Chapter Seventeen.
The Old Family Driven from their Home.
Paul Gauntlett watched the Mr Sleeches till they disappeared at the farther end of the avenue, amid the shadows of the trees.
“I am thankful they’re gone without me doing them a mischief; but the colonel said to me, ‘Paul, take charge of this place till you deliver it up to my nephew, the captain.’ And that is what I hope to do,” soliloquised the old soldier.
He stood for some minutes inside the porch, with his hands clasped before him in a stand-at-ease position. His plans were speedily formed. There were four stout fellows he could rely on generally employed about the grounds. He placed them, with thick oaken cudgels in their hands, two at a time, to watch the approaches to the hall, while he himself, armed in a similar manner, continued at intervals night and day to pace round and round the house, to see, as he said to himself, that the sentries were on the alert.
Once or twice Mabel caught sight of him, and wondered what he was about; but he did not think it necessary to inform her and her aunt of his plans. His chief post was the front porch, where he would sit the livelong day, keeping a watchful eye up and down the avenue. His only entertainment was reading the newspaper, which was brought by a man on horseback from Lynderton. It was a very different production from the large sheet of news at the present day.
Whatever were Mr Sleech’s plans, he seemed to have some hesitation in putting them into execution; for day after day Paul was allowed to keep his post unmolested.
One morning the groom brought the paper which had arrived the evening before from London, and as the ladies were out in the grounds, Paul took upon himself to peruse it first. He had spelt down two or three columns, when his eye fell on a paragraph in which the name of his Majesty’s frigate the “Brilliant” was mentioned. He read it eagerly. The paper trembled in his hands. “We regret to state” (so it ran) “that we have received information of the loss of H.M.’s frigate the ‘Brilliant,’ on her passage out to the North American station. She struck on an iceberg, and soon afterwards foundered, eight persons only in one of her boats being saved, out of the whole ship’s company, including one lieutenant and a midshipman. Captain Everard and the rest of the officers and ship’s company met a watery grave.” (The names of the survivors were then mentioned.) “The boat reached Halifax, those in her having suffered fearful hardships, and they have now been brought home in the ‘Tribune.’” The old soldier let the paper sink down by his side.
“The captain gone!” he murmured, in a low voice—“the captain gone, and no one to stand by Miss Mabel; and that poor lad, too, on whom she had set her young heart. He lost! Oh, it will break it, it will break it.”
Paul’s courage failed him when he had to tell the two ladies of their grievous bereavement.