Barbara Lynn: A Tale of the Dales and Fells.

by Emily J. Jenkinson

"Aye, aye, keep to the sheep-paths, Barbara. Keep to the sheep-paths and your star-gazing. See thou keep to the sheep-paths, great-granddaughter. They're safer for a young lass than Cringel Forest. Get thee gone now. It's time you were in bed. The dawn comes earlier every day."

"Earlier still I'll have to be up," replied Barbara, giving the old woman good-night.

"God bless thee, Barbara, thee's a good lass, although I do get my knife into thee whiles. Sleep well."

The girl drew the blue and white homespun curtains round the bed, put out the candle and went away. The wooden soles of her clogs rang with a measured sound upon the stone stairs and then across the rafters overhead. After that there was silence save for the chatter of the beck, running by the door. Its voice had an insistent, familiar tone, as though it were talking to someone within. No movement came from old Mistress Lynn. Either she was asleep, or she busied her mind with thoughts of other days. For a long time the room was in darkness. Then the turf on the fire slipped, the light leaped forth, and the four-poster glided out of shadow like a ship in full sail. The curtains were noiselessly drawn back, and a long, lean hand relit the candle.

Mistress Lynn looked slowly and searchingly about her. She left no dim corner unscanned, and there were many dim corners in the great kitchen, for it ran the length of the front part of the house.

It was a low room with a flagged and sanded floor. The walls were white-washed, making a fine contrast to the beams overhead, and the doors of the carved oak cupboards, all alike, black with age. Along one side ran three windows. The hearth was a slab of blue slate, and, as the chimney flue descended no further into the room than the ceiling, the fire made a great show on occasions, with its flames and smoke; as though one end of the house were burning from floor to rafters. A bar of wood, called the rannel-balk, spanned the fireplace, and from it depended the rattan-crook, a long hook on which the kettle hung. There was a carved oak settle in the ingle, and near it a spinning wheel; and under the windows a narrow but heavy table with all its corners sharp but one, which was rounded off in a curious manner following the shape of the solid tree trunk from which it had been made. Against the opposite wall stood a dresser, holding a varied array of wooden and pewter platters, piggins for drinking out of, and two or three china cups. Next to it came the bridewain, and then the great bed. Between the windows was the door, bound with iron, studded with large nails, and bolted by two massive iron bolts. Another door at the far end led into a little passage, which gave access to the wool-barn, cow-house and dairy, all at the back of the building. In the chimney, curing in the smoke, hung flitches of bacon and a sheep by the heels. Upon the shelves along the walls were hammers and lanterns, pattens for horses to wear in snowy weather, sticks and staves and an old gun. An oak cupboard, with Mistress Lynn's initials carved upon it, held the oat-cake, and a kist, near the fire, held meal.

But the principal feature of the place was the four-post bed, with its curtains of blue and white homespun, so placed that it commanded a full view of the room. Nothing could happen there unseen by the old woman.

Shadows shot up and sank with the flickering light. The clock peered down like a white-faced watcher, the dresser and the high-backed chairs were endowed with movement if not with life. Mistress Lynn laid her fingers upon the bridewain, as though she would reassure herself that it, too, was not a fantastic creation of firelight and shadow, but the solid piece of oak which she had brought with her to this house of Greystones, when she married David Lynn four generations ago.

She listened for any sound in the sleeping house. But all was quiet. No stealthy steps crossed the rafters overhead, where Barbara and Lucy slept. The windows were shuttered and the doors were closed. Jan Straw, the shepherd, grown old and blind and deaf in her service, had a bed along with the hind above the cow-house. There was none to spy upon her, save the shadows and the firelight, and the bob-tailed sheep-dog, lying with his nose between his paws, dreaming of the flocks upon Thundergay.

Mistress Lynn moved the candle nearer to her, and, taking from its hiding-place in the bed a large iron key, she leaned over and unlocked the middle cupboard of the bridewain.