“Yes; but you will not go near, so as to run any risk? If they found you alone, they would attack and strip you of everything of value you have.”
“I’ll take care,” cried the lad. “I can get up to the side of the cliff, and watch them right away. I can see the path to the Black Tor from there.”
“Yes; go,” said Sir Morton, and the boy hurried out, crossed the little court, and passing through a small side-door, reached the slope of the cliff upon which the old castle was built, and then by a narrow pathway, clambered a couple of hundred feet higher, starting the jackdaws from their resting-places, making them fly off, uttering angry cries of tah! tah! Then throwing himself down behind a great block of limestone, which had fallen from above, and which looked as if a thrust would send it hurtling down some hundred feet, into the river below, he waited till, as he fully expected, he saw the party of men appear down below in the track; and then he followed their course, seeing them disappear behind the trees, appear again, and after making divers short cuts, as if their leader were well acquainted with the place, make off for the ford. Then he watched them as they straggled across the river, and struck into the narrow cliff path which led to the great dark-hued cliff known as the Black Tor, where the Edens’ impregnable stronghold stood, perched upon a narrow ledge of rock which rose up like a monstrous tongue from the earth, connected on one side by a narrow natural bridge with the main cliff, the castellated building being protected on all sides by a huge rift fully a couple of hundred feet deep, the tongue being merely a portion of the cliff split away during some convulsion of nature; or perhaps gradually separated by subsidence, the top affording sufficient space for the building, and its courtyards.
Ralph watched the men until the last had disappeared; and then, knowing from the configuration of the place as he had seen it from another point of view, that he would probably not see them again for an hour or two, perhaps not again that day, if Sir Edward Eden received the proposals of Captain Purlrose favourably, he began slowly and thoughtfully to descend. For he knew that it would be a serious matter for his father if Sir Edward Eden seized upon the opportunity for strengthening his retainers and attacking his rival.
The feud between the two families had lasted for generations, beginning so far back that the origin was lost in the mists of time. All that Ralph Darley knew was, that in the days of Henry the Eighth, an Eden had done a Darley deadly injury that could never be forgiven, and ever since the wrong had been handed down from father to son as a kind of unpleasant faith by which it was the duty of all Darleys to be prepared to exterminate all Edens; and if they could not exterminate them and seize upon their possessions, to do them all the injury they could.
There was another version of the story, as Ralph well knew, and it was precisely the same, saving for the following exception: that in the beginning it was a Darley who did the deadly wrong to an Eden. But one thing was certain—the two families had carried on their petty warfare in the most determined way. Edens had fallen by the sword; so had Darleys. There was a grim legend, too, of an Eden having been taken prisoner, and starved to death in one of the dungeons of Cliffe Castle, in Queen Mary’s time; and Ralph had often gone down below to look at the place, and the staple ring and chain in the gloomy place, shuddering at the horror of the prisoner’s fate.
For this the Edens had waited their time, and surprised the castle one night, driving the occupants from place to place, till they took refuge in the central tower, from which they could not be dislodged; so the Edens contented themselves by the following reprisal: they set fire to the castle in a dozen places before they retired, the flames raging till there was no more woodwork to destroy, and nothing was left but the strong central tower and the sturdy walls. The place was restored, though, soon after, and the Sir Ralph Darley of Elizabeth’s time made an expedition one night to give tit-for-tat, but only to find out that it was impossible to get across the stoutly-defended natural bridge at Black Tor, and that it was waste of time to keep on shooting arrows, bearing burning rags soaked in pitch, on to the roofs of the towers and in at the loopholes. So he retreated, with a very sore head, caused by a stone thrown from above, dinting in his helmet, and with half his men carrying the other half, wounded or dead.
His successor had tried again and again to master the Edens and seize their possessions. Amongst these was the Black Tor lead-mine, approached by steps in the side of the cliff; its galleries honeycombed the place, running right under the earth, and into natural caverns of the large opposite cliffs of limestone, where the jackdaws built their nests.
Ralph Darley, living as he did that day in the days of King James, pondered on all those old legends as he descended to give his father the information he had acquired; and as he stepped down, he knit his brows and began to think that it was quite time this feud had an end, and that it must be his duty to finish it all off, in spite of the addition to the strength at Black Tor, by waiting his opportunity, and meeting, and in fair fight slaying, young Mark Eden, who was about his own age, seventeen, and just back home from one of the great grammar-schools. This done, he would make a scheme for seizing the Black Tor, putting Sir Edward Eden and his mercenaries to the sword, but sparing the men who were miners, so that they might go on working for the Darleys. By this means he would end the feud, secure peace, and make his father a rich and happy man, having proved himself a thoroughly good and chivalrous son.
Ralph felt very brave, and proud, and happy, when he had reached this point, which was just as he opened the door of his father’s room, which contained a very small library—books being rare and precious in those days—plenty of handsome armour and war-like weapons of offence, and a corner set apart for alchemy and the study of minerals; for, in a desultory way, Sir Morton Darley, bitten by the desire to have a mine of his own to produce him as good an income as that of his enemy neighbour, had been given to searching without success for a good lode of lead.