Читать книгу A Double Knot - Fenn George Manville - Страница 1

“Mother!”

There was no reply, and once again rose from the bed in the prettily-furnished room the same word – “Mother!” The wild, appealing, anguished cry of offspring to parent, seeming to ask for help – protection – forgiveness – the tenderness of the mother-heart to its young, and still there was no answer.

The speaker struggled up so that she rested on her elbow, the heavy dark nut-brown hair fell in long clusters on her soft white neck and bosom; her large hazel eyes looked wild and dilated; and her fair young face deathly pale, as, with quivering white lips, she cried once more:

“Mother! Speak to me or I shall die.”

“It would be better so,” was the cold hard reply, and a lady who had been gazing from the window turned slowly round to gaze full at the first speaker, her handsome Spanish type of countenance looking malignant as her dark eyes flashed, where she stood biting her full sensuous nether lip, and glaring at the occupant of the bed.

“Mother!” was the anguished cry once more, as the girl sank back upon her pillow.

“Yes,” was the bitter reply. “You are a mother. God be thanked that your father, who idolised his child, was not spared to see this day.”

“Oh, mother, mother, have some pity – have some mercy upon me. Where am I to seek it, if not from you?”

“From Heaven: for the world will show you none. Why should I? Shame upon you that you should bring this curse upon my widowed life. The coward! – the villain! Was not our simple quiet home, far away from the busy world, to be held sacred, that he must seek us out and cast such a blight upon it!”

“Oh, hush, mother!” wailed the girl. “I love him – I love him.”

“Love him! Idiot! Baby! To be led away by the smooth words of the first soft-spoken villain you meet.”

“You shall not call him villain, mamma,” cried the girl passionately. “He loves me, and I am to be his wife.”

The girl flashed up for a moment with anger, but only to lie back the next instant faint and with half-closed eyes.

“His wife! Are you such a fool that you believe this?” cried the elder woman bitterly. “His wife! There, cast aside that shadow at once, for it is a delusion.”

“No, no, mother, dear mother, he has promised me that I shall be his wife, and I believe him.”

“Yes,” said the mother, “as thousands of daughters of Eve have believed before. There, cast away that thought, poor fool, and think now of hiding your sin from the world which will shun you as if you had the plague.”

“Mother!” cried the girl piteously.

“Don’t talk to me!” cried the woman fiercely, and she began to pace the room; tall, swarthy, and handsome for her years, her mobile countenance betraying the workings of the passionate spirit within her.

“Mother! Would I had never been one! My life has been a curse to me.”

“No, no; don’t say that, dear.”

“It has, I tell you. There’s something wrong in our blood, I suppose. Look at your brother.”

“Poor Julian!” sighed the girl.

“Poor Julian!” cried the woman scornfully. “Of course he is poor, and he deserves it. He must have been mad.”

“But he loved her, mamma, so dearly.”

“Loved!” cried the woman with a wild intensity of rage in her deep rich voice and gesture, as she spat on the floor. “Curse love! Curse it! What has it done for me? A few sickly embraces – a few years of what the world calls happiness – and then a widowhood of poverty and misery.”

“Mamma, you will kill me if you talk like that.”

“Then I will talk like that, and save myself from temptation more than I can bear,” cried the woman fiercely. “What has love done for the son of whom I was so proud – my gallant-looking, handsome boy? Why, with his bold, noble, Spanish face and dark eyes, he might have wed some heiress, married whom he liked – and what does he do? turns himself into a galley slave.”

“Mamma, what are you saying?” cried the girl faintly.

“The truth. What has he done? Married a woman without a sou, and had to accept that post at the mines. Isn’t that being a galley slave?”

“But he loved Delia, mamma.”

“Loved her! Curse love! I tell you. The ass! The idiot, to be led away by that sickly, washed-out creature – the Honourable Delia Dymcox,” she continued, with an intensity of scorn in her tones.

“But she is a lady, mamma.”

“Lady? The family are paupers, and, forsooth, they must look down on him – on us because we have no blood. Well, she is justly punished, and he too. I hope they like Auvergne.”

“Oh, mother,” sighed the girl weakly, “you are very cruel.”

“Cruel? I wish I had been cruel enough to have strangled you both at birth. I wish our family were at an end – that it would die out as Julian’s brats waste away there in that hot, dry, sun-cursed region.”

“You do not mean it, dear?”

“I do, Mary; I swear I do. Oh that I could have been so weak as to marry as I did – to be cursed with two such children!”

“You talk so, dear, because you are angry with me,” sighed the girl. “I know you loved poor papa dearly.”

“Pish! You are like him.”

“Yes, mamma, and poor Julian has always been so like you.”

There was silence then in the half-shadowed room, while the mother sat sternly gazing out at the stream that rippled by the cottage, dancing in the sunlight and bathing the roots of the willows that kissed its dimpling, silvery surface. The verdant meadows stretched far away rich in the lush grass and many flowers that dotted them with touches of light. All without looked bright and joyous, as a lark high poised poured forth his lay, which seemed to vibrate in the blue arch of heaven, and then fall in silvery fragments slowly down to earth.

The girl lay crying silently, the tears moistening her soft white pillow, as she gazed piteously from time to time at her mother’s averted face, half hidden from her by the white curtain she held aside to gaze from the window.

“Can you – can you see him coming, mamma?” faltered the girl at last.

“Whom? The doctor?” was the cold response, as the curtain was allowed to fall back in its place. “No, I have not sent for one. Why should we publish our shame?”

“Our shame, mamma?”

“Yes, our shame. Is it not as bitter for me? Live or die, I shall send for no doctor here.” Again there was silence, and the elder woman slowly paced the room, till, passing near the bed, a soft white arm stole forth, and caught her hand.

“You are very cruel to me, mother. Oh, do look; look again. See if he is coming.”

“If he is coming!” cried the elder. “Are you mad as well as weak? You will never see him more. Poor fool! I believe even his name is only assumed.”

“I shall,” cried the girl with energy, “and he will come. He loves me too dearly to forsake me now. He is a gentleman and the soul of honour.”

Her face lit up, and the joyous look of love shone in her eyes as she gazed defiantly at her mother, who looked back at her, half pitying, half mocking her faith. Then, in spite of herself, she started, for steps were heard on the path beneath, and as the girl struggled up once more to her elbow, and craned her neck towards the window, voices were heard speaking at a little distance.

“There, there,” cried the girl, with a sob of joy, as she sank back laughing hysterically. “What did I say? He loves me – he loves me, and he has come.”

Mrs Riversley ran to the window, and drew aside the curtain furtively as a couple of young men, gentlemen evidently, and one carrying a trout-rod, walked slowly by, following the winding path that led round by the great gravel-pit in the wood that bordered the stream, and soon after they disappeared amidst the trees.

“That was his step,” cried the girl at last. “Who was with him, mamma?”

“Captain Millet.”

“Poor Mr Millet!” said the girl softly; and then, with the anxious troubled look fading from her countenance to give place to one of quiet content as a smile played round her lips, she lay very still, with half-closed eyes listening for the returning steps.

Twice she started up to listen, but only to sink back again, very calm and patient, her full faith that the man she loved would return beaming from every feature of her handsome young face.

“Mother,” she said at last softly; and Mrs Riversley turned towards her.

“What do you want?”

“Is it not time you brought it back to me, mother – that you laid it by my side?”

There was no reply, and the girl looked up pleadingly.

“I should like him to see it when he comes,” she said softly, and a wondrous look of love dawned in her pale face, causing a strange pang in her mother’s breast as she stood watching her and evidently trying to nerve herself for the disclosure she was about to make, one which in her anger she had thought easy, but which now became terribly difficult.

“If you cannot forgive me, mother dear,” said the girl pleadingly, “let me have my babe: for I love it, I love it,” she whispered to herself, and the soft dawn of a young mother’s yearning for her offspring grew warmer in her face.

“You will never see it more,” exclaimed the woman at last, in a hard harsh voice, though she trembled and shrank from her daughter’s eyes as she spoke. “It will never lie by your side for him to gaze upon your shame and his: the child is dead.”

A piteous cry broke from the young mother’s breast, and in her bitter grief she lay sobbing violently, till nature interposed, and, exhausted, weak and helpless, she sank into a heavy sleep with the tears still wet upon her face.

“It is better so – it is better so,” muttered Mrs Riversley, as she stood gazing down at her child. “It will nearly kill her, but, God forgive me, it must be done.”

She stood watching in the shaded room till a slight noise below made her start, and hastily glancing at her daughter to see that she slept, she stole on tiptoe from the bedside, and crept downstairs to where a sharp angular-looking woman of four or five and twenty was standing in the little drawing-room with her shawl over one arm, and her bonnet swinging from the strings.

She looked flushed with exercise, and her hair about her temples was wet with perspiration, while her boots were covered with dust.

“Well?”

“Well,” said the woman, with a rude, impatient gesture. “You must give me a glass of wine. I’m dead beat. It’s quite four miles there, and as hot as hot.”

“How dare you speak to me in that insolent way, Jane?” said Mrs Riversley angrily.

“Oh,” said the woman sharply, “this is no time far ma’aming and bowing and scraping; servants and missuses is all human beings together when they’re in trouble, and folks don’t make no difference between them.”

“But you might speak in a more respectful way, Jane,” said Mrs Riversley, biting her lips, and looking pale.

“Dessay I might,” said the woman; “but this ain’t the time. Well, you want to know about the – ”

“Hush! for Heaven’s sake, hush,” exclaimed Mrs Riversley, glancing round.

“Oh, there’s no one near us,” said the woman with a mocking laugh; “not even the police, so you needn’t be afraid. It ain’t murder.”

“Did you find her?” said Mrs Riversley. “Pray tell me, Jane. I spoke rather harshly just now, but I could not help it, I was so troubled and upset.”

“Dessay you were; dessay everybody else is,” said the woman roughly. “How’s Miss Mary?”

“Better, Jane; but you must never see her again. She must never know.”

“Did you tell her it was dead?” said the woman sharply.

“Yes, yes, and so it must be to her. But tell me,” continued Mrs Riversley eagerly, “did you make the arrangement?”

“Yes, and I had to give her every penny of the money you started me with.”

“And she does not know anything?”

“No,” said the woman, “and never will if you behave to me proper.”

“Yes, yes, Jane, I will; anything I can do, but you must go from here – at once.”

“And how are you going to manage?”

“As I can,” said Mrs Riversley sternly. “This secret must be kept.”

“And what are you going to give me to keep it?” said the woman sharply.

“I am not rich, Jane – far from it,” began Mrs

Riversley.

“You’re rich enough to pay me twenty pounds a year always,” said the woman, with a keen greedy look in her unpleasant face.

“Yes, yes, Jane, I will,” said Mrs Riversley eagerly, “on condition that you keep it secret, and never come near us more.”

“Then I want that grey silk dress of Miss Mary’s,” said the woman, with the avaricious look growing in her face. “She won’t want to wear it now.”

“You shall have it, Jane.”

“And there’s that velvet jacket I should like.”

“You shall have that too, Jane.”

“I ain’t got a watch and chain,” said the woman, “you may as well give me yourn.”

Without a word Mrs Riversley unhooked the little gold watch from her side, drew the chain from her neck, and threw it over that of her servant, whose closely set eyes twinkled with delight.

“You must pay me the money in advance every year,” said the woman now sharply. “I’m not going without the first year.”

Without replying Mrs Riversley walked to a side-table, unlocked a desk, and from the drawer took out four crisp new bank-notes.

Jane Glyne, maid-of-all-work at the Dingle, a place two miles from everywhere, as she said, and at which she was sure no decent servant would stop, held out her crooked fingers for the money, but Mrs Riversley placed the hand containing the notes behind her.

“One word first,” she said firmly. “I have agreed in every respect to the hard terms you have made.”

“Well, if you call them hard terms” – began the woman in an insolent tone.

“Silence!” exclaimed Mrs Riversley, “and listen to me.”

She spoke in a low deep voice, full of emotion, and the low-bred woman quailed before her as she went on.

“I say I have come to your terms that you have imposed upon me.”

“I never imposed upon you,” began Jane.

“Silence, woman!” cried Mrs Riversley, stamping her foot imperiously. “I have agreed to all you wished, but I must have my conditions too. You have that unfortunate babe.”

“Your grandson,” said the woman in a low voice, but Mrs Riversley did not heed her.

“Bring it up as you will, or trust it to whom you will, but from this hour it must be dead to us. I shall give you the money in my hand, and I will do more. This is June. From now every half year fifteen pounds shall be ready at an address in London that I will give you. To such a woman as you that should be a goodly sum, but my conditions are that within an hour you shall have made up a bundle of the best of your things, and left this place, never to return. If you ever molest us by letter or visit, the money will be stopped.”

“And suppose I tell everybody about it?” said the woman insolently.

“It is no criminal proceeding that I am aware of,” said Mrs Riversley coldly; “but you will not do that; you value the money too much. Do you agree to my terms?”

“But my box,” said the woman. “I can’t carry away half my things.”

“Here is another five-pound note,” said Mrs Riversley coldly; “five five-pound notes. I gave you ten pounds before, and you only gave that woman half.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know your grasping character,” said Mrs Riversley firmly. “Now – quick – do you decide? Try to extort more, and finding what you are, I shall risk all discovery, and bear the shame sooner than be under your heel. Do you agree?”

“Yes,” said the woman surlily.

“Quick, then; get your things and go. I will bring you the dress and jacket.”

“Ain’t I to say good-bye to Miss Mary?”

“No,” said Mrs Riversley firmly. “Now go.”

The woman stood biting the side of one of her fingers for a few moments, and seemed to hesitate; but the rustle of the new bank-notes as Mrs Riversley laid them upon the table and placed a paperweight upon them decided her, and in an incredibly short time she stood once more in the room, in her best clothes, and with a bulky bundle tied up in an old Paisley shawl.

Five minutes later she had received the money without a word being spoken on either side, and was standing just out of sight of the cottage, by the stream, hugging the bundle to her with one hand, and gnawing at the side of her finger.

“What a fool I was!” she muttered viciously. “She’d have given double if I’d pressed her, and I’m put off now with a beggarly thirty pound a year. I’ve a good mind to go back.”

She took a few steps in the direction of the cottage, but stopped with a grim chuckle.

“Thirty pound a year regular for doing nothing is better than ten pound and lots of work. Perhaps we should only quarrel, for she’s a hard one when she’s up. But I might have had more.”

She stood thinking for a few moments.

“What shall I do?” she muttered. “If I leave it with them they’ll kill it in a week, and then there’s an end of it, and I get my money for nothing. If I fetch it away I have to keep it. But it may be worth my while. Mrs Riversley ain’t everybody, for there’s Miss Mary, and there’s him, and if he isn’t a swell, t’other one is, I’m sure. What’s that?”

She started in affright, for just then a strange, hoarse shriek rang out of the wood to her left, and it sounded so wild and agonising that she stood trembling and listening for awhile.

“It was like as if someone had jumped into one of the deep river holes or the big pit,” she muttered; “but I dursen’t go to see. It was very horrid.”

Whatever the cry, it was not repeated, and the woman hurried on for about a mile, when, coming to a side lane, she hesitated as to the course she should take, and ended by going straight on.

At the end of a score of paces she stopped short, turned and hurried back to the side lane, down which she walked as fast as her bundle would let her.

“I don’t care, I will,” she muttered; “thirty pound a year will keep us both. I’ll fetch him away; he may be worth his weight in gold.”

Mine Own Familiar Friend

They were about equal in height and build, and apparently within a year of the same age, the one dark, and wearing, what was unusual in those days, a short crisp beard and moustache; the other fair and closely-shaven as to lip and chin, but with a full brown whisker clothing his cheeks.

The former was evidently terribly agitated, for his face worked and he was very pallid, while the latter looked flushed and nervous, the hand that grasped his trout-rod twitching convulsively; and he kept glancing at his companion as they strode along past the cottage.

“What I ask you is” – the darker of the two was saying.

“For Heaven’s sake be silent till we get farther on, Rob, and I’ll tell you all you want to know.”

There was silence for awhile, and the two young men walked rapidly on, turning through a woodland path, when the trees caught the rod of the one addressed as Rob, and he cast it impatiently aside, stopping short directly after in an opening where the path wound round the brink of a deep gravel-pit, the wayfarer being protected from a fall by a stout oaken railing.

“Now, sir,” exclaimed the first speaker excitedly; “no one can hear us.”

“No,” said the fair man in a nervous, hesitating way. “Go on; say what you have to say.”

“It is soon said, James Huish. I have been away with my regiment in Canada two years. Previous to that chance threw me into the company of a sweet, pure girl, little more than a child then. I used to come down here fishing.”

“You did!” exclaimed the other hoarsely.

“I did, and visited at that cottage time after time. Man, man, I tell you,” he continued, speaking rapidly in his excitement, “the recollection of those days has been my solace in many a bitter winter’s night, and I have looked forward to my return as the great day of my existence.”

“Stop!” said the other nervously. “Tell me this, Rob: did she – did she love you?”

“Love me?” exclaimed the other passionately: “no. How could I expect it? She was a mere child, budding into maidenhood; but her eyes brightened when I came, and she was my little companion here in the happy days that can never be recalled. James Huish, I loved that girl with all my soul. My love has grown for her, and my first thought was to seek her on my return, and try to win her for my wife.”

“It’s deuced unfortunate, Rob,” said the other in his nervous way. Then, with a kind of bravado, he continued half laughingly: “But then, you see, you have been away two years, and you have stopped away too long. It’s a pity, too, such friends as we were.”

Ere he had finished speaking his companion had seized his arm as in a vice.

“Huish!” he cried hoarsely, “if you speak to me in that tone of voice I will not answer for the consequences. I do not wish to be rash, or to condemn you unheard; but this is of such vital import to me that, by God, if you speak of it in that flippant tone again, I shall forget that we are gentlemen, and, like some brute beast, I shall have you by the throat.”

“Loose my arm,” exclaimed the other, flushing more deeply; “you hurt me.”

“You hurt me,” cried the other, trembling with passion – “to the heart.”

“If I have wronged you,” exclaimed Huish, “even if duelling is out of fashion, I can give you satisfaction.”

“Satisfaction!” cried the other bitterly. “Look here, James Huish. You have been a man of fashion, while I have been a blunt soldier. If what I hear be true, would it be any satisfaction for me to shoot you through the head, and break that poor girl’s heart, for I could do it if I liked; and if I did not, would it be any satisfaction to let you make yourself a murderer?”

Huish shuddered slightly, and the colour paled in his cheeks.

“Now answer my question. I say, is this true?”

“We are old friends,” retorted Huish, “but you have no right to question me.”

“Right or no right, I will question you,” exclaimed the other passionately, “and answer me you shall before you leave this spot.”

Huish glanced uneasily to the right and left, and, seeing this, his companion laid his hand once more upon his arm.

“No,” he exclaimed, “you do not go; and for your own sake, do not provoke me.”

The speaker’s voice trembled with rage, which he seemed to be fighting hard to control, while Huish was by turns flushed with anger, and pale with something near akin to fear.

“I will not answer your questions,” he exclaimed desperately.

“You promised me you would, and you shall, James Huish. Look here, sir. A little over two years ago there was a servant at the cottage – a cold hard girl. I come back here, and I find this same girl now a woman. She recognised me when I met her yesterday, and, believing that I was going to the cottage, she stopped me, and by degrees told me such a tale as I would I had never lived to hear. I went away again yesterday half mad, hardly believing that it could be true. To-day I returned, and she pointed you out to me as the villain – as Mr Ranby – a serpent crawling here to poison under an assumed name.”

“Go on,” said the other. “You meant marriage of course.”

“I tell you, man, I never had a thought for that poor girl that was not pure and true. If I had spoken so soon, it might have checked an intercourse that was to me the happiest of my life. Now I come back and find that the peace of that little home is blasted – that the woman I have loved has been made the toy of your pleasure; that you whom I believed to be a gentleman, a man of honour, have proved to be the greatest of villains upon this earth.”

“Have a care what you say,” said Huish hotly.

“I will have a care,” cried the other. “I will not condemn you on the words of others; I would not so condemn the man who was my closest friend. Speak, then; tell me. I say, is this all true?”

“You have no right to question me.”

“I say, is this true, James Huish?”

“Look here. What is the use of making a fuss like this over a bit of an affair of gallantry.”

“What!” cried the other, grasping the arm of Huish once more tightly. “An affair of gallantry? Is it, then, an affair of gallantry to come upon a home like a blight – to destroy – yes, blast the life of a pure, trusting, simple-hearted girl, who believes you to be the soul of honour? James Huish, I do not understand these terms; but tell me this,” he continued in a voice that was terrible in its cold measured tones, “is this true?”

“Is what true?” said the other, with an attempt at bravado.

“You know what I mean – about Mary Riversley.”

“Well, there, yes, I suppose it is,” said Huish, with assumed indifference; “and now the murder’s out.”

“No,” exclaimed the other, with the rage he had been beating down struggling hard for the mastery; “not murder: it is worse. But look here, Huish. This girl is fatherless,” he continued in a voice quite unnaturally calm. “I loved her very dearly, but, poor girl, her affection has gone to another. She cannot be my wife, but I can be her friend and I will. You will marry her at once.”

“Not likely,” was the scornful reply, as Huish tried to shake his arm free.

“I say, James Huish, you will marry this poor girl – no, this dear, sweet, injured lady – at once. The world would call her fallen; I say she is a good, true woman, as pure as snow, and in the sight of God Almighty your own wife. But we have customs here in England that must be observed. I say again, you will marry Ruth Riversley – at once?”

“I – will – not!” said Huish slowly and distinctly, the pain he suffered bringing a burning spot in each cheek, and his temper now mastering the dread he felt of his companion.

“I say again,” said the other, in the same strange unnatural tone, “you will marry Miss Riversley – at once.”

“And I say,” cried Huish, now half mad with rage and pain, “I will not. Marry her yourself,” he said brutally, “if – ”

“Damned traitor?” cried the other, choking the completion of the sentence, as, active as a panther, he caught Huish by the throat. “Dog! coward! scoundrel! Down on your knees, and swear you will marry her, or I will not answer for your life!”

Huish in his dread half wrenched himself free, and a wild, strange cry escaped his lips. Then, nerved by his position, he turned upon his assailant, and a deadly struggle commenced.

They were well matched, but the young officer, hardened by a rough life, was the more active, and as they swayed to and fro in a fierce embrace, he more than once seemed on the point of forcing his adversary to the ground; but Huish putting forth his whole strength recovered himself, and the struggle was renewed with greater violence than before.

It was an aimless encounter, such as would result from two men engaging when maddened with rage. Their cheeks were purple, their veins stood out in their temples, and their eyes flashed with the excitement of the encounter. The danger they risked in their proximity to the deep pit was not heeded, and more than once as they wrestled to and fro, they nearly touched the fence that ran along the brink; but neither seemed to be aware of its existence, the short grass and heather by the side of the path was trampled, the bushes rustled and the twigs were broken as the antagonists in turn seemed to gain the mastery, and then for a few moments they paused, each gripping the other tightly, and gazing angrily in one another’s eyes.

There was the low sobbing pant of labouring breath, the heaving of strong men’s breasts, and then without a word being spoken the struggle recommenced.

It soon became evident that Huish was trying all he could to throw his adversary, the idea uppermost being that if he could get Captain Millet to the ground, he might hold him there till help came. On the other side Millet’s main thought was to put into execution his threat; force Huish to his knees, and there make him humbly ask pardon and take such an oath as he should prescribe.

The upshot of the struggle was very different, though, from what either had imagined, and one that strongly influenced their future lives.

As the struggle was resumed, the better training of Millet, who was hard and spare, began to tell upon Huish, whose life of ease had not fitted him for so arduous an encounter. His breath was drawn heavily, and at rapid intervals; his grasp of his adversary was less firm; the big drops stood upon his face, and a singing noise began to sound in his ears, while the thought which made him feel infuriate seemed about to be realised, and in imagination he saw himself humbled before his friend.

In fact, the latter nearly had him at his mercy as they now swayed to and fro, and tightening his grasp with one hand, he suddenly lowered the other, and catching Huish at a disadvantage, he would in another instant have thrown him, when, maddened by desperation, Huish dashed himself forward to forestall his antagonist’s effort, Millet’s heel caught in a furze-bush, and the two men fell heavily against the rough fence.

There was a sharp crack made by the breaking wood, the rushing noise of falling earth and stones, and the next moment Huish was clinging to the rough stem of a bunch of golden broom, hanging at arm’s length over the gravel-pit, while from beneath him came up a dull, heavy thud as of some fallen body.

Faint, sick, breathless, and ready to loose his hold, Huish clung there in an agony of desperation for a few moments. The trees, the clouds above him, seemed to be whirling round, and he closed his eyes preparatory to falling in his turn.

Then came the reaction, and, how he afterwards hardly knew, he made two or three desperate efforts to find rest for his feet, but only at first to send down avalanche after avalanche of stones and earth. Then one foot rested on a piece of old stump, and he was able to take some of the strain off his arms, resting there panting, and with a strange creeping sensation assailing his nerves as he thought that in a few minutes at most he must fall.

He glanced down once, to see that the stones were some thirty or forty feet below; and in his then position the height seemed dreadful, and with a shudder he wrenched his gaze away and looked up, thinking now of escape.

The stem he clung to was pretty strong, but the shrub was only rooted in the gravelly side of the pit, and at any moment it might be torn out by his weight. In fact, it seemed already to be giving way. But now his breath came in less laboured fashion, and the power to act began to return, the result being that he took in at a glance his situation, and, stretching out one of his feet, he found for it a more secure resting-place, one which enabled him to get hold of a stronger and tougher shrub, and draw himself to where he could stand in comparative safety, with the fence only some five feet above his hands.

Could he reach that, or must he descend?

He glanced down again.

Descent was impossible, for the side of the pit was eaten away by the weather, and receded from him, so once more with a shudder he looked up.

Yes, there was a clump of furze a foot or two higher, just on the edge where the grass reached before the gravel began to recede. Could he reach that?

For a few moments he hesitated to make the attempt – it was so hazardous, for, even should he reach it, the roots might give way. Then, rendered desperate by his position, and feeling sure that his fall must be the work of a few minutes if he stayed where he was, he gathered himself together, drew a long breath, made a tremendous effort, and got hold of the stout stem of the furze-bush, which tore and scarified his wrists. But that was not heeded, and drawing his feet up, he struggled vainly for a few moments to get some place of rest for them, but only for the gravel and stones to keep crumbling away.

Another minute of such effort and he must have fallen. It was only by letting himself hang by his hands with outstretched arms that he could just rest one foot upon a great stone embedded in the face of the pit. Small as it was, though, it was rest, and he remained quiescent once more.

As he hung there with nerves throbbing, and a strange aching sensation beginning to numb his muscles, he felt once more that he must fall, and so overpowering was the thought that he nearly loosened his hold. But the dread of death prevailed, and, making a fresh effort, he drew himself up quickly, gained a hold for the toe of one boot, made a snatch at a root a little higher, then at another, and his feet rested upon the furze stem. Another effort, and he had hold of one of the posts of the open fence, and the next minute he had crawled through the broken portion, struggled to his feet, and sunk down upon the heath, giddy, exhausted and ready to faint.

In a few minutes he had recovered himself, and getting up, he was fain to take off the stout bottom joint of his fly-rod, which, with its spear, made a sturdy support as he went to the edge of the pit, and with a shrinking sensation that he could not master, gazed down below.

He turned shuddering away, and walked a dozen paces to where he could made his way down through the trees to the bottom of a slope, where, parting the bushes, he directly after stood in the cart-track, now grown over with grass and heather, but which had once been the way used by those who carted the gravel.

His giddiness wore off, and gave place to a terrible feeling of dread as he walked hastily on, parting at last some low-growing twigs of birch, to stand beside the prostrate body of his adversary.

Millet was lying upon his back with one leg bent under him, and his arm in an unnatural position, and as James Huish gazed down upon him, the horrible thought occurred to him that the end of his affair of gallantry, as he termed it, might be a trial for murder.

As this thought presented itself, bitter repentance attacked him; his knees shook beneath him, and at last he fell upon them beside the body of his former friend, to moan in agony.

“God help me, what have I done?”

He took the fallen man’s hand, and laid the arm in a natural position.

It was broken.

He then tried to lay his leg in its normal place, but there was something wrong; he could not tell what. And now he did what he might have been expected to do first, laid his hand upon the breast to try and find out if the injured man still lived.

He started to his feet then with the cold perspiration bedewing his forehead, and gazing sharply round, he exclaimed:

“I call Heaven to witness I never meant him harm.”

Then, throwing himself upon his knees, he began to examine the injured man once more, with feverish haste tearing open his shirt-front, laying his ear close to his lips, and ending by scooping up some clear water with both his hands from a little pool hard by, and dashing it in the prostrate man’s face.

“I little thought it would come to this. Rob – can you hear me? My God!” he groaned, “he must be dead.”

At that moment, to his great joy, the injured man moaned slightly, and, to Huish’s great relief, at last opened his eyes, and gazed vacantly round.

“Can you drink some of this?” said Huish eagerly, as he unscrewed the top of a small flask, and held it to the other’s lips.

Millet swallowed a few drops, and soon the vacant look passed from his eyes, and he groaned heavily.

“Huish,” he said hoarsely. “You’ve given me – my death-blow – hope first – now my life.”

“No, no – no, no!” exclaimed Huish. “Can you bear for me to leave you now? I’ll run for help.”

“Stop,” exclaimed Millet, making an effort to rise, and sinking back with a groan of agony. “Stop! come closer.”

Huish obeyed, and held the flask once more to his lips, but it was pushed aside.

“Is this manslaughter or murder?” he said, with a bitter smile.

“I protest to heaven,” began Huish.

“Hush! Listen! That poor girl – Mary – now – quick, at once – swear to me by all you hold sacred – you will – at once – make her your wife.”

Millet’s face was ghastly pale, and he spoke with difficulty, but one hand now grasped the wrist of Huish with a firm hold, and his eyes were fixed upon those of the man who bent over him with feverish intensity.

“Yes, yes, I will – on my soul, I will,” cried Huish, with frantic vehemence. “Rob, old fellow, if I could undo – ”

“You cannot. Quick, man; swear it – you will marry her – at once.”

“I swear I will,” cried Huish.

“So help you God.”

“So help me, God!” exclaimed Huish, “and help me now,” he added in agony, “for he is dying.”

“Here – below there – Hi!” shouted a voice from the pathway above. “What’s the matter?”

“Quick, quick, help!” cried Huish, and his appeal was answered by rapid footsteps, the rustling of bushes, and directly after, a short, broad-shouldered young man, with a large head and keen grey eyes, was at his side.

“I say,” he cried; “struggle up above, broken fence, man killed!”

Huish started back, staring at him with dilated eyes, and then by an effort he exclaimed:

“Quick – run – the nearest doctor, man.”

“Six miles away,” was the sharp reply. “I’m a sucker – medical stoo,” he added; and pulling off his coat, he rapidly rolled it into a pad for a pillow before proceeding in a business-like way to examine the fallen man’s injuries. “I say, this is bad – arm broken – hip joint out – hold still, old fellow, I won’t hurt you,” he said, as his patient moaned. “You’d better go for help. I’ll stay. Leave me that flask; and, I say, just see if my fishing tackle’s all right: I left it up at the top.” Then, as if inspired by the words uttered by the injured man a few minutes before, he exclaimed: “I say, I don’t know that I ought to let you go; is this manslaughter or murder?”

“No,” moaned Millet, unclosing his eyes, and speaking in a hoarse whisper – “my old friend – an accident – sir – an accident.”

“I say, the brandy, man, the brandy,” cried the new-comer. “By Jove he’s fainted.”

“He’s dead – he’s dead,” groaned Huish frantically, as he sank upon his knees and caught his friend’s hand. “Rob, old fellow, I’d give my life that this had not happened; but I’ll keep my word; I’ll keep my word.”

Foster-Parents

As Jane Glyne said, just four miles away from The Dingle was a low, long range of hovels, roughly built in the coarsest manner, and so covered in that but for a stuffing of straw here and there, the bleak winds and rain that come even in summer could beat through with all their force.

The hovels were built on the unity principle – one room – one door – one chimney – one window, and they stood in a row close by the bank of a canal which formed the great highway to and from the dirty Goshen of these modern children of Israel.

But they were not Jews, any more than they were Christians: they were simply work-people – the slaves who make bricks without straw, and not for the use of a king of Egypt, but for modern Babylon. The canal was the great highway to this settlement, which stood in an earth-gnawed desert of its own; but all the same there was a rugged pathway which led towards the pretty stream on whose bank stood Mrs Riversley’s cottage, passable in fine weather, a slough in wet; and there was a roadway for carts, a horribly churned up mingling of mud and water, along which chariot wheels drave heavily to work woe upon that patient martyr of ours – the horse.

It was not a pleasant spot that brickfield, and seemed to have been thrust out far from the habitations of ordinary men. It was not salubrious, but then its subsoil was of the stiffest clay. Here the brickmakers lived gregariously, each hovel containing as many as it would hold. Here four or five men ‘pigged’ together. It was their own term, and most appropriate. In another hovel, a young couple would have three young men lodgers, while the occupants of other dens would have done the same, only that their swarming children did not give room for lodgers to lie down, the superficies of the floors being small.

A desolate-looking spot on a flat expanse, through which the canal, erst a river, ran. It was once a series of pleasant meadows, but Babylon swallows many bricks. Hence the tract had been delved all over into a chaos of clay, where long rows of bricks stood drying, while others were being made. Stagnant water covered with green scum lay in the holes whence clay had been dug, while other holes were full of liquid mud. Dirt-pie-making by horse-power seemed to be going on all day long, and soft mud mixtures were formed, water being run into banked-up lakes by means of wooden troughs, while every here and there wretched horses, blindfolded so that they should not resent their task, seemed to be turning torture machines to break up so much obstinate clay upon the wheel.

The breeze there was not a balmy wind, laden with sweet floral odours, but a solid gritty breeze, being the musty, ill-savoured, sifted ashes of the great city, brought in processions of barges to mix with the clay, to be burned and go back as so much brick.

“Bring that bairn here,” cried a shrill voice, proceeding from a being, who, but for the shaping of the scanty garment she had on, might have been taken for a clay-daubed man. Her long cotton dress clung close to her figure, for it was soaked with water, and on “that bairn,” a tiny little morsel whose experience of the world was not many hours old, being brought to her by a half-naked girl of ten with something cotton upon her, but more clay, the infant was tended in a maternal way for some little time, during which the woman, as she rocked herself to and fro, made use of an unoccupied hand to draw a piece of rag from her pocket, and then, much to the discomfort of the infant, she tied up in the corners and middle of the rag, with as many knots, five new, bright sovereigns.

“Look out, mother,” cried the girl, but her warning came too late: a heavy-looking man in half a shirt, and a pair of trousers held up by a strap, and who seemed to go by machinery, for he emitted puffs of smoke from a short black pipe as he moved, made a snatch at the rag, and thrust it into his pocket.

“I’ll take care o’ that ’ere,” he growled; and, as the woman uttered a resentful cry, he “made an offer” at her with the back of his hand, and then began puffing smoke once more, and moved away. The woman cowered down to avoid the expected blow, muttered viciously to herself, and at last rose, and tucked the babe into an improvised bed of rags in the shelter of a shed. This, by the way, was only a sloping roof of boards some six feet by five, covering the rough bench upon which a brickmaker works, and being unoccupied just then, came in handy for the purpose to which it was put.

“I’ll have that back agen, old man,” the woman muttered to herself. “Just wait till you’re asleep. Now then,” she cried aloud to sundry clayey imps who were at work fetching and carrying the plastic mass with which they were daubed, “keep a hye on this bairn, all on yer. If Bill Jones’s dawg comes anigh, let go at him.”

Saying this, she joined “father,” who under the next shed was puffing away as he worked, a puff being emitted as each brick was made in its mould, and turned out upon a board.

“When’s she comin’ agen about that there kid?” growled father.

“Wait and see,” said the woman surlily, as she attacked a mass of clay, as if it were so much dough pinched off pieces, and roughly shaped them into loaves a little larger than a brick ready for the man to mould.

Then there was a pause, during which the puffs of smoke came with beautiful regularity from the brickmaker’s mouth, and as a boy approached, it almost seemed as if he were going to stoke father, and put on some more coals; but he only dabbed down a mass of clay which he had carried upon his head, whose shape was printed in the lump which left a portion amongst the boy’s hair.

“Think it were Bill Jones’s dawg as took Lamby’s kid, mother?” growled father at last.

“Think? I’m sure on it,” said mother. “It were there one minute, and it were gone the next. Where could it ha’ gone if he hadn’t took it.”

The machinery stopped, for father took his pipe out of his mouth, wiped his lips with the back of his clayey hand, which was all the cleaner afterwards, father’s lips having the character of a short stubbly bristled brush. Then he thought for a minute; the machinery began to go once more, a puff of smoke was emitted from his lips and he replied:

“Dunno!”

“I think Lamby’s gal, July, dropped it in the canal, and was ’fraid to tell,” said the girl in the clay robe shrilly.

“You hold your noise, and look alive wi’ them lumps,” growled father, who made as if to strike the girl, whereupon she ducked down to avoid the expected blow, dodged away to a safe distance, put out her tongue, and said, “Yah!” and the other children – four – all engaged in carrying clay, laughed and ran to avoid blows.

They varied in age from five to fourteen, and were all richly clothed in clay, which coated them from their hair – tangled and hardened with the worked-up adhesive soil – to their very toes, which printed their shapes in the moist ground they trod.

Father seeming disposed to “hull” one of the moulds at them, they all hastened away to the clay mill – a machine like a great churn bound with many strong iron hoops and with a thumper or plunger therein, to which a long wooden bar was attached, harnessed to one end of which was another blindfolded skeleton of a horse, which still retained its skin and vitality, and went round and round despondently, as if under the impression that it was going straight forward; but a sharp jerk of the head seemed to say from time to time: “It doesn’t matter; it will not be for long.”

At the bottom of the great mill, in a gloomy hole, was a clayey man in a kind of rough apron, and armed with a piece of wire two feet long, whose ends were twisted round a couple of pieces of wood to form handles.

As the mill turned, the well-mixed clay was forced through the bottom in a mass some ten inches in diameter, which from time to time the man dexterously cut through with his wire, and passed the pieces to the children who came for fresh supplies.

One took the heavy fat lump, and hugged it to its breast, making a mould in the top for its little chin.

Another had it dabbed upon its curly head; another bore it upon the shoulder, leaving therein the print of the ear; but the favourite way seemed to be to hug it to the breast back to the shed, where mother seized it and went on making her brown loaves.

Father, whose external machinery consisted of some water, some dry, sandy earth, and a little oblong box the shape of the brick, seized the brown loaves his wife passed to him, gave them a dexterous dab which forced them into the mould, scraped off the top level with the sides, pushed it along on a board, raised the mould, and left there a soft clay brick.

Then with regular puffs the process was repeated again and again, while a man with a strange-shaped barrow removed the new soft bricks and bore them away.

At the first sight it seemed as if the babe Jane Glyne had brought had fallen amongst savages, but they were English fellow-creatures, living – existing rather – not so very far from the centre of civilisation, and bricks are in great demand.

As the work went on in its muddy monotony, an evil-looking, long-jawed dog, the very opposite of the hound in the legend who slew the wolf to save his master’s child, came slinking and sniffing about the sheds. He was a lean, starving, wolfish, mangy cur, with reddish glaring eyes, always on the watch for kicks and blows. He would have been a big dog had he been fed, but want of food appeared to have produced a bad crop of hair upon his skin, and given him a thin shadowy look even to his head, which seemed to have been starved into a snarl and a set of teeth.

The dog slunk here and slunk there for a time, till his keen senses led him towards where, some fifty yards away, one of the brickmakers’ dinners lay within his reach. Giving a sharp glance round, he had already opened his sharp jaws to snatch up the knotted handkerchief which held a basin, when a well-aimed, half-dried brick struck him in the ribs, which emitted a cavernous drummy sound, and with a sharp yelp the brute bounded off.

But he was too hungry to be driven right away, and before long he stopped short, screwed himself round, and soothed the injured spot with half a dozen licks. Then, wild of eye and wolfish of aspect, he turned once more towards the sheds to seek for food.

He whined a little, either from pain or from an injured feeling – his amour propre telling him that dogs must live as well as the savages round whose camp he prowled. Then, forgetting one pain external in a greater one within, he set off once more, but this time displaying a caution worthy of a wolf as he neared the shed where father, mother, and the clayey children were all so busily at work making their summer harvest – too busy to mind the wretched foster-child, which, after feebly appealing against the neglect, and turning its little face to and fro in search of something warm, had gone off fast asleep.

Inoculated for a Wolf

Suddenly in the midst of the work there was the sound of a whip cracking, accompanied by loud oaths, many of them very red, shouts, and the jerking noise of chain harness.

It was nothing new, but being a diversion from the monotony of their work, half the brickmakers stopped to look on.

The remnant of a fine horse was in the shafts of a heavily-laden sand cart, which he had dragged for some distance through the tenacious mud of the deeply-cut ruts, till, coming to a softer place than usual, one wheel had gone down nearly to the nave in the mire, tilting the cart sideways, and every frantic struggle made by the poor beast only seemed to set it more fast. Its hoofs, which sank deeply, churned up the mud and water, and it stood still at last with heaving flanks, its great earnest eyes staring appealingly at its masters, while the blindfolded skeleton in the clay mill went round and round, then stopped short, and gave its head a jerk, as if saying once more, “It doesn’t matter; it will not be for long.”

Click, clack, clack went the whip, and the skeleton in the mill started energetically once more, while the horse in the cart struggled spasmodically to move the load, much of its strength being, however, exhausted by extricating its hoofs from the clayey, sticky mud.

Click, clack, clack went the whip once more, and as Jane Glyne came along panting and perspiring with the weight of her bundle, a little crowd of clayey savages began to collect.

The horse struggled with a piteous expression in the wrinkles above its starting eyes; its flanks heaved; they moistened the lash of the cruel whip, and still it strove; but the cart wheels had sunk so low that a team could hardly have dragged it out, and the willing beast vainly essayed the impossible. A dozen strong men stood around, as many shovels were within reach ready to remove the clay from the wheels, and partially dig them out; but, as Jane Glyne looked on, in a strange, hard, callous manner, no one made a move, not a hand was placed to a wheel-spoke to help with a few pounds the labouring beast. Cartloads of hard broken brick rubbish lay about that could have been thrown down to fill up the ruts; but not a barrowful was brought, and amidst a shower of oaths, there was added, to make it a storm, a shower of blows.

The horse’s struggles grew interesting, and as the little crowd increased pipes were replenished, and the heavy clay-sullied men looked on.

More blows, more struggles; but the cart sank deeper, and was not likely to be moved, for, in spite of the frantic way in which the horse plunged into its collar, it could not stir the load an inch. Not an inch, strong as it was; but there is exhaustion even for the strongest, and at last the poor brute stood deep in the tenacious mud, with wet heaving flanks, staring eyes, and trembling in every limb.

“Here, give us holt!” cried father; and his children brought up in this earthly school looked on with glee.

“Father ’ll soon fetch him out,” said the eldest boy; and it seemed that at last the poor brute was to get some help. But it was not help the horse was to have, for the whip was handed to father.

“Take holt on his head,” he cried to the man in charge, and the latter ruffian seized the rein, and began to jerk and drag the bit savagely.

“Jeet – jeet – aw – a – a – ya! Hoot!” roared the ruffian, with a hot burst of oaths, while father, puffing regularly his smoke, turned his machinery to bear upon the poor dumb brute, and with a grim smile lashed and cut at it, ingeniously seeking out the tender parts beneath.

“Gie’t ’im, lad. Gie’t ’im,” rose in chorus.

The poor trembling horse, roused by the stinging thong, shot into the collar in a way that broke one of the chains that linked it to the shaft, and then as a more cruel lash fell upon its side, it fell upon its knees, the cart shafts pinning it down as the load sank forward. Now followed more lashing, the horse struggled frantically, rolled over, dragging its legs from the mud, plunged and struck out as if galloping, though its hoofs only beat the mud and water. Then it raised its head two or three times as if trying to regain its feet, before letting it subside into the mud, and the eye that was visible began to roll.

“Get up!” roared father, with a burst of oaths, and again the whip came into play.

But it was an order that the poor brute, willing to the last, could not obey, pinned down as it was by the shafts and the weight of the sand. At the first cut of the whip, though, the horse struck out with its hoofs, sending the mud flying, and causing a roar of laughter amongst the crowd as father was bespattered from head to foot. Then there was a curious gasping cry as the horse threw up its head; a shiver ran through its heaving frame; a couple of jets of blood started from its nostrils; there was a strange sigh, and the head fell heavily down in the mud and water.

Even then there was a sharp lash given with the whip, just as a convulsive kick or two splashed up the mud, before the willing beast lay motionless; it had broken its heart – no metaphor here for excess of sorrow, but the simple truth, while the listening skeleton in the mill gave its head another jerk, and seemed to say, “I knew it wouldn’t be for long.”

“Well – ”

Father did not finish his sentence, for Jane Glyne uttered a loud shriek and dropped her bundle in the mud just as a shout arose from one of father’s clay-daubed sons.

“Hi! chivy him,” roared the boy. “Bill Jones’s dawg has got that kid.”

It was too true: the wolfish starveling beast had watched his opportunity while the crowd was occupied, slinked up to the shed, seized the babe by one arm, and was stealing cautiously off, when the boy turned and saw him, shouted, gave chase, and the savage brute broke into a heavy lumbering canter.

For a short distance he dragged the child along the earth; then, with a dexterous twist, he threw it over his shoulders and increased his pace.

“Hi! stop him, hi!” roared a score of voices which echoed through the brickfield, and men, women, and children came hurrying from all parts to take up the chase.

For they saw in a moment what had taken place, and the hunt roused all to a pitch of excitement consequent upon the evil reputation borne by “Bill Jones’s dawg.”

This being the case, the way off to the open fields where the woodland and stream lay beyond the flat plain was closed, and for a moment or two the dog halted and threw up his head to see that he was hemmed in on three sides by enemies, while at his back was the canal, and for water he had no love.

Enemies they were indeed, for the brickfield savages were human, after all, and every man, woman, and child was armed with shovel, stick, or well-burned fragment of refuse brick – this last, a missile that he knew by heart as angular and sharp; and dog as he was, he had sense enough to feel that, if taken, they would pound the life out of his wretched carcase on the spot.

If he had dropped his prey, he might have shown his pursuers a clean pair of heels; but he was hungry – wolfishly hungry, and more savage than domestic as he was, he literally knew the taste of that which he held between his teeth. He would have died the death before, on suspicion, had not Bill, his master, interposed. Now, however, he saw the said Bill armed with a clay spade, although he whistled to him to come. But “Bill Jones’s dawg” knew too well the treachery of the human heart, and would not listen to whistle nor following call.

Which way should he go? Towards that frantic woman who had torn off her shawl? No. There was the clinker kiln, where a whole burning of bricks was spoiled. He could not reach the open – he would have been cut off as he went, and chopped with spades, and stunned with brick-bats; but there was that kiln standing old and weather-beaten, a very sanctuary of bricks burned into solid masses, full in view, though a quarter of a mile lower by the other works. Yes, there was that kiln abounding in convenient holes, where he had often spent the night; he might reach there in safety with his prey, and then —

“Hi! stop him – stop him!”

The yelling crowd was closing in and growing more dangerous every moment, so the dog took a tighter grip of his prize, and made straight for the old kiln.

Brickmaking was impossible in the face of such a chase, and everyone joined in, with the full determination that this day “Bill Jones’s dawg” must die.

“Hi! stop him – stop him!”

By an ingenious double or two, the dog nearly reached the refuge that he sought, but he was cut off and turned back by swift-footed boys, yelling with excitement and panting to hurl the first lump of brick at the hated beast. But the dog kept out of harm’s way by running between the rows of piled-up, unburnt bricks, which afforded him shelter, and the baby, too, for missiles went flying after them at every chance.

Up this row, down that, and zigzag to and fro, till the canal was near, and the forces joining, the dog was nearly driven to leap into the foul stagnant water; but again he doubled, passed through an opening, and was once more in the shelter between two rows of bricks, cantering along towards the end. Here, though, he was cut off again by one of the lads, who, divining the course he had taken, shouted to part of the contingent, and turned the wily brute back.

But he was not beaten. He was starving, but he was hard and strong: no fattened, asthmatic favourite was he, but long-winded and lank, ready to run for an hour yet, even with the load he bore. Wily too, as his relative the fox, he cleverly doubled in and out, in the maze-like rows of wet bricks, avoiding as if by magic the missiles that were thrown; and at last, just as the boys were driving him back towards the spade-armed men, whom he had from the first given a wide berth, he cleverly dashed for the weak part in the advancing line of lads, passed them, put on all his pace, and went away for the kiln.

There were swift runners amongst those lightly-clad, barefooted boys, and now that it had become a tail race, away they went with all their might, faster and faster, and yelling till they were hoarse. For there were shouts and cries of encouragement from behind, enough to spur on the greatest laggard, and on they went till the dog reached the old kiln and tried to enter a low hole, probably the one he made his den.

Here, though, he had a check, by the clothes of the infant catching in the rough scoria, when – foxlike – he backed out, turned, and then began to back in.

That momentary check saved the child: for just as it was disappearing in the opening, the foremost boy bounded up, caught the infant by its leg, and the long robe it wore, and, pulling and shouting hard, succeeded in drawing the wretched little object back, the dog snarling savagely, and holding on with all his might; but just then half a brick smote him on the head, he loosed his hold, and, backing in, the child with its lacerated arm and shoulder was held up on high amidst the cheering of the boys.

In another minute the panting crowd surrounded the opening, and Jane Glyne had the baby in her arms, wondering whether it was alive or dead.

The tragedy was not over yet.

Bill Jones stood amongst the men, and was for defending his “dawg,” but the blood of all present was thoroughly roused, and though Bill declared his readiness to fight any man present for a pot, he soon cried off on finding that his challenge was taken up by a score of fellow-workers, half of whom began to prepare for the trial by battle on the spot.

“I don’t keer what you do wi’ the dawg,” Bill growled, taking out and beginning to fill his pipe, and directly after joining in the attempt about to be made to get the beast out of his place of refuge.

Forming themselves into a semicircle round the opening, a part stood ready, while some of the sturdiest brickmakers began to drag the burrs apart, a task in which they had not been long engaged, standing upon the heap, before there was a rustling noise; the old rough bricks began to crumble down inwards; and with a savage snarl the frightened dog bounded out.

There was a shout, a chorus of yells, mingled with which was the last ever given by “Bill Jones’s dawg,” for his mortal race was run. Even Cerberus of the three heads could not have existed many seconds beneath the shower of bricks and clinkers that assailed him after the savage chop given by father’s spade. One yell only, and there was a mass of brick rising over him, the dog’s death and burial being a simultaneous act on the part of those who, old and young, did not pause until they had erected a rough but respectable mausoleum over the wolfish creature’s grave.

“Put a bit o’ wet ’bacco on the place,” said father, removing his pipe as he turned to where Jane Glyne and mother were examining the little frail morsel, which, in spite of its usage, began now to wail feebly; “put a bit o’ wet ’bacco on the place; it ain’t dead. There, give it to mother; and, I say, when are you going to pay agen?”

“Never,” cried Jane Glyne, hastily wrapping the baby in the shawl now handed by one of the staring girls.

“Oh, it ain’t hurt much,” said father; “put a bit o’ wet ’bacco on the place.”

“Hurt!” cried the woman excitedly, as with a newly-awakened interest she held the child tightly to her hard breast, “it’s a’most killed, and if it lives, that dog’s teeth have poisoned it, and it will go mad.”

“Not it,” growled father; “why, the dawg is dead. Give it to mother, and I say, when – why, she’s gone!”

He said this after a pause, as he stared after Jane Glyne hurrying towards the path where her bundle lay, but thinking more of her little burden, inoculated by the poison of those wolfish teeth – blood-poisoned, perhaps, as to its mental or bodily state – certainly suffering from lacerations that might end its feeble little life.