Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:the Web Archive:
https://archive.org/details/cihm_75374
(University of Alberta)

THE
COIL OF CARNE

BY

JOHN OXENHAM

AUTHOR OF "THE LONG ROAD"

TORONTO
THE COPP, CLARK CO. LIMITED
1911

TO

RODERIC DUNKERLEY, B.A., B.D.

"And what are you eager for, Mr. Eager?"

"Men, women, and children--bodies and souls."

Intra, page 53.

"By God's help we will make men of them, the rest we must trust to Providence."

Intra, page 66.

"Catch them young!"

Intra, page 67.

"No man is past mending till he's dead, perhaps not then."

Intra, page 82.

THE COIL OF CARNE

[BOOK I]

[CHAPTER I]

THE HOUSE OF CARNE

If by any chance you should ever sail on a low ebb-tide along a certain western coast, you will, if you are of a receptive humour and new to the district, receive a somewhat startling impression of the dignity of the absolutely flat.

Your ideas of militant and resistant grandeur may have been associated hitherto with the iron frontlets and crashing thunders of Finisterre or Sark, of Cornwall or the Western Isle. Here you are faced with a repressive curbing of the waters, equal in every respect to theirs, but so quietly displayed as to be somewhat awesome, as mighty power in restraint must always be.

As far as eye can reach--sand, nothing but sand, overpowering by reason of its immensity, a very Sahara of the coast. Mighty levels stretching landward and seaward--for you are only threading a capricious channel among the banks which the equinoctials will twist at their pleasure, and away to the west the great grim sea lies growling in his sandy chains until his time comes. Then, indeed, he will swell and boil and seethe in his channels till he is full ready, and come creeping silently over his barriers, and then--up and away over the flats with the speed of a racehorse, and death to the unwary. You may see the humping back of him among the outer banks if you climb a few feet up your mast. Then, if you turn towards the land, you will see, far away across the brown ribbed flats, a long rim of yellow sand backed by bewildering ranges of low white hummocks, and farther away still a filmy blue line of distant hills.

Here and there a fisherman's cottage accentuates the loneliness of it all. At one point, as the sun dips in the west, a blaze of light flashes out as though a hidden battery had suddenly unmasked itself; and if you ask your skipper what it is, he will tell you that is Carne. Then, if he is a wise man, he will upsail and away, to make Wytham or Wynsloe before it is dark, for the shifting banks off Carne are as hungry as Death, and as tricky as the devil.

For over three hundred years the grim gray house of Carne has stood there and watched the surface of all things round about it change with the seasons and the years and yet remain in all essential things the same. When the wild equinoctials swept the flats till they hummed like a harp, the sand-hills stirred and changed their aspects as though the sleeping giants below turned uneasily in their beds. For, under the whip of the wind, grain by grain the sand-hills creep hither and thither and accommodate themselves to circumstances in strange and ghostly fashions. So that, after the fury of the night, the peace of the morning looked in vain for the landmarks of the previous day.

And the cold seabanks out beyond were twisted and tortured this way and that by the winds and waves, and within them lay many an honest seaman, and some maybe who might have found it difficult to prove their right to so honourable a title. But the banks were always there, silent and deadly even when they shimmered in the sunshine.

And generations of Carrons had held Carne, and had even occupied it at times, and had passed away and given place to others. But Carne was always there, grim and gray, and mostly silent.

The outward aspects of things might change, indeed, but at bottom they remained very much the same, and human nature changed as little as the rest, though its outward aspects varied with the times. What strange twist of brain or heart set its owner to the building of Carne has puzzled many a wayfarer coming upon it in its wide sandy solitudes for the first time. And the answer to that question answers several others, and accounts for much.

It was Denzil Carron who built the house in the year Queen Mary died. He was of the old faith, a Romanist of the Romanists, narrow in his creed, fanatical in his exercise of it, at once hot- and cold-blooded in pursuit of his aims. When Elizabeth came to the throne he looked to be done by as he had done, and had very reasonable doubts as to the quality of the mercy which might be strained towards him. So he quietly withdrew from London, sold his houses and lands in other counties, and sought out the remotest and quietest spot he could find in the most Romanist county in England. And there he built the great house of Carne, as a quiet harbourage for himself and such victims of the coming persecutions as might need his assistance.

But no retributive hand was stretched after him. He was Englishman first and Romanist afterwards. Calais, and the other national crumblings and disasters of Mary's short reign, had been bitter pills to him, and he hated a Spaniard like the devil. He saw a brighter outlook for his country, though possibly a darker one for his Church, in Elizabeth's firm grip than any her opponents could offer. So he shut his face stonily against the intriguers, who came from time to time and endeavoured to wile him into schemes for the subversion of the Crown and the advancement of the true Church, and would have none of them. And so he was left in peace and quietness by the powers that were, and found himself free to indulge to the full in those religious exercises on the strict observance of which his future state depended.

His wife died before the migration, leaving him one son, Denzil, to bring up according to his own ideas. And a dismal time the lad had of it. Surrounded by black jowls and gloomy-faced priests, tied hand and foot by ordinances which his growing spirit loathed, all the brightness and joy of life crushed out by the weight of a religion which had neither time nor place for such things, he lived a narrow monastic life till his father died. Then, being of age, and able at last to speak for himself, he quietly informed his quondam governors that he had had enough of religion to satisfy all reasonable requirements of this life and the next, and that now he intended to enjoy himself. Carne he would maintain as his father had maintained it, for the benefit of those whom his father had loved, or at all events had materially cared for. And so, good-bye, Black-Jowls! and Ho for Life and the joy of it!

He went up to London, bought an estate in Kent, ruffled it with the best of them, married and had sons and daughters, kept his head out of all political nooses, fought the Spaniards under Admiral John Hawkins and Francis Drake, and died wholesomely in his bed in his house in Kent, a very different man from what Carne would have made him.

And that is how the grim gray house of Carne came to be planted in the wilderness.

Now and again, in the years that followed, the Carron of the day, if he fell on dolorous times through extravagance of living--as happened--or suffered sudden access of religious fervour--as also happened, though less frequently--would take himself to Carne and there mortify flesh and spirit till things, financial and spiritual, came round again, either for himself or the next on the rota. And so some kind of connection was always maintained between Carne and its owners, though years might pass without their coming face to face.

The Master of Carne in the year 1833 was that Denzil Carron who came to notoriety in more ways than one during the Regency. His father had been of the quieter strain, with a miserly twist in him which commended the wide, sweet solitude and simple, inexpensive life of Carne as exactly suited to his close humour. He could feel rich there on very little; and after the death of his wife, who brought him a very ample fortune, he devoted himself to the education of his boy and the enjoyment, by accumulation, of his wealth. But a short annual visit to London on business affairs afforded the boy a glimpse of what he was missing, and his father's body was not twelve hours underground before he had shaken off the sands of Carne and was posting to London in a yellow chariot with four horses and two very elevated post-boys, like a silly moth to its candle.

There, in due course, by processes of rapid assimilation and lavish dispersion, he climbed to high altitudes, and breathed the atmosphere of royal rascality refined by the gracious presence of George, Prince of Wales. For the replenishment of his depleted exchequer he married Miss Betty Carmichael, only daughter and sole heiress of the great Calcutta nabob. She died in child-birth, leaving him a boy whose education his own diversions left him little time or disposition to attend to. He won the esteem, such as it was, of the Prince Regent by running through the heart the Duke of Astrolabe, who had, in his cups, made certain remarks of a quite unnecessarily truthful character concerning Mrs. Fitzherbert, whom he persisted in calling Madame Bellois; and lost it for ever by the injudicious insertion of a slice of skinned orange inside the royal neckcloth in a moment of undue elevation, producing thereby so great a shock to the royal system and dignity as to bring it within an ace of an apoplexy and the end of its great and glorious career.

Under the shadow of this exploit Carron found it judicious to retire for a time to the wilderness, and carried his boy with him. He had had a racketing time, and a period of rest and recuperation would be good both for himself and his fortunes.

He had hoped and believed that his trifling indiscretion would in time be forgotten and forgiven by his royal comrade. But it never was. The royal cuticle crinkled at the very mention of the name of Carron, and Sir Denzil remained in retirement, embittered somewhat at the price he had had to pay for so trivial a jest, and solacing himself as best he could.

Once only he emerged, and then solely on business bent.

In the panic year, when thousands were rushing to ruin, he gathered together his accumulated savings, girded his loins, and stepped quietly and with wide-open eyes into the wild mêlée. He played a cautious, far-sighted game, and emerged triumphant over the dry-sucked bodies of the less wary, with overflowing coffers and many gray hairs. He was prepared to greet the royal beck with showers of gold once more. But the royal neck, though it now wore the ermine in its own right, could not forget the clammy kiss of the orange, and Carron went sulkily back to Carne.

When the Sailor Prince stepped up from quarter-deck to throne, he returned to London and took his place in society once more. But ten years in the desert had placed him out of touch with things; and with reluctance he had to admit to himself that if the star of Carron was to blaze once more, it must be in the person of the next on the roll.

And so, characteristically enough, he set himself to the dispersal of the flimsy cloudlet of disgrace which attached to his name by seeking to win for his boy what the royal disfavour had denied to himself.

Now, indeed, that the royal sufferer was dead, the rising generation, when they recalled it, rather enjoyed the crinkling of the royal skin. They would even have welcomed the crinkler among them as a reminder of the hilarities of former days. But the fashion of things had changed. He did not feel at home with them as he had done with their fathers, and he who had shone as a star, though he had indeed disappeared like a rocket, had no mind to figure at their feasts as a lively old stick.

Young Denzil's education had been of the most haphazard during the years his father was starring it in London. On the retirement to Carne, however, Sir Denzil took the boy in hand himself and inculcated in him philosophies and views of life, based upon his own experiences, which, while they might tend to the production of a gentleman, as then considered, left much to be desired from some other points of view.

He bought him a cornetcy in the Hussars, supplied him freely with money, and required only that his acquaintance should be confined to those circles of which he himself had once been so bright an ornament.

The young man was a success. He was well-built and well-featured, and his manners had been his father's care. He had all the family faults, and succeeded admirably in veiling such virtues as he possessed, with the exception of one or two which happened to be fashionable. He was hot-headed, free-handed, jovial, heedless of consequences in pursuit of his own satisfactions, incapable of petty meanness, but quite capable of those graver lapses which the fashion of the times condoned. With a different upbringing, and flung on his own resources, Denzil Carron might have gone far and on a very much higher plane than he chose.

As it was, his career also ended somewhat abruptly.

At eight-and-twenty he had his captaincy in the 8th Hussars, and was in the exuberant enjoyment of health, wealth, and everything that makes for happiness--except only those things through which alone happiness may ever hope to be attained. He had been in and out of love a score of times, with results depressing enough in several cases to the objects of his ardent but short-lived affections. It was the fashion of the times, and earned him no word of censure. He loved and hated, gambled and fought, danced and drank, with the rest, and was no whit better or worse than they.

At Shole House, down in Hampshire, he met Lady Susan Sandys, sister of the Earl of Quixande--fell in love with her through pity, maybe, at the forlornness of her state, which might indeed have moved the heart of a harder man. For Quixande was a warm man, even in a warm age, and Shole was ante-room to Hades. Carron pitied her, liked her--she was not lacking in good looks--persuaded himself, indeed, that he loved her. For her sake he summarily cut himself free from his other current feminine entanglements, carried her hotfoot to Gretna--a labour of love surely, but quite unnecessary, since her brother was delighted to be rid of her, and Sir Denzil had no fault to find either with the lady or her portion--and returned to London a married, but very doubtfully a wiser, man.

Lady Susan did her best, no doubt. She was full of gratitude and affection for the gallant warrior who had picked her out of the shades, and set her life in the sunshine. But Denzil was no Bayard, and it needed a stronger nature than Lady Susan's to lift him to the higher level.

For quite a month--for thirty whole days and nights, counting those spent on the road to and from Gretna--Lady Susan kept her hold on her husband. Then his regimental duties could no longer be neglected. They grew more and more exigent as time passed, and the young wife was left more and more to the society of her father-in-law. Sir Denzil accepted the position with the grace of an old courtier, and did his duty by her, palliated Captain Denzil's defections with cynical kindness, and softened her lot as best he might. And the gallant captain, exhausted somewhat with the strain of his thirty days' conservatism, resumed his liberal progression through the more exhilarating circles of fashionable folly, and went the pace the faster for his temporary withdrawal.

The end came abruptly, and eight months after that quite unnecessary ride to Gretna Lady Susan was again speeding up the North Road, but this time with her father-in-law, their destination Carne. Captain Denzil was hiding for his life, with a man's blood on his hands; and his father's hopes for the blazing star of Carron were in the dust.

[CHAPTER II]

THE STAR IN THE DUST

And the cause of it all?--Madame Damaris, of Covent Garden Theatre, the most bewitching woman and the most exquisite dancer of her time. Perhaps Captain Denzil's handsome face and gallant bearing carried him farther into her good graces than the others. Perhaps their jealous tongues wagged more freely than circumstances actually justified. Anyway, the rumours which, as usual, came last of all to Lady Susan's ears caused her very great distress. She was in that state of health in which depression of spirits may have lasting and ulterior consequences. There were rumours too of a return of the cholera, and she was nervous about it; and Sir Denzil was already considering the advisability of a quiet journey to that quietest of retreats: the great house of Carne, when that happened which left him no time for consideration, but sent him speeding thither with the forlorn young wife as fast as horses could carry them.

There was in London at this time a certain Count d'Aumont attached to the French Embassy. He was a man of some note, and was understood to be related in some roundabout way to that branch of the Orleans family which force of circumstance had just succeeded in seating on the precarious throne of France. He cut a considerable figure in society, and had most remarkable luck at play. He possessed also a quick tongue and a flexibility of wrist which so far had served to guard his reputation from open assault.

He had known Madame Damaris prior to her triumphant descent on London, and was much piqued when he found himself ousted from her good graces by men whom he could have run through with his left hand, but who could squander on her caprices thousands to his hundreds. Head and front of the offenders, by reason of the lady's partiality, was Denzil Carron, and the two men hated one another like poison.

Denzil was playing at Black's one night, when a vacancy was occasioned in the party by the unexpected call to some official duty of one of the players. D'Aumont was standing by, and to Denzil's disgust was invited by one of the others to take the vacant chair.

He had watched the Frenchman's play more than once, and had found it extremely interesting. In fact, on one occasion he had been restrained with difficulty from creating a disturbance which must inevitably have led to an inquiry and endless unpleasantness. Then, too, but a short time before, hearing of some remarks D'Aumont had made concerning Madame Damaris and himself, Denzil, in his hot-headed way, had sworn that he would break the Frenchman's neck the very first time they met.

It is possible that these matters were within the recollection of Captain O'Halloran when he boisterously invited D'Aumont to his partnership at the whist-table that night. For O'Halloran delighted in rows, and was ready for a "jule," either as principal or second, at any hour of the day or night. He was also very friendly with D'Aumont, and it is possible that the latter desired a collision with Carron as a pretext for his summary dismissal at the point of the sword. However it came about, the meeting ended in disaster.

The play ran smoothly for a time, and the onlookers had begun to believe the sitting would end without any explosion, when Carron rose suddenly to his feet, saying:

"At your old tricks, M. le Comte. You cheated!"

"Liar!" said the Count.

Then Carron laid hold of the card-table, swung it up in his powerful arms, and brought it down with a crash on the Frenchman's head. The remnants of it were hanging round his neck like a new kind of clown's ruffle before the guineas had ceased spinning in the corners of the room.

"He knows where to find me," said Denzil, and marched out and went thoughtfully home to his quarters to await the Frenchman's challenge, which for most men had proved equivalent to a death-warrant.

Instead, there came to him in the gray of the dawn one of his friends, in haste, and with a face like the morning's.

"Ha, Pole! I hardly expected you to carry for a damned Frenchman. Where do we meet, and when?" said Carron brusquely, for he had been waiting all night, and he hated waiting.

"God knows," said young Pole, with a grim humour which none would have looked to find in him. "He's gone to find out. He's dead!"

"Dead!--Of a crack on the head!"

"A splinter ran through his throat, and he bled out before they could stop it. You had better get away, Carron. There'll be a deuce of a row, because of his connections, you see."

"I'll stay and see it through. I'd no intent to kill the man--not that way, at any rate."

"You'll see it through from the outside a sight easier than from the inside," said young Pole. "You get away. We'll see to the rest. It's easier to keep out of the jug than to get out of it."

Carron pondered the question.

"I'll see my father," he said, with an accession of wisdom.

"That's right," said young Pole. "He'll know. Go at once. I'm off."

It was a week since Denzil had been to the house in Grosvenor Square, and when he got there he was surprised to find, early as it was, a travelling-chariot at the door, with trunks strapped on, all ready for the road.

He met his father's man coming down the stairs with an armful of shawls.

"Sir Denzil, Kennet. At once, please."

"Just in time, sir. Another ten minutes and we'd been gone. He's all dressed, Mr. Denzil. Will you come up, sir?"

"Ah, Denzil, you got my note," said Sir Denzil at sight of him. "We settled it somewhat hurriedly. But Lady Susan is nervous over this cholera business. What's wrong?" he asked quickly, as Kennet quitted the room.

Denzil quietly told him the whole matter, and his father took snuff very gravely. He saw all his hopes ruined at a blow; but he gave no sign, except the tightening of the bones under the clear white skin of his face, and a deepening of the furrows in his brow and at the sides of his mouth.

"The man's death is a misfortune--as was his birth, I believe," he said, as he snuffed gravely again. "Had you any quarrel with him previously?"

"I had threatened, in a general way, to break his head for wagging his tongue about me."

"They may twist that to your hurt," said his father, nodding gravely. "In any case it means much unpleasantness. I am inclined to think you would be better out of the way for a time."

"I will do as you think best, sir. I am quite ready to wait and see it through."

"You never can tell how things may go," said his father thoughtfully. "It all depends on the judge's humour at the time, and that is beyond any man's calculation. . . . Yes, you will be more comfortable away, and I will hasten back and see how things go here. . . . And if you are to go, the sooner the better. . . . You can start with us. We will drop you at St. Albans, and you will make your way across to Antwerp. You had better take Kennet," he continued, with the first visible twinge of regret, as his plans evolved bit by bit. "He is safe, and I don't trust that man of yours--he has a foxy face. If they follow us to Carne, you will be at Antwerp by that time. Send us your address, and I will send you funds there. Here is enough for the time being. Oblige me by ringing the bell. And, by the way, Denzil, say a kind word or two to Susan. You have been neglecting her somewhat of late, and she has felt it. . . . Kennet, tell Lady Susan I am ready, and inform her ladyship that Mr. Denzil is here, and will accompany us."

And ten minutes later the travelling-chariot was bowling away along the Edgware Road; and the hope which had shone in Lady Susan's eyes at sight of her husband was dying out with every beat of the horses' hoofs and every word that passed between the two men. For the matter had to be told, and the time was short. Sir Denzil had intended to stop for a time at Carne. Now he must get back at the earliest possible moment. And, though they made light of the matter, and described Denzil's hurried journey as a simple measure of precaution, and a means of escaping unnecessary annoyance, Lady Susan's jangled nerves adopted gloomier views, and naturally went farther even than the truth.

Denzil did his best to follow his father's suggestion. His conscience smote him at sight of his wife's pinched face and the shadows under her eyes--shadows which told of days of sorrow and nights of lonely weeping, shadows for which he knew he was as responsible as if his fists had placed them there.

"I am sorry, dear, to bring this trouble on you," he said, pressing her hand.

"Let me go with you, Denzil," she cried, with a catch of hope in her voice. "Let me go with you, and the trouble will be as nothing."

How she would have welcomed any trouble that drove him to her arms again! But she knew, even as she said it, that it was not possible. That lay before her, looming large in the vagueness of its mystery, which sickened her, body and soul, with apprehension. But it was a path which she must travel alone, and already, almost before they were fairly started, she was longing for the end of the journey and for rest. The jolting of the carriage was dreadful to her. The trees and hedges tumbled over one another in a hazy rout which set her brain whirling and made her eyes close wearily. She longed for the end of the journey and for rest--peace and quiet and rest, and the end of the journey.

"We will hope the trouble will soon blow over," said Sir Denzil. "But we lose nothing by taking precautions. I shall return to town at once and keep an eye on matters, and as soon as things smooth down Denzil will join you at Carne." At which Denzil's jaw tightened lugubriously. He had his own reasons for not desiring to visit Carne.

"Old Mrs. Lee," continued Sir Denzil--for the sake of making talk, since it seemed to him that silence would surely lead to hysterics on the part of Lady Susan--"will make you very comfortable. She is a motherly old soul, though you may find her a trifle uncouth at first; and Carne is very restful at this time of year. That woman of yours always struck me as a fool, my dear. I think it is just as well she decided not to come, but she might have had the grace to give you a little longer warning. That class of person is compounded of selfishness and duplicity. They are worse, I think, than the men, and God knows the men are bad enough. Your man is another of the same pattern, Denzil. They ought to marry. The result might be interesting, but I should prefer not having any of it in my service."

At St. Albans they parted company. Denzil pressed his wife's hand for the last time in this world, hired a post-chaise, and started across country in company with the discomfited Kennet, who regarded the matter with extreme disfavour both on his own account and his master's, and Sir Denzil and Lady Susan went bumping along on the way to Carne.

[CHAPTER III]

THE FIRST OF THE COIL

A woman trudged heavily along the firm damp sand just below the bristling tangle of high-water mark, in the direction of Carne. She wore a long cloak, and bent her head and humped her shoulders over a small bundle which she hugged tight to her breast.

She had hoped to reach the big house before it was dark. But a north-east gale was blowing, and it caught up the loose tops of the sand-hills and carried them in streaming clouds along the flats and made walking difficult. The drift rose no higher than her waist; but if she stood for a moment to rest, the flying particles immediately set to work to transform her into a pillar of sand. If she had stumbled and been unable to rise, the sweeping sand would have covered her out of sight in five minutes.

The flats stretched out before her like an empty desert that had no end. The black sky above seemed very close by reason of the wrack of clouds boiling down into the west. Where the sun had set there was still a wan gleam of yellow light. It seemed to the woman, when she glanced round now and again through her narrowed lids to make sure of her whereabouts, as if the sky was slowly closing down on her like the lid of a great black box. On her right hand the sand-hills loomed white and ghostly, and were filled with the whistle of the gale in the wire-grass and the hiss of the flying sand.

Far away on her left, the sea chafed and growled behind its banks.

Her progress was very slow, but she bent doggedly to the gale, stopped now and again and leaned bodily against it, then drew her feet out of the clogs the sand had piled round them and pushed slowly on again. At last she became aware, by instinct or by the instant's break in the roar of the wind on her right, that she had reached her journey's end. She turned up over the crackling tangle, crossed the ankle-deep dry sand of the upper beach, and stopped for breath under the lee of the great house of Carne.

It was all as dark as the grave, but she knew her way, and after a moment's rest she passed round the house to the back. Here in a room on the ground floor a light shone through a window. The window had neither curtain nor shutter, but was protected by stout iron bars. The sill was piled high with drifted sand.

The sight of the light dissipated a fear which had been in the woman's heart, but which she had crushed resolutely out of sight. At the same time it set her heart beating tumultuously, partly in the rebound from its fear and partly in anticipation of the ungracious welcome she looked for. She stood for a moment in the storm outside and looked at the tranquil gleam. Then she slipped under a stone porch, which opened towards the south-west, and knocked on the door. The door opened cautiously on the chain at last, six inches or so, and a section of an old woman's head appeared in the slit and asked gruffly:

"Who's it?"

"It's me, mother--Nance!"

The door slammed suddenly to, as though to deny her admittance. But she heard the trembling fingers inside fumbling with the chain. They got it unsnecked at last, and the door swung open again. The woman with the burden stepped inside and shut out the drifting sand.

The room was a stone-flagged kitchen; but the light of the candle, and the cheery glow of a coal fire, and the homeliness of the white-scrubbed table and dresser, and the great oak linen-press, mellowed its asperities. After the cold north-easter, and the sweeping sand and the darkness, it was like heaven to the traveller, and she sank down on a rush-bottomed chair with a sigh of relief.

"So tha's come whoam at last," was the welcome that greeted her, in a voice that was over-harsh lest it should tremble and break. The old woman's eyes shone like black beads under her white mutch. She sniffed angrily, and dashed her hand across her face as though to assist her sight. She spoke the patois of the district. Beyond the understanding of any but natives even now, it was still more difficult then. It would be a sorry task to attempt to reproduce it.

"Aye, I've come home."

"And brought thy shame with thee!"

"Shame?" said the other quickly. "What shame? He married me, and this is his boy." And as she straightened up, the cloak fell apart and disclosed the child. She spoke boldly, but her eyes and her face were not so brave as her speech.

"Married ye?" said the old woman, with a grim laugh that was half sob and half anger. "I know better. The likes o' him doesna marry the likes o' you."

Holding the sleeping child in her one arm, the girl fumbled in her bodice and plucked out a paper.

"There's my lines," she said angrily.

The old woman made no attempt to read it, but shook her head again, and said bitterly:

"The likes o' him doesna marry the likes o' you, my lass."

"He married me as soon as we got to London."

But the old woman only shook her head, and asked, in the tone of one using an irrefutable argument:

"Where is he?"

At that the girl shook her head also; but she was saved further reply by the baby yawning and stretching and opening his eyes, which fastened vacantly on the old woman's as she bent over to look at him in spite of herself.

"You might ha' killed him and yoreself coming on so soon," she said gruffly.

"I wanted to get here before he came," said the girl, with a choke, "but I couldna manage it. I were took at Runcorn, seven days ago."

"An' yo' walked from there! It's a wonner yo're alive. Well, well, it's a bad job, but I suppose we mun mak' best o' it. Yo're clemmed!"

"Ay, I am, and so is he. I've not had much to give him, and he makes a rare noise when he doesn't get what he wants."

The baby screwed up his face and proved his powers. His mother rocked him to and fro, and the old woman set herself to getting them food. She set on the fire a pannikin of goats' milk diluted with water to her own ideas, and placed bread and cheese and butter on the table. The girl reached for the food and began to eat ravenously. The old woman dipped her finger into the pannikin and put it into the child's mouth. It sucked vigorously and stopped crying. She drew it out of the girl's arms and began to feed it slowly with a spoon.

"If he married yo', why did he leave yo' like this?" she asked presently, as she dropped tiny drops of food into the baby's mouth and watched it swallow and strain up after the spoon for more.

"He was ordered away with his regiment. He left me money and said he'd send more. But he never did. I made it last as long's I could, but it runs away in London. I couldna bear the idea of--of it up there, an' I got wild at him not coming. I tried to find him, and then I set off to walk here. I got a lift on a wagon now and again. But when I got to Runcorn I could go no further. There a a woman there was good to me. Maybe I'd ha' died but for her. Maybe it'd ha' been best if I had. But,"--she said doggedly--"he married me all the same."

The old woman shook her head hopelessly, but said nothing. The baby was falling asleep on her knee. Presently she carried him carefully into the next room and left him on the bed there.

"I nursed him on my knee," she said when she came back, "before you came. If I'd known he'd take you from me I'd ha' choked him where he lay."

The girl felt and looked the better for her meal. She nodded her head slowly, and said again, "All the same he married me." Her persistent harping on that one string--which to her mother was a broken string--angered the old woman.

"Tchah!" she said, like the snapping of a dog, and was about to say a great deal more when a peremptory knocking on the door choked the words in her throat. Her startled eyes turned accusingly on the girl; what faint touch of colour her face had held fled from it, and her lips parted twice in questioning which found no voice. Her whole attitude implied the fear that there was something more behind the girl's story than had been told and that now it was upon them.

The knocking continued, louder and still more peremptory.

The girl strode to the door, loosed the chain and drew back the bolts, and flung it open. A tall man, muffled in a travelling-cloak, strode in with an imprecation, and dusted the sand out of his eyes with a silk handkerchief.

"Nice doings when a man cannot get into his own house," he began. Then, as his blinking eyes fell on the girl's face, he stopped short and said, "The deuce!" and pinched his chin between his thumb and forefinger. He stood regarding her in momentary perplexity, and then went on dusting himself, with his eyes still on her.

He was a man past middle age, but straight and vigorous still. His clean-shaven face, in spite of the stubble of three days' rapid travel on it, and the deep lines of hard living, was undeniably handsome--keen dark eyes, straight nose, level brows, firm hard mouth. An upright furrow in the forehead, and a sloping groove at each corner of the mouth, gave a look of rigid intensity to the face and the impression that its owner was engaged in a business distasteful to him.

"Ah, Mrs. Lee," he said, as his eyes passed from the girl at last and rested on the old woman.

"Yes, Sir Denzil." And Mrs. Lee attempted a curtsey.

"A word in your ear, mistress." And he spoke rapidly to her in low tones, his eyes roving over to the girl now and again, and the old woman's face stiffening as he spoke.

"And now bustle, both of you," he concluded. "Fires first, then something to eat, the other things afterwards. I will bring her ladyship in."

He went to the door, and the old woman turned to her daughter and said grimly:

"There's a lady with him. Yo' mun help wi' the fires."

She closed the door leading to the bedroom where the baby lay sleeping soundly, and then set doggedly about her duties. The two women had left the room carrying armfuls of firing when Sir Denzil came back leading Lady Susan by the hand, muffled like himself in a big travelling-cloak. He drew a chair to the fire, and she sank into it. He left her there and went out again, and as the door opened the rattle of harness on chilling horses came through.

Lady Susan bent shivering over the fire and spread her hands towards it, groping for its cheer like a blind woman. Her face was white and drawn. Her eyes were sunk in dark wells of hopelessness, her lips were pinched in tight repression. Any beauty that might have been hers had left her; only her misery and weariness remained. Her whole attitude expressed extremest suffering both of mind and body.

A piping cry came from the next room, and she straightened up suddenly and looked about her like a startled deer. Then she rose quickly and picked up the candle and answered the call.

The child had cried out in his sleep, and as she stood over him, with the candle uplifted, a strange softening came over her face. Her left hand stole up to her side and pressed it as though to still a pain. A spasmodic smile crumpled the little face as she watched. Then it smoothed out and the child settled to sleep again. Lady Susan went slowly back to her seat before the fire, and almost immediately Sir Denzil came in again, dusting himself from the sand more vigorously than ever.

"How do you feel now, my dear?" he asked.

"Sick to death," she said quietly.

"You will feel better after a night's rest. The journey has been a trying one. Old Mrs. Lee will make you comfortable here, and I will return the moment I am sure of Denzil's safety. You agree with the necessity for my going?"

"Quite."

"Every moment may be of importance. But the moment he is safe I will hurry back to see to your welfare here. I shall lie at Warrington to-night, and I will tell the doctor at Wynsloe to come over first thing in the morning to see how you are going on. Ah, Mrs. Lee, you are ready for us?"

"Ay. The oak parlour is ready, sir. I'll get you what I con to eat, but you'll have to put up wi' short farin' to-night, sin' you didna let me know you were coming. To-morrow----"

"What you can to-night as quickly as possible. Lady Susan is tired out, and I return as soon as I have eaten. See that the post-boy gets something too."

"Yo're non stopping?" asked the old woman in surprise.

"No, no, I told you so," he said, with the irritation of a tired man. "Come, my dear!" and he offered his arm to Lady Susan, and led her slowly away down the stone passage to a small room in the west front, where the rush of the storm was barely heard.

An hour later Sir Denzil was whirling back before the gale on his way to London, as fast as two tired horses and a none too amiable post-boy could carry him. His usual serene self-complacency was disturbed by many anxieties, and he carried not a little bitterness, on his own account, at the untowardness of the circumstances which had dragged him from the ordered courses of his life and sent him posting down into the wilderness, without even the assistance of his man, upon whom he depended for the minutest details of his bodily comfort.

"A most damnable misfortune!" he allowed himself, now that he was alone, and he added some further unprofitable moments to an already tolerably heavy account in cursing every separate person connected with the matter, including a dead man and the man who killed him, and an unborn babe and the mother who lay shivering at thought of its coming.

[CHAPTER IV]

THE COIL COMPLETE

In the great house of Carne there was a stillness in strange contrast with the roaring of the gale outside. But the stillness was big with life's vitalities--love and hate and fear; and, compared with them, the powers without were nothing more than whistling winds that played with shifting sands, and senseless waves that sported with men's lives.

It was not till the new-comer was lying in her warm bed in the room above the oak parlour, shivering spasmodically at times in spite of blankets and warming-pans and a roaring fire, that she spoke to the old woman who had assisted her in grim silence.

The silence and the grimness had not troubled her. They suited her state of mind and body better than speech would have done. Life had lost its savour for her. Of what might lie beyond she knew little and feared much at times, and at times cared naught, craving only rest from all the ills of life and the poignant pains that racked her.

It was only when Mrs. Lee had carefully straightened out her discarded robes, and looked round to see what else was to be done, and came to the bedside to ask tersely if there was anything more my lady wanted, that my lady spoke.

"You'll come back and sit with me?" she asked.

"Ay--I'll come."

"Whose baby is that downstairs?"

"It's my girl's," said the old woman, startled somewhat at my lady's knowledge.

"Did she live through it?"

"Ay, she lived." And there was that in her tone which implied that it might have been better if she had not. But my lady's perceptions were blunted by her own sufferings.

"Is she here?"

"Ay, she's here."

"Would she come to me too?"

But the old woman shook her head.

"She's not over strong yet," she said grimly. "I'll come back and sit wi' yo'."

"How old is it?"

"Seven days."

"Seven days! Seven days!" She was wondering vaguely where she would be in seven days.

"It looked very happy," she said presently. "Its father was surely a good man."

"They're none too many," said the old woman, as she turned to go. "I'll get my supper and come back t' yo'."

"Who is she?" asked her daughter, with the vehemence of an aching question, as she entered the kitchen.

Mrs. Lee closed the passage door and looked at her steadily and said, "She's Denzil Carron's wife." And the younger woman sprang to her feet with blazing face and the clatter of a falling chair.

"Denzil's wife! I am Denzil Carron's wife."

"So's she. And I reckon she's the one they'll call his wife," said her mother dourly.

"I'll go to her. I'll tell her----" And she sprang to the door.

"Nay, you wun't," said her mother, leaning back against it. "T' blame's not hers, an' hoo's low enough already."

"And where is he? Where is Denzil?"

"He's in trouble of some kind, but what it is I dunnot know. Sir Denzil's gone back to get him out of it, and he brought her here to be out of it too."

"And he'll come here?"

"Mebbe. Sir Denzil didna say. He said he'd hold me responsible for her. She's near her time, poor thing! An' I doubt if she comes through it."

"Near----!" And the girl blazed out again.

"Ay. I shouldna be surprised if it killed her. There's the look o' it in her face."

"Kill her? Why should it kill her? It didn't kill me," said the girl fiercely.

"Mebbe it would but for yon woman you told me of. Think of your own time, girl, and bate your anger. Fault's not hers if Denzil served you badly."

"He connot have two wives."

"Worse for him if he has. One's enough for most men. But--well-a-day, it's no good talking! I'll take a bite, and back to her. She begged me come. Yo' can sleep i' my bed. There's more milk on th' hob there if th' child's hungry." And carrying her bread-and-cheese she went off down the passage, and the young mother sat bending over the fire with her elbows on her knees.

She had no thought of sleep. Her limbs were still weary from her long tramp, but the food and rest had given her strength, and the coming of this other woman, who called herself Denzil Carron's wife, had fired her with a sense of revolt.

The blood was boiling through her veins at thought of it all--at thought of Denzil, at thought of the boy in the next room, and this other woman upstairs. Her heart felt like molten lead kicking in a cauldron.

She got up and began to pace the floor with the savage grace born of a life of unrestricted freedom. Once she stopped and flung up her hands as though demanding--what?--a blessing--a curse--the righting of a wrong? The quivering hands looked capable at the moment of righting their own wrongs, or of wreaking vengeance on the wrongdoer if they closed upon him.

Then, as the movement of her body quieted in some measure the turmoil of her brain, her pace grew slower, and she began to think connectedly. And at last she dropped into the chair again, leaned her elbows on her kneel and sat gazing into the fire. When it burned low she piled on wood mechanically, and sat there thinking, thinking. Outside, the storm raged furiously, and the flying sand hit the window like hailstones. And inside, the woman sat gazing into the fire and thinking.

She sat long into the night, thinking, thinking--unconscious of the passage of time;--thinking, thinking. Twice her child woke crying to be fed, and each time she fed him from the pannikin as mechanically almost as she had fed the fire with wood. For her thoughts were strange long thoughts, and she could not see the end of them.

They were all sent flying by the sudden entrance of her mother in a state of extreme agitation, her face all crumpled, her hands shaking.

"She's took," she said, with a break in her voice. "Yo' mun go for th' doctor quick. I connot leave her. Nay!"--as the other sat bolt upright and stared back at her--"yo' mun go. We connot have her die on our hands. Think o' yore own time, lass, and go quick for sake o' Heaven."

"I'll go." And she snatched up her cloak. "See to the child." And she was out in the night, drifting before the gale like an autumn leaf.

The old woman went in to look at the child, filled the kettle and put it on the fire, and hurried back to the chamber of sorrows.

The gale broke at sunrise, and the flats lay shimmering like sheets of burnished gold, when Dr. Yool turned at last from the bedside and looked out of the window upon the freshness of the morning.

He was in a bitter humour. When Nance Lee thumped on his door at midnight he was engaged in the congenial occupation of mixing a final and unusually stiff glass of rum and water. It was in the nature of a soporific--a nightcap. It was to be the very last glass for that night, and he had compounded it with the tenderest care and the most businesslike intention.

"If that won't give me a night's rest," he said to himself, "nothing will."

But there was no rest for him that night. He had been on the go since daybreak, and was fairly fagged out. He greeted Nance's imperative knock with bad language. But when he heard her errand he swallowed his nightcap without a wink, though it nearly made his hair curl, ran round with her to the stable, harnessed his second cob to the little black gig with the yellow wheels, threw Nance into it, and in less than five minutes was wrestling with the north-easter once more, and spitting out the sand as he had been doing off and on all day long.

"There's one advantage in being an old bachelor, Miss Nancy," he had growled, as he flung the harness on the disgusted little mare; "your worries are your own. Take my advice and never you get married----" And then he felt like biting his tongue off when he remembered the rumours he had heard concerning the girl. She was too busy with her own long thoughts to be troubled by his words, however, and once they were on the road speech was impossible by reason of the gale.

When they arrived at Carne she scrambled down and led the mare into the great empty coach-house, where the post-horses had previously found shelter that night. She flung the knee-rug over the shaking beast, still snorting with disgust and eyeing her askance as the cause of all the trouble. Then she followed the doctor into the house. He was already upstairs, however, and, after a look at her sleeping boy, she sat down in her chair before the fire again to await the event, and fell again to her long, long thoughts.

And once more her thoughts were sent flying by the entrance of her mother. She carried a tiny bundle carefully wrapped in flannel and a shawl, and on her sour old face there was an expression of relief and exultation--the exultation of one who has won in a close fight with death.

"He were but just in time," she said, as she sat down before the fire. "I'm all of a shake yet. But th' child's safe anyway." And she began to unfold the bundle tenderly. "Git me t' basin and some warm water. Now, my mannie, we'll soon have you comfortable. . . . So . . . Poor little chap! . . . I doubt if she'll pull through. . . . T' doctor's cursing high and low below his breath at state she's in . . . travelling in that condition . . . 'nough to have killed a stronger one than ever she was. . . . I knew as soon as ivver I set eyes on her . . . A fine little lad!"--as she turned the new-comer carefully over on her knee--"and nothing a-wanting 's far as I can see, though he's come a month before he should."

She rambled on in the rebound from her fears, but the girl uttered no word in reply. She stood watching abstractedly, and handing whatever the old woman called for. Her thoughts were in that other room, where the grim fight was still waging. Her heart was sick to know how it was going. Her thoughts were very shadowy still, but the sight of the boy on the old woman's knee showed her her possible way, like a signpost on a dark night. She would see things clearer when she knew how things had gone upstairs.

She must know. She could not wait. She turned towards the passage.

"I will go and see," she said.

"Ay, go," said the old woman. "But go soft."

The doctor was sitting at the bedside. He raised his hand when she entered the room, but did not turn. She stood and watched, and suddenly all her weariness came on her and she felt like falling. She leaned against the wall and waited.

Once and again the doctor spoke to the woman on the bed. But there was no answer. He sat with furrowed face watching her, and the girl leaned against the wall and watched them both.

And at last the one on the bed answered--not the doctor, but a greater healer still. One long sigh, just as the sun began to touch the rippled flats with gold, and it was over. The stormy night was over and peace had come with the morning.

The doctor gat up with something very like a scowl on his face and went to the window. Even in the Presence he had to close his mouth firmly lest the lava should break out.

He hated to be beaten in the fight--the endless fight to which his whole life was given, year in, year out. But this had been no fair fight. The battle was lost before he came on the field, and his resentment was hot against whoever was to blame.

He opened the casement and leaned out to cool his head. The sweet morning air was like a kiss. He drank in a big breath or two, and, after another pained look at the white face on the pillow, he turned and left the room. The girl had already gone, and as she went down the passage there was a gleam in her eyes.

Her mother saw it as soon as she entered the kitchen. "Well?" asked the old woman.

"She's gone."

"And yo're glad of it. Shame on yo', girl! And yo' but just safe through it yoreself!"

The girl made no reply, and a moment later the doctor came in.

"Now, Mrs. Lee, explain things to me. Whose infernal folly brought that poor thing rattling over the country in that condition? And get me a cup of coffee, will you? Child all right?"

"He's all right, doctor. He's sleeping quiet there"--pointing to a heap of shawls on the hearth. "It were Sir Denzil himself brought her last night."

"And why didn't he stop to see the result of his damned stupidity? It's sheer murder, nothing less. Make it as strong as you can,"--referring to the coffee--"my head's buzzing. I haven't had a minute's rest for twenty-four hours. Where is Sir Denzil? He left word at my house to come over here first thing this morning. I expected to find him here."

"He went back wi the carriage that brought 'em. There's trouble afoot about Mr. Denzil as I understond. He said it were life and death, and he were off again inside an hour."

"Ah!" said the doctor, nodding his head knowingly. "That's it, is it? And you don't know what the trouble was?"

"'Life and death,' he said. That's all I know."

"Well, if he bungles the other business as he has done this it'll not need much telling which it'll be." And he blew on his coffee to cool it.

"I must send him word at once," he said presently, "and I'll tell him what I think about it. I've got his town address. You can see to the child all right, I suppose? Another piece of that bread, if you please. Any more coffee there? This kind of thing makes me feel empty."

"I'll see to t' child aw reet."

"Send me word if you need me, not otherwise. There's typhus down Wyvveloe way, and I'm run off my legs. A dog's life, dame--little thanks and less pay!" And he buttoned up his coat fiercely and strode out to his gig. "I'll send John Braddle out," he called back over his shoulder. "But I doubt if we can wait to hear from Sir Denzil. However----" And he drove away, through the slanting morning sunshine.

The white sand-hills smiled happily, the wide flats blazed like a rippled mirror, the sky was brightest blue, and very far away the sea slept quietly behind its banks of yellow sand.

[CHAPTER V]

IN THE COIL

The days passed and brought no word from Sir Denzil in reply to Dr. Yool's post letter. And, having waited as long as they could, they buried Lady Susan in the little green churchyard at Wyvveloe, where half a dozen Carrons, who happened to have died at Carne, already rested. Dr. Yool and Braddle had had to arrange everything between them, and, as might have been expected under the circumstances, the funeral was as simple as funeral well could be, and as regards attendance--well, the doctor was the only mourner, and he still boiled over when he thought of the useless way in which this poor life had been sacrificed.

Braddle was there with his men, of course, but the doctor only just managed it between two visits, and his manner showed that he grudged the time given to the dead which was all too short for the requirements of the living. Yet it went against the grain to think of that poor lady going to her last resting-place unattended, and he made a point of being there. But his gig stood waiting outside the churchyard gate, and he was whirling down the lane while the first spadefuls were drumming on the coffin.

He thought momentarily of the child as he drove along. But, since no call for his services had come from Mrs. Lee, he supposed it was going on all right, and he had enough sick people on his hands to leave him little time for any who could get along without him.

The days ran into weeks, and still no word from Sir Denzil. It looked as though the little stranger at Carne might remain a stranger for the rest of his days. And yet it was past thinking that those specially interested should make no inquiry concerning the welfare of so important a member of the family.

"Summat's happened," was old Mrs. Lee's terse summing-up, with a gloomy shake of the head whenever she and Nance discussed the matter, which was many times a day.

Other matters too they discussed, and to more purpose, since the forwarding of them was entirely in their own hands. And when they spoke of these other matters, sitting over the fire in the long evenings, each with a child on her knee, hushing it or feeding it, their talk was broken, interjectional even at times, and so low that the very walls could have made little of it.

It was fierce-eyed Nance who started that strain of talk, and at first her mother received it open-mouthed. But by degrees, and as time played for them, she came round to it, and ended by being the more determined of the two. So they were of one mind on the matter, and the matter was of moment, and all that happened afterwards grew out of it.

Both the children throve exceedingly. No care was lacking them, and no distinction was made between them. What one had the other had, and Nance, with recovered strength, played foster-mother to them both.

Just two months after Lady Susan's death the two women were sitting talking over the fire one night, the children being asleep side by side in the cot in the adjacent bedroom, when the sound of hoofs and wheels outside brought them to their feet together.

"It's him," said Mrs. Lee; and they looked for a moment into one another's faces as though each sought sign of flinching in the other. Then both their faces tightened, and they seemed to brace themselves for the event.

An impatient knock on the kitchen door, the old woman hastened to answer it, and Sir Denzil limped in. He was thinner and whiter than the last time he came. He leaned heavily on a stick and looked frail and worn.

"Well, Mrs. Lee," he said, as he came over to the fire and bent over it and chafed his hands, "you'd given up all fears of ever seeing me again, I suppose?"

"Ay, a'most we had," said the old woman, as she lifted the kettle off the bob and set it in the blaze.

"Well, it wasn't far off it. I had a bad smash returning to London that last time. That fool of a post-boy drove into a tree that had fallen across the road, and killed himself and did his best to kill me. Now light the biggest fire you can make in the oak room, and another in my bedroom, and get me something to eat. Kennet"--as his man came in dragging a travelling-trunk--"get out a bottle of brandy, and, as soon as you've got the things in, brew me the stiffest glass of grog you ever made. My bones are frozen."

He dragged up a chair and sat down before the fire, thumping the coals with his stick to quicken the blaze. The rest sped to his bidding.

Kennet, when he had got in the trunks, brewed the grog in a big jug, with the air of one who knew what he was about.

"Shall I give the boy some, sir?" he asked, when Sir Denzil had swallowed a glass and was wiping his eyes from the effects of it.

"Yes, yes. Give him a glass, but tone it down, or he'll be breaking his neck like the last one."

So Kennet watered a glass to what he considered reasonable encouragement for a frozen post-boy, and presently the jingling of harness died away in the distance, and Kennet came in and fastened the door.

Sir Denzil had filled and emptied his glass twice more before Mrs. Lee came to tell him the room was ready. Then he went slowly off down the passage, steadying himself with his stick, for a superfluity of hot grog on an empty stomach on a cold night is not unapt to mount to the head of even a seasoned toper.

Kennet, when he came back to the room, after seeing his master comfortably installed before the fire, brewed a fresh supply of grog, placed on one side what he considered would satisfy his own requirements, and carried the rest to the oak room.

It was when the girl Nance carried in the hastily prepared meal that Sir Denzil, after peering heavily at her from under his bushy brows, asked suddenly, "And the child? It's alive?"

"Alive and well, sir."

"Bring it to me in the morning."

The girl looked at him once or twice as if she wanted to ask him a question.

He caught her at it, and asked abruptly, "What the devil are you staring at, and what the deuce keeps you hanging round here?" Upon which she quitted the room.

There was much talk, intense and murmurous, between the two women that night, when they had made up a bed for Kennet and induced him at last to go to it. From Kennet and the grog, after Sir Denzil had retired for the night, Nance learned all Kennet could tell her about Mr. Denzil.

According to that veracious historian it was only through Mr. Kennet's supreme discretion and steadfastness of purpose that the young man got safely across to Brussels, and, when he tired of Brussels, which he very soon did, to Paris.

"Ah!" said Mr. Kennet. "Now, that is a place. Gay?--I believe you! Lively?--I believe you! Heels in the air kind of place?--I believe you! And Mr. Denzil he took to it like a duck to the water. London ain't in it with Paris, I tell you." And so on and so on, until, through close attention to the grog, his words began to tumble over one another. Then he bade them good night, with solemn and insistent emphasis, as though it was doubtful if they would ever meet again, and cautiously followed Nance and his candle to his room.

The flats were gleaming like silver under a frosty sun next morning, and there was a crackling sharpness in the air, when Sir Denzil, having breakfasted, stood at the window of the oak room awaiting his grandson.

"Tell Mrs. Lee to bring in the child," he had said to Kennet, and now a tap on the door told him that the child was there.

"Come in," he said sharply, and turned and stood amazed at sight of the two women each with a child on her arm. "The deuce!" he said, and fumbled for his snuff-box.

He found it at last, a very elegant little gold box, bearing a miniature set with diamonds--a present from his friend George, in the days before the slice of orange, and most probably never paid for. He slowly extracted a pinch without removing his eyes from the women and children. He snuffed, still staring at them, and then said quietly, "What the deuce is the meaning of this?"

"Yo' asked to see t' child, sir," said Mrs. Lee.

"Well?"

"Here 'tis, sir."

"Which?"

"Both!"

"Ah!"--with a pregnant nod. Then, with a wave of the hand. "Take them away." And the women withdrew.

Sir Denzil remained standing exactly as he was for many minutes. Then he began to pace the room slowly with his stick, to and fro, to and fro, with his eyes on the polished floor, and his thoughts hard at work.

He saw the game, and recognized at a glance that no cards had been dealt him. The two women held the whole pack, and he was out of it.

He thought keenly and savagely, but saw no way out. The more he thought, the tighter seemed the cleft of the stick in which the women held him.

The law? The law was powerless in the matter. Not all the law in the land could make a woman speak when all her interests bade her keep silence, any more than it could make her keep silence if she wanted to speak.

Besides, even if these women swore till they were blue in the face as to the identity of either child, he would never believe one word of their swearing. Their own interests would guide them, and no other earthly consideration.

He could turn them out. To what purpose? One of those two children was Denzil Carron of Carne. Which?

The other--ah yes! The other was equally of his blood. He did not doubt that for one moment. He had known of Denzil's entanglement with Nance Lee, and it had not troubled him for a moment. But who, in the name of Heaven, could have foreseen so perplexing a result?

When he glanced out of the window, the crystalline morning, the white sunshine, the clear blue sky, the hard yellow flats, the distant blue sea with its crisp white fringe, all seemed to mock him with the brightness of their beauty.

How to solve the puzzle? Already, in his own mind, he doubted if it ever would be solved. And he cursed the brightness of the morning, and the women--which was more to the point, but equally futile,--and Denzil, and poor Lady Susan, who lay past curses in Wyvveloe churchyard. And his face, while that fit was on him, was not pleasant to look upon.

Presently, with a twitching of the corners of the mouth, like a dog about to bare his fangs, he rang the bell very gently, and Kennet came in.

"Kennet," he said, as quietly as if he were ordering his boots, "put on your hat and go for Dr. Yool. Bring him with you without fail. If he is out, go after him. If he says he'll see me further first, say I apologise, and I want him here at once. Tell him I've burst a blood-vessel."

He had had words with the doctor the night before. He had stopped his post-chaise at his house and gone in for a minute to explain his long absence, and the doctor, who feared no man, had rated him soundly for the thoughtlessness which had caused Lady Susan's death.

He did not for a moment believe that the doctor or any one else could help him in this blind alley. But discuss the matter with some one he must, or burst, and he did not care to discuss it with Kennet. Kennet knew very much better than to disagree with his master on any subject whatever, and discussion with him never advanced matters one iota. Discussion of the matter with Dr. Yool would probably have the same result, but it could do no harm, and it offered possibilities of a disputation for which he felt a distinct craving.

Whether doctors could reasonably be expected to identify infants at whose births they had officiated, after a lapse of two months, he did not know. But he was quite prepared to uphold that view of the case with all the venom that was in him, and he awaited the doctor's arrival with impatience.

Dr. Yool drove up at last with Kennet beside him, and presently stood in the room with Sir Denzil.

"Hello!" cried the doctor, with disappointment in his face. "Where's that blood-vessel?"

"Listen to me, Yool. You were present at the birth of Lady Susan's children----"

"Eh? What? Lady Susan's child? Yes!"

"Children!"

"What the deuce! Children? A boy, sir--one!"

"You'd know him again, I suppose?"

"Well, in a general kind of way possibly. What's amiss with him?"

"According to these women here, there are two of him now."

"Good Lord, Sir Denzil! What do you mean? Two? How can there be two?"

"Ah, now you have me. I thought that you, as a doctor--as the doctor, in fact--could probably explain the matter." The doctor's red face reddened still more.

"Send for the women here--and the children," he said angrily.

Sir Denzil rang the bell, gave his instructions to the impassive Kennet, who had not yet fathomed the full intention of the matter, and in a few minutes Mrs. Lee and Nance, each with a child on her arm, stood before them.

"Now then, what's the meaning of all this?" asked Dr. Yool. "Which of these babies is Lady Susan's child?"

"We don't know, sir," said Mrs. Lee, with a curtsey.

"Don't know! Don't know! What the deuce do you mean by that, Mrs. Lee? Whose is the other child?"

"My daughter's, sir. It were born a day or two before the other, and we got 'em mixed and don't know which is which."

"Nonsense! Bring them both to me."

He flung down some cushions in front of the fire, rapidly undressed the children, and laid them wriggling and squirming in the blaze among their wraps. He bent and examined them with minutest care. He turned them over and over, noticed all their points with a keenly critical eye, but could make nothing of it. They were as like as two peas. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, plump, clear-skinned, healthy youngsters both. The seven days between them, which in the very beginning might have been apparent, was now, after the lapse of two months, absolutely undiscoverable.

Sir Denzil came across and looked down on the jerking little arms and legs and twisting faces, and snuffed again as though he thought they might be infectious. For all the expression that showed in his face, they might have been a litter of pups.

"Well, I am ----!" said Dr. Yool, at last, straightening up from the inspection with his hands on his hips. "Now"--fixing the two women with a blazing eye--"what's the meaning of it all? Who is the father of this other child?"

"Denzil Carron," said Nance boldly, speaking for the first time. "He married me before he married her, and here are my lines," and she plucked them out of her bosom.

Dr. Yool's eyebrows went up half an inch. Sir Denzil took snuff very deliberately.

The doctor held out his hand for the paper, and after a moment's hesitation Nance handed it to him.

He read it carefully, and his good-humoured mouth twisted doubtfully. The matter looked serious.

"Dress the children and take them away," he said at last. When they were dressed, however, Nance stood waiting for her lines.

Dr. Yool understood. "I will be answerable for them," he said; and she turned and went.

"A troublesome business, Sir Denzil," he said, when they were alone. "A troublesome business, whichever way you look at it. This"--and he flicked Nance's cherished lines--"may, of course, be make-believe, though it looks genuine enough on the face of it. That must be carefully looked into. But as to the children--you are in these women's hands absolutely and completely, and they know it."

"It looks deucedly like it."

"They know which is which well enough; but nothing on earth will make them speak--except their own interests, and that," he said thoughtfully, "won't be for another twenty years."

"It's too late to make away with them both, I suppose," said Sir Denzil cynically.

"Tchutt! It's bad enough as it is, but there's no noose in it at present. Besides, they are both undoubtedly your grandsons----"

"And which succeeds?" asked the baronet grimly.

"There's the rub. Deucedly awkward, if they both live--most deucedly awkward! There's always the chance, of course, that one may die."

"Not a chance," said Sir Denzil. "They'll both live to be a hundred. They can toss for the title when the time comes. I'd sooner trust a coin than those women's oaths."

The doctor nodded. He felt the same.

"What about this?" he asked, reading Nance's lines again. "Will you look into it?" He pulled out a pencil and noted places and dates in his pocket-book.

"What good? It alters nothing."

"As regards your son?"

Sir Denzil shrugged lightly.

"He has shown himself a fool, but he is hardly such a fool as that. If he comes to the title, and she claims on him, he must fight his own battle. As to the whelps----" Another shrug shelved them for future consideration.

Nevertheless, when Dr. Yool had driven away in the gig with the yellow wheels, Sir Denzil paced his room by the hour in deep thought, and none of it pleasant, if his face was anything to go by.

He travelled along every possible avenue, and found each a blind alley.

He could send the girl about her business, and the old woman too. But to what purpose? If they took one of the children with them, which would it be? Most likely Lady Susan's. But he would never be certain of it. That would be so obviously the thing to do that they would probably do the opposite. If they left both children, he would have to get some one else to attend to them, and no one in the world had the interest in their welfare that these two had.

If both children died, then Denzil might marry again, and have an heir about whom there was no possible doubt. That is, if this other alleged marriage of his was, as he suspected, only a sham one. He would have to look into that matter, after all.

If, by any mischance, the marriage, however intended, proved legal, then that hope was barred, and it would be better to have the children, or at all events one of them, live. Otherwise the succession would vest in the Solway Carrons, whom he detested. Better even Nance Lee's boy than a Solway Carron.

The conclusion of the matter was, that he could not better matters at the moment by lifting a finger. Not lightly nor readily did he bring his mind to this. He spent bitter days and nights brooding over it all, and at the end he found himself where he was at the beginning. Time might possibly develop, in one or other of the boys, characteristics which might tell their own tale. But that chance, he recognised, was a small one. Both boys took after their father, and were as like Denzil, when he was a baby, as they possibly could be.

In the spring he would look into that marriage matter. Till then, things must go on as they were.

Not a word did he say to the women. Not the slightest interest did he show in the children. He rarely saw them, and then only by chance. And in the women's care the children throve and prospered, since it was entirely to their interest that they should do so.

[BOOK II]

[CHAPTER VI]

FREEMEN OF THE FLATS

Now we take ten years at a leap.

So small a span of time has made no difference in the great house of Carne, or in its surroundings. Many times have the sand-hills sifted and shifted hither and thither. Many times have the great yellow banks out beyond lazily uncoiled themselves like shining serpents, and coiled themselves afresh into new entanglements for unwary mariners. In the narrow channels the bones of the unwary roll to and fro, and some have sunk down among the quicksands. Times without number have the mighty flats gleamed and gloomed. And the great house has watched it all stonily, and it all looks just the same.

But ten years work mighty changes in men and women, and still greater ones in small boys.

A tall straight-limbed young man strode swiftly among the sand-hummocks and came out on the flats, and stood gazing round him, with a great light in his eyes, and a towel round his neck.

He had a lean, clean-shaven face, to which the hair brushed back behind his ears lent a pleasant eagerness. But the face was leaner and whiter than it should have been, and the eyes seemed unnaturally deep in their hollows.

"Whew!" he whistled, as the wonder of the flats struck home. "A change, changes, and half a change, and no mistake! And all very much for the better--in most respects. The bishop said I'd find it rather different from Whitechapel, and he was right! Very much so! Dear old chap!"

It was ten o'clock of a sweet spring morning. The brown ribbed flats gleamed and sparkled and laughed back at the sun with a thousand rippling lips. The cloudless blue sky was ringing with the songs of many larks.

The young man stood with his braces slipped off his shoulders, and looked up at the larks. Then he characteristically, flung up a hand towards them, and cried them a greeting in the famous words of that rising young poet, Mr. Robert Browning, "God's in His heaven! All's well with the world!--Well! Well! Ay--very, very well!" And then, with a higher flight, in the words of the old sweet singer which had formed part of the morning lesson--"Praise Him, all His host!" And then, as his eye caught the gleam of the distant water, he resumed his peeling in haste.

"Ten thousand souls--and bodies, which are very much worse--to the square mile there, and here it looks like ten thousand square miles to this single fortunate body. . . . That sea must be a good mile away. . . . The run alone will be worth coming for. . . ."

He had girt himself with a towel by this time, and fastened it with a scientific twist. . . . "Now for a dance on the Doctor's nose," and he sped off on the long stretch to the water.

The kiss of the salt air cleansed him of the travail of the slums as no inland bathing had ever done. The sun which shone down on him, and the myriad broken suns which flashed up at him from every furrow of the rippled sand, sent new life chasing through his veins. He shouted aloud in his gladness, and splashed the waters of the larger pools into rainbows, and was on and away before they reached the ground.

And so, to the sandy scum of the tide, and through it to deep water, and a manful breasting of the slow calm heave of the great sea; with restful pauses when he lay floating on his back gazing up into the infinite blue; and deep sighs of content for this mighty gift of the freedom of the shore and the waves. And a deeper sigh at thought of the weary toilers among whom he had lived so long, to whom such things were unknown, and must remain so.

But there!--he had done his duty among them to the point almost of final sacrifice. There was duty no less exigent here, though under more God-given conditions. So--one more ploughing through deep waters, arm over arm, side stroke with a great forward reach and answering lunge. Then up and away, all rosy-red and beaded with diamonds, to the clothing and duty of the work-a-day world.

"Grim old place," he chittered as he ran, and his eye fell on Carne for the first time. "Grand place to live . . . if she lived there too. . . . Great saving in towels that run home. . . . Now where the dickens . . . ?"

He looked about perplexedly, then began casting round, hither and thither, like a dog on a lost scent.

"Hang it! I'm sure this was the place. . . . I remember that sand-hill with its hair all a-bristle."

He poked and searched. He scraped up the sand with his hands in case they should have got buried, but not a rag of his clothes could he find.

Stay! Not a rag? What's that? Away down a gully between two hummocks, as if it had attempted escape on its own account--a blue sock which he recognised as his own.

He pounced on it with a whoop, dusted one foot free of the dry, soft sand, and put the sock on.

"It's a beginning," he said, quaintly enough, "but----!" But obviously more was necessary before he could return home. He searched carefully all round, but could not find another thread. He climbed the sliding side of the nearest sand-hill, and looked cautiously about him. But the whole place was a honeycomb of gullies, and the clothing of a thousand men might have hidden in them and never been seen again.

He sat down in the warm sand and cogitated. He looked at his single towel, and at the wire-grass bristling sparsely through the sand, and wondered if it might be possible to construct a primitive raiment out of such slight materials. But his deep-set eyes never ceased their vigilant outlook.

Something moved behind the rounded shoulder of a hill in front. It might be only the loping brown body of a rabbit, but he was after it like a shot.

When he topped the hill he saw a naked white foot slipping out of sight into a dark hole like a big burrow. He leaped down the hill, and stretched a groping arm into the hole. It lighted on squirming flesh. His hand gripped tightly that which it had caught, and a furious assault of blows, scratches, bites, and the frantic tearings of small fingers strove to loosen it. But he held tight, and inch by inch drew his prisoner out--a small boy with dark hair thick with sand, and dark eyes blazing furiously.

He was stark naked, and held in his hand a small weapon consisting of a round stone with a hole in the centre, into which a wooden handle had been thrust and bound with string. With this, as he lay on his back, now that he had space to use it, he proceeded to lash out vigorously at his captor, who still held on to his ankle in spite of the punishment his wrist and arm were receiving.

"Well, I'll be hanged!" said the young man in the towel, dodging the blows as well as he could. "What in Heaven's name are you? Ancient Briton? Bit of the Stone Age?"

"Le' me go or I'll kill you," howled the prisoner.

"No, don't! You're strong: be merciful. Hello!" as a fresh attack took him in the rear, and his bare back resounded to the blows of a weapon similar to the one that was pounding his arm. "You young savages! Two to one, and an unarmed man!"

He loosed the ankle and made a quick dive at the brown thrashing arm, and, having secured it, lifted the wriggling youngster and tucked him under his arm like a parcel. Then, in spite of the struggles of his prisoner, he turned on the new-comer and presently held him captive in similar fashion.

They bit and tore and wriggled like a pair of little tiger-cats, but the arms that held them were strong ones if the face above was thin and worn and gentle.

"Stop it!" He knocked their heads together, and squeezed the slippery little bodies under his arms till the breath was nearly out of them, and took advantage of the moment of gasping quiescence to ask, "Will you be quiet if I let you down?"

They intimated in jerks that they would be quiet.

"Drop those drumsticks, then."

First one, then the other weapon dropped into the sand. He put his foot on them and stood the boys on their feet.

"Drumsticks!" snorted one, his sandy little nose all a-quiver.

"Well, neither am I a drum," said their captor good-humouredly. "Now what's the meaning of all this? Who are you? Or what are you?"

They were fine sturdy little fellows, of ten or eleven, he judged, their skins tanned brown and coated with dry sand, quick dark eyes and dark flushed faces all aglow still with the light of battle. They stood panting before him, no whit abashed either by their defeat or their lack of clothing. He saw their eyes settle longingly on the clubs under his feet. He stooped and picked them up, and the dark eyes followed them anxiously.

"Promise not to use them on me and I'll give them back to you."

The brown hands reached out eagerly, and he handed the weapons over.

"Now sit down and tell me all about it." And he sat down himself in the sand.

He saw them glance towards the mouth of their retreat, and shook his head.

"You can't manage it. I'd have you out before you were half way in. You're prisoners of war on parole. Now then, who are you?"

"Carr'ns."

"Carr'ns, are you? Well, you look it, whatever it means. Do you live in that hole?"

"Sometimes."

"Never wear any clothes?"

"Sometimes."

"I see. Much jollier without, isn't it? But, you see, I can't go home like this. So perhaps you won't mind telling me why you stole my things and where they are?"

"Carr'ns don't steal," jerked one.

"Carr'ns only take things," jerked the other.

"I see. It's a fine point, but it comes to much the same thing unless you return what you take. So perhaps you'll be so good as to turn up my things. Where are they?"

One of the boys nodded towards the burrow.

"That's the stronghold, is it? Not much room to turn about in, I should say."

They declined to express an opinion.

"May I go in and have a look?"

But that was not in the terms of their parole, and they sprang instantly to the defence of their hold. The young man of the towel was beginning to wonder if another pitched battle would be necessary before he could recover his missing property, when a diversion was suddenly created by an innocent outsider.

A foolish young rabbit hopped over the shoulder of a neighbouring sand-hill to see what all the disturbance was about. In a moment the round stone clubs flew and the sense was out of him before he had time to twinkle an eye or form any opinion on the subject. With a whoop the boys sprang at him and resolved themselves instantly into a pyrotechnic whirl of arms and legs and red-hot faces and flying sand, as they fought for their prey.

"Little savages!" said the young man, and did his best to separate them.

But he might as well have attempted argument with a Catherine wheel in the full tide of its short life. And so he took to indiscriminate spanking wherever bare slabs of tumbling flesh gave him a chance, and presently, under the influence of his gentle suasion the combatants separated and stood panting and tingling. The causus belli had disappeared beneath the turmoil of the encounter, but suddenly it came to light again under the workings of twenty restless little toes. They both instantly dived for it, and the fight looked like beginning all over again, when the long white arm shot in and secured it and held it up above their reach.

"I say! Are you boys or tiger-cats?" he asked, as he examined them again curiously.

"Carr'ns," panted one, while both gazed at the rabbit like hounds at the kill.

"Yes, you said that before, but I'm none the wiser. Where do you live when you're clothed and in your right minds?--if you ever are," he added doubtfully.

One of them jerked his head sharply in the direction of the great gray house away along the shore.

"There?"

Another curt nod. He had rarely met such unnatural reserve, even in Whitechapel, where pointed questions from a stranger are received with a very natural suspicion. Here, as there, it only made him the more determined to get to the bottom of it. But Whitechapel had taught him, among other things, that round-about is sometimes the only way home.

"Why do you want to fight over a dead rabbit?"

"I killed it."

"Didn't. 'Twas me."

"Well now, if you ask me, I should say you both killed it. How did you become such capital shots?"

But to tell that would have needed much talk, so they only stared up at him. He saw he must go slowly.

"Those are first-rate clubs. Did you make them?"

Nods from both.

"Do you know?"--he picked one up and examined it carefully--"these are exactly what the wild men used to make when they lived here a couple of thousand years ago and used to go about naked just as you do." They listened eagerly, with wide unwinking eyes, which asked for more. "They used to stain themselves all blue"--the idea so evidently commended itself to them that he hastened to add--"but you'd better not try that or you'll be killing yourselves. They used the juice of a plant which you can't get and it did them no harm. Can you swim?"

Both heads shook a reluctant negative.

"Can't? Oh, you ought to swim. You can fight, I know, and you are splendid shots--and good runners, I'll be bound. Why haven't you learnt to swim?"

"Won't let us."

"Who won't let you?"

"HIM."

"Who's 'him'?"

"Sir Denzil."

"Is that your father?"

"Gran'ther

"I see. I wonder if he'd let me teach you. Every boy ought to learn to swim. You'd like to?"

The black heads left no possible doubt on that point.

"Well, I'll call on him and ask his permission. Now, what are your names?"

"Denzil Carr'n."

"And you?"

"Denzil Carr'n."

"But you can't both be Denzil Carr'n."

"I'm Jack."

"I'm Jim."

"And how am I to tell who from which? You're as like as two peas."

They looked at one another as if it had never struck them.

"Stand up and let me see who's the biggest. No"--with a shake of the head, as they stood side by side--"that doesn't help. You're both of a tires Now, let me see. Jack's got a big bump on the forehead,"--at which Jim grinned with reminiscent enjoyment. "That will identify him for a few days, anyhow, and by that time I shall have got to know you. Why hasn't your grandfather let you learn to swim?"

"Devil of a coast," said Jack, loosing his tongue at last.

"Damned quicksands," said Jim in emulation. "Suck and suck and never let go."

"We must be careful, then. You must tell me all about them. My name's Eager--Charles Eager. I've come to take Mr. Smythe's place at Wyvveloe. Do you two go to school?"

Emphatically No from both shaggy heads, and undisguised aversion to the very thought of such a thing.

"But you can't go on like this, you know. What will you do when you grow up?"

"Go fighting," said Jack of the bumped forehead.

"Quite so. But you don't want to go as privates, I suppose. And to be officers you must learn many things."

This was a new view of the matter. It seemed to make a somewhat unfavourable impression. It provided food for thought to Eager himself also, and he sat looking at them musingly with new and congenial vistas opening before him.

He had in him a great passion for humanity--for the uplifting and upbuilding of his fellows. Here apparently was virgin soil ready to his hand, and he wanted to set to work on it at once.

"You know how to read and write, I suppose?"

"We can read Robinson Crusoe--round the pictures."

"Of course. Good old Robinson Crusoe! He's taught many a boy to read."

"He's in there," said Jim, nodding vaguely in the direction of their burrow.

"That's a good ides. Let us have a look at him." And Jim started off to fetch Robinson out. "And you might bring my things out too, Jim. My back's getting raw with the sun."

Jim grinned and crept into the hole, and reappeared presently with an armful of clothing and a richly bound volume.

Eager put on his other sock and his shirt and trousers, and then sat down again and picked up the book. It was an unusually fine edition of the old story, with large coloured plates, and had not been improved by its sojourn in the land.

"Does your grandfather know you have this out here?"

Most decidedly not.

"I should take it back if I were you, or keep it wrapped in paper. It's spoiling with the sand and damp. It always hurts me to see a good book spoiled. Are there many more like this at the house?"

"Heaps,"--which opened out further pleasant prospects if the mine proved workable.

"Have you gone right through it?"

"Only 'bout the pictures."

"Well, if you're here to-morrow I'll begin reading it to you from the beginning. There must be quite three-quarters of it that you know nothing about. And as soon as I can, I'll call on your grandfather and have a talk with him about, the swimming and the rest. Can you write?"

"Not much," said Jack.

"Sums?"

Nothing of the kind and no slightest inclination that way.

"Now I must get back to my work," said Eager, as he finished dressing. "This is my first morning, and it's been holiday. I've been living for the last five years in the East End of London, where the people are all crowded into dirty rooms in dirty streets, and I came to have a took at the sea and the sands. It's like a new life. Now, good-bye," and he shook hands politely with each in turn. "I shall be on the look-out for you to-morrow."

He strode away through the sand-hills towards Wyvveloe, and the boys stood watching till he disappeared.

"My rabbit!" cried Jim, as his eye lighted on the old gage of battle lying on the sand, and he dashed at it.

"Mine!" and in a moment they were at it hammer and tongs. And the Rev. Charles went on his way, not a little elated at thoughts of this new field that lay open before him.

[CHAPTER VII]

EAGER HEART

"Mrs. Jex," said Eager, to the old woman in whose cottage he had taken his predecessor's rooms, "who lives in yon big house on the shore?"

Mrs. Jex straightened her big white cap nervously. She had hardly got used yet to this new "passon," who was so very different from the last, and who had already in half a day asked her more questions than the last one did in a year.

"Will it be Carne yo' mean, sir?"

"That's it,--Carne. Who lives there, and what kind of folks are they?"

"There's Sir Denzil an' there's Mr. Kennet----"

"Who's Mr. Kennet?"

"Sir Denzil's man, sir. An' there's the boys----'

"Ah, then, it's the boys I met on the shore, running wild and free, without a shirt between them."

"Like enough, sir. They do say 'at----"

"Yes?"---as she came to a sudden stop.

"'Tain't for the likes o' me, sir, to talk about my betters," said Mrs. Jex, with a doubtful shake of the head.

"Oh, the parson hears everything, you know, and he never repeats what he hears. What do they say about the boys? Are they twins? They're as like as can be, and just of an age, as far as I could see."

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Jex, with another shake, "there's more to that than I can say, an' I'm not that sure but what it's more'n anybody can say."

"Why, what do you mean? That sounds odd."

"Ay, 'tis odd. Carne's seen some queer things, and this is one of 'em, so they do say."

"I'd like to hear. I rather took to those boys. They seem to be growing up perfect little savages, learning nothing and----"

"Like enough, sir."

"And I thought of calling on their grandfather and seeing if he'd let me take them in hand."

"Yo'd have yore hands full, from all accounts."

"That's how I like them. They've been a bit overfull for a good many years, but this offers the prospect of a change anyway."

"Well, yo'd best see Dr. Yool. If yo' con get him talking he con tell yo' more'n onybody else. He were there when they were born--one of 'em onyway."

"Worse and worse? You're a most mysterious old lady. What's it all about?"

"Yo'd better ask t' doctor. He knows. I only knows what folks say, and that's mostly lies as often as not. Yore dinner's all ready. Yo' go and see t' doctor after supper and ax him all about it."

After dinner he took a ramble round his new parish. He had arrived a couple of days sooner than expected and the head shepherd was away from home, so he had had to find his way about alone and make the acquaintance of his sheep as best he could.

Mrs. Jex, who had also acted as landlady for the departed Smythe, had already thanked God for the change. For Smythe, a lank, boneless creature, who cloaked a woeful lack of zeal for humanity under cover of an unwrinkling robe of high observance, had found the atmosphere of Wyvveloe uncongenial. It lacked the feminine palliatives to which he had been accustomed. He had grown fretful and irritable--"a perfec' whimsy!" as Mrs. Jex put it. The sturdy fisher-farmer folk laughed him and his ways to scorn, and the whole parish was beginning to run to seed when, to the relief of all concerned, he succeeded in obtaining his transfer to a sphere better suited to his peculiar requirements.

Mrs. Jex had had experience of Mr. Eager for one night and half a day, and she already breathed peacefully, and had thanked God for the change. And it was the same in every cottage into which the Rev. Charles put his lean, smiling face that day.

Those simple folk, who looked death in the face as a necessary part of their daily life, knew a man when they saw one, and there was that in Charles Eager's face which would never be in Mr. Smythe's if he lived to be a hundred--that keen hunger for the hearts and souls and lives of men which makes one man a pastor, and the lack of which leaves another but a priest.

And if the cottagers instinctively recognised the difference, how much more that bluff guardian--beyond their inclinations at times--of their outer husks, Dr. Yool!

When Jane Tod, his housekeeper, ushered the stranger into his room Dr. Yool was mixing himself a stiff glass of grog and compounding new fulminations, objurgative and expletive, tending towards the cleansing of Wynsloe streets and backyards.

Miss Tod was a woman in ten thousand, and had been specially created for the post of housekeeper to Dr. Yool. She was blessed with an imperturbable placidity which the irascible doctor had striven in vain to ruffle for over twenty years. When he came in of a night, tired and hungry and bursting with anger at the bovine stupidity of his patients, she let him rave to his heart's relief without changing a hair, and set food and drink before him, and agreed with all he said, even when he grew personal, and she never talked back. When she showed in Mr. Eager she simply opened the sitting-room door, said "New passon," and closed it behind him.

"Will you let me introduce myself, Dr. Yool, seeing that the vicar is not here to do it? I am Charles Eager, vice Smythe, translated. You aid I are partners, you see, so I thought the sooner we became acquainted the better."

"H'mph!" grunted Dr. Yool, eyeing his visitor keenly over the top of the glass as he sipped his red-hot grog.

"Charles Eager, eh? And what are you eager for, Mr. Eager?"

"Men, women, children--bodies and souls."

"You leave their bodies to me," growled Dr. Yool in his brusquest manner. "Their souls '11 be quite as much as you can tackle."

But Eager saw through his brusquerie. A very beautiful smile played over the keen, earnest face as he said:

"When you separate them it's too late for either of us to do them any good."

"Separate them! Takes me all my time to keep 'em together."

"Exactly! So we'll make better headway if we work together and overlap."

"Right! We'll work together, Mr. Eager." And the doctor's big brown hand met the other's in a friendly grip. "You've got more bone in you than the late invertebrate. He was a sickener. Hand like a fish. Have some grog?

"I don't permit myself grog. It wouldn't do, you know. But I'll have a pipe. I see you don't object to smoke."

"Smoke and grog are the only things a man can look forward to with certainty after a stiff day's work. The sooner you can get your flock to cleanse out the sheepfolds the better, Mr. Shepherd. We had typhus here ten years ago, and it gave them such a scare that for one year the place was fairly sweet. Now it stinks as bad as ever, and I'll be hanged if I can stir them."

"I'll stir them, or I'll know the reason why!"

Dr. Yool studied the deep-set eyes and firm mouth before him for a good minute, and then said:

"Gad! I believe you will if any man can."

"Do you know East London?"

"Not intimately. I've seen enough of it to strengthen my preference for clean sand."

"This is heaven compared with it. I'm going to open these people's eyes to their advantages."

"You'll be a godsend if you can."

"I want you to tell me all you think fit about two naked boys I came across on the shore this morning. Carr'ns, they called themselves. Fine little lads, and next door to savages, as far as I could judge. I tried to pump Mrs. Jex, and she referred me to you."

Dr. Yool puffed contemplatively, and looked at him through the smoke.

"That's the problem of Carne," he said slowly at last--"the insoluble problem."

"What's the problem? And why insoluble?"

"One of them is heir to Caine; the other is baseborn. No man on earth knows which is which."

"Any woman?"

"Ah--there you have it! Can you make a woman speak against her will--and her interest?" he added, as a hopeful look shot through Eager's eyes.

"It's a strong combination against one. All the same, there is no reason why those boys should grow up naked of mind as well as of body. They are surely close in age? They're as like as two peas--splendid little savages, both."

"There may be a week between them, not more." He puffed thoughtfully for several minutes again, and then said slowly: "If you can clothe them, body and mind, it will be a good work and a tough one. It's virgin soil and a big handful, and one of them's got a place in the world. I'll tell you the story for your guidance. I can trust it in your keeping. The old man would curse me, no doubt, but his time is past and the boys' is only coming. They are of more consequence."

And bit by bit he told him what he knew of the strange happenings which had led to the problem of Carne.

Eager followed him with keen interest.

"And was that first marriage genuine?" he asked.

"Very doubtful. I worried the old man till he went off to look into it, but when he came back he would say nothing. It makes no difference, however, for we don't know one boy from the other."

"And the mother--the one who lived?" asked Eager, following out his own line of thought.

"She stayed on at Carne with her mother for about a year. Then she disappeared, and, as far as I know, nothing has been heard of her since. She could solve the problem doubtless, but if she swore to it no one would believe her."

"She believed in her own marriage, of course?"

"Doubtless. And the time may come when she will put in her claim, if she is alive."

"That's what I was thinking. And the father of the boys?"

"The man he killed--unintentionally, no doubt, still after threats--had powerful friends. They would have exacted every penalty the law permitted. Denzil no doubt considered he could enjoy life better in other ways. If he is alive he is abroad. He has never shown face here since."

"A complicated matter," said Eager thoughtfully, "and likely to become more so. Where would the old man's death land things?"

"God knows. I've puzzled over it many a day and night."

"And meanwhile Sir Denzil allows the youngsters to run to seed?"

"Exactly. He takes absolutely no interest in them. If one of them died it would be all right for the other. He would be Carron of Carne in due course and no questions asked. But the complication of the two has made him look askance at both."

"And the old woman--Mrs. Lee?"

"She lives on at Carne, biding her time. I have no doubt she knows which is her grandson, but she won't speak till the time comes."

"And how does Sir Denzil treat her?"

"They say he has never spoken to her for the last ten years--never a word since that day she and her daughter brought the two children in to him and started the game. She tends the house and does the cooking, and so on. Sir Denzil lives in his own rooms, and his man Kennet looks after him. It's a very long time since I saw him. We never got on well together. He killed that poor girl, dragging her here as he did, and I told him so. And he chose to say that I ought to have been able to recognise t'other baby from which. Much he knows about it," snorted the doctor.

"And what does he do with himself? Is he a student?"

"Drinks, I imagine. I meet his man about now and again, and if it's like master like man there's not much doubt about it."

"Poor little fellows! I must get hold of them, doctor. I must have them. Now, how shall I set about it?"

"Better call on the old man and see what he says. His soul's in your charge, you know. I have my own opinion as to its probable ultimate destination, in spite of you. It'll be an experience, anyway."

"For me or for him?"

"Well, I was thinking of you at the moment."

"And not an over-pleasant one, you suggest?

"Oh, he's a gentleman, is the old man, if he is an old heathen. Gad! I'd like to go along with you, only it would upset your apple-cart and set you in the ditch."

"I'll see him in the morning," said Eager.

[CHAPTER VIII]

SIR DENZIL'S VIEWS

The struggle between the boys, which began before Mr. Eager was well out of sight, resulted in a bump on Jim's forehead similar to the one which already decorated Jack's, in a few additional scratches and bruises to both brown little bodies, and in Jim's temporary possession of the rabbit.

That point decided for the time being, they sat down in the hot sand to recover their wind, Jim holding his prey tightly by the ears on his off side, since a moment's lack of caution would result in its instant transfer to another owner.

"I'm going to learn to swim," said Jack.

"HE won't let us," said Jim.

Then, intent silence as a sand-piper came hopping along a ridge. It stopped at sight of them, and fixed them first with one inquiring eye and then with the other. Their hands felt for their little clubs. The sand-piper decided against them, and flew away with a cheep of derision.

Jim had dropped the rabbit for his club. Jack leaned over behind him and had it in a second. Jim hurled himself on him, and they were at it again hammer and tongs, and presently they were sitting panting again, and this time the rabbit was on Jack's off side, and, for additional security, wedged half under his sandy leg.

"We could tell him we'd asked HIM and HE said Yes," said Jim, resuming the conversation as if there had been no break.

"He'll go and ask HIM himself, and HE'LL say No," said Jack, with perfect understanding, in spite of the mixture of third persons.

"H'mph!" grunted Jim sulkily. "Wish HE was dead."

"There'd be somebody else."

From which remark you may gather that, where abstruse thinking met with little encouragement, Master Jack was the more thoughtful of the two.

"We'll go in and watch him when he goes in to-morrow," suggested Jim presently.

"They'd see us."

"Drat 'em! Let 'em. Who cares?"

"Means lickings. . . . And that Kennet he lays on a sight harder than he used to."

"Ever since we caught him in the rat-trap. He remembers it whenever he's licking us. . . . Soon as I'm a man I'm going to kill Kennet. It's the very first thing I shall do."

"I don't know," said Jack doubtfully. "He only licks us when HE tells him to."

"I should think so," snorted Jim, with scorn at the idea of anything else.

"HE always looks at us as if we were toads. Why does he?"

"Damned if I know," said Jack quietly. It sounded odd from his childish lips, but it had absolutely no meaning for him. It was simply one of the accomplishments they had picked up from Mr. Kennet.

An upward glance at the sun at the same moment suddenly accentuated a growing want inside him. He sprang up with a whoop, swinging his rabbit by the ears, and made for the hole in the sand-hill. Jim followed close on his heels, and presently, clad only in short blue knee-breeches of homely cut, and blue sailor jerseys, they were trotting purposefully through the shallows towards Carne and dinner, chattering brokenly as they went.

A grim old man watched them from an upper window till they padded silently round the corner out of sight. They ran in through the back porch, and so into the comfortable kitchen with its red-tiled floor and shining pans, and dark wood linen-presses round the walls.

Old Mrs. Lee, grandmother to one of them, turned from the fire to greet them.

"Ready for yore dinner, lads? And which on yo' killed to-day?"--as she caught sight of the rabbit.

"I did," from Jack.

"No--me," from Jim.

"Well, both of us, then," said Jack.

"Clivver lads! Now fall to." And they needed no bidding to the food she set before them. They were always hungry, and never criticised her provisioning.

Ten years had made very little change in Mrs. Lee. Indeed, if there was any change at all it was for the better. For, whereas in the previous times she had had grievous troubles and anxieties, during these last ten years she had had an object in life, not to say two, and lively subjects both of them.

The grim old man upstairs would have viewed the death of either of the boys with more than equanimity. At the first sudden upspringing of the trouble he had, indeed, fervently wished both out of the way. But consideration of the subject and much snuff brought him to just that much better a frame of mind that he ended by desiring short shrift for only one of them, and which one he did not care a snap. Either would be preferable to a Solway Carron, but the two together produced a complication which time would only intensify, unless Death stepped in and cut the knot.

In the beginning he watched Nance's and Mrs. Lee's treatment of them as closely as he could, without betraying his keen interest in the matter. His man, Kennet, had instructions to surprise, entrap, or coerce the secret out of the women in any way he could devise.

But the women laughed to scorn their clumsy attempts at espionage, and meted out equal justice and mercy to both boys alike. Never by one single word or look of special favour bestowed on either did master or man come one step nearer to the knowledge they sought.

Mr. Kennet, indeed, undertook, for a consideration, to make Nance his lawful, wedded wife, with a view to getting at the truth. But when he deviously approached Nance herself he received so hot a repulse, which was not by any means confined to mere verbal broadsides, that he beat a hasty retreat, with marks of the encounter on his face which took longer to heal than did his ardour to cool.

She was a handsome, strapping girl, with a temper like hot lava, and she honestly believed herself Denzil Carron's lawful wife, though her mother still cast doubts upon it.

"You!" Nance labelled Mr. Kennet after this episode, and concentrated in that single word all the scorn of her outraged feelings; and thereafter, till she took herself off to parts unknown, made Mr. Kennet's life a burden to him, yet caused him to thank his stars that the matter had gone no farther.

And the grim old man upstairs? From the women's treatment of the boys--and he spied upon them in ways, and at times, and by means, of which they had no slightest idea--he had learned nothing. And so he waited and waited, with infinite patience, and hoped that time might bring some solution of the problem, even though it came by the hand of Death. And then, as Death stood aloof, and the boys grew and waxed strong, and developed budding personalities, he watched them still more keenly, in the hope of finding in their dispositions and tempers some indications which might help him in his quest.

Plain living was the order of those days at Caine; and he who had hobnobbed with princes, and had been notorious for his prodigality in time when excess rioted through the land, lived now as simply as the simplest yeoman of the shire. And that not of necessity, for his income was large, and, since he spent nothing, the accumulations were rollicking up into high figures. The candle had simply burnt itself out. He had not a desire left in life, unless it was to get the better of these women who had dusted his latter days with ashes.

Of his son, the origin of this culminating and enduring trouble, he had heard nothing for many years. He did not even know whether he was alive or dead, and, save for the confusion which lack of definite knowledge on that head might cause in the table of descent, he did not much care.

He had looked to the gallant captain to raise the house of Carne to its old standing in the world--a poor enough ambition indeed, but still all that was left him. By his hot-headed folly Captain Denzil had struck himself out of the running, and by degrees, as this became more and more certain, his father's interest in life transferred itself from the impossible to the remotely possible, even though the possibility was all of a tangle.

For a time he supplied the prodigal freely with money, and the prodigal dispensed it in riotous living. The fact that by rights he ought to have been cooling his heels in prison gave a zest to his enjoyments, and he denied himself none.

His father buoyed his hopes, as long as hope was possible, on his son's return in course of time to his native land, and to those aristocratic circles of which he had previously been so bright an ornament. But time passed and brought no amelioration of his prospects. Louis Philippe still occupied the French throne. The death of d'Aumont was not forgotten. Sir Denzil's quiet soundings of the authorities were always met with the invariable, and perfectly obvious, reply, that Captain Carron was at liberty to return at any time--at his own risk; a reply which only strengthened Captain Carron's determination to remain strictly where he was.

He lived for a time, as Kennet told us, in Paris, under an assumed name of course, but under the very noses of the men whose implacable memories debarred him from returning home. It was added spice to his already highly spiced life. But high living demands high paying, and Captain Denzil's demands grew and grew till at last his father--who would have withheld nothing for a definite object, but saw no sense in aimless prodigality--flatly refused anything beyond a moderate allowance. From that time communications ceased, and whether and how his son lived Sir Denzil knew, not, and, from all appearance; cared little. He had ceased to be a piece of value in the old man's game.

Pending direction, from above or below or from the inside, Sir Denzil left the boys to develop as they might. A magnanimous, even a reasonably balanced nature would have assumed the burden and done its best for both alike, and trusted to Time and Providence for a solution of the problem. But no one ever miscalled Sir Denzil Carron to the extent of imputing to him any faintest trace of magnanimity. Time he had some hopes of. Providence he had no belief in. He was simply the product of his age: an unmitigated old heathen, with but one aim in life--the resuscitation of the house of Carne, and to that end ready to sacrifice himself, or any other, body, soul, and spirit.

That both boys were of his blood he was satisfied, but the unsolvable doubt as to which was the rightful heir cancelled all his feelings for them and set them both outside the pale of his doubtful favours.

At times, in pursuance of his search for leading signs, he had sent for the boys, talked to them, tried to get below the surface. But in his presence they crept into their innermost shells and became dull and dumb, and impervious even to his biting sarcasms on their appearances, tastes, and habits.

They feared and hated the grim old tyrant, with his peaked white face and thin scornful lips and gold snuff-box. There was no kindliness for them in the keen dark eyes, and they felt it without understanding why. They would slink out of his presence like whipped puppies, but once out of it he would hear their natural spirits rising as they raced for the kitchen, and their merry shouts as they sped across the flats to their own devices.

When that was possible he watched them unawares, on the look-out always for what he sought. But such chances were few, for natural instinct caused the boys to remove themselves as far away from him as possible, and the sand-hills offered an inviting field and unlimited scope for their abilities.

[CHAPTER IX]

MORE OF SIR DENZIL'S VIEWS

All the next morning the boys lay in the wire-grass on top of their special sand-hill, on the look-out for their new friend. But he did not come.

Instead, he walked over to Carne, and coming first on the back door, rapped on it, and was confronted by Mrs. Lee. It seemed to him that she eyed him with something more than native caution, and after what he had heard from Dr. Yool he was not surprised at it.

"Can I see Sir Denzil?" he asked cheerily. "I'm the new curate."

The old woman's mouth wrinkled in a dry smile, as though the thought of Sir Denzil and the curate compassed incongruity.

"Yo' can try," she said. "Knock on front door and maybe Kennet'll hear yo'." And Eager went round to the front.

Continuous knocking at last produced some result. The great front door looked as if it had not been opened for years. It opened at last, however, and Mr. Kennet stood regarding him with disfavour and surprise and a touch of relief on his hairless red face. Carne had few callers, and Kennet's first idea, when summoned to that door, was that Captain Denzil had come home, a return which could hardly make for peace and happiness.

"Can I see Sir Denzil?" asked Eager once more. "Tell him, please, that Mr. Eager, the new curate, begs the favour of an interview with him."

Kennet looked doubtful, but finally, remembering that he was a gentleman's gentleman, asked him to step inside while he inquired if Sir Denzil could see him.

The hall was a large and desolate apartment, flagged with stone and destitute of decoration or clothing of any kind, and was evidently little used. There was a huge fireplace at one side, but the bare hearth gave a chill even to the summer day. A wide oak staircase led up to a gallery off which the upper rooms opened, and from which Sir Denzil at times in the winter quietly overlooked the boys at their play down below, and sought in them unconscious indications of character.

And presently, Kennet came silently down the staircase and intimated that the visitor was to follow him. He ushered him into a room looking out over the sea, and Sir Denzil turned from the window, snuff-box in hand, to meet him.

There was an intimation of surprised inquiry in the very way he held his snuff-box. He bowed politely, however, and his eyebrows emphasised his desire to learn the reasons for so unexpected a visit.

"I trust you will pardon my introducing myself, Sir Denzil," said Eager. "I am taking Mr. Smythe's place, and the vicar is away."

"Ah!" said Sir Denzil, taking a pinch very elegantly, "I had not the pleasure of Mr. Smythe's acquaintance,"--and his manner politely intimated that he equally had not sought that of Mr. Smythe's successor.

"I have come with a very definite object," said Eager, cheerfully oblivious to the old man's frostiness, and going straight to his mark, as was his way. "I want you to let me take those two boys in hand. I met them on the sands yesterday. In fact, they amused themselves by hiding my clothes while I was in bathing, and I looked like having to go home clad only in a towel." And he laughed again at the recollection.

"They shall be punished----"

"My dear sir! You don't suppose I came for any such purpose as that! It broke the ice between us. I got my things and made two friends. I want to improve the acquaintance--with your sanction."

"To what end?"

"To the end of making men of them, Sir Denzil. There are great possibilities there. You must not neglect them, or the responsibility will be yours."

"That, I presume, is my affair."

"No--excuse me! In the natural course of things those boys will be here when you and I are gone. As their feet are set now, so will they walk then. If you leave them untrained the responsibility for their deeds will be yours. It is no light matter."

Sir Denzil extracted a pinch very deliberately and closed the box with a tap on the First Gentleman's snub nose.

"And suppose I prefer to let them run wild for the present?"

"Then you are not doing your duty by them, and sooner or later it will recoil upon your own head--or house."

"Yes; but, as you say, I shall probably not be here, and so I shall not suffer."

"Your name--the name of your house will suffer----" Sir Denzil shedded the prospect with a shrug.

"Who set you on this business, Mr. Eager?" he asked, with a touch of acidity.

"God."

"Ah!"--snuffing with extreme deliberation. "Now we approach debatable ground."

"No, sir. We stand on the only ground that offers sound footing."

"Well, well! I suppose some people still believe such things."

"Fortunately, yes. Now about the boys. May I take them in hand?"

Sir Denzil regarded him thoughtfully while he shook his snuff box gently and prepared another pinch.

"On conditions, possibly yes," he said at last.

"And the conditions?"

"What have you heard about those boys, Mr. Eager?"

"I think I may say everything."

"Egad! Then you know more than I do. You have wasted no time. Who told you the story?"

"Perhaps you will not press that question, Sir Denzil. Having got interested in the boys I naturally desired to learn what I could about them. It was from no idle curiosity, I assure you."

"So you went to Dr. Yool, I suppose. I felt sure he would be at the root of the matter."

"I assure you he is not. The root of the matter is simply my desire for those boys. I would like to try my hand at making men of them."

"Very welt. You shall try--on this condition. As you are aware, one of them comes of high stock on both sides, the other of low stock on one side. The signs may crop out, must crop out in time. You will have opportunities, such as I have not, of observing them. What I ask of you is to bring all your intelligence and acumen to bear on the solution of my problem--which is which?"

"I understand, and I will willingly do my best. But you must remember, Sir Denzil, that there is no infallibility in such indications. The crossing of blue blood with red sometimes produces a richer strain than the blending of two thin blues."

"That is so. Still I hope there may be indications we cannot mistake, and then I shall know what to do. It is, as you can understand, a matter that has caused me no little concern."

"Naturally. By God's help we will make men of both of them. The rest we must trust to Providence."

Sir Denzil's pinch of snuff cast libellous doubts on Providence.

"You design them for the army, I presume?" asked Eager.

"Unless one should show an inclination for the Church," said the old cynic suavely. "Which I should be inclined to look upon as a clear indication of his origin."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Eager, with a smile. "The Church has its heroes no less than the army."

"You will find them difficult to handle."

"We shall soon be good friends. I'm going to begin by teaching them to swim."

Sir Denzil looked at him thoughtfully and said:

"That might undoubtedly relieve the situation. It is a dangerous coast. If you could drown one of them for me----"

"I am going to make men of them. I can't make a man out of a drowned boy. I will take every care of them, and some time you will be proud of them."

"Of one of them possibly. The question is, which?"

[CHAPTER X]

GROWING FREEMEN

The Rev. Charles was greatly uplifted as he tramped through the sand to keep his appointment with the boys. He had succeeded beyond his hopes, and a most congenial field of work and study lay open to his hand.

"Catch them young," had been hammered into his heart and brain by his five years' work in East London. With heart and brain he had fought against the stolid indifference and active evil-mindedness of the grown-ups, till heart and brain grew sick at times. His greatest hopes had settled on the children, and here were two, of a different caste indeed, but as ignorant of the essentials as any he had met with--and they were given into his hand for the moulding. By God's help he would make men of them, high-born or baseborn. The side-issue was nothing to him, but it would add zest to the work.

When he got, as he believed, into the neighbourhood of his previous day's adventure, he examined the ridge of sand-hills with care. But they were all so much alike that he could not be sure. He had hoped to find the boys on the look-out for him, but he saw no signs of them.

He struggled up the yielding side of the nearest hill and looked round. If he could find their hole he would probably find them inside it or not far away.

It was close on midday, baking hot, and the sand-hills seemed as deserted as Sahara. The sea lay fast asleep behind its banks, which reached to the horizon. When he looked back across the flats to Carne, he rubbed his eyes at sight of its stout walls bending and bowing and jigging spasmodically in an uncouth dance. The very wire-grass drooped listlessly. The only sound was the cheerful creak of a cricket.

The width, length, and height of it, the gracious spaciousness of it all filled him with fresh delight. It was all so very different from the heart-crushing straitness of the slums and alleys in which his last years had been spent. He stood drinking it all in, and then, seeing no signs of the boys, he turned his back to the shore and strode inland.

But within a few steps he caught sight of recent traces of them in fresh-turned yellow sand which the sun had not had time to whiten. He whistled shrilly, if perchance the sound might penetrate to their hold.

And then, to his astonishment, the ground in front of him cracked and heaved, and first one and then another dark sanded head and laughing face came out, and the boys sprang up from the shallow holes in which they had buried themselves and stood before him.

"You young rabbits," he laughed. "I had just about given you up. Thought I wasn't coming, I suppose."

Decisive nods from both black heads.

"Well, we'll make a start on that. Remember that I never break a promise, and I want you to do the same. The boy who makes up his mind that he'll never break his word is half a brave man."

They stared up at him with wide eyes, and whether they understood it he did not know. But he knew better than to say more just then.

"Now--why----?" And he looked from one to the other and then began to laugh. "Which of you is Jack and which is Jim? I was to remember Jack by a bump on the forehead, and now you've both got bumps. Been fighting again?"

Gleaming nods from both boys.

"We must find you something better to do. I've been seeing your grandfather, and he says I may teach you to swim."

Squirms of anticipation in the active brown bodies, and glances past him at the distant sea.

"No, not to-day. It's too late now, but it was worth spending the morning on. We'll make a start to-morrow. Can you be here at eight o'clock?"

Their energetic heads intimated that they could be there very much before eight if desired.

"Right! I'll be here. In the meantime you can be practising a bit on dry land. Here's the stroke"--and he laid himself flat on a convenient hummock and kicked out energetically, while the black eyes watched intently.

"Now try it. You first, Jack. That's right. Keep your hands a bit more sloped, and your toes more down. Thrust back with the flat of your feet as though you were trying to kick some one. First rate! Now, Jim!" But Jim was already hard at work on his own account. "That's right. Hands sloped, toes down. Draw your knees well up under your body. You'll find it easier in the water. Oh, you'll do. You'll be swimmers in no time. That'll do for just now. Now--Jack," he looked at them both, but his eyes finally settled on Jim--"if you'll fetch Robinson out well make a start on him."

Jim turned to dive down the hill-side, and was instantly tripped by Jack, who flung himself on top of him. They rolled down together, fighting like cats, amid a cloud of flying sand. Eager sprang after them, found it useless, as before, to attempt to separate them by any ordinary means, so spanked them indiscriminately till they fell apart and stood up panting. And the odd thing about it all was that no slightest ill-will seemed born of their strife. The moment it was over they were friends again.

"He told me," panted Jack in self-justification.

"He looked at me," panted Jim.

"My fault, boys. I must tie a string round one of your arms till I get to know you. Now trot along one of you--no, you "--grabbing one by the shoulder as both started off again. "We haven't much time to-day. If I'm not home by one Mrs. Jex will be eating all my dinner."

So they sat in the soft sand, and he read, and explained what he read, till Robinson Crusoe came alive and began to be as real to them as one of themselves, and they knew him as they had never known him before.

When Eager was dodging about his sheepfold that afternoon he came upon Dr. Yool in the yellow-wheeled gig. "Well, I've got 'em," said the curate.

"Got what? Measles, jumps----?"

"Those boys. I bearded the old man in his den this morning, and he has given me a free hand with them."

"You'll do," said Dr. Yool. "They'll keep you busy. Don't forget I want your help with these stinks"--pointing with his whip to the heaps of refuse lying about.

"I'm tackling stinks now. Tiger-pups in the morning, stinks in the afternoon, Dr. Yool in the evening. That's the order of service at present." And they parted the better for the meeting.

Eager had a chat with some of the wise men of Wynsloe, and got points from them as to shifting sands, and the tucking sands, and the other dangers of that treacherous coast, and in return incidentally dropped into their minds some seeds of wisdom respecting stinks and their consequences.

Five minutes to eight next morning found him a-perch of the highest sand-hill in the neighbourhood, on the look-out for his pupils.

Five minutes past eight found him somewhat disappointed at their non-appearance. They had seemed eager enough too, the day before. Perhaps the old man had thought better of it. Then he remembered his cynical hope that the swimming might prove of service in the solution of his great problem. And then a couple of war-whoops at each of his ears jerked him off his perch with so sudden a leap that the whoopers squirmed in the sand with delight.

"Thought we weren't coming?" grinned Jack.

"Well, I began to fear you'd been stopped----"

"We promised," grinned Jim; and Eager rejoiced to think that that seed at all events had taken root.

In two minutes they were trotting across the flats, and presently they were in the tide-way, and the little savages were revelling in a fresh acquirement and a new sense of motion.

There was little teaching needed. Eager took them out, one after the other, neck-deep, and turned their faces to the shore, and they swam home like rats, and yelled hilariously from pure enjoyment as soon as they found their breath.

Then he carried them out of their depths, and loosed them, and they paddled away back without a sign of fear. Fear, in fact, seemed absolutely lacking in them. The only thing on earth of which they stood in any fear, as far as he could make out, was the grim old man in the upper room at Carne, and even in his case it seemed to be as much distrust and dislike as actual fear.

But even fearlessness has its dangers, and, mindful of his trust, Eager exacted from each of them a solemn promise not to go into the sea except when he was with them, for he had no mind to solve the old man's riddle for him in the way he had so hopefully suggested.

Those mornings on the sands and in the water proved the foundation on which he slowly and surely built the boys' characters.

A very few days of so close an intimacy stamped their individualities on his mind. After the third day he never again mistook one for the other. Time and again they tried to mislead him, but he saw deeper than they knew and never failed to detect them.

They were, at this time, remarkably alike in every way, and though, later on, each developed marked characteristics of his own, there all along remained between them resemblance enough to put strangers to confusion, a matter in which they at all times found extreme enjoyment.

But even now, like as they were, in face and body and the wild naturalness of their primeval ways, their respective personalities began to disclose themselves, as Eager broke them, bit by bit, to the harness of civilisation. And if their harnessing was no easy matter, either for themselves or their teacher, they came to realise very quickly that, though it might mean less of freedom in some ways, it meant also an immensely wider reach and outlook. Whereas their life had hitherto revolved in narrow grooves--with which indeed no man had taken the trouble to meddle, now it ran in courses that were ordered, but which also were spacious and lofty and filled with novelty and enterprise.

And as their natural characteristics began to develop in these more reasonable ways, Eager watched and studied them with intensest interest.

But little savages they remained in certain respects for a considerable time, and it was only by slow degrees that he managed to lead them out of darkness into something approaching twilight.

Jim, for instance, had a rooted detestation of every living thing he came across on the shore, and promptly proceeded to squash it with his bare foot or to pound it into jelly with his prehistoric club. From tiny delicate crab to senseless jelly-fish or screaming gull, if Jim came across it it must die if he could manage it.

To counteract, if he might, this innate lust for slaughter Eager took to explaining to them some of the more simple wonders and beauties of seashore life. He brought down a small pocket microscope and showed them things they had never dreamed of.

This appealed to Jack immensely. He became a devoted slave of the wonderful glasses, and never tired of poring over and peering into things. Jim, however, drew a double satisfaction from them. He smashed things first and then delighted in the examination of the pieces, and many a pitched battle they fought over the destruction and defence of flotsam and jetsam which formerly they would both have destroyed with equal zest.

It was all education, however, and Eager rejoiced in them greatly. He found them, in varying degrees and with notable exceptions, fairly easy to lead, but almost impossible to drive. He led them step by step from darkness towards the light, and meanwhile studied them with as microscopic a care as that with which he endeavoured to get them to study the tiny things of the shore.

Their wild free life about the sand-hills had trained their powers of observation to an unusual degree. True, the observation had generally tended to destruction, but the faculty was good, and the end and aim of it was a matter to be slowly brought within control.

They could tell him many strange things about the manners and customs of rabbits, and gulls, and peewits, and sandpipers, and bull-frogs, and tadpoles, and so on. They could forecast the weather from the look of the sky and the smell of the wind, with the accuracy of a barometer. They could run as fast and farther than he could, for they had been breathing God's sweetest air all their lives, while he had been travelling alley-ways, with tightened lips and compressed nostrils. And they could fling their little stone clubs with an aim that was deadly. Jim indeed vaunted himself on having once brought down a seagull on the wing, but the actual fact rested on his sole testimony and Jack cast doubts on it, and thereupon they fought each time it was mentioned, but proved nothing thereby.

Eager told them of the wonders of the black man's boomerang; and they laboured long and practised much, but could not compass it. It was their ideal weapon, a thing to dream of and strive after, but it always lay beyond them.

One day he brought home under his arm, from the shop in Wyvveloe, a small parcel which he took up into his own room. He borrowed Mrs. Jex's scissors, and spent a very much longer time planning and cutting than the result seemed to warrant. Then he got Mrs. Jex, who would have shaved her scanty locks to please him, to do some hemming and stitching and to sew on some bits of tape, and next day he astonished his little savages by attiring himself and them in bright-red loin-cloths, before they started for their mile sprint to the water.

The boys were inclined to resist this innovation as an unnecessary cramping of their freedom. Jim averred that he couldn't stretch his legs, and that his garment burnt him, though when it was on it looked no bigger than his hand. Jack demanded reasons, and was told to wait and he would see. However, the brilliancy of the little garments somewhat condoned their offence, and once in the water they were soon forgotten, and as they flashed back and forth across the sands the startling effects they produced in the sunny pools by degrees reconciled their wearers to their use.

About a week after this, the boys were sitting one morning in the hollow Mr. Eager used as a dressing-room, wondering why he was later than usual,

"Gone to see HIM, maybe, 'bout yon books we brought out," growled Jack gloomily.

"Hmph!" grunted Jim. "I don't care--'sides, he wouldn't."

And then Eager strode in with a brighter face even than usual.

"Afraid I wasn't coming, were you?" he laughed.

"Thought maybe you'd gone to see HIM again," said Jack.

"Your grandfather? No; I've been seeing some one very much nicer. Jim, did you say your verse this morning?"

This was a gigantic innovation, and still much of a mere ritual. But it was a beginning, and the rest would follow. It was the first upward step towards those higher things which Charles Eager kept ever steadily in view.

"Forgot," grunted Jim.

This again was mighty gain. A month ago--if such a contingency had been possible--he would never have owned up. To his grandfather it is doubtful if he would have owned up even now.

"Well, oblige me by going behind that sand-hill and saying it now, and think what you're saying as well as you can. And you, Jack?"

"Said um," said Jack dutifully.

"Never saw you," said Jim, on his knees. Whereupon Jack dashed at him and rolled him over prayer and all, and they had a regular former-state set-to.

The Rev. Charles, grave of face, but internally convulsed, got them separated at last, and as soon as Jim had performed his devotions they turned their faces towards the sea. Before the two boys could start out, as they usually did, like bolts from a cross-bow, however, he laid a detaining hand on each brown shoulder, and to their surprise whistled shrilly across the hills. In reply, a tiny figure in brilliant scarlet sped out from an adjacent nook, and shot, with flowing hair, and little white feet going like drumsticks, across the flats towards the sea.

The boys caught their breath and gaped in amazement.

"What is it?" gasped Jim.

"Whow! Who?" from Jack.

"My little sister. She only arrived last night. Now let's see if we can catch her! Off you go!" And they tore away across the long ribbed sands after the flying streak of scarlet in front.

They caught her long before she reached the tide-lip, and her eyes flashed merriment as they raced alongside.

She had rare beauty even as a child--and no beauty of after-life ever quite equals that of a lovely child--and the two boys had never in their lives seen anything like her. They stumbled alongside, careless of holes and lumps, with sidelong glances for nothing but that radiant vision--scarlet-wrapped, streaming nut-brown hair, dancing blue eyes, white skin flushed with the run like a hedge-rose, little teeth gleaming pearls between panting, laughing lips, a little rainbow of beauty.

"Well run, Gracie! Keep it up, old girl!" panted Eager, almost pumped himself. And then they were in the water.

Grace, it appeared, could not swim yet. The boys fell to at once and fought for the honour of helping her, though neither would have dared to touch her. She screamed at sight of their brown bodies thrashing to and fro in the foam, but was comforted at sight of her brother's laughing face.

"Come along, Gracie. Never mind the boys. They enjoy a fight more than anything. Now kick away, and strike out as I showed you how on the footstool. I'll hold your chin up. That's it! Bravo, little one! You'll be a swimmer in a week."

[CHAPTER XI]

THE LITTLE LADY

And so another element entered into the tiger-cubs' education, and one that, for so small a creature, exercised a mighty influence on them, both then and thereafter.

She was the Joy of Charles Eager's heart and the light of his eyes. Other sisters and brothers there had been, but all were gone save this little fairy, and they two were alone in the world. While he wrought in the dark corners of the great city he had boarded her with some maiden aunts in the suburbs, and the weekly sight of her, growing like a flower, had helped to keep his heart fresh and sweet. Not the least of the joys of his translation to this wide new sphere was the fact that he could have her always with him.

Mrs. Jex wept with joy at sight of her, vowed she was the very image of her own little Sally, who died when she was eight, and proceeded to squander on her the pent-up affections of thirty childless years.

And the Little Lady, as Mrs. Jex styled her, lorded it over them all, then and thereafter, and was a factor of no small consequence in all their lives.

Over the slowly regenerating tiger-cubs she exercised a peculiarly softening and elevating influence. It was exactly what they needed, and all unconsciously it wrought upon the simple savageries of their boy-natures as powerfully as did the Rev. Charles's more direct and strenuous endeavours.

Both boys, in moments of excitement, which were many in the course of each day, had a habit of expression, picked up from Sir Denzil and Mr. Kennet, which was not a little startling on their juvenile lips. Eager promptly suppressed these whenever they slipped out. He knew well enough that they conveyed no special meaning to the boys beyond an idea of extra forcefulness, but, besides being unseemly, they grated horribly on his sensitive ear.

As for the Little Lady, Master Jim Carron did not soon forget the effect produced on her by one of his unconscious expletives.

When Dan Fell of Wynsloe got to the end of his bottle of Hollands gin sooner than he expected one dark night at the fishing, and hurled it overboard with a curse, his only feeling was one of disgust at the shortcomings of a friend in time of need. If any one had told him that he was thereby assisting in the education of little Jim Carron of Carne he would have cursed more volubly still, under the impression that he was being made game of, which was a thing he could not stand. The bottle floated ashore, tried conclusions with a log of Norway pine thrown up by the last equinoctials, distributed itself in razor-like spicules about the soft sand, and lay in wait for unwary feet.

Jim, racing home one day from the bathing alongside the Little Lady, and dazzled somewhat, perhaps, by the gleam of the little crimson robe and the damp little mane of flowing hair, set incautious foot on one of the razor spicules, jerked out an energetic and utterly unconscious "Damn!" and bit the sand.

The Little Lady heard the word, but missed the cause.

"Oh!" cried she, in a shocked voice, and sped away to her own apartment, and began to dress with trembling sodden pink fingers in extreme haste, as though clothing might possibly afford a certain amount of protection against the ill effects of flying curses.

By the time she had got on her tiny pink petticoat, a peep round the corner showed her her brother and Jack kneeling by the fallen utterer of oaths and curses, and she began to fear something had happened.

She had little doubt that punishment had promptly overtaken the sinner. But she liked the sinner in spite of his sin, and she stole back to see what was the matter. That it was something serious was evident by Charles's knitted brows as he bent over the foot which Jim held tightly between his hands. His lips were pinched very close, and his brown face was mottled with putty colour, and the sand below was red. The indurated little pad, hard as leather almost with much running on the sands--for the boys scoffed at shoes--was badly sliced and bleeding freely, but the worst of it was that the treacherous spicule had broken off short and stopped inside and they had no means of getting it out.

"Rags, Gracie," said Eager, at sight of the tearful face and clasped hands and pink petticoat, and she turned and sped, over sands that rocked like waves beneath her feet, to her dressing-room, and back with an armful of garments and a handkerchief the size of his hand.

He folded the handkerchief into a square pad, and ripped something white into strips and bound the foot tightly, issuing his orders as he did so.

"Jack, get into your things and run for Dr. Yool, and tell him to go to the house. Tell him there's glass inside that must come out. Gracie, put on your frock and sit here with Jim. I'll get some things on, and then I'll carry him home!"

And the Little Lady struggled mistily into her things behind Jim's back, and then sat down alongside him without speaking.

"Doesn't hurt a bit," said Jim, through clenched teeth and whitened lips.

The Little Lady sniffed and looked at the distant sea.

"Tell you it doesn't hurt," said Jim again.

The Little Lady made no response.

And presently--"Whew!" said Jim, with a frightful twist of the face, trying by instinct the other tack, "ah!--o-o-oh!"--but all to no purpose. The Little Lady's soft heart might be wrung, but at present she could not bring herself to speak to this dreadful sinner.

"Now," said Eager, running up. "Stand up, Jim. Put your arms round my neck. Now your feet up, so, and off we go. I must get old Bent to make sandals for you youngsters. We can't have this kind of thing, you know. It'll be ten days before you can use that foot, old man."

"Damn!"

"Jim!"

And the Little Lady fell solemnly into the rear.

She would not speak to him for two whole days, though she did not mind sitting within sight of him in the side of a sand-hill, and she silently allowed him to instruct her in the art of making sand waterfalls. But the current of her usual merry chatter was frozen at the fount, and the unconscious Jim could make nothing of it.

On the third day, tiring of an abstinence that was quite as irksome to herself as to her victim, she broke the ice by informing him of the painful fact that he was doomed to everlasting punishment. She put it very shortly and concisely.

"Jim," she said, "you'll go to hell."

"Um?" chirped Jim cheerfully, glad to hear her voice once more, even at such a price. "An' why?"

"'Cause you swear."

"Ho! Very well! So will HE"--the emphatic use of the third person singular in the boys' vernacular was always understood to stand for Sir Denzil Carron of Carne--"and so will Kennet, and so will Dr. Yool."

"I don't care about any of them," said Grace impartially, "unless, perhaps, Dr. Yool. I do rather like him. But it will be such a pity for you."

The prospect did not seem to trouble him greatly, perhaps because his views on the subject were not nearly so clearly defined as hers.

"Oh, well, I won't if you don't like," he answered cheerfully.

"Thank you," said the Little Lady; and from that time, simply to oblige her, and from no great fear of direr consequences, he really did seem to do his best to avoid the use of any words which might offend her. He even went so far as to assume an oversight of his brother's rhetorical flights, and many a pitched battle they had in consequence.

These encounters were so much a part of their nature that Eager found it impossible to stop them entirely. They had fought continually since ever they could crawl within arm's length of one another. Where other boys might have argued to ill-temper, these two simply closed without wasting a word, and having settled the momentary dispute, vi et armis, were as friendly as ever. They both possessed fiery tempers, and had never seen or dreamt of the necessity of controlling them. But on the other hand, they never bore malice, and the cause of dispute, and the blows that settled it, were forgotten the moment the god of battle had awarded the palm. They were very closely matched, and no great bodily harm came of it, though to the spectators it looked fearsome enough.

Bit by bit, utilising and turning to best account their natural powers and proclivities, Eager got hold of them, to the point at all events of inducing their feet into more reasonable upward paths. But as to coming one step nearer to the reading of Sir Denzil's puzzle, he had to acknowledge completest failure.

He studied the boys, from his own intense interest in them, as no other had ever had the opportunity of studying them. And he discussed his observation of them with Sir Denzil time and again. But, so far, there were no ultra indications of disposition in either of them so marked as to offer any reasonable basis for deduction.

For men without a single common view of life, he and Sir Denzil had become quite friendly. A verbal tussle with the old heathen, in which each spoke his mind without reserve, always braced him up, just as the boys' more primitive method of argument seemed to do them good.

The old gentleman always greeted him, over a pinch of snuff, with an expression of regret that he had not yet succeeded in settling the matter out of hand by drowning one of his pupils.

"Well, Mr. Eager," he would say, "no progress yet?"

"Oh, plenty. We're improving every day."

"H'mph If you'd only drown one of them for me----"

"I've a better use for them than that."

"I doubt it. Ill stock on either side, though I say it."

"As the twig is bent----"

"Break one off and I'd thank you. Here is possibly a further complication,"--tapping with his snuff-box a small news-sheet he had been reading when Eager came in.

"What is that, sir?"

"That fool Quixande has got into a mess in Paris--got a sword through his ribs."

"Quixande?" queried Eager, not perceiving the relevancy of the matter.

"He has no issue--none that can inherit, that is. One of those whelps is his only sister's son and so comes in for the title. Which?"

"H'm, yes. It's mighty awkward. I suppose you couldn't make one of them Earl of Quixande and the other Carron of Carne?"

"It would be a solution. But which? Which? Such matters are not settled by guesswork."

"We can only wait and see."

"If Quixande dies we cannot wait--the succession cannot."

"For his own sake we'll hope he'll pull through. He may repent of his sins."

"Quixande?"--with raised brows, and a shake of the head. "You don't know him."

"If I did, I'd try to bring him to his senses."

"Waste of time. With these cubs you may be able to do something, though I doubt it. Quixande's past mending."

"No man is past mending till he's dead. Perhaps not then----"

"Ah!"--with a pinch of snuff and a wave of the hand, "A hopeful creed, but with no more foundation than most others. It would, however, undoubtedly commend itself to Quixande on his death-bed."

"A hopeful creed is better than a hopeless one," said Eager, with emphasis.

"Undoubtedly, if you admit the necessity of such things."

"Thank God, I do."

"Well, well! However--what you are doing for those boys should benefit one of them, though it's thrown away upon the other."

"And if you never solve the puzzle?"

"If one of them dies I accept the other in full. That's the solution."

There were times when all Eager's knocking on the great front door was productive of no result whatever. Then he would go round to the back and interview Mrs. Lee, but never with any satisfaction.

"Ay?" she would say to his statement, straightening up from her work, arms akimbo, and gazing steadily at him with her dark eyes. "Maybe they're out."

But he had never met Sir Denzil out, nor had any of the villagers ever encountered him, and Dr. Yool said brusquely that both the old gentleman and his gentleman were probably lying dead drunk in the upper rooms.

Eager never mentioned these abortive visits to Sir Denzil, and there was never anything in his appearance to justify Dr. Yool's assertions.

[CHAPTER XII]

MANY MEANS

Eager spread his nets very wide for the capture for higher things of these two callow souls cast so carelessly into his hands. Carelessly, that is, on the part of Sir Denzil. For his own part he believed devoutly in the Higher Hand in the great game of life, and never for a moment doubted that here was a work specially designed for him by Providence.

He put his whole heart into the matter, as he did into all matters. He felt himself very much in the position of a missionary breaking up new ground, except, indeed, that here were no old beliefs to get rid of. It was absolutely virgin soil, and he felt and rejoiced in the responsibility.

Perfect little savages they were in many respects, and their training had to begin at the very beginning. Manners they lacked entirely, and their customs were simply such as they had evolved for themselves in their free-and-easy life on the flats, Their beliefs were summed up in a wholesome fear of Sir Denzil and his representative Mr. Kennet. These two were to them as the gods of the heathen; powers of evil, to be avoided if possible, and if not, then to be propitiated by the assumption of graces--such as unobtrusiveness, and if observed, then of meekness and conformability--which were no more than instantly assumed little masks concealing the true natures within, which true natures found their full vent and expression in the wilds of the sand-hills and the untrammelled freedom of the shore.

Old Mrs. Lee was a power of another kind, on the whole benevolent; provident, at all events, and not given to such incomprehensible outbreaks of anger and punishment as were the others at times.

They had known no coddling, had run wild with as little on as possible--and in their own haunts with nothing on at all--since the day they could crawl out of the courtyard down to the ribbed sand below. They were hard as nails, and feared nothing, except Sir Denzil and Mr. Kennet.

Eager's first and most difficult work was to break them off their evil habits--their natural lust for slaughter and destruction, the perpetual resort to fisticuffs for the settlement of the most trifling dispute, the use of language which conveyed no meaning beyond that of emphasis to their own minds, but which to other ears was terribly revolting.

Just as, if he had had a couple of wild colts to take to stable, he would have found it better to lead them than to drive, so he strove to win these two from the miry ways and pitfalls among which a shameful lack of oversight had left them to stray. He forced no bits into their mouths, laid no halters on their touchy heads. He just won their confidence and liking, till they looked up to him, trusted him, finally worshipped him, and followed, unquestioning, where he chose to lead them.

And--Providence or no Providence--they could not have fallen into better hands.

Charles Eager was one of the newer school, a muscular Christian if ever there was one, rejoicing greatly in his muscularity, and as wise as he was thorough in his Master's work. He had pulled stroke in his boat at Cambridge, and when he went there had looked forward to the sword as his oyster-opener. And so he had given much time to fitting himself adequately for an army career. He would have backed himself to ride, or box, or fence with any man of his time; and he had so unmistakable a bent for mechanics, and was so skilful a hand with lathe and tools, that there could not be a moment's doubt as to which branch nature designed him for.

And then, when he had perfected himself for the way he had chosen, a better way opened suddenly before him. Without a sign of the cost, he renounced all he had been looking forward to all his life, and dedicated himself wholeheartedly to the greater work.

All that he had acquired, however, with so different an end in view, remained with him, and helped to make him the man he was; and it was into such hands that, by the grace of God, these two wild Carron colts had fallen.

A missionary, when he sets out to turn his unruly flock from their old savageries, must, if he understands human nature and his work, provide other and less harmful outlets for the energies resulting from generations of tumult and slaughter. Eager taught his young savages boxing on the most scientific principles, and made the gloves himself. He taught them fencing with basket-hilted sticks, constructed under his own eyes by the old basket-weaver in the village. Prompt appeal to arms was still permitted in settlement of their endless disputes; but the business was regularised, and tended, all unconsciously on the part of the combatants, to education.

For their inexhaustible energies he found new and much-appreciated vent in games on the sands. And if these were crude enough performances, compared with their later developments familiar to ourselves, they still had in them those elements of saving grace which all such games teach in the playing--self-control, fair-play, honour And these be mighty things to learn.

In the summer they played cricket. The bat and ball Eager provided; the stumps he made himself.

He also instructed them in the mysteries of hare-and-hounds, which chimed mightily with their humour, especially when he supplemented it with a course of Fenimore Cooper. They became mighty hunters and notable trackers, their natural instincts and previous training standing them in excellent stead.

In the winter the flats rang to their shouts at football and hockey, crudely played, but mightily relished.

And always, in and alongside their play and in between, but so deftly administered that it seemed to them but a natural part of the whole, their education proceeded by leaps and bounds. They drank in knowledge unawares, and learned intuitively things that mere teaching is powerless to teach.

When he found them they were simply self-centred and selfish little savages--each for himself, and heedless of anything outside his own skin; and their manners and customs were such as naturally fitted their state.

As their minds opened to the larger things outside, and they began to be drawn away from themselves, their natural proclivities came into play. Like hardy wild-flowers, their rough outer sheaths began to open to the sun, revealing glimpses of the better things within.

And, all unconsciously to herself or to them, little Grace Eager was the sun to whom, in the beginning, their expansion was due.

Eager, watching them all with keenest interest, used to say to himself that she was doing as much for them as he, if not more.

She was so novel to them, so altogether sweet and charming. She supplied something that had hitherto been a-wanting in their lives, and of whose lack they had not even been aware, until she came into them, and made them conscious of the want by filling it.

Now and again at first, and presently almost as a matter of course, the tiger-cubs were invited up to Mrs. Jex's cottage for a homely meal, after some hotly contested game on the sands or some long chase after the tricky two legged hare or astute and elusive Redskin.

And, in the beginning, Indian brave who knew no fear, but knew almost everything else that was to be known in his own special line, and cunning hare and vociferous hound, and tireless champion of the bat and hockey-stick, and valiant fighters on all possible occasions, would sit mumchance and awkward, watching the Little Lady, with wide, observant eyes, as she dispensed her simple hospitalities with a grace and sweetness that set her above and apart from anything they had ever known.

And then she was so extraordinarily different indoors from what she was on the sands. There, at cricket or hockey, or football, she danced and shrieked with excitement, and was never still for a moment. Here, at the table, she suddenly became many years older, knew just what to do, and did it charmingly,--ordering even the Rev. Charles about, and beaming condescendingly on them all, from the lofty heights of her experience and knowledge of the world as learned from her aunts in London.

Painfully aware of deficiency, they began to strive to fit themselves for such occasions, repressed themselves into still greater awkwardness and silence, fought one another afterwards on account of too obvious lapses from what they considered proper behaviour and unkind brotherly comment thereupon, but all the time unconsciously absorbed the new atmosphere and by degrees became able to enjoy it without discomfort.

"Jim, my dear boy," she would say, on occasion, "are you comfortable on that chair?"

A quick nod from the conscious and obviously uncomfortable Jim.

"You shouldn't just nod your head, my dear. You should say, 'Yes, thank you,' or 'Not entirely,'--as the case may be. It's rude just to nod."

"Not entirely, then," blurted Jim, with a very red face, and many times less comfortable than before.

"I'm sorry, but they're all the same, and if you sit on the sofa you can't reach the table. And if you sit on the floor I can't see you."

"I can do, thank you."

"Who lives in that cottage we passed to-day, down along the shore by the Mere?" asked Eager, by way of diversion.

"Old Seth," from both boys at once, much relieved at being put into a position to answer a question that had nothing to do with themselves.

"Old Seth? I've not come across him yet. Old Seth what?"

"Old Seth Rimmer. He's a Methody," said Jack.

"It's a lonely place to live, away out there. Has he a wife,--any children?"

"Mrs. Rimmer's always in bed."

"An invalid. I must call and see her, Methody or no Methody."

"And there's young Seth and Kattie."

"I saw the girl peeping out after you'd passed. She's a nice-looking girl. I shall call and get to know her," said the Little Lady decisively.

"We'll go and make their acquaintance to-morrow," said her brother. "What does Mr. Rimmer do? Fishing?"

A nod from Jim. "Keeps his boat up in the river, two miles further on."

"And the Mere? Any fish there?"

"Ducks in winter. We got one once."

"Had to lie in the rushes all day," said Jack, with a reminiscent shiver.

"It was a good duck," said Jim.

And the next afternoon the Rev. Charles set out for the cottage, with Grace skipping about him in search of treasure-trove of beach and sand-hill.

It was a stoutly-built little wooden house, standing back in a hollow of the sand-hummocks, and its solitariness was enhanced by reason of the vast and lonely expanse of Wyn Mere, which lay just behind it. The shore of the Mere was thick with reeds and rushes. The long unbroken stretch of water silently mirroring the blue sky, with its margin of rustling reeds, possessed a beauty all its own, but something of sadness and solemnity too.

Grace, standing on top of a sand-hill, with a high tide dancing merrily up the flats on the one side and the long silent Mere on the other, put it into words.

"How unhappy it looks, Charlie! I like the sea best. It laughs."

"It laughs just now, my dear, but sometimes it roars and thunders."

"All the same, I like it best. This other looks as if it drowned people."

"I don't suppose it ever drowned as many people as the sea, Gracie."

"Then it seems as if it thought more of those it has drowned. I wouldn't live here for anything. I'd cut a hole through the sand-hills and let the sea wash it all away."

"Better see what Mr. Rimmer thinks of it before you do that." And he laid a restraining hand on her arm as the door of the wooden house opened quietly, and a man came out backwards and stood for a moment with his head bent towards the door as if he were listening. His hair was long and of scanty grizzled gray. He wore a blue jersey and high sea-boots, and carried his sou'wester in his hand. Then he straightened up, clapped on his hat, and strode away round the house towards the Mere. Eager jumped down the sand-hill and ran after him, and caught him before he reached a flat-bottomed skiff drawn up on to the sedgy shore.

"Is this Mr. Rimmer?" he asked.

"Seth Rimmer, at yore service, sir." And there turned on them a fine old gray face, laced and seamed with weather-lines that told of bitter black nights on the sea, when the spume flew and the salt bit deep. The blue eyes, very deep under the bushy gray brows, were shrewd and kindly; the mouth, half hidden in gray moustache and beard, was set very firmly.

"He looked good but hard. But I liked him," was Gracie's comment afterwards.

"Yo' be the new curate," he said at once, taking in Eager in a large comprehensive gaze.

"Charles Eager, the new curate, Mr. Rimmer. How is your wife to-day? I understand----"

"Ay, hoo's bed-rid. We're Wesleyans, but hoo'll be glad to see yo' and th' little lady." And he turned back to the house.

"An' what's yore name?"--to Gracie.

"Grace Eager."

"Yore sister?"

"All I have left. There have been many between, but we are the last, and so we're very good friends."

"An' so ye should. A fine name yon, Grace Eager. An' what are yore graces, an' what are yo' eager for, missie?"

"She's full of all graces and eager for all good, like her big brother. Isn't that it, Gracie?" laughed Charles, to cover her confusion at so pointed a questioning.

She nodded and squeezed his hand and skipped by his side, and so they came back to the house.

"Someun to see yo', Kattrin," he said, as he opened the door and ushered them in.

It was but a small room and the furnishings were of the simplest, but everything was spick-and-span in its ordered brightness. There was a small fire with a kettle on the hob, and in one corner was a bed with a sweet-faced woman in it, propped up with pillows so that she could look out of the window.

"Yo're welcome, whoever yo' are," she said.

"It's new curate, Mr. Eager, an' 's li'll sister."

"Ech, a'm glad to see yo', sir, though we don't trouble church much here. Nivver set eyes on last curate, nivver once."

"I apologise for him, Mrs. Rimmer; perhaps he found the long walk through the sand too much for him."

"Ay; he wasn't much of a man," said Rimmer quietly. "Yo're a different breed, I'm thinking. Yo're tackling them Carron lads, an' that's a good job. I seen yo' about the sands with 'em."

"Yes; they're worth tackling, aren't they?"

"Surely; and yo're the man for the job! Now I mun get along or I'll miss tide. Yo'll excuse me, an' if yo'll talk a while with the missus she'll be glad. She dunnot get too many visitors. Good-bye, wife!" And he went out quietly and tramped sturdily away to his work.

"He's a right good mon," said his wife fervently. "And he aye bids me good-bye in case he nivver comes back, and he aye says a prayer for me outside the door. It's a bad, bad coast this," she said, with a sigh. "It took his feyther, an' his grandfeyther, and it's aye on his mind that sometime it'll take him too. An' it may be onytime."

"He's in better hands than his own, Mrs. Rimmer," said Eager.

"Aye, I. know, and so was they, an' it's no good thinking o' death and drownin's till you see 'em. But I seen so many it's not easy to get away from 'em, lying here all alone."

"Where's your little girl?" asked Gracie suddenly.

"Kattie? She should be in by this. She stops chattin' wi' th' neebors now an' then. It's lonesome here for childer, yo' see. I sometimes wish we was nearer folk, but we've lived here all our lives an' I wouldna like to move now."

"And who are your nearest neighbours, Mrs. Rimmer?" asked Eager.

"Oh, there's plenty across Mere--Bill o' Jack's, an' Tom o' Bob's o' Jim's, an'----" She stopped and lay listening. "That's her now." And presently a girl's voice lilting a song drew near from the direction of the Mere.

The door opened and she came in carrying a pail of milk.

"'Ello!" she jerked in her astonishment, and then lapsed into silence.

"Where's your manners, Kattie?" from her mother, as she stood staring at the strangers, especially at Gracie.

"How are you, Kattie?" said Eager. "I'm the new curate. This is my sister, Gracie. She saw you the other day and wanted to see you again."

Kattie put out the tip of a red tongue and smiled in rich confusion.

She was a remarkably pretty child, with large, dark-blue eyes, a mane of brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, and the healthy red-brown skin of the dwellers on the flats.

Like the boys of Carne, she obviously wore only what she had to wear of necessity. In her shy grace she was like a startled fawn, looking her first on man, and ready to bound away at smallest sign of advance.

"Where's yore manners, lass?" said her mother again; and Kattie drew in the tip of her tongue and twisted her little red mouth and stared at Gracie harder than ever.

"Suppose you two run away out and make one another's acquaintance," said Eager to Gracie, "and I'll have a chat with Mrs. Rimmer." And the girls slipped out contentedly.

"Ech, but you do wear a lot o' clothes!" jerked Kattie, the moment they got outside.

"It must be jolly to wear so few," said Gracie enviously. "When I've lived here a bit perhaps I can too. You see I've always been used to wearing a lot."

"They're gey pratty, but I'd liever not carry 'em."

"Is that your boat? Do you row it all by yourself?"

"O' course! I'll show you." And she sped down to the long-prowed shallop from which she had just landed, shoved it off, tumbled in, regardless of wet feet and display of bare leg, and sent the little craft bounding over the smooth dark mirror, her vivid little face sparkling with delight at this opportunity for the display of superior accomplishment.

Grade meanwhile danced with desire on the sedgy shore.

"Me too, Kattie! Come back and take me too! What a love of a little boat! And you row like a man."

"I can scull too," cried Kattie vauntingly, and drew in one oar and slipped the other over the stern and came wobbling back with a manly swing that seemed to Gracie to court disaster.

"I like the rowing best," she gasped, as she crawled cautiously in over the projecting prow. "Let me try one."

And thereafter they were friends.

"I like Kattie," said Grade exuberantly, as she danced along home holding Charlie's hand.

"She's a pretty little thing, but she seems very shy."

"She's not a bit shy when you know her. And she can row and swim, and once she shot a duck on the Mere. And she knows where they lay their eggs, and . . ."

And so, for better or worse, Kattie Rimmer came into the story.

[CHAPTER XIII]

MOUNTING

For the polishing of gems the dust of gems is necessary. And for the training of boys other boys are essential. Eager cast about for other boys against whom his colts might wear off some of their angles.

Some men have a wonderful power of attracting and drawing out all that is best in their fellows. Personal magnetism, we call it, and it is a mighty gift of the gods.

Charles Eager had that gift in a very remarkable degree, and with it many others that appealed to the most difficult of all sections of the community. Boys hate being made good. The man who can lift them to higher planes without any unpleasant consciousness thereof on their part is a genius, and more than a genius. We have, some of us, met such in our lives, and we think of them with most affectionate reverence and crown them with glory and honour, though, all too often, the world passes them by with but scant acknowledgment.

But diamond-dust alone will polish diamonds. Softer stuff is useless, and the supply of boy-diamond-dust in that neighbourhood was small. So he laid masterful hands on what there was.

Just outside Wyvveloe, between that and Wynsloe, lay Knoyle, the residence of Sir George Herapath, the great army contractor. He was a man of sixty-five, tall, gray-bearded, genial, enjoying a well-earned rest from a life of many activities. He had married late, and had one son, George, aged fifteen, and one daughter, Margaret, a year younger. His wife was dead.

The firm of Herapath & Handyside, and its trade-mark of interlocked H.'s, was as well known in army circles as the War Department's own private mark. During the Napoleonic wars its business dealings were on a gigantic scale. It fed and clothed and sheltered armies in many lands, and carried out its every undertaking to the letter, cost what it might. The first consideration with the firm of H. and H. was perfect fulfilment of its obligations. None knew better how much depended on its exertions--how helpless the most skilful commander was unless he could count absolutely on his supplies. H. and H. never failed in their duty, and the firm reaped its reward, both in honours and in cash. But to both Herapath and his partner Handyside the honour they cherished most of all was the fact that their name and mark stood everywhere as a guarantee of reliability and fair dealing.

Handyside died five years after his partner's baronetcy, and left the bulk of his money to Herapath, having no near relatives of his own. And Sir George, desirous of rest before he grew past the enjoyment of it, took into partnership his right-hand man, Ralph Harben, who had grown up with the firm, strung another H on to the bar of the first big one, which represented himself--so that the mark of the firm came to look something like a badly made hurdle--and left the direction of affairs chiefly in his hands.

Eager, in the course of his duties, had called at Knoyle and had met with a congenial welcome. George and Margaret Herapath would be useful to his cubs now that they were licking into shape. His thoughts turned to them at once.

There had been another boy with them at church the previous Sunday, he noticed. The more the merrier. He would rope them all in, for games good enough with four are many times as good with eight or more.

"Yes, I heard you'd tackled the Carron colts," smiled Sir George. "Bit of a handful, I should say, from all accounts."

"I like bits of handfuls," said Eager. "I've got good material to work on. I shall make men of those two."

"You'll have done a good work. And how can Knoyle be of service to you, Mr. Eager?"

"In heaps of ways. I want your two in our games. Four are really not enough for proper work. Who's the new youngster I saw with you on Sunday?"

"That's young Harben, my partner's son. His father is in Spain just now, and his mother's dead, so I've taken him in for a time."

"The more the merrier! I wish you had another half-dozen."

"H'm! I don't. My two keep me quite lively enough."

"I want you to let me break my two in on some of your horses, too. You've got more than you can keep in proper condition, and the old curmudgeon at Carrie flatly refuses to buy them ponies. I've done my best with him, and riding's about due with my two. They can fence and swim and box. They beat me at running. Boating's no good here, and wouldn't be much use to them later, anyway. They're for the army, of course. Your boy, too, I suppose?"

"Yes, George is for the army, and young Harben too, I judge, from his talk. Suppose you bring your two up, say, to-morrow, and they can have a fling at the ponies, and----"

"And you can form your own judgment of them," said Eager, with a quiet chuckle. "That's all right. They're presentable, or I should not have proposed it, and yours will help to polish them, and that's what I want."

"I see. To-morrow morning, then, and they can tumble off the ponies in the paddock to their hearts' content."

So--three very excited faces, and three pairs of very eager eyes, as they pressed up the avenue to Knoyle next morning, and keen little noses sniffing anxiously for ponies, for Gracie was not going to miss such a chance, and as for the boys, wild mustangs of the prairies would not have daunted them.

Life--what with swimming and fencing and boxing and cricket and hockey and football--had suddenly widened its bounds beyond belief almost, and now, the crowning glory of horses loomed large in front.

Picture them in their scanty blue knee-breeches and blue jerseys, no hats, but fine crops of black hair, their eager, handsome faces the colour of the sand, with the hot blood close under the tan, bare legs and homely leather sandals, black eyes with sparks in them; Gracie in a little blue jersey also and a short blue frock, bare-legged and in sandals too, for life on the sands had proved altogether too destructive of stockings; on her streaming hair, and generally hanging by its strings, a sunbonnet originally blue, but now washing out towards white.

"There they are!" gasped Gracie, dancing with excitement as usual. "In that field over there----"

"And here are Sir George and the others. Remember to salute him, boys; and look him straight in the eye when he speaks to you. He's a jolly old boy."

"And, for goodness' sake, don't fight if you can possibly help it!" said Gracie impressively.

"I congratulate you on your colts, Mr. Eager," said Sir George, as they followed the youngsters to the paddock. "They're miles ahead of what I expected. I had my misgivings, I confess, but now they are gone. You've done wonders with them already."

"Good material, Sir George. But there's plenty still to do. You can't cure the neglect of years in a few months."

"If any man could, you could. They're a well-set-up pair, and look as fit as fiddles."

"Their free life on the sands has done that for them at all events. If they've missed much, they have also gained much, and, by God's help, I'm going to supply the rest. There are the makings of two fine men there."

"You'll do it. Why! What are they up to now?"

"Only fighting," laughed Eager. "They rarely dispute in words, always vi et armis. Jack! Jim! Stop that! What's the matter now?" as the boys got up off the ground with flushed faces and dancing eyes. "A mighty good-looking pair!" thought Sir George to himself. "And which is which and which is t'other, I couldn't tell to save my life."

"I was going to help Gracie over, and he cut in," said Jack.

"I wanted to help her over too," grinned Jim.

"Sillies!" said Gracie. "I didn't need you. I got through. Oh, what beauties!" as a bay pony and a grey came trotting up to their master and mistress for customary gifts and caresses.

"This is mine," said Margaret, kissing the soft dark muzzle. "Dear old Graylock! Want a bit of sugar? There then, old wheedler!" And Graylock tossed his head and savoured his morsel appreciatively, with a mouth that watered visibly for more.

"Lend me a bit, Meg," begged her brother. "I forgot the greedy little beggars. You spoil 'em. Here you are, Whitefoot."

"Bridles only, at present, Bob," said Sir George, to a stable-boy who had come down laden with gear. "Let the youngsters begin at the beginning. Now you, Jack and Jim--I don't know which of you's which--have a go at them barebacked, and let's see what you're made of." And the boys flung themselves over the ponies with such vehemence that Jim came down headlong on the other side while Graylock danced with dismay; and Jack hung over Whitefoot like a sack, but got his leg over at last, with such a yell of triumph that his startled steed shot from under him and left him in a heap on the grass.

But they were both up in a moment and at it again.

"Twist yer hand in his mane," instructed Bob, "an' hang on like the divvle. There y'are! Now clip him tight wi' yer knees an' shins. You're aw reet!" And Jim and Graylock went off down the paddock in a series of wild leaps and bounds, while Bob ran after them administering counsel.

"Loose yer reins a bit! Don't tickle him wi' yer toes! . . . Stiddy then! Go easy, my lad! Don't fret 'im!"--as Jack and Whitefoot bore down upon him in like fashion.

"They'll ride aw reet," he said, as he came back crab-fashion to the lookers-on, with his eyes fixed on the riders. "Stick like cats, they do. And them ponies is enjoying theirselves."

"Promising, are they, Bob?" asked Sir George.

"They're aw reet. They'll ride," said Bob emphatically. When the horsemen wore round towards the group they were in boastful humour.

"I was up first," from Jack.

"I was off first," from Jim.

"Ay--on ground!"

"Nay, on pony! You were sitting on grass."

"You fell over t'other side."

"I'll fight you!" And in a moment they were off their steeds and locked in fight, to the great scandal of Gracie.

"Oh you dreadful boys!" And she danced wildly about them. "Didn't I tell you----"

"Stop it, boys!" And Eager laughingly shook them apart.

"The old Adam will out," he said to Sir George, who was enjoying them mightily.

"They've no lack of pluck. Keep 'em on right lines, Mr. Eager, and you'll make men of them. Now then, who's for next mount? Rafe, my lad, what do you say to a bareback?"

"Sooner have a saddle, sir," said young Harben, and sat tight on the paling.

"You, missie?" as Gracie danced imploringly before him. "Saddle up, Bob. . . . Well, I'm----!" as the ponies went off down the field again with the boys struggling up into position. "Oh, they'll do all right. I like their spirit."

When the ponies were captured, Gracie had her ride under Margaret's care, and expressed herself very plainly on the subject of side-saddles and the advantages of being a boy. And the boys took to saddle and stirrups as they had to the swimming.

"They'll ride," was Bob's final and emphatic verdict again.

Sir George insisted on their waiting for midday dinner, an experience which some of them enjoyed not at all and would gladly have escaped.

Gracie sat between Jack and Jim, and got very little dinner because of her maternal anxieties on their account. By incessant watchfulness on both sides at once she managed to keep them from any very dreadful exhibition of inexperience, but she got very red in the face over it, and rather short in the temper, which perhaps was not to be wondered at considering the state of her appetite and the many tempting dishes she had no time to do justice to.

The boys scuffled through somehow, with very wide eyes--to say nothing of mouths--for hitherto untasted delicacies. Mrs. Lee's commissariat tended to the solidly essential, and disdained luxuries for growing lads.

Muter Harben made the Little Lady's ears tingle more than once with an Appreciative guffaw at her protégés' solecisms, and if quick indignant glances could have pierced him he would have suffered sorely. As it was, Margaret frowned him back to decency, and George intimated in unmistakable gesture that punishment awaited him in the privacy of the immediate future.

But Jack and Jim, the prime causes of all this disturbance, ate on imperturbably, and followed the directions, conveyed by their monitress in brief fierce whispers and energetic side-kicks, to the best of their powers, so long as these imposed no undue restraint on the reduction of two healthy appetites.

And more than once Eager caught Sir George's eye resting thoughtfully on the pair, and knew what he was thinking.

"I suppose you know them apart?" he asked quietly, one time when Eager caught him watching them.

"Oh yes, I know them, but it took me a few days."

"A deuced troublesome business! No wonder the old man's gone sour over it. I don't see what he can do."

"He can do nothing but wait."

"And it's bitter waiting when the sands are running out."

On the way home the Little Lady blew away some of the froth of their exultation at their own prowess, by her biting comments on their shortcomings at table. But this new and grand addition to their lengthening list of acquirements overtopped everything else, and they exulted in spite of her.

"We stuck on barebacked, anyway," said Jim; "and what does it matter how you eat?"

"It matters a great deal if you want to be gentlemen," said Gracie vehemently.

"We're going to be soldiers," said Jack.

[CHAPTER XIV]