"But this was, of course, impossible. I had, how ever, good reason to be content with our new arrangement. The old, difficult (though perfectly safe) interment in a doubly tenanted grave, with all its annoyances of being on the spot myself, of scaling walls and keeping Jeremy to his labour, was all done away with. Deep Moat certainly became, as it were, a self-contained factory for spinning the money which is the god of this world. Ah, it was a peaceful and a happy time. Within and without, everything went like clockwork. I began to be respected, too—at a certain distance from home, that is. For I had taken care to engage the simplest and honestest soul in the world for my grieve or bailiff, and when Jeremy and I were not out on our more immediate business, Simon Ball and I frequented markets and bought all that was necessary for the home farm. To be exact, he bought and I paid.
"But the beginning of evil days was at hand. I have always noticed it. Man cannot long be left in peace, even among the most favoured surroundings. Now I was doing no harm to any soul or body in all the surrounding parishes. Instead I did what good I could—spoke fairly and civilly, contributed freely to charities, helped more than one of my impoverished neighbours. But I will not conceal it from my successor (who alone is to read this manuscript) that all my good will was in vain, so far as gaining the affection and respect of the countryside was concerned. Yet for this, personally, I can conceive no reason. Those whom Jeremy took charge of were invariably strangers—men of loud, brawling character, generally semi-drunkards, trampling all laws of a quiet and respectable demeanour under their feet.
"While I myself, giving shelter to these poor creatures, the sisters Orrin—who without me would have been hunted from city to city—I, Howard Stennis, whose only dissipation or distraction was to weave the thronging fancies of flower and fruit into my napery—was no better respected than an outlaw dog. They called me the Golden Farmer, but it was with a sneer. None would willingly linger a moment to speak with me, not so much as one of Bailiff Ball's tow-headed urchins. If one of them met me in a lonesome path, as like as not he would set up a howl and dodge between my legs, running, tumbling, and making the welkin ring, as if I had been some black evil bogie!
"Yet, I am a man who all his life has loved children, and (with a few exceptions) carefully observed the courtesies as between man and man. When I consider how I have been served by friends and neighbours, many of whom I have repeatedly obliged, I am filled with surprise that I have kept the sphere of my operations so remote from my insulters. But then I have always, save perhaps in the case of my daughter Bell, been a forgiving man. Even now I cherish no enmity against those whose machinations have caused me to be suspected.
"It was about this time, when the first-planted lilies were beginning to sprout for the third season, that Jeremy, nosing, as usual, here and there, discovered the ancient underground rooms across the drawbridge. Immediately I saw the use they would be to us. Having been well brought up myself, I had always regretted the necessity of sending so many, mostly careless and godless men, to their account unwarned and unprepared. Such of them as could be induced to disgorge further sums of money besides those carried on their bodies might at least have some space for reflection and repentance. What I did not foresee was that the Orrins, with their low, mad-folks' cunning, would make use of these nests of chambers and hiding-places for their own ends, and thereby endanger everything which I had so wisely and so laboriously thought out.
"But for all that it was, as I have said, the beginning of the evil days.
"And as usual it was owing to my own carelessness. I have enough common sense to know that, nine times out of ten, men have themselves to thank for the misfortunes which befall them. It is only the born fool who goes from house to house and from friend to friend maundering about ill luck and an unkind Providence. Good luck, at least, is generally only the art of looking a good way ahead.
"I was away in Edinburgh, for the almanac told us that we were approaching the date of the Bewick Wakes. Jeremy was to make the acquaintance of a certain Lammermuir farmer with a well lined pocket-book. The lily bed, under which he was to lie, would just have made out Miss Aphra's pattern neatly—a thing concerning which she was most particular. I will not give his name; if this falls into the hands of a worthy successor he may one day scent the 'shot' out for himself. He speaks broad Lammermuir, wears glasses hooked round his ears, like a college professor, and generally has cut himself while shaving in more than one place. But at any rate he had a respite for the time being.
"For, without my knowledge, and quite apart from all my well-ordered designs, Jeremy in a mad, fierce fit fell suddenly upon the mail carrier betwixt Breckonside and Bewick. Very early in the morning it was done, and the place unsuitable and quite unsafe, being close by the bailiff's cottage. But that was not the worst. The mare belonging to the carrier postman (I knew him well, a decent quiet man, Henry Foster by name) ran wide and wild, made a circuit of the Deep Moat property and turned up in front of the school-house at Breckonside, the mail gig all blood and leaves, just as the innocent bairns were going in to say their morning's lessons.
"The rest of the business Jeremy had carried through well enough. He had sculled the body of Foster, properly covered with bark and brushwood, and laid it comfortably in the place intended for the Lammermuir farmer. He had taken the mail bags, such as appeared to have anything of value in them, turned them inside out, burned them in his baker's furnace, and hidden away the rings (which he could not melt) in some of his private caches.