A Little Wizard

by Stanley John Weyman

"I met him going down to Settle," Luke said briefly. "Ay, but the child did not know he was gone," she answered with confidence. "The child did not know it, do you see? But I will make him know enough not to steal again, the little thief!"

The men nodded in stern approval. "Open me that closet door," Mistress Gridley continued, pointing with her unoccupied hand to a cupboard made in the thickness of the wall beside the chimney, and used in winter for storing wood. "I will lock him up there for the present. It is nice and dark. He may keep the oatmeal, and when he has finished it, but not before, we will see about finding him some other food. In with you!" she continued, dragging the boy forcibly to the place; "the beetles will keep you company!" and pushing him in, she closed the door and locked it upon him.

So far the boy had neither spoken nor resisted. But finding the door closed on him inexorably, and the horrors of the black closet round him--horrors which a child alone can thoroughly comprehend--he flung himself, shrieking loudly, against the door. He beat on it with his hands, he kicked it, he cried frantically to be let out. The woman listened and laughed cruelly. "It is as good as beating him, and less labor," she said. "Take no heed of him, and he will soon tire of shouting."

The men laughed too--the boy was a thief--and went back to their talk, while the woman sat down to her wheel. The child's cries were music to her ears; and yet she was ill at ease. The butler had gone down to Settle, had he? What if he had visited a certain place among the yew-trees before going, and dug a little? She did not think he would have had the courage to play her such a trick. Still it was possible--it was possible, and she longed for night that she might go to the place and have the assurance of her own eyes.

For a time the boy raved and beat the door, his fear increased by that sense of physical oppression which children, and many who are not children, experience when shut up in a confined space without the power of freeing themselves. By-and-by, however, as the woman had predicted, he grew calmer. He had a talisman which availed, when the first paroxysm had spent itself, to keep selfish terrors at a distance; and that was the thought of his brother. In proportion as his sobs grew feebler his brain grew clearer. Anxiety on Frank's account took the place of fear for himself. Crouching beside the door with his ear laid against it, he drew such comfort from the murmur of voices and the thin line of light which marked the threshold, that he grew almost content with his position. He was safe from further punishment. Only there was his brother. He pictured Frank waiting and looking for him, waiting and looking in vain for the food which did not come! And this fancy causing his tears to flow again, in the middle of a stifled sob he fell asleep.

CHAPTER V.

[TREASURE TROVE.]

When he awoke and found himself in darkness, he could not for a time understand where he was. The line of light which had comforted him was gone, and with it the homely sounds of kitchen life. He stretched his sore limbs in the darkness and shivered, looking timidly for the outline of a window. Finding none, he put out his hand to feel for his bedfellow, and lit instead on the rough surface of the door, against which he had sunk down in his sleep until only his head rested upon it.

The touch recalled everything to the boy's mind. With a low whimper of alarm he sat up, and crouching against the door, which seemed some kind of company, listened, holding his breath. All was still in the house, and he presently comprehended that it was night and that the family had gone to bed, leaving him there.

Use and sleep had rendered him in a way familiar with his prison, and he did not on making this discovery break into any loud wailing. Instead, he huddled himself with a moan into as small a space as possible, and not daring to put out his hand again lest it should rest on some horror, some crawling thing or clammy hand, he tried with all his might to go to sleep. He was dozing off and had almost succeeded, when a slight noise aroused him. In a moment a light shone under the door.