Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

But what chiefly occupied my mind was the thought that, according to Elsie the oven was of easy access from her room, and doubtless would have been visited frequently by whoever had the charge of the baking.

I could therefore, with Elsie's iron bar, if no better turned up, make a good fight for both our liberties. The situation was getting altogether too ridiculous for a man of business habits, shut up within a few miles of his own horses, lorries, his grocery, ironmongery, and other supplying and contracting establishments.

How I was ever to face Bob Kingsman I did not know. I wondered if all this time he were taking his orders from "Dearest Joe." Joe indeed! I lacked confidence in my son as a man of business—as it turned out, without reason. He might even have brought me to the verge of bankruptcy. There were, I was informed, two young ladies from London dwelling in my house, of whom—especially one of them—Elsie reported to me by code a very poor account. They seemed completely to have gotten the mastery over my poor wife, who was, as it appeared, prostrated with grief—a thing I should not have anticipated. On every account it seemed about time that I should come to life again.

The question was merely one of detail. How?

Of course, I did not hide from myself that as the days went by, marked, for me, only by the lighting and darkening of my jackdaw's entrance above, many things would certainly be happening outside. For one thing, I was a prominent ratepayer, and the cleaning and lighting taxes, as well as the school and road rates for the parishes of Breckonside and Over Breckonton, would be coming due. If for nothing else, they would be sure to hunt me up to pay them. For, as I had appealed against them all—on principle—Joe would not be able to settle them without me. He would have done it if he could, having no "fight" in him—that boy taking after his mother—but my lawyer would see him further first, being a minor. I could trust Mr. C. P. Richards—he would not pay a farthing till he had an order under my hand or a proof of my decease. Yes. They would seek for me. No doubt of that.

And Elsie? Of course she was not a ratepayer; but—well, if, as was likely, they had seen her shake out her skirts to trip across a muddy road they would be just as great fools as myself.

And they were greater—every man of them. I know Breckonside.

Well, now, to join on our doings in the cellar (as it were) to those up aloft in the front hall, it was about this time that our meals began to wax irregular. The Breckonside mob, ill led, and incapable of knowing exactly what it wanted, had come and gone, defeated by the cunning of Miss Aphra—very clever woman, Miss Aphra—and the cheerful, innocent brutality of Dr. Hector.

There was still talk about us, no doubt, but desultory—some semblance of action, too. In fine, little real work was being done, when our provisions began to get scarce down below in the old stone storehouses of the monks.

Indeed, so far as I was concerned, I should have starved if Elsie Stennis, who was still occasionally remembered, had not pushed through the bolt holes long strips of the home-made loaves with which Mad Jeremy supplied her. As for water, she had a spoon tied to the end of the iron rod; and I took it as a babe does pap. It was, I am free to say, most kindly done. For at no time had she too much for herself, and though I do not make too much of a thing like that, neither, on the other hand, do I forget it. After a long, sleepless night of thought, I resolved that the very next evening I should borrow the iron rod from Elsie, which had formerly been used as a rake shaft of the bakery furnace.