A Little Wizard

by Stanley John Weyman

She spoke with authority, and her words seemed to be accepted as a final decision. Gridley pulled the child sharply by the arm, and, himself wearing a somewhat hangdog expression, led him across the fold and through the doorway, the others following. The scene outside, the leaden sky and grey moor and falling rain, had reduced the boy to the depth of misery; the interior to which he was introduced did little to comfort him. The hearth was fireless, the stone floor bare and unstrewn. A couple of great chests, a chair and two stools, formed, with a table, a spinning-wheel, and a rude loom, the only furniture. The rafters displayed none of the plenty which Jack was accustomed to see in kitchens, for neither flitch nor puddings adorned them, but in the window-seat a gaunt elderly man with a long grey beard sat reading a large Bible. He looked up dreamily when the party entered, but said nothing, the rapt expression of his face seeming to show that he was virtually unconscious of their presence.

"Luke is the same as ever?" the butler said in a low voice to his sister-in-law.

"He has his visions, if that is what you mean," she answered tartly. "Same as he ever had, and clearer of late. Set the child there. You are hungry, I dare say. Well, you'll have to wait. In an hour it will be supper-time, and in an hour you will have your supper. But you will get no Pattenhall dainties here."

The elder Gridley went to the loom and began to work, while his brother, repressing a sigh of discontent, sat down and gazed at the hearth, regretting already the step he had taken. Mistress Gridley looked fixedly and with compressed lips at the boy, who sat in the cold chimney corner, too much terrified to cry. The only sounds which broke the dreary stillness of the house were the rattling of the loom and the murmur of Luke Gridley's voice, as his tongue followed the mechanical movement of his finger.

Such was their reception; the child, hungry and fear-stricken, thought with a bursting heart of the home he had left, of the friends and the very dogs of Pattenhall, its trees and sunshine, and warm kitchen. The grim silence of the room, the woman's cruel eyes, the bareness and greyness, seemed to crush him with an iron hand, so that it was only by an effort, almost beyond his years, that he repressed a scream of passionate revolt.

Nor did he suffer alone. The butler, despite the care with which he hid his feelings, was little more at home in his company. He had no longer anything in common with his kinsfolk. In his heart he cringed before their rugged natures as a guilty dog crouches before its master. But he had thoughts of his own and a purpose to serve; and this enabled him to put a good face on the matter, or at least to endure with a wry smile.

The scanty meal of cheese and oatmeal eaten, and Luke's long extemporary prayer brought to an end, the strangers were taken to one of the two upper rooms. In five minutes the tired child was asleep; not so his companion. Gridley, fatigued as he was, lay and watched the last glimmer of daylight die away, and then, when all the house was dark and quiet, he sat up and listened. His wallets lay on the floor beside him. He rose and crawled to them, and for a long time crouched on the boards by them, thinking. He wanted a hiding-place--before morning he must have a hiding-place; but the scanty furniture of the room afforded none. This he had not anticipated, and the perplexity into which it threw him was so largely mingled with fear, that he fancied the loud beating of his heart must attract attention even through the walls. After some minutes of misery he made up his mind, and rising from the floor crept to the door and opened it. All was so still in the house that he took fresh courage. He went back to his wallets, and drawing something from them stole on tiptoe down the stairs, each creaking board--and there were many--throwing him into a cold perspiration. When a coward gives himself to wickedness, he pays dearly for his fancy.

The staircase opened directly into the kitchen, where he stood awhile listening on the hearth. Luke, the preacher, slept in the back-room, and the door seemed to be ajar. Gridley felt his way through the darkness to it and softly closed it. Then he peered round him. Where could he hide what he had to hide? Memory, conjuring up the objects round him, suggested one place after another, but in each case he foresaw the possibility of accident. The linen-chest? Mistress Gridley might take it into her head to inspect her store of linen. The under-part of the sink? She might be about to clean it. The dresser was out of the question. He decided at last on the oatmeal chest, and groping his way to it found it, to his delight, unlocked and half full. The objects he had to hide were small; he ran little risk, he thought, if he buried them near the bottom of the meal.

After pausing again to listen and assure himself that he was not watched, he plunged his treasure deep in the soft meal. Then with trembling hands he drew the stuff over it, jealously smoothing and patting the surface in his fear lest daylight should disclose some signs of what he had been about. This done, and as he believed, effectually, he heaved a sigh of relief, and laid his hand on the lid of the chest to close it. At that moment a thin ray of light pierced the darkness in which he stood, and falling across the floor of the kitchen, chilled him to the heart.

Even in his panic he had sufficient presence of mind to close the lid softly, but the act detained him so long that he had no chance of moving away from the chest; and there Mistress Gridley found him when she entered, with her rushlight shaded, and her small eyes gleaming triumphantly behind it.