"Let me consider for a moment," rejoined the other; but Mowle went on in the same strain, saying, "Then, sir, if you were to be absent all to-morrow, I might get very important information, and not be able to give it to you, nor arrange anything with you either."
Osborne still meditated with a grave brow for some time. "I will write," he said, at length. "It will be better--it will be only just and honourable. I will write instead of going to-morrow, Mr. Mowle; and if this affair should not take place to-morrow night, as you suppose, I will make such arrangements for the following day--on which I must go over to Woodchurch--as will enable you to communicate with me without delay, should you have any message to send. At all events, I will return to Hythe before night. Now good evening;" and while Mowle made his bow and retired, the young officer turned to the letter again, and read it over with glistening eyes.
[CHAPTER III.]
I wonder if the reader ever wandered from Saltwood Castle back to the good old town of Hythe, on a fine summer's day, with a fair companion, as full of thought and mind as grace and beauty, and with a dear child just at the age when all the world is fresh and lovely--and then missed his way, and strayed--far from the track--towards Sandgate, till dinner was kept waiting at the inn, and the party who would not plod on foot, were all tired and wondering at their friend's delay!--I wonder if the reader ever did all this. I have--and a very pleasant thing it is to do. Yes, all of it, reader. For, surely, to go from waving wood to green field, and from green field to hill-side and wood again, and to trace along the brook which we know must lead to the sea-shore, with one companion of high soul, who can answer thought for thought, and another in life's early morning, who can bring back before your eyes the picture of young enjoyment--ay, and to know that those you love most dearly and esteem most highly, are looking for your coming, with a little anxiety, not even approaching the bounds of apprehension, is all very pleasant indeed.
You, dear and excellent lady, who were one of my companions on the way, may perhaps recollect a little cottage--near the spot where we sprung a solitary partridge--whither I went to inquire the shortest road to Hythe. That cottage was standing there at the period of which I now write; and at the bottom of that hill, amongst the wood, and close by the little stream nearly where the foot-bridge now carries the traveller over dryshod, was another hut, half concealed by the trees, and covered over with well nigh as much moss and houseleek as actual thatch.
It has been long swept away, as well as its tenants; and certainly a wretched and ill-constructed place it was. Would to Heaven that all such were gone from our rich and productive land, and that every labourer, in a country which owes so much to the industry of her children, had a dwelling better fitted to a human being! But, alas, many such still exist! and it is not always, as it was in this case, that vice is the companion of misery. This is no book of idle twaddle, to represent all the wealthy as cold, hard, and vicious, and the poor all good, forbearing, and laborious; for evil is pretty equally distributed through all classes--though, God knows, the rich, with all their opportunities, ought to shew a smaller proportion of wickedness, and the poor might perhaps be expected, from their temptations, to be worse than they are! Still it is hard to think that many as honest a man as ever lived--ay, and as industrious a man, too--returns, after his hard day's toil, to find his wife and children, well nigh in starvation, in such a place as I am about to describe--and none to help them.
The hut--for it did not deserve the name of cottage--was but of one floor, which was formed of beaten clay, but a little elevated above the surrounding soil. It contained two rooms. The one opened into what had been a garden before it, running down nearly to the brookside; and the other communicated with the first, but had a door which gave exit into the wood behind. Windows the hut had two, one on either side; but neither contained more than two complete panes of glass. The spaces, where glass had once been, were now filled up in a strange variety of ways. Here was a piece of board nailed in; there a coarse piece of cloth kept out the wind; another broken pane was filled up with paper; and another, where some fragments of the original substance remained, was stopped with an old stocking stuffed with straw. In the garden, as it was still called, appeared a few cabbages and onions, with more cabbage-stalks than either, and a small patch of miserable potatoes. But weeds were the most plentiful of all, and chickweed and groundsel enough appeared there to have supplied a whole forest of singing birds. It had been once fenced in, that miserable garden; but the wood had been pulled down and burned for firing by its present tenants, or others as wretched in circumstances as themselves; and nought remained but a strong post here and there, with sometimes a many-coloured rag of coarse cotton fluttering upon some long, rusty nail, which had snatched a shred from passing poverty. Three or four stunted gooseberry bushes, however, marked out the limit on one side; a path ran in front between the garden and the brook; and on the other side there was a constant petty warfare between the farmer and the inhabitant of the hovel as to the possession of the border-land; and like a great and small state contending, the more powerful always gained some advantage in despite of right, but lost perhaps as much by the spiteful incursions of the foe, as if he had yielded the contested territory.
On the night of which I speak--the same on which Mowle visited the commanding officer of the dragoons at Hythe--the cottage itself, the garden, and all the squalid-looking things about the place, were hidden in the deep darkness which had again fallen over the earth as soon as night had fallen. The morning, it may be remembered--it was the same on which Sir Edward Digby had been fired at by the smugglers--had been somewhat cold and foggy; but about eleven, the day had brightened, and the evening had been sultry. No sooner, however, did the sun reach the horizon than mists began to rise, and before seven o'clock the whole sky was under cloud and the air filled with fog. He must have been well acquainted with every step of the country who could find his way from town to town. Nevertheless, any one who approached Galley Ray's cottage, as it was called, would, at the distance of at least a hundred yards, have perceived something to lead him on; for a light, red as that of a baleful meteor, was streaming through the two glazed squares of the window into the misty air, making them look like the eyes of some wild animal in a dark forest.
We must pause here, however, for a moment, to explain to the reader who Galley Ray was, and how she acquired the first of her two appellations, which certainly was not that which she had received at her baptism. Galley Ray, then, was the old woman of whom Mr. Mowle had given that favourable account, which may be seen in the last chapter; and, to say the truth, he had but done her justice. Her name was originally Gillian Ray; but, amongst a number of corrupt associates, with whom her early life was spent, the first of the two appellations was speedily transformed to Gilly or Gill. Some time afterwards--when youth began to wane, and whatever youthful graces she possessed were deviating into the virago qualities of the middle age--while watching one night the approach of a party of smugglers, with whom she had some intimacy, she perceived three or four Custom-House officers coming down to launch a galley, which they had upon the beach, for the purpose of cutting off the free-traders. But Gilly Ray instantly sprang in, and with the boat-hook set them all at defiance, till they threatened to launch her into the sea, boat and all.
It is true, she was reported to have been drunk at the time; but her daring saved the smugglers, and conveyed her for two months to jail, whence, as may be supposed, she returned not much improved in her morals. One of those whom she had befriended in the time of need, bestowed on her the name of Galley, by an easy transition from her original prænomen; and it remained by her to the last day of her life.