A Little Wizard

by Stanley John Weyman

She had scarcely gone when Luke entered and joined the party by the window, and there ensued much solemn jubilation over the morning's work and the peculiar judgments vouchsafed to the neighborhood; and particularly over the reported arrival at Ripon of Lieutenant-General Cromwell, with forces which might be trusted to give a good account of the Scotch army. Jack, sitting trembling on a stool in a corner of the fireless chimney-place, heard their sanguine predictions and shuddered. He knew Cromwell by name, and dimly associated him with Marston Moor, and the sad night which had seen his father ride home to die. The kitchen grew to the lad's eyes as he listened full of dark shadows and forebodings of fate. The men who loomed between him and the window seemed to increase in size. Only the purpose he had in his mind, and the necessity of action if he would pursue it, saved him from breaking down and bursting into childish weeping.

By dint of fixing his mind on this, however, he steadied himself; and by-and-by, choosing a moment when the talk was loud, stole across the room to a tub in which the oatcake was kept. Ordinary the lid lay loose upon it: now, to his huge disappointment, he found it locked! Baffled, and more than half inclined to cry, he wandered back to his place and resumed his seat on the floor, affecting to be engaged in playing with two billets of wood. In reality his thoughts were keenly at work. The cheese and cake he had secreted were scarcely worth carrying to his brother. Where could he get more?

It occurred to him at last that, failing everything else, raw oatmeal might be of use. Inspired by the thought, he rose and sauntered round three sides of the room until he reached the chest. Pretending to play about it he presently tried the lid, and to his joy found it unfastened. He raised it cautiously an inch or two, and thrusting his hand in found the wooden bowl which was used for measuring the meal. He filled this, and withdrew it successfully. Then he let the lid fall without noise.

He had still to escape unseen with his plunder, but the men were so busily engaged in talk that he feared no interruption from them, and Mistress Gridley was neither to be heard nor seen. He moved towards the back door, opened it, and slipped outside, holding the bowl under the skirt of his jacket. The afternoon sun shone in his eyes, and for a moment he stood blinking like an owl in the daylight, so great was the change from the cool, sombre kitchen. Softly he advanced a step. Before he could take another, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and Mistress Gridley had him in her clutch.

"You little thief!" she screamed, her voice shrill with savage triumph, "I have caught you, have I? You thought to deceive me, did you? To deceive me, you little ninny? What is this, eh? Whose is this?" she repeated, grasping the child's wrist, and forcing him to hold up the little bowl of meal which his fingers still gripped mechanically. "Whose is this, eh? Is it yours? This way, my little thief; this way!"

She dragged him into the kitchen, and exulting in her own sharpness, told the men, who had risen at the sound of her outcry, how she had caught him. "He thought himself clever," she continued, shaking him to and fro without mercy, "but he was not clever enough for me!"

"What did he want with the meal?" one of the strangers asked suspiciously. "It looks to me very much as if----"

"What?" Mistress Gridley asked rudely.

"As if the malignant who gave us the slip this morning were hid here, and had employed this boy to get him food."

The woman sniffed contemptuously. "Stuff and rubbish!" she said. "The meal is for the cowardly sneak who brought the boy here. He is outside, on short commons," she continued, laughing without mirth.