A Little Wizard

by Stanley John Weyman

"Come, man, be quick!" Simon cried sharply. "What are you waiting for?"

"I'm not coming, Simon," was the reply.

"Not coming?"

"Some one must stay and take care of the place," the butler answered, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay. Your wife will need some one."

"Fool! what can one man do here?" the Puritan retorted fiercely. "Come, I say. This is no time for loitering when the work calls us."

Gridley shook his head and moistened his lips with his tongue. "I'm not a fighting man," he muttered feebly.

For a moment the elder brother glared at him, as though he were minded to cross the fence and strike him down. Fortunately, however, Simon found a vent for his passion as effectual and more characteristic. "If you do not fight, you do not eat," he said coldly. "At any rate in my house. Mistress," he continued to his wife, "see that my orders are obeyed. Give that craven neither bit nor sup until I come again. If he will not fight he shall not feed!"

And with that he went.

When little Jack came back to the house an hour later, and crept shyly into the kitchen, as his manner was, he found it empty. The light was beginning to wane, and the coming evening already filled the corners of the gaunt, silent room, in which not even a clock ticked, with shadows. The boy stood awhile, looking about him and listening in the stillness for any movement in the inner room, or on the floor above. Hearing none, he went outside in a kind of panic; but there too he found no one. Still, the light gave him courage to re-enter and mount the stairs. He called "Gridley!" again and again, but no one answered. He tried Luke's room; it was empty. On this the lad was about to fly again in a worse panic than before--for the loneliness of the house might have appalled an older heart than his--when the sound of footsteps relieved his fears. He stole to the window, and saw the butler and Mistress Gridley come round the corner of the house, the former carrying a spade on his shoulder.

Jack wondered timidly what they had been about with the spade, and where Simon and Luke were; but naturally he got no explanation, and was glad to escape from the grim looks with which they greeted him. It was time for the evening meal, and the woman set it on, and gave him his share as usual. The butler, however, he saw with surprise took no part in it, but sat at a distance with a scowl on his face, and neither ate nor drank. On the other hand, Mistress Gridley ate more than usual. Indeed, he had never seen her in better appetite or spirits, She rallied her companion, too, on his abstinence so pleasantly and with so much good-temper, that the child was quite carried away by her humor, and went to bed in better spirits than had been his since the beginning of his life at Malham.