I am not to do _rosa_, _rosæ_!"

"What! not if papa wished it?"

"I hate the Latin grammar!"

For a while both remained silent. Judith felt the tension to which her
mind and nerves had been subjected, and lapsed momentarily into a
condition of something like unconsciousness, in which she was dimly
sensible of a certain satisfaction rising out of the pause in thought
and effort. The boy lay quiet, with his head on her shoulder, for a
while, then withdrew his arms, folded his hands on his lap, and began
to make a noise by compressing the air between the palms.

"There's a finch out there going 'chink! chink!' and listen, Ju, I can
make 'chink! chink!' too."

Judith recovered herself from her distraction, and said:

"Never mind the finch now. Think of what I say. We shall have to leave
this house."

"Why?"

"Of course we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the better. It is
no more ours."

"Yes, it is ours. I have my rabbits here."

"Now that papa is dead it is no longer ours."

"It's a wicked shame."

"Not at all, Jamie. This house was given to papa for his life only;
now it will go to a new rector, and Aunt Dunes[B] is going to fetch us
away to another house."

    [B] Dunes is the short for Dionysia.

"When?"

"To-day."

"I won't go," said the boy. "I swear I won't."

"Hush, hush, Jamie! Don't use such expressions. I do not know where
you have picked them up. We must go."

"And my rabbits, are they to go too?"

"The rabbits? We'll see about them. Aunt----"

"I hate Aunt Dunes!"

"You really must not call her that; if she hears you she will be very
angry. And consider, she has been taking a great deal of trouble about
us."

"I don't care."

"My dear, she is dear papa's sister."

"Why didn't papa get a nicer sister--like you?"

"Because he had to take what God gave him."

The boy pouted, and began to kick his heels against the chair-legs
once more.

"Jamie, we must leave this house to-day. Aunt is coming to take us
both away."

"I won't go."

"But, Jamie, I am going, and the cook is going, and so is Jane."

"Are cook and Jane coming with us?"

"No, dear."

"Why not?"

"We shall not want them. We cannot afford to keep them any more, to
pay their wages; and then we shall not go into a house of our own. You
must come with me, and be a joy and rest to me, dear Jamie."

She turned her head over, and leaned it on his head. The sun glowed in
their mingled hair--all of one tinge and lustre. It sparkled in the
tears on her cheek.

"Ju, may I have these buttons?"

"What buttons?"

"Look!"

He shook himself free from his sister, slid his feet to the ground,
went to a bureau, and brought to his sister a large open basket that
had been standing on the top of the bureau. It had been turned out of
a closet by Aunt Dionysia, and contained an accumulation of those most
profitless of collected remnants--odd buttons, coat buttons, brass,
smoked mother-of-pearl, shirt buttons, steel clasps--buttons of all
kinds, the gathering together made during twenty-five years. Why the
basket, after having been turned out of a lumber closet, had been left
in the room of death, or why, if turned out elsewhere, it had been
brought there, is more than even the novelist can tell. Suffice it
that there it was, and by whom put there could not be said.

"Oh! what a store of pretty buttons!" exclaimed the boy. "Do look,
Ju, these great big ones are just like those on Cheap Jack's red
waistcoat. Here is a brass one with a horse on it. Do see! Oh, Ju,
please get your needle and thread and sew this one on to my black
dress."

Judith sighed. It was in vain for her to impress the realities of the
situation on his wandering mind.

"Hark!" she exclaimed. "There is Aunt Dunes. I hear her voice--how
loud she speaks! She has come to fetch us away."

"Where is she going to take us to?"

"I do not know, Jamie."

"She will take us into the forest and lose us, like as did
Hop-o'-my-Thumb's father."

"There are no forests here--hardly any trees."

"She will leave us in the forest and run away."

"Nonsense, Jamie!"

"I am sure she will. She doesn't like us. She wants to get rid of us.
I don't care. May I have the basket of buttons?"

"Yes, Jamie."

"Then I'll be Hop-o'-my-Thumb."

CHAPTER V.

THE BUTTONS.

It was as Judith surmised. Mrs. Dionysia Trevisa had come to remove
her nephew and niece from the rectory. She was a woman decided in
character, especially in all that concerned her interests. She had
made up her mind that the children could not be left unprotected in
the parsonage, and she could not be with them. Therefore they must go.
The servants must leave; they would be paid their month's wage, but by
dismissing them their keep would be economized. There was a factotum
living in a cottage near, who did the gardening, the cinder-sifting,
and boot-cleaning for the rectory inmates, he would look after the
empty house, and wait on in hopes of being engaged to garden, sift
cinders, and clean boots for the new rector.

As it was settled that the children must leave the house, the next
thing to consider was where they were to be placed. The aunt could not
take them to Pentyre Glaze; that was not to be thought of. They must
be disposed of in some other way.

Mrs. Trevisa had determined on a sale of her brother's effects: his
furniture, bedding, curtains, carpets, books, plate, and old sermons.
She was anxious to realize as soon as possible, so as to know for
certain what she could calculate upon as being left her for the
support of Judith and her brother. To herself the rector had left only
a ring and five guineas. She had not expected more. His decease was
not likely to be a benefit, but, on the contrary, an embarrassment to
her. He had left about a thousand pounds, but then Mrs. Trevisa did
not yet know how large a bite out of this thousand pounds would be
taken by the dilapidations on rectory, glebe, and chancel. The chancel
of the church was in that condition that it afforded a wide margin for
the adjudication of dilapidations. They might be set down at ten
shillings or a thousand pounds, and no one could say which was the
fairest sum, as the chancel was deep in sand and invisible. The
imagination of the valuer might declare it to be sound or to be
rotten, and till dug out no one could impeach his judgment.

In those days, when an incumbent died, the widow and orphans of the
deceased appointed a valuer, and the incoming rector nominated his
valuer, and these two cormorants looked each other in the eyes--said
to each other, "Brother, what pickings?" And as less resistance to
being lacerated and cleaned to the bone was to be anticipated from
a broken-hearted widow and helpless children than from a robust,
red-faced rector, the cormorants contrived to rob the widow and the
fatherless. Then that cormorant who had been paid to look after the
interest of the widow and children and had not done it said to the
other cormorant, "Brother, I've done you a turn this time; do me the
like when the chance falls to you." Now, although nominally the money
picked off the sufferers was to go to the account of the incomer, it
was not allowed to pass till the cormorants had taken toll of it.
Moreover, these cormorants were architects, builders, solicitors, or
contractors of some sort, and looked to get something further out of
the incoming man they favored, whereas they knew they could get
nothing at all out of the departed man who was buried. Now we have
pretended to change all this; let us persuade ourselves we have made
the conduct of these matters more honest and just.

Aunt Dionysia did not know by experience what valuers for
dilapidations were, but she had always heard that valuation for
dilapidations materially diminished the property of a deceased
incumbent. She was consequently uneasy, and anxious to know the worst,
and make the best of the circumstances that she could. She saw clearly
enough that the sum that would remain when debts and valuation were
paid would be insufficient to support the orphans, and she saw also
with painful clearness that there would be a necessity for her to
supplement their reduced income from her own earnings. This conviction
did not sweeten her temper and increase the cordiality with which she
treated her nephew and niece.

"Now, hoity-toity!" said Aunt Dionysia; "I'm not one of your mewlers
and pewkers. I have my work to do, and can't afford to waste time in
the luxury of tears. You children shall come with me. I will see you
settled in, and then Balhachet shall wheel over your boxes and
whatever we want for the night. I have been away from my duties longer
than I ought, and the maids are running wild, are after every one who
comes near the place like horse-flies round the cattle on a sultry
day. I will see you to your quarters, and then you must shift for
yourselves. Balhachet can come and go between the rectory and Zachie
Menaida as much as you want."

"Are we going to Mr. Menaida's, aunt?" asked Judith.

"Did I not say Zachie Menaida! If I said Zachie Menaida I suppose I
meant what I said, or are you hard of hearing? Come--time to _me_ is
precious. Bustle--bustle--don't keep me waiting while you gape."

After a while Mrs. Trevisa succeeded in getting her nephew and niece
to start. Judith, indeed, was ready at the first suggestion to go with
her aunt, glad to get over the pang of leaving the house as quickly as
might be. It was to be the rupture of one thread of the tie that bound
her to the past, but an important thread. She was to leave the house
as a home, though she would return to it again and again to carry away
from it such of her possessions as she required and could find a place
for at Zachary Menaida's. But with Jamie it was otherwise. He had run
away, and had to be sought, and when found coaxed and cajoled into
following his aunt and sister.

Judith had found him, for she knew his nooks and dens. He was seated
in a laurel bush playing with the buttons.

"Look, Ju! there is some broken mirror among the buttons. Stand still,
and I will make the sun jump into your eyes. Open your mouth, and I
will send him down your throat. Won't it be fun; I'll tease old Dunes
with it."

"Then come along with me."

He obeyed.

The distance to Zachary Menaida's cottage was about a mile and a
quarter, partly through parish roads, partly through lanes, the way in
parts walled and hedged up against the winds, in others completely
exposed to every breath of air where it traversed a down.

Judith walked forward with her aunt, and Jamie lagged. Occasionally
his sister turned her head to reassure herself that he had not given
them the slip; otherwise she attended as closely as she was able to
the instructions and exhortations of her aunt. She and her brother
were to be lodged temporarily at Uncle Zachie's, that is to say, with
Mr. Menaida, an elderly, somewhat eccentric man, who occupied a double
cottage at the little hamlet of Polzeath. No final arrangement as to
the destination of the orphans could be made till Aunt Dunes knew the
result of the sale, and how much remained to the children after the
father's trifling debts had been paid, and the considerable slice had
been cut out of it by the valuers for dilapidations. Mrs. Trevisa
talked fast in her harsh tones, and in a loud voice, without
undulation or softness in it, and expected her niece to hear and give
account for everything she told her, goading her to attention with a
sharp reminder when she deemed that her mind was relaxed, and whipping
her thoughts together when she found them wandering. But, indeed, it
was not possible to forget for one moment the presence and personality
of Dionysia, though the subject of her discourse might be unnoticed.

Every fibre of Judith's heart was strung and strained to the
uttermost, to acutest feeling, and a sympathetic hand drawn across
them would have produced a soft, thrilling, musical wail. Her bosom
was so full to overflow that a single word of kindness, a look even
that told of love, would have sufficed to make the child cast herself
in a convulsion of grief into her aunt's arms, bury her face in her
bosom, and weep out her pent-up tears. Then, after perhaps half an
hour, she would have looked up through the rain into her aunt's face,
and have smiled, and have loved that aunt passionately,
self-sacrificingly, to her dying day. She was disposed to love
her--for was not Dionysia the only relative she had; and was she not
the very sister of that father who had been to her so much? But Mrs.
Trevisa was not the woman to touch the taught cords with a light hand,
or to speak or look in love. She was hard, angular, unsympathetic; and
her manner, the intonations of her voice, her mode of address, the
very movements of her body, acted on the strained nerves as a rasping
file, that would fret till it had torn them through.

Suddenly round a corner, where the narrow road turned, two hundred
yards ahead, dashed a rider on a black steed, and Judith immediately
recognized Coppinger on his famous mare Black Bess; a mare much talked
of, named after the horse ridden by Dick Turpin. The recognition was
mutual. He knew her instantly; with a jerk of the rein and a set of
the brow he showed that he was not indifferent.

Coppinger wore his slouched hat, tied under his chin and beard, a
necessary precaution in that gale-swept country; on his feet to his
knees were high boots. He wore a blue knitted jersey, and a red
kerchief about his throat.

Captain Cruel slightly slackened his pace, as the lane was narrow; and
as he rode past his dark brow was knit, and his eyes flashed angrily
at Judith. He deigned neither a glance nor a word to his housekeeper,
who courtesied and assumed a fawning expression.

When he had passed the two women he dug his spurs into Black Bess and
muttered some words they did not hear.

Judith, who had stood aside, now came forward into the midst of the
roadway and rejoined her aunt, who began to say something, when her
words and Judith's attention was arrested by shouts, oaths, and cries
in their rear.

Judith and her aunt turned to discover the occasion of this
disturbance, and saw that Coppinger was off his horse, on his feet,
dragging the brute by the rein, and was hurling his crop, or
hunting-whip, as he pursued Jamie flying from him with cries of
terror. But that he held the horse and could not keep up with the boy,
Jamie would have suffered severely, for Coppinger was in a livid fury.

Jamie flew to his sister.

"Save me, Ju! he wants to kill me."

"What have you done?"

"It is only the buttons."

"Buttons, dear?"

But the boy was too frightened to explain.

Then Judith drew her brother behind her, took from him the basket he
was carrying, and stepped to encounter the angry man, who came on, now
struggling with his horse, cursing Bess because she drew back, then
plunging forward with his whip above his head brandished menacingly,
and by this conduct further alarmed Black Bess.

Judith met Coppinger, and he was forced to stay his forward course.

"What has he done?" asked the girl. "Why do you threaten?"

"The cursed idiot has strewn bits of glass and buttons along the
road," answered the Captain, angrily. "Stand aside that I may lash
him, and teach him to frighten horses and endanger men's lives."

"I am sorry for what Jamie has done. I will pick up the things he has
thrown down."

Cruel Coppinger's eyes glistened with wrath. He gathered the lash of
his whip into his palm along with the handle, and gripped them
passionately.

"Curse the fool! My Bess was frightened, dashed up the bank, and all
but rolled over. Do you know he might have killed me?"

"You must excuse him; he is a very child."

"I will not excuse him. I will cut the flesh off his back if I catch
him."

He put the end of the crop handle into his mouth, and, putting his
right hand behind him, gathered the reins up shorter and wound them
more securely about his left hand.

Judith walked backward, facing him, and he turned with his horse and
went after her. She stooped and gathered up a splinter of glass. The
sun striking through the gaps in the hedge had flashed on these scraps
of broken mirror and of white bone, or burnished brass buttons, and
the horse had been frightened at them. As Judith stooped and took up
now a buckle, then a button, and then some other shining trifle, she
hardly for an instant withdrew her eyes from Coppinger; they had in
them the same dauntless defiance as when she encountered him on the
stairs of the rectory. But now it was she who retreated, step by step,
and he who advanced, and yet he could not flatter himself that he was
repelling her. She maintained her strength and mastery unbroken as she
retreated.

"Why do you look at me so? Why do you walk backward?"

"Because I mistrust you. I do not know what you might do were I not to
confront you."

"What I might do? What do you think I would do?"

"I cannot tell. I mistrust you."

"Do you think me capable of lashing at you with my crop?"

"I think you capable of anything."

"Flattering that!" he shouted, angrily.

"You would have lashed at Jamie."

"And why not? He might have killed me."

"He might have killed you, but you should not have touched him--not
have thought of touching him."

"Indeed! Why not?"

"Why not?" She raised herself upright and looked straight into his
eyes, in which fire flickered, flared, then decayed, then flared
again.

"You are no Dane, or you would not have asked 'Why not?' twice. Nay,
you would not have asked it once."

"Not a Dane?" His beard and mustache were quivering, and he snorted
with anger.

"A Dane, I have read in history, is too noble and brave to threaten
women and to strike children."

He uttered an oath and ground his teeth.

"No; a Dane would never have thought of asking why not?--why not lash
a poor little silly boy?"

"You insult me! You dare to do it?"

Her blood was surging in her heart. As she looked into this man's dark
and evil face she thought of all the distress he had caused her
father, and a wave of loathing swept over her, nerved her to defy him
to the uttermost, and to proclaim all the counts she had against him.

"I dare do it," she said, "because you made my own dear papa's life
full of bitterness and pain----"

"I! I never touched him, hardly spoke to him. I don't care to have to
do with parsons."

"You made his life one of sorrow through your godless, lawless ways,
leading his poor flock astray, and bidding them mock at his warnings
and despise his teachings. Almost with his last breath he spoke of
you, and the wretchedness of heart you had caused him. And then you
dared--yes--you dared--you dared to burst into our house where he lay
dead, with shameful insolence to disturb its peace. And now--" she
gasped, "and now, ah! you lie when you say you are a Dane, and talk of
cutting and lashing the dead father's little boy on his father's
burial day. You are but one thing I can name--a coward!"

Did he mean it? No! But blinded, stung to madness by her words,
especially that last, he raised his right arm with the crop.

Did she mean it? No! But in the instinct of self-preservation,
thinking he was about to strike her, she dashed the basket of buttons
in his face, and they flew right and left over him, against the head
of Black Bess, a rain of fragments of mirror, brass, steel,
mother-of-pearl, and bone.

The effect was instantaneous. The mare plunged, reared, threw
Coppinger backward from off his feet, dashed him to the ground,
dragged him this way, that way, bounded, still drawing him about by
the twisted reins, into the hedge, then back, with her hoofs upon him,
near, if not on, his head, his chest--then, released by the snap of
the rein, or through its becoming disengaged, Bess darted down the
lane, was again brought to a standstill by the glittering fragments on
the ground, turned, rushed back in the direction whence she had come,
and disappeared.

Judith stood panting, paralyzed with fear and dismay. Was he dead,
broken to pieces, pounded by those strong hoofs?

He was not dead. He was rolling himself on the ground, struggling
clumsily to his knees.

"Are you satisfied?" he shouted, glaring at her like a wild beast
through his tangled black hair that had fallen over his face. "I
cannot strike you nor your brother now. My arm and the Lord knows what
other bones are broken. You have done that--and I owe you something
for it."

CHAPTER VI.

UNCLE ZACHIE.

The astonishment, the consternation of Mrs. Trevisa at what had
occurred, which she could not fully comprehend, took from her the
power to speak. She had seen her niece in conversation with Cruel
Coppinger, and had caught snatches of what had passed between them.
All his words had reached her, and some of Judith's. When, suddenly,
she saw the girl dash the basket of buttons in the face of the
Captain, saw him thrown to the ground, drawn about by his frantic
horse, and left, as she thought, half dead, her dismay was unbounded.
It might have been that Coppinger threatened Judith with his whip, but
nothing could excuse her temerity in resisting him, in resisting him
and protecting herself in the way she did. The consequences of that
resistance she could not measure. Coppinger was bruised, bones were
broken, and Aunt Dionysia knew the nature of the man too well not to
expect his deadly animosity, and to feel sure of implacable revenge
against the girl who had injured him--a revenge that would envelop all
who belonged to her, and would therefore strike herself.

The elderly spinster had naturally plenty of strength and hardness
that would bear her through most shocks without discomposure, but such
an incident as that which had just taken place before her eyes
entirely unnerved and dismayed her.

Coppinger was conveyed home by men called to the spot, and Mrs.
Trevisa walked on with her niece and nephew in silence to the house of
Mr. Zachary Menaida. Jamie had escaped over the hedge, to put a
stone-and-earth barrier between himself and his assailant directly
Judith interposed between him and Coppinger. Now that the latter was
gone, he came, laughing, over the hedge again. To him what had
occurred was fun.

At Menaida's the aunt departed, leaving her nephew and niece with the
old man, that she might hurry to Pentyre Glaze and provide what was
needed for Coppinger. She took no leave of Judith. In the haze of
apprehension that enveloped her mind glowed anger against the girl for
having increased her difficulties and jeopardized her position with
Coppinger.

Mr. Zachary Menaida was an old man, or rather a man who had passed
middle age, with grizzled hair that stood up above his brow,
projecting like the beak of a ship or the horn of an unicorn. He had a
big nose inclined to redness, and kindly, watery eyes, was close
shaven, and had lips that, whenever he was in perplexity, or worried
with work or thought, he thrust forward and curled. He was a
middle-statured man, inclined to stoop.

Uncle Zachie, as he was commonly called behind his back, was a
gentleman by birth. In the Roman Catholic Church there is a religious
order called that of Minims. In England we have, perhaps, the most
widely-diffused of orders, not confined to religion--it is that of
Crotchets. To this order Mr. Menaida certainly belonged. He was made
up of hobbies and prejudices that might bore, but never hurt others.

Probably the most difficult achievement one can conceive for a man to
execute is to stand in his own light; yet Mr. Menaida had succeeded in
doing this all through his life. In the first place, he had been bred
up for the law, but had never applied himself to the duties of the
profession to which he had been articled. As he had manifested as a
boy a love of music, his mother and sister had endeavored to make him
learn to play on an instrument; but, because so urged, he had refused
to qualify himself to play on pianoforte, violin, or flute, till his
fingers had stiffened, whereupon he set to work zealously to practise,
when it was no longer possible for him to acquire even tolerable
proficiency.

As he had been set by his father to work on skins of parchment, he
turned his mind to skins of another sort, and became an eager
naturalist and taxidermist.

That he had genius, or rather a few scattered sparks of talent in his
muddled brain, was certain. Every one who knew him said he was clever,
but pitied his inability to turn his cleverness to purpose. But one
must take into consideration, before accepting the general verdict
that he was clever, the intellectual abilities of those who formed
this judgment. When we do this, we doubt much whether their opinion is
worth much. Mr. Menaida was not clever. He had flashes of wit, no
steady light of understanding. Above all, he had no application, a
little of which might have made him a useful member of society.

When his articleship was over he set up as a solicitor, but what
business was offered him he neglected or mismanaged, till business
ceased to be offered. He would have starved had not a small annuity of
fifty pounds been left him to keep the wolf from the door, and that he
was able to supplement this small income with money made by the sale
of his stuffed specimens of sea-fowl. Taxidermy was the only art in
which he was able to do anything profitable. He loved to observe the
birds, to wander on the cliffs listening to their cries, watching
their flight, their positions when at rest, the undulations in their
feathers under the movement of the muscles as they turned their heads
or raised their feet; and when he set himself to stuff the skins he
was able to imitate the postures and appearance of living birds with
rare fidelity. Consequently his specimens were in request, and
ornithologists and country gentlemen whose game-keepers had shot rare
birds desired to have the skins dealt with, and set in cases, by the
dexterous fingers of Mr. Zachary Menaida. He might have done more work
of the same kind, but that his ingrained inactivity and distaste for
work limited his output. In certain cases Mr. Menaida would not do
what was desired of him till coaxed and flattered, and then he did it
grumblingly and with sighs at being subjected to killing toil.

Mr. Menaida was a widower; his married life had not been long; he had
been left with a son, now grown to manhood, who was no longer at home.
He was abroad, in Portugal, in the service of a Bristol merchant, an
importer of wines.

As already said, Uncle Zachie did not begin the drudgery of music till
it was too late for him to acquire skill on any instrument. His
passion for music grew with his inability to give himself pleasure
from it. He occupied a double cottage at Polzeath, and a hole knocked
through the wall that had separated the lower rooms enabled him to
keep his piano in one room and his bird-stuffing apparatus in the
other, and to run from one to the other in his favorite desultory way,
that never permitted him to stick to one thing at a time.

Into this house Judith and her brother were introduced. Mr. Menaida
had been attached to the late rector, the only other gentleman in
culture, as in birth, that lived in the place, and when he was told by
Miss--or, as she was usually called, Mrs.--Trevisa that the children
must leave the parsonage and be put temporarily with some one
suitable, and that no other suitable house was available, he consented
without making much objection to receive them into his cottage. He was
a kindly man, gentle at heart, and he was touched at the bereavement
of the children whom he had known since they were infants.

After the first salutation Mr. Menaida led Judith and the boy into his
parlor, the room opening out of his workshop.

"Look here," said he, "what is that?" He pointed to his piano.

"A piano, sir," answered Judith.

"Yes--and mind you, I hate strumming, though I love music. When I am
in, engaged at my labors, no strumming. I come in here now and then as
relaxation, and run over this and that; then, refreshed, go back to my
work, but, if there is any strumming, I shall be put out. I shall run
my knife or needle into my hand, and it will upset me for the day. You
understand--no strumming. When I am out, then you may touch the keys,
but only when I am out. You understand clearly? Say the words after
me: 'I allow no strumming.'"

Judith did as required. The same was exacted of Jamie. Then Mr.
Menaida said--

"Very well; now we shall have a dish of tea. I daresay you are tired.
Dear me, you look so. Goodness bless me! indeed you do. What has tired
you has been the trial you have gone through. Poor things, poor
things! There, go to your rooms; my maid, Jump, will show you where
they are, and I will see about making tea. It will do you good. You
want it. I see it."

The kind-hearted man ran about.

"Bless my soul! where have I put the key of the caddy? And--really--my
fingers are all over arsenical soap. I think I will leave Jump to make
the tea. Jump, have you seen where I put the key? Bless my soul!
where did I have it last? Never mind; I will break open the caddy."

"Please, Mr. Menaida, do not do that for us. We can very well wait
till the key is found."

"Oh! I don't know when that will be. I shall have forgotten about it
if I do not find the key at once, or break open the caddy. But, if you
prefer it, I have some cherry-brandy, or I would give you some
milk-punch."

"No--no, indeed, Mr. Menaida."

"But Jamie--I am sure he looks tired. A little cherry-brandy to draw
the threads in him together. And suffer me, though not a doctor, to
recommend it to you. Bless my soul! my fingers are all over arsenical
soap. If I don't have some cherry-brandy myself I shall have the
arsenic get into my system. I hope you have no cuts or scratches on
your hand. I forgot the arsenic when I shook hands with you. Now, look
here, Jump, bring in the saffron cake, and I will cut them each a good
hunch. It will do you good, on my word it will. I have not spared
either figs or saffron, and then--I will help you, as I love you. Come
and see my birds. That is a cormorant--a splendid fellow--looks as if
run out of metal, all his plumage, you know, and in the attitude as if
swallowing a fish. Do you see!--the morsel is going down his throat.
And--how much luggage have you? Jump! show the young lady where she
can put away her gowns and all that sort of thing. Oh, not come yet?
All right--a lady and her dresses are not long parted. They will be
here soon. Now, then. What will you have?--some cold beef--and cider?
Upon my soul!--you must excuse me. I was just wiring that kittiwake.
Excuse me--I shall be ready in a moment. In the meantime there are
books--Rollin's 'Ancient History,' a very reliable book. No--upon my
word, my mind is distracted. I cannot get that kittiwake right without
a glass of port. I have some good port. Oliver guarantees it--from
Portugal, you know. He is there--first-rate business, and will make
his fortune, which is more than his father ever did."

Mr. Menaida went to a closet, and produced a bottle.

"Come here, Jamie. I know what is good for you."

"No--please, Mr. Menaida, do not. He has not been accustomed to
anything of the sort. Please not, sir."

"Fudge!" said Uncle Zachie, holding up a glass and pouring
cherry-brandy into it. "What is your age?--seventeen or eighteen, and
I am fifty-two. I have over thirty years' more experience of the world
than you. Jamie, don't be tied to your sister's apron-string. I know
what is best for you. Girls drink water, men something better. Come
here, Jamie!"

"No, sir--I beseech you."

"Bless my soul! I know what is good for him. Come to me, Jamie. Look
the other way, Judith, if I cannot persuade you."

Judith sighed, and covered her face with her hands. There was to be no
help, no support in Uncle Zachie. On the contrary, he would break down
her power over Jamie.

"Jamie," she said, "if you love me, go up-stairs."

"Presently, Ju. I want that first." And he took it, ran to his sister,
and said:

"It is good, Ju!"

"You have disobeyed me, Jamie--that is bad."

She stood on the threshold of further trouble, and she knew it.

CHAPTER VII.

A VISIT.

No sleep visited Judith's eyes that night till the first streaks of
dawn appeared, though she was weary, and her frail body and
over-exerted brain needed the refreshment of sleep. But sleep she
could not, for cares were gathering upon her.

She had often heard her father, when speaking of Mr. Menaida, lament
that he was not a little more self-controlled in his drinking. It was
not that the old fellow ever became inebriated, but that he hankered
after the bottle, and was wont to take a nip continually to strengthen
his nerves, steady his hand, or clear his brain. There was ever ready
some excuse satisfactory to his own conscience; and it was due to
these incessant applications to the bottle that his hand shook, his
eyes became watery, and his nose red. It was a danger Judith must
guard against, lest this trick should be picked up by the childish
Jamie, always apt to imitate what he should not, and acquire habits
easily gained, hardly broken, that were harmful to himself. Uncle
Zachie, in his good-nature, would lead the boy after him into the same
habits that marred his own life.

This was one thought that worked like a mole all night in Judith's
brain; but she had other troubles as well to keep her awake. She was
alarmed at the consequences of her conduct in the lane. She wondered
whether Coppinger were more seriously hurt than had at first appeared.
She asked herself whether she had not acted wrongly when she acted
inconsiderately, whether in her precipitation to protect herself she
had not misjudged Coppinger, whether, if he had attempted to strike
her, it would not have been a lesser evil to receive the blow, than to
ward it off in such a manner as to break his bones. Knowing by report
the character of the man, she feared that she had incurred his deadly
animosity. He could not, that she could see, hurt herself in the
execution of his resentment, but he might turn her aunt out of his
house. That she had affronted her aunt she was aware; Mrs. Trevisa's
manner in parting with her had shown that with sufficient plainness.

A strange jumble of sounds on the piano startled Judith. Her first
thought and fear were that her brother had gone to the instrument, and
was amusing himself on the keys. But on listening attentively she was
aware that there was sufficient sequence in the notes to make it
certain that the performer was a musician, though lacking in facility
of execution. She descended the stairs and entered the little
sitting-room. Uncle Zachie was seated on the music-stool, and was
endeavoring to play a sonata of Beethoven that was vastly beyond the
capacity of his stiff-jointed fingers. Whenever he made a false note
he uttered a little grunt and screwed up his eyes, endeavored to play
the bar again, and perhaps accomplish it only to break down in the
next.

Judith did not venture to interrupt him. She took up some knitting,
and seated herself near the piano, where he might see her without her
disturbing him. He raised his brows, grunted, floundered into false
harmony, and exclaimed, "Bless me! how badly they do print music
nowadays. Who, without the miraculous powers of a prophet, could tell
that B should be natural?" Then, turning his head over his shoulder,
addressed Judith, "Good-morning, missie. Are you fond of music?"

"Yes, sir, very."

"So you think. Everyone says he or she is fond of music, because that
person can hammer out a psalm tune or play the 'Rogue's March.' I hate
to hear those who call themselves musical strum on a piano. They can't
feel, they only execute."

"But they can play their notes correctly," said Judith, and then
flushed with vexation at having made this pointed and cutting remark.
But it did not cause Mr. Menaida to wince.

"What of that? I give not a thank-you for mere literal music-reading.
Call Jump, set 'Shakespeare' before her, and she will hammer out a
scene--correctly as to words; but where is the sense? Where the life?
You must play with the spirit and play with the understanding also,
as you must read with the spirit and read with the understanding also.
It is the same thing with bird-stuffing. Any fool can ram tow into a
skin and thrust wires into the neck, but what is the result? You must
stuff birds with the spirit and stuff with the understanding also--or
it is naught."

"I suppose it is the same with everything one does--one must do it
heartily and intelligently."

"Exactly! Now you should see my boy, Oliver. Have you ever met him?"

"I think I have; but, to be truthful, I do not recollect him, sir."

"I will bring you his likeness--in miniature. It is in the next room."
Up jumped Mr. Menaida, and ran through the opening in the wall, and
returned in another moment with the portrait, and gave it into
Judith's hands.

"A fine fellow is Oliver! Look at his nose how straight it is. Not
like mine--that is a pump-handle. He got his good looks from his
mother, not from me. Ah!" He reseated himself at the piano, and
ran--incorrectly--over a scale. "It is all the pleasure I have in
life, to think of my boy, and to look at his picture, and read his
letters, and drink the port he sends me--first-rate stuff. He writes
admirable letters, and never a month passes but I receive one. It
would come expensive if he wrote direct, so his letter is enclosed in
the business papers sent to the house at Bristol, and they forward it
to me. You shall read his last--out loud. It will give me a pleasure
to hear it read by you."

"If I read properly, Mr. Menaida--with the spirit and with the
understanding."

"Exactly! But you could not fail to do that looking at the cheerful
face in the miniature, and reading his words--pleasant and bright as
himself. Pity you have not seen him; well, that makes something to
live for. He has dark hair and blue eyes--not often met together, and
when associated, very refreshing. Wait! I'll go after the letter:
only, bless my soul! where is it? What coat did I have on when I read
it? I'll call Jump. She may remember. Wait! do you recall this?"

He stumbled over something on the keys which might have been anything.

"It is Haydn. I will tell you what I think: Mozart I delight in as a
companion; Beethoven I revere as a master; but Haydn I love as a
friend. You were about to say something?"

Judith had set an elbow on the piano and put her hand to her head, her
fingers through the hair, and was looking into Uncle Zachie's face
with an earnestness he could not mistake. She did desire to say
something to him; but if she waited till he gave her an opportunity
she might wait a long time. He jumped from one subject to another with
alacrity, and with rapid forgetfulness of what he was last speaking
about.

"Oh, sir, I am so very, very grateful to you for having received us
into your snug little house----"

"You like it? Well, I only pay seven pounds for it. Cheap, is it not?
Two cottages--laborers' cottages--thrown together. Well, I might go
farther and fare worse."

"And, Mr. Menaida, I venture to ask you another favor, which, if you
will grant me, you will lay me under an eternal obligation."

"You may command me, my dear."

"It is only this: not to let Jamie have anything stronger than a glass
of cider. I do not mind his having that; but a boy like him does not
need what is, no doubt, wanted by you who are getting old. I am so
afraid of the habit growing on him of looking for and liking what is
too strong for him. He is such a child, so easily led, and so unable
to control himself. It may be a fancy, a prejudice of mine"--she
passed her nervous hand over her face--"I do hope I am not offending
you, dear Mr. Menaida; but I know Jamie so well, and I know how
carefully he must be watched and checked. If it be a silly fancy of
mine--and perhaps it is only a silly fancy--yet," she put on a
pleading tone, "you will humor me in this, will you not, Mr. Menaida?"

"Bless my soul! you have only to express a wish and I will fulfil it.
For myself, you must know, I am a little weak; I feel a chill when the
wind turns north or east, and am always relaxed when it is in the
south or west; that forces me to take something just to save me from
serious inconvenience, you understand."

"Oh quite, sir."

"And then--confound it!--I am goaded on to work when disinclined. Why,
there's a letter come to me now from Plymouth--a naturalist there,
asking for more birds; and what can I do? I slave, I am at it all day,
half the night; I have no time to eat or sleep. I was not born to
stuff birds. I take it as an amusement, a pastime, and it is converted
into a toil. I must brace up my exhausted frame; it is necessary to my
health, you understand!"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Menaida. And you really will humor my childish whim?"

"Certainly, you may rely on me."

"That is one thing I wanted to say. You see, sir, we have but just
come into your house, and already, last night, Jamie was tempted to
disobey me, and take what I thought unadvisable, so--I have been
turning it over and over in my head--I thought I would like to come to
a clear understanding with you, Mr. Menaida. It seems ungracious in
me, but you must pity me. I have now all responsibility for Jamie on
my head, and I have to do what my conscience tells me I should do;
only, I pray you, do not take offence at what I have said."

"Fudge! my dear; you are right, I dare say."

"And now that I have your promise--I have that, have I not?"

"Yes, certainly."

"Now I want your opinion, if you will kindly give it me. I have no
father, no mother, to go to for advice; and so I venture to appeal to
you--it is about Captain Coppinger."

"Captain Coppinger!" repeated Uncle Zachie, screwing up his brows and
mouth. "Umph! He is a bold man who can give help against Captain
Coppinger, and a strong man as well as bold. How has he wronged you?"

"Oh! he has not wronged me. It is I who have hurt him."

"You--you!" Uncle Zachie laughed. "A little creature such as you could
not hurt Captain Cruel!"

"But, indeed, I have; I have thrown him down and broken his arms and
some of his bones."

"You--you?" Uncle Zachie's face of astonishment and dismay was so
comical that Judith, in spite of her anxiety and exhaustion, smiled;
but the smile was without brightness.

"And pray, how in the name of wonder did you do that? Upon my word,
you will deserve the thanks of the Preventive men. They have no love
for him; they have old scores they would gladly wipe off with a broken
arm, or, better still, a cracked skull. And pray how did you do this?
With the flour-roller?"

"No, sir, I will tell you the whole story."

Then, in its true sequence, with great clearness, she related the
entire narrative of events. She told how her father, even with his
last breath, had spoken of Coppinger as the man who had troubled his
life by marring his work; how that the Captain had entered the
parsonage without ceremony when her dear father was lying dead
up-stairs, and how he had called there boisterously for Aunt Dionysia
because he wanted something of her. She told the old man how that her
own feelings had been wrought, by this affront, into anger against
Coppinger. Then she related the incident in the lane, and how that,
when he raised his arm against her, she had dashed the buttons into
his face, frightened his horse, and so produced an accident that might
have cost the Captain his life.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Menaida, "and what do you want? Is it
an assault? I will run to my law-books and find out; I don't know that
it can quite be made out a case of misadventure."

"It is not that, sir."

"Then what do you want?"

"I have been racking my head to think what I ought to do under the
circumstances. There can be no doubt that I aggravated him. I was very
angry, both because he had been a trouble to my darling papa, and then
because he had been so insolent as to enter our house and shout for
Aunt Dunes; but there was something more--he had tried to beat Jamie,
and it was my father's day of burial. All that roused a bad spirit in
me, and I did say very bad words to him--words a man of metal would
not bear from even a child, and I suppose I really did lash him to
madness, and he would have struck me--but perhaps not, he might have
thought better of it. I provoked him, and then I brought about what
happened. I have been considering what I ought to do. If I remain here
and take no notice, then he will think me very unfeeling, and that I
do not care that I have hurt him in mind and body. It came into my
head last night that I would ask aunt to apologize to him for what I
had done, or, better still, should aunt not come here to-day, which is
very likely, that I might walk with Jamie to Pentyre and inquire how
Captain Coppinger is, and send in word by my aunt that I am
sorry--very sorry."

"Upon my soul, I don't know what to say. I could not have done this to
Coppinger myself for a good deal of money. I think if I had, I would
get out of the place as quickly as possible, while he was crippled by
his broken bones. But then, you are a girl, and he may take it better
from you than from me. Well--yes; I think it would be advisable to
allay his anger if you can. Upon my word, you have put yourself into a
difficult position. I'll go and look at my law-books, just for my own
satisfaction."

A heavy blow on the door, and without waiting for a response and
invitation to enter, it was thrown open, and there entered Cruel
Coppinger, his arm bandaged, tied in splints, and bound to his body,
with his heavy walking-stick brandished by the uninjured hand. He
stood for a moment glowering in, searching the room with his keen eyes
till they rested on Judith. Then he made an attempt to raise his hand
to his head, but ineffectually.

"Curse it!" said he, "I cannot do it; don't tear it off my head with
your eyes, girl. Here, you Menaida, come here and take my hat off.
Come instantly, or she--she will do--the devil knows what she will not
do to me."

He turned, and with his stick beat the door back, that it slammed
behind him.

CHAPTER VIII.

A PATCHED PEACE.

"Look at her!" cried Coppinger, with his back against the house door,
and pointing to Judith with his stick.

She was standing near the piano, with one hand on it, and was half
turned toward him. She was in black, but had a white kerchief about
her neck. The absence of all color in her dress heightened the lustre
of her abundant and glowing hair.

Coppinger remained for a moment, pointing with a half sneer on his
dark face. Mr. Menaida had nervously complied with his demand, and had
removed the hat from the smuggler, and his dark hair fell about his
face. That face was livid and pale; he had evidently suffered much,
and now every movement was attended with pain. Not only had some of
his bones been broken, but he was bruised and strained.

"Look at her!" he shouted again, in his deep commanding tones, and he
fixed his fierce eyes on her and knitted his brows. She remained
immovable, awaiting what he had to say. Though there was a flutter in
her bosom, her hand on the piano did not shake.

"I am very sorry, Captain Coppinger," said Judith, in a low, sweet
voice, in which there was but a slight tremulousness. "I profess that
I believe I acted wrongly yesterday, and I repeat that I am
sorry--very sorry, Captain Coppinger."

He made no reply. He lowered the stick that had been pointed at her,
and leaned on it. His hand shook because he was in pain.

"I acted wrongly yesterday," continued Judith, "but I acted under
provocation that, if it does not justify what I did, palliates the
wrong. I can say no more--that is the exact truth."

"Is that all?"

"I am sorry for what was wrong in my conduct--frankly sorry that you
are hurt."

"You hear her?" laughed Coppinger, bitterly. "A little chit like that
to speak to me thus"--then, turning sharply on her, "Are you not
afraid?"

"No, I am not afraid; why should I be?"

"Why? Ask any one in S. Enodoc--any one in Cornwall--who has heard my
name."

"I beg your pardon. I do not want to ask any one else in S. Enodoc,
any one else in Cornwall. I ask you."

"Me? You ask me why you should be afraid of me?" He paused, drew his
thick brows together till they formed a band across his forehead. "I
tell you that none has ever wronged me by a blade of grass or a flock
of wool but has paid for it a thousand-fold. And none has ever hurt me
as you have done--none has ever dared to attempt it."

"I have said that I am sorry."

"You talk like one cold as a mermaid. I do not believe in your
fearlessness. Why do you lean on the piano. There, touch the wires
with the very tips of your fingers, and let me hear if they give a
sound--and sound they will if you tremble."

Judith exposed some of the wires by raising the top of the piano. Then
she smiled, and stood with the tips of her delicate fingers just
touching the chords. Coppinger listened, so did Uncle Zachie, and not
a vibration could they detect.

Presently she withdrew her hand, and said, "Is not that enough? When a
girl says, 'I am sorry,' I supposed the chapter was done and the book
closed."

"You have strange ideas."

"I have those in which I was brought up by the best of fathers."

Coppinger thrust his stick along the floor.

"Is it due to the ideas in which you have been brought up that you are
not afraid--when you have reduced me to a wreck?"

"And you?--are you afraid of the wreck that you have made?"

The dark blood sprang into and suffused his whole face. Uncle Zachie
drew back against the wall and made signs to Judith not to provoke
their self-invited visitor; but she was looking steadily at the
Captain, and did not observe the signals. In Coppinger's presence she
felt nerved to stand on the defensive, and more, to attack. A threat
in his whole bearing, in his manner of addressing her, roused every
energy she possessed.

"I tell you," said he, harshly, "if any man had used the word you
threw at me yesterday, I would have murdered him; I would have split
his skull with the handle of my crop."

"You raised your hand to do it to me," said Judith.

"No!" he exclaimed, violently. "It is false; come here, and let me see
if you have the courage, the fearlessness you affect. You women are
past-masters of dissembling. Come here; kneel before me and let me
raise my stick over you. See; there is lead in the handle, and with
one blow I can split your skull and dash the brains over the floor."

Judith remained immovable.

"I thought it--you are afraid."

She shook her head.

He let himself, with some pain, slowly into a chair.

"You are afraid. You know what to expect. Ah! I could fell you and
trample on you and break your bones, as I was cast down, trampled on,
and broken in my bones yesterday--by you, or through you. Are you
afraid?"

She took a step toward him. Then Uncle Zachie waved her back, in great
alarm. He caught Judith's attention, and she answered him, "I am not
afraid. I gave him a word I should not have given him yesterday. I
will show him that I retract it fully." Then she stepped up to
Coppinger and sank on her knees before him. He raised his whip, with
the loaded handle, brandishing it over her.

"Now I am here," she said, "I again ask your forgiveness, but I
protest an apology is due to me."

He threw his stick away. "By heaven, it is!" Then in an altered tone,
"Take it so, that I ask your forgiveness. Get up; do not kneel to me.
I could not have struck you down had I willed, my arm is stiff.
Perhaps you knew it."

He rose with effort to his feet again. Judith drew back to her former
position by the piano, two hectic spots of flame were in her cheek,
and her eyes were preternaturally bright.

Coppinger looked steadily at her for a while, then he said, "Are you
ill? You look as if you were."

"I have had much to go through of late."

"True."

He remained looking at her, brooding over something in his mind. She
perplexed him; he wondered at her. He could not comprehend the spirit
that was in her, that sustained a delicate little frame, and made her
defy him.

His eyes wandered round the room, and he signed to Uncle Zachie to
give him his stick again.

"What is that?" said he, pointing to the miniature on the stand for
music, where Mr. Menaida had put it, over a sheet of the music he had
been playing, or attempting to play.

"It is my son, Oliver," said Uncle Zachie.

"Why is it there? Has she been looking at it? Let me see it."

Mr. Menaida hesitated, but presently handed it to the redoubted
Captain, with nervous twitches in his face. "I value it highly--my
only child."

Coppinger looked at it, with a curl of his lips; then handed it back
to Mr. Menaida.

"Why is it here?"

"I brought it here to show it her. I am very proud of my son," said
Uncle Zachie.

Coppinger was in an irritable mood, captious about trifles. Why did he
ask questions about this little picture? Why look suspiciously at
Judith as he did so--suspiciously and threateningly?

"Do you play on the piano?" asked Coppinger. "When the evil spirit was
on Saul, David struck the harp and sent the spirit away. Let me hear
how you can touch the notes. It may do me good. Heaven knows it is not
often I have the leisure, or the occasion, or am in the humor for
music. I would hear what you can do."

Judith looked at Uncle Zachie.

"I cannot play," she said; "that is to say, I can play, but not now,
and on this piano."

But Mr. Menaida interfered and urged her to play. He was afraid of
Coppinger.

She seated herself on the music-stool and considered for a moment. The
miniature was again on the stand. Coppinger put out his stick and
thrust it off, and it would have fallen had not Judith caught it. She
gave it to Mr. Menaida, who hastily carried it into the adjoining
room, where the sight of it might no longer irritate the Captain.

"What shall I play? I mean, strum?" asked Judith, looking at Uncle
Zachie. "Beethoven! No--Haydn. Here are his 'Seasons.' I can play
'Spring.'"

She had a light, but firm touch. Her father had been a man of great
musical taste, and he had instructed her. But she had, moreover, the
musical faculty in her, and she played with the spirit and with the
understanding also. Wondrous is the power of music, passing that of
fabled necromancy. It takes a man up out of his most sordid
surroundings, and sets him in heavenly places. It touches fibres of
the inner nature, lost, forgotten, ignored, and makes them thrill with
a new life. It seals the eyes to outward sights, and unfurls new
vistas full of transcendental beauty; it breathes over hot wounds and
heals them; it calls to the surface springs of pure delight, and bids
them gush forth in an arid desert.

It was so now, as, under the sympathetic fingers of Judith, Haydn's
song of the "Spring" was sung. A May world arose in that little dingy
room; the walls fell back and disclosed green woods thick with red
robin and bursting bluebells, fields golden with buttercups, hawthorns
clothed in flower, from which sang the blackbird, thrush, the finch,
and the ouzel. The low ceiling rose and overarched as the speed-well
blue vault of heaven, the close atmosphere was dispelled by a waft of
crisp, pure air; shepherds piped, Boy Blue blew his horn, and
milkmaids rattled their pails and danced a ballet on the turf; and
over all, down into every corner of the soul, streamed the glorious,
golden sun, filling the heart with gladness.

Uncle Zachie had been standing at the door leading into his workshop,
hesitating whether to remain, with a pish! and a pshaw! or to fly away
beyond hearing. But he was arrested, then drawn lightly, irresistibly,
step by step, toward the piano, and he noiselessly sank upon a chair,
with his eyes fixed on Judith's fingers as they danced over the keys.
His features assumed a more refined character as he listened; the
water rose into his eyes, his lips quivered, and when, before reaching
the end of the piece, Judith faltered and stopped, he laid his hand on
her wrist and said: "My dear--you play, you do not strum. Play when
you will--never can it be too long, too much for me. It may steady my
hand, it may dispel the chill and the damp better than--but never
mind--never mind."

Why had Judith failed to accomplish the piece? Whilst engaged on the
notes she had felt that the searching, beaming eyes of the smuggler
were on her, fixed with fierce intensity. She could meet them, looking
straight at him, without shrinking, and without confusion, but to be
searched by them whilst off her guard, her attention engaged on her
music, was what she could not endure.

Coppinger made no remark on what he had heard, but his face gave token
that the music had not swept across him without stirring and softening
his hard nature.

"How long is she to be here with you?" he asked, turning to Uncle
Zachie.

"Captain, I cannot tell. She and her brother had to leave the rectory.
They could not remain in that house alone. Mrs. Trevisa asked me to
lodge them here, and I consented. I knew their father."

"She did not ask me. I would have taken them in."

"Perhaps she was diffident of doing that," said Uncle Zachie. "But
really, on my word, it is no inconvenience to me. I have room in this
house, and my maid, Jump, has not enough to do to attend on me."

"When you are tired of them send them to me."

"I am not likely to be tired of Judith, now that I have heard her
play."

"Judith--is that her name?"

"Yes--Judith."

"Judith!" he repeated, and thrust his stick along the floor,
meditatively. "Judith!" Then, after a pause, with his eyes on the
ground, "Why did not your aunt speak to me! Why does she not love
you?--she does not, I know. Why did she not go to see you when your
father was alive! Why did you not come to the Glaze?"

"My dear papa did not wish me to go to your house," said Judith,
answering one of his many questions, the last, and perhaps the easiest
to reply to.

"Why not?" he glanced up at her, then down on the floor again.

"Papa was not very pleased with Aunt Dunes--it was no fault on either
side, only a misunderstanding," said Judith.

"Why did he not let you come to my house to salute your aunt?"

Judith hesitated. He again looked up at her searchingly.

"If you really must know the truth, Captain Coppinger, papa thought
your house was hardly one to which to send two children--it was said
to harbor such wild folk."

"And he did not know how fiercely and successfully you could defend
yourself against wild folk," said Coppinger, with a harsh laugh. "It
is we wild men that must fear you, for you dash us about and bruise
and break us when displeased with our ways. We are not so bad at the
Glaze as we are painted, not by a half--here is my hand on it."

Judith was still seated on the music-stool, her hands resting in her
lap. Coppinger came toward her, walking stiffly, and extending his
palm.

She looked down in her lap. What did this fierce, strange man, mean?

"Will you give me your hand?" he asked. "Is there peace between us?"

She was doubtful what to say. He remained, awaiting her answer.

"I really do not know what reply to make," she said, after awhile. "Of
course, so far as I'm concerned, it is peace. I have myself no quarrel
with you, and you are good enough to say that you forgive me."

"Then why not peace?"

Again she let him wait before answering. She was uneasy and unhappy.
She wanted neither his goodwill nor his hostility.

"In all that affects me, I bear you no ill-will," she said, in a low,
tremulous voice; "but in that you were a grief to my dear, dear
father, discouraging his heart, I cannot be forgetful, and so full of
charity as to blot it out as though it had not been."

"Then let it be a patched peace--a peace with evasions and
reservations. Better that than none. Give me your hand."

"On that understanding," said Judith, and laid her hand in his. His
iron fingers closed round it, and he drew her up from the stool on
which she sat, drew her forward near the window, and thrust her in
front of him. Then he raised her hand, held it by the wrist, and
looked at it.

"It is very small, very weak," he said, musingly.

Then there rushed over her mind the recollection of her last
conversation with her father. He, too, had taken and looked at her
hand, and had made the same remark.

Coppinger lowered her hand and his, and, looking at her, said:

"You are very wonderful to me."

"I--why so?"

He did not answer, but let go his hold of her, and turned away to the
door.

Judith saw that he was leaving, and she hastened to bring him his
stick, and she opened the door for him.

"I thank you," he said, turned, pointed his stick at her, and added,
"It is peace--though a patched one."

CHAPTER IX.

C. C.

Days ensued, not of rest to body, but of relaxation to mind. Judith's
overstrained nerves had now given them a period of numbness, a sleep
of sensibility with occasional turnings and wakenings, in which they
recovered their strength. She and Jamie were settled into their rooms
at Mr. Menaida's, and the hours were spent in going to and from the
rectory removing their little treasures to the new home--if a
temporary place of lodging could be called a home--and in arranging
them there.

There were a good many farewells to be taken, and Judith marvelled
sometimes at the insensibility with which she said them--farewells to
a thousand nooks and corners of the house and garden, the shrubbery,
and the glebe farm, all endeared by happy recollections, now having
their brightness dashed with rain.

To Judith this was a first revelation of the mutability of things on
earth. Hitherto, as a child, with a child's eyes and a child's
confidence, she had regarded the rectory, the glebe, the contents of
the house, the flowers in the garden, as belonging inalienably to her
father and brother and herself. They belonged to them together. There
was nothing that was her father's that did not belong to Jamie and to
her, nothing of her brother's or her own that was not likewise the
property of papa. There was no mine or thine in that little family of
love--save only a few birthday presents given from one to the other,
and these only special property by a playful concession. But now the
dear father was gone, and every right seemed to dissolve. From the
moment that he leaned back against the brick, lichen-stained wall, and
sighed--and was dead, house and land had been snatched from them. And
though the contents of the rectory, the books, and the furniture, and
the china belonged to them, it was but for a little while; these
things must be parted with also, turned into silver.

Not because the money was needed, but because Judith had no settled
home, and no prospect of one. Therefore she must not encumber herself
with many belongings. For a little while she would lodge with Mr.
Menaida, but she could not live there forever; she must remove
elsewhere, and she must consider, in the first place, that there was
not room in Uncle Zachie's cottage for accumulations of furniture, and
that, in the next place, she would probably have to part with them on
her next remove, even if she did retain them for a while.

If these things were to be parted with, it would be advisable to part
with them at once. But to this determination Judith could not bring
herself at first. Though she had put aside, to be kept, things too
sacred to her, too much part of her past life, to be allowed to go
into the sale, after a few days she relinquished even these. Those six
delightful old colored prints, in frames, of a fox-hunt--how Jamie had
laughed at them, and followed the incidents in them, and never wearied
of them--must they go--perhaps for a song? It must be so. That
work-table of her mother's, of dark rosewood, with a crimson bag
beneath it to contain wools and silks, one of the few remembrances she
had of that mother whom she but dimly recalled--must that go?--what,
and all those skeins in it of colored floss silk, and the piece of
embroidery half finished? the work of her mother, broken off by
death--that also? It must be so. And that rusty leather chair in which
papa had sat, with one golden-headed child on each knee cuddled into
his breast, with the flaps of his coat drawn over their heads, which
listened to the tick-tick of his great watch, and to the tale of
Little Snowflake, or Gracieuse and Percinet?--must that go also? It
must be so.

Every day showed to Judith some fresh link that had to be broken. She
could not bear to think that the mother's work-table should be
contended for at a vulgar auction, and struck down to a blousy
farmer's wife; that her father's chair should go to some village inn
to be occupied by sots. She would rather have seen them destroyed; but
to destroy them would not be right.

After a while she longed for the sale; she desired to have it over,
that an entirely new page of life might be opened, and her thoughts
might not be carried back to the past by everything she saw.

Of Coppinger nothing further was seen. Nor did Aunt Dionysia appear at
the rectory to superintend the assortment of the furniture, nor at Mr.
Menaida's to inquire into the welfare of her nephew and niece. To
Judith it was a relief not to have her aunt in the parsonage while she
was there; that hard voice and unsympathetic manner would have kept
her nerves on the quiver. It was best as it was, that she should have
time, by herself, with no interference from any one, to select what
was to be kept and put away what was to be sold; to put away gently,
with her own trembling hand, and with eyes full of tears, the old
black gown and the Oxford hood that papa had worn in church, and to
burn his old sermons and bundles of letters, unread and uncommented on
by Aunt Dunes.

In these days Judith did not think much of Coppinger. Uncle Zachie
informed her that he was worse, he was confined to his bed, he had
done himself harm by coming over to Polzeath the day after his
accident, and the doctor had ordered him not to stir from Pentyre
Glaze for some time--not till his bones were set. Nothing was known of
the occasion of Coppinger's injuries, so Uncle Zachie said; it was
reported in the place that he had been thrown from his horse. Judith
entreated the old man not to enlighten the ignorance of the public;
she was convinced that naught would transpire through Jamie, who could
not tell a story intelligibly; and Miss Dionysia Trevisa was not
likely to publish what she knew.

Judith had a pleasant little chamber at Mr. Menaida's; it was small,
low, plastered against the roof, the rafters showing, and whitewashed
like the walls and ceiling. The light entered from a dormer in the
roof, a low window glazed with diamond quarries set in lead that
clickered incessantly in the wind. It faced the south, and let the sun
flow in. A scrap of carpet was on the floor, and white curtains to the
window. In this chamber Judith ranged such of her goods as she had
resolved on retaining, either as indispensable, or as being too dear
to her to part with unnecessarily, and which, as being of small size,
she might keep without difficulty.

Her father's old travelling trunk, covered with hide with the hair
on, and his initials in brass nails--a trunk he had taken with him to
college--was there, thrust against the wall; it contained her clothes.
Suspended above it was her little bookcase, with the shelves laden
with "The Travels of Rolando," Dr. Aitkin's "Evenings at Home,"
Magnal's "Questions," a French Dictionary, "Paul and Virginia," and a
few other works such as were the delight of children from ninety to a
hundred years ago.

Books for children were rare in those days, and such as were produced
were read and re-read till they were woven into the very fibre of the
mind, never more to be extricated and cast aside. Now it is otherwise.
A child reads a story-book every week, and each new story-book effaces
the impression produced by the book that went before. The result of
much reading is the same as the result of no reading--the production
of a blank.

How Judith and Jamie had sat together perched up in a sycamore, in
what they called their nest, and had revelled in the adventures of
Rolando, she reading aloud, he listening a little, then lapsing into
observation of the birds that flew and hopped about, or the insects
that spun and crept, or dropped on silky lines, or fluttered humming
about the nest, then returned to attention to the book again! Rolando
would remain through life the friend and companion of Judith. She
could not part with the four-volumed, red-leather-backed book.

For the first day or two Jamie had accompanied his sister to the
rectory, and had somewhat incommoded her by his restlessness and his
mischief, but on the third day, and thenceforth, he no longer attended
her. He had made fast friends with Uncle Zachie. He was amused with
watching the process of bird-stuffing, and the old man made use of the
boy by giving him tow to pick to pieces and wires to straighten.

Mr. Menaida was pleased to have some one by him in his workshop to
whom he could talk. It was unimportant to him whether the listener
followed the thread of his conversation or not, so long as he was a
listener. Mr. Menaida, in his solitude, had been wont to talk to
himself, to grumble to himself at the impatience of his customers, to
lament to himself the excess of work that pressed upon him and
deprived him of time for relaxation. He was wont to criticise, to
himself, his success or want of success in the setting-up of a bird.
It was far more satisfactory to him to be able to address all these
remarks to a second party.

He was, moreover, surprised to find how keen and just had been Jamie's
observation of birds, their ways, their attitudes. Judith was
delighted to think that Jamie had discovered talent of some sort, and
he had, so Uncle Zachie assured her, that imitative ability which is
often found to exist alongside with low intellectual power, and this
enabled him to assist Mr. Menaida in giving a natural posture to his
birds.

It flattered the boy to find that he was appreciated, that he was
consulted, and asked to assist in a kind of work that exacted nothing
of his mind.

When Uncle Zachie was tired of his task, which was every ten minutes
or quarter of an hour, and that was the extreme limit to which he
could continue regular work, he lit his pipe, left his bench, and sat
in his arm-chair. Then Jamie also left his tow-picking or
wire-punching, and listened, or seemed to listen, to Mr. Menaida's
talk. When the old man had finished his pipe, and, with a sigh, went
back to his task, Jamie was tired of hearing him talk, and was glad to
resume his work. Thus the two desultory creatures suited each other
admirably, and became attached friends.

"Jamie! what is the meaning of this?" asked Judith, with a start and a
rush of blood to her heart.

She had returned in the twilight from the parsonage. There was
something in the look of her brother, something in his manner that was
unusual.

"Jamie! What have you been taking? Who gave it you?"

She caught the boy by the arm. Distress and shame were in her face, in
the tones of her voice.

Mr. Menaida grunted.

"I'm sorry, but it can't be helped--really it can't," said he,
apologetically. "But Captain Coppinger has sent me down a present of a
keg of cognac--real cognac, splendid, amber-like--and, you know, it was
uncommonly kind. He never did it before. So there was no avoidance; we
had to tap it and taste it, and give a sup to the fellow who brought
us the keg, and drink the health of the Captain. One could not be
churlish; and, naturally, I could not abstain from letting Jamie try
the spirit. Perfectly pure--quite wholesome--first-rate quality. Upon
my word, he had not more than a fly could dip his legs in and feel the
bottom; but he is unaccustomed to anything stronger than cider, and
this is stronger than I supposed."

"Mr. Menaida, you promised me--"

"Bless me! There are contingencies, you know. I never for a moment
thought that Captain Coppinger would show me such a favor, would have
such courtesy. But, upon my honor, I think it is your doing, my dear!
You shook hands and made peace with him, and he has sent this in token
of the cessation of hostilities and the ratification of the
agreement."

"Mr. Menaida, I trusted you. I did believe, when you passed your word
to me, that you would hold to it."

"Now--there, don't take it in that way. Jamie, you rascal, hop off to
bed. He'll be right as a trivet to-morrow morning, I stake my
reputation on that. There, there, I will help him up-stairs."

Judith suffered Mr. Menaida to do as he proposed. When he had left the
room with Jamie, who was reluctant to go, and struggled to remain, she
seated herself on the sofa, and covering her face with her hands burst
into tears. Whom could she trust? No one.

Had she been alone in the world she would have been more confident of
the future, been able to look forward with a good courage; but she had
to carry Jamie with her, who must be defended from himself, and from
the weak good-nature of those he was with.

When Uncle Zachie came down-stairs he slunk into his workroom and was
very quiet. No lamp or candle was lighted, and it was too dark for him
to continue his employment on the birds. What was he doing? Nothing.
He was ashamed of himself, and keeping out of Judith's way.

But Judith would not let him escape so easily; she went to him, as he
avoided her, and found him seated in a corner turning his pipe about.
He had been afraid of striking a light, lest he should call her
attention to his presence.

"Oh, my dear, come in here into the workshop to me! This is an honor,
an unexpected pleasure. Jamie and I have been drudging like slaves all
day, and we're fagged--fagged to the ends of our fingers and toes."

"Mr. Menaida, I am sorry to say it, but if such a thing happens again
as has taken place this evening, Jamie and I must leave your house. I
thank you with an overflowing heart for your goodness to us; but I
must consider Jamie above everything else, and I must see that he be
not exposed to temptation."

"Where will you take him?"

"I cannot tell; but I must shield him."

"There, there, not a word! It shall never happen again. Now let
by-gones be by-gones, and play me something of Beethoven, while I sit
here and listen in the twilight."

"No, Mr. Menaida, I cannot. I have not the spirit to do it. I can
think only of Jamie."

"So you punish me!"

"Take it so. I am sorry; but I cannot do otherwise."

"Now, look here! Bless my soul! I had almost forgotten it. Here is a
note for you, from the Captain, I believe." He went to the
chimney-piece and took down a scrap of paper, folded and sealed.

Judith looked at it and went to the window, broke the seal, and opened
the paper. She read--

    "Why do you not come and see me? You do not care for what you
    have done. They call me cruel; but you are that.--C. C."

CHAPTER X.

EGO ET REGINA MEA.

The strange, curt note from Cruel Coppinger served in a measure to
divert the current of Judith's thoughts from her trouble about Jamie.
It was, perhaps, as well, or she would have fretted over that
throughout the night, not only because of Jamie, but because she felt
that her father had left his solemn injunction on her to protect and
guide her twin-brother, and she knew that whatsoever harm, physical or
moral, came to him, argued a lack of attention to her duty. Her father
had not been dead many days, and already Jamie had been led from the
path she had undertaken to keep him in.

But when she began to worry herself about Jamie, the bold characters,
"C. C.," with which the letter was signed, rose before her, and glowed
in the dark as characters of fire.

She had gone to her bedroom, and had retired for the night, but could
not sleep. The moon shone through the lattice into her chamber, and on
the stool by the window lay the letter, where she had cast it. Her
mind turned to it.

Why did Coppinger call her cruel? Was she cruel? Not intentionally so.
She had not wilfully injured him. He did not suppose that. He meant
that she was heartless and indifferent in letting him suffer without
making any inquiry concerning him.

He had injured himself by coming to Polzeath to see her the day
following his accident. Uncle Zachie had assured her of that.

She went on in her busy mind to ask why he had come to see her? Surely
there had been no need for him to do so! His motive--the only motive
she could imagine--was a desire to relieve her from anxiety and
distress of mind; a desire to show her that he bore no ill-will toward
her for what she had done. That was generous and considerate of him.
Had he not come she certainly would have been unhappy and in unrest,
would have imagined all kinds of evil as likely to ensue through his
hostility--for one thing, her aunt's dismissal from her post might
have been expected.

But Coppinger, though in pain, and at a risk to his health, had walked
to where she was lodging to disabuse her of any such impression. She
was grateful to him for so doing. She felt that such a man could not
be utterly abandoned by God, entirely void of good qualities, as she
had supposed, viewing him only through the representations of his
character and the tales circulating relative to his conduct that had
reached her.

A child divides mankind into two classes--the good and the bad, and