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THE DAY after they came home from the sea-side they set out on a tour of inspection to make sure everything was as they had left it. Soon they discovered that old Hobden had blocked their best hedge-gaps with stakes and thorn-bundles, and had trimmed up the hedges where the blackberries were setting.‘It can’t be time for the gipsies to come along,’ said Una. ‘Why, it was summer only the other day!’

‘There’s smoke in Low Shaw!’ said Dan, sniffing. ‘Let’s make sure!’

They crossed the fields towards the thin line of blue smoke that leaned above the hollow of Low Shaw which lies beside the King’s Hill road. It used to be an old quarry till somebody planted it, and you can look straight down into it from the edge of Banky Meadow.

‘I thought so,’ Dan whispered, as they came up to the fence at the edge of the larches. A gipsy-van—not the show-man’s sort, but the old black kind, with little windows high up and a baby-gate across the door—was getting ready to leave. A man was harnessing the horses; an old woman crouched over the ashes of a fire made out of broken fence-rails; and a girl sat on the van-steps singing to a baby on her lap. A wise-looking, thin dog snuffed at a patch of fur on the ground till the old woman put it carefully in the middle of the fire. The girl reached back inside the van and tossed her a paper parcel. This was laid on the fire too, and they smelt singed feathers.

‘Chicken feathers!’ said Dan. ‘I wonder if they are old Hobden’s.’

Una sneezed. The dog growled and crawled to the girl’s feet, the old woman fanned the fire with her hat, while the man led the horses up to the shafts, They all moved as quickly and quietly as snakes over moss.

‘Ah!’ said the girl. ‘I’ll teach you!’ She beat the dog, who seemed to expect it.

‘Don’t do that,’ Una called down. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’

‘How do you know what I’m beating him for?’ she answered.

‘For not seeing us,’ said Dan. ‘He was standing right in the smoke, and the wind was wrong for his nose, anyhow.’

The girl stopped beating the dog, and the old woman fanned faster than ever.

‘You’ve fanned some of your feathers out of the fire,’ said Una. ‘There’s a tail-feather by that chestnut-tot.’

‘What of it?’ said the old woman, as she grAbbéd it.

‘Oh, nothing!’ said Dan. ‘Only I’ve heard say that tail-feathers are as bad as the whole bird, sometimes.’

That was a saying of Hobden’s about pheasants. Old Hobden always burned all feather and fur before he sat down to eat.

‘Come on, mother,’ the man whispered. The old woman climbed into the van, and the horses drew it out of the deep-rutted shaw on to the hard road.

The girl waved her hands and shouted something they could not catch.

‘That was gipsy for “Thank you kindly, Brother and Sister,”’ said Pharaoh Lee.

He was standing behind them, his fiddle under his arm. ‘Gracious, you startled me!’ said Una.

‘You startled old Priscilla Savile,’ Puck called from below them. ‘Come and sit by their fire. She ought to have put it out before they left.’

They dropped down the ferny side of the shaw. Una raked the ashes together, Dan found a dead wormy oak branch that burns without flame, and they watched the smoke while Pharaoh played a curious wavery air.

‘That’s what the girl was humming to the baby,’ said Una.

‘I know it,’ he nodded, and went on:

He passed from one odd tune to another, and quite forgot the children. At last Puck asked him to go on with his adventures in Philadelphia and among the Seneca Indians.

‘I’m telling it,’ he said, staring straight in front of him as he played. ‘Can’t you hear?’

‘Maybe, but they can’t. Tell it aloud,’ said Puck.

Pharaoh shook himself, laid his fiddle beside him, and began:

‘I’d left Red Jacket and Cornplanter riding home with me after Big Hand had said that there wouldn’t be any war. That’s all there was to it. We believed Big Hand and we went home again—we three braves. When we reached Lebanon we found Toby at the cottage with his waistcoat a foot too big for him—so hard he had worked amongst the yellow-fever people. He beat me for running off with the Indians, but ’twas worth it—I was glad to see him,—and when we went back to Philadelphia for the winter, and I was told how he’d sacrificed himself over sick people in the yellow fever, I thought the world and all of him. No, I didn’t neither. I’d thought that all along. That yellow fever must have been something dreadful. Even in December people had no more than begun to trinkle back to town. Whole houses stood empty and (they)  was robbing them out. But I can’t call to mind that any of the Moravian Brethren had died. It seemed like they had just kept on with their own concerns, and the good Lord He’d just looked after ’em. That was the winter—yes, winter of ’Ninety-three—the Brethren bought a stove for the church. Toby spoke in favour of it because the cold spoiled his fiddle hand, but many thought stove-heat not in the Bible, and there was yet a third party which always brought hickory coal foot-warmers to service and wouldn’t speak either way. They ended by casting the Lot for it, which is like pitch-and-toss. After my summer with the Senecas, church-stoves didn’t highly interest me, so I took to haunting round among the French emigres which Philadelphia was full of. My French and my fiddling helped me there, d’ye see. They come over in shiploads from France, where, by what I made out, every one was killing every one else by any means, and they spread ’emselves about the city—mostly in Drinker’s Alley and Elfrith’s Alley—and they did odd jobs till times should mend. But whatever they stooped to, they were gentry and kept a cheerful countenance, and after an evening’s fiddling at one of their poor little proud parties, the Brethren seemed old-fashioned. Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goos didn’t like my fiddling for hire, but Toby said it was lawful in me to earn my living by exercising my talents. He never let me be put upon.

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‘In February of ’Ninety-four—No, March it must have been, because a new Ambassador called Faucher had come from France, with no more manners than Genet the old one—in March, Red Jacket came in from the Reservation bringing news of all kind friends there. I showed him round the city, and we saw General Washington riding through a crowd of folk that shouted for war with England. They gave him quite rough music, but he looked ’twixt his horse’s ears and made out not to notice. His stirrup brished Red Jacket’s elbow, and Red Jacket whispered up, “My brother knows it is not easy to be a chief.” Big Hand shot just one look at him and nodded. Then there was a scuffle behind us over some one who wasn’t hooting at Washington loud enough to please the people. We went away to be out of the fight. Indians won’t risk being hit.’

‘What do they do if they are?’ Dan asked.

‘Kill, of course. That’s why they have such proper manners. Well, then, coming home by Drinker’s Alley to get a new shirt which a French Vicomte’s lady was washing to take the stiff out of (I’m always choice in my body-linen) a lame Frenchman pushes a paper of buttons at us. He hadn’t long landed in the United States, and please would we buy. He sure-ly was a pitiful scrattel—his coat half torn off, his face cut, but his hands steady; so I knew it wasn’t drink. He said his name was Peringuey, and he’d been knocked about in the crowd round the Stadt—Independence Hall. One thing leading to another we took him up to Toby’s rooms, same as Red Jacket had taken me the year before. The compliments he paid to Toby’s Madeira wine fairly conquered the old man, for he opened a second bottle and he told this Monsieur Peringuey all about our great stove dispute in the church. I remember Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goos dropped in, and although they and Toby were direct opposite sides regarding stoves, yet this Monsieur Peringuey he made ’em feel as if he thought each one was in the right of it. He said he had been a clergyman before he had to leave France. He admired at Toby’s fiddling, and he asked if Red Jacket, sitting by the spinet, was a simple Huron. Senecas aren’t Hurons, they’re Iroquois, of course, and Toby told him so. Well, then, in due time he arose and left in a style which made us feel he’d been favouring us, instead of us feeding him. I’ve never seen that so strong before—in a man. We all talked him over but couldn’t make head or tail of him, and Red Jacket come out to walk with me to the French quarter where I was due to fiddle at a party. Passing Drinker’s Alley again we saw a naked window with a light in it, and there sat our button-selling Monsieur Peringuey throwing dice all alone, right hand against left.

‘Says Red Jacket, keeping back in the dark, “Look at his face!”

‘I was looking. I protest to you I wasn’t frightened like I was when Big Hand talked to his gentlemen. I—I only looked, and I wondered that even those dead dumb dice ’ud dare to fall different from what that face wished. It—it was a face!

‘“He is bad,” says Red Jacket. “But he is a great chief. The French have sent away a great chief. I thought so when he told us his lies. Now I know.”

‘I had to go on to the party, so I asked him to call round for me afterwards and we’d have hymn-singing at Toby’s as usual. “No,” he says. “Tell Toby I am not Christian tonight. All Indian.” He had those fits sometimes. I wanted to know more about Monsieur Peringuey, and the emigre party was the very place to find out. It’s neither here nor there, of course, but those French emigre parties they almost make you cry. The men that you bought fruit of in Market Street, the hairdressers and fencing-masters and French teachers, they turn back again by candlelight to what they used to be at home, and you catch their real names. There wasn’t much room in the washhouse, so I sat on top of the copper and played ’em the tunes they called for—“Si le Roi m’avait donne,” and such nursery stuff. They cried sometimes. It hurt me to take their money afterwards, indeed it did. And there I found out about Monsieur Peringuey. He was a proper rogue too! None of ’em had a good word for him except the Marquise that kept the French boarding-house on Fourth Street. I made out that his real name was the Count Talleyrand de Perigord—a priest right enough, but sorely come down in the world. He’d been King Louis’ Ambassador to England a year or two back, before the French had cut off King Louis’ head; and, by what I heard, that head wasn’t hardly more than hanging loose before he’d run back to Paris and prevailed on Danton, the very man which did the murder, to send him back to England again as Ambassador of the French Republic! That was too much for the English, so they kicked him out by Act of Parliament, and he’d fled to the Americas without money or friends or prospects. I’m telling you the talk in the washhouse. Some of ’em was laughing over it. Says the French Marquise, “My friends, you laugh too soon. That man ‘ll be on the winning side before any of us.”

‘“I did not know you were so fond of priests, Marquise,” says the Vicomte. His lady did my washing, as I’ve told you.

‘“I have my reasons,” says the Marquise. “He sent my uncle and my two brothers to Heaven by the little door,”—that was one of the emigre names for the guillotine. “He will be on the winning side if it costs him the blood of every friend he has in the world.”

‘“Then what does he want here?” says one of ’em. “We have all lost our game.”

‘“My faith!” says the Marquise. “He will find out, if any one can, whether this canaille of a Washington means to help us to fight England. Genet” (that was my Ambassador in the Embuscade) “has failed and gone off disgraced; Faucher” (he was the new man) “hasn’t done any better, but our Abbé will find out, and he will make his profit out of the news. Such a man does not fall.”

‘“He begins unluckily,” says the Vicomte. “He was set upon today in the street for not hooting your Washington.” They all laughed again, and one remarks, “How does the poor devil keep himself?”

‘He must have slipped in through the washhouse door, for he flits past me and joins ’em, cold as ice.

‘“One does what one can,” he says. “I sell buttons. And you, Marquise?”

‘“I?”—she waves her poor white hands all burned—“I am a cook—a very bad one—at your service, Abbé. We were just talking about you.”

‘They didn’t treat him like they talked of him. They backed off and stood still.

‘“I have missed something, then,” he says. “But I spent this last hour playing—only for buttons, Marquise—against a noble savage, the veritable Huron himself.”

‘“You had your usual luck, I hope?” she says.

‘“Certainly,” he says. “I cannot afford to lose even buttons in these days.”

‘“Then I suppose the child of nature does not know that your dice are usually loaded, Father Tout-a-tous,” she continues. I don’t know whether she meant to accuse him of cheating. He only bows. ‘“Not yet, Mademoiselle Cunegonde,” he says, and goes on to make himself agreeable to the rest of the company. And that was how I found out our Monsieur Peringuey was Count Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord.’

Pharaoh stopped, but the children said nothing.

‘You’ve heard of him?’ said Pharaoh.

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Una shook her head. ‘Was Red Jacket the Indian he played dice with?’ Dan asked.

‘He was. Red Jacket told me the next time we met. I asked if the lame man had cheated. Red Jacket said no—he had played quite fair and was a master player. I allow Red Jacket knew. I’ve seen him, on the Reservation, play himself out of everything he had and in again. Then I told Red Jacket all I’d heard at the party concerning Talleyrand.

‘“I was right,” he says. “I saw the man’s war-face when he thought he was alone. That’s why I played him. I played him face to face. He’s a great chief. Do they say why he comes here?”

‘“They say he comes to find out if Big Hand makes war against the English,” I said.

‘Red Jacket grunted. “Yes,” he says. “He asked me that too. If he had been a small chief I should have lied. But he is a great chief. He knew I was a chief, so I told him the truth. I told him what Big Hand said to Cornplanter and me in the clearing—‘There will be no war.’ I could not see what he thought. I could not see behind his face. But he is a great chief. He will believe.’

‘“Will he believe that Big Hand can keep his people back from war?” I said, thinking of the crowds that hooted Big Hand whenever he rode out.

‘“He is as bad as Big Hand is good, but he is not as strong as Big Hand,” says Red Jacket. “When he talks with Big Hand he will feel this in his heart. The French have sent away a great chief. Presently he will go back and make them afraid.”

‘Now wasn’t that comical? The French woman that knew him and owed all her losses to him; the Indian that picked him up, cut and muddy on the street, and played dice with him; they neither of ’em doubted that Talleyrand was something by himself—appearances notwithstanding.’

‘And was he something by himself?’ asked Una.

Pharaoh began to laugh, but stopped. ‘The way I look at it,’he said, ‘Talleyrand was one of just three men in this world who are quite by themselves. Big Hand I put first, because I’ve seen him.’

‘Ay,’ said Puck. ‘I’m sorry we lost him out of Old England. Who d’you put second?’

‘Talleyrand: maybe because I’ve seen him too,’ said Pharaoh.

‘Who’s third?’said Puck.

‘Boney—even though I’ve seen him.’

‘Whew!’ said Puck. ‘Every man has his own weights and measures, but that’s queer reckoning.’

‘Boney?’ said Una. ‘You don’t mean you’ve ever met Napoleon Bonaparte?’

‘There, I knew you wouldn’t have patience with the rest of my tale after hearing that! But wait a minute. Talleyrand he come round to Hundred and Eighteen in a day or two to thank Toby for his kindness. I didn’t mention the dice-playing, but I could see that Red Jacket’s doings had made Talleyrand highly curious about Indians—though he would call him the Huron. Toby, as you may believe, was all holds full of knowledge concerning their manners and habits. He only needed a listener. The Brethren don’t study Indians much till they join the Church, but Toby knew ’em wild. So evening after evening Talleyrand crossed his sound leg over his game one and Toby poured forth. Having been adopted into the Senecas I, naturally, kept still, but Toby ’ud call on me to back up some of his remarks, and by that means, and a habit he had of drawing you on in talk, Talleyrand saw I knew something of his noble savages too. Then he tried a trick. Coming back from an emigre party he turns into his little shop and puts it to me, laughing like, that I’d gone with the two chiefs on their visit to Big Hand. I hadn’t told. Red Jacket hadn’t told, and Toby, of course, didn’t know. ’Twas just Talleyrand’s guess. “Now,” he says, my English and Red Jacket’s French was so bad that I am not sure I got the rights of what the President really said to the unsophisticated Huron. Do me the favour of telling it again.” I told him every word Red Jacket had told him and not one word more. I had my suspicions, having just come from an emigre party where the Marquise was hating and praising him as usual.

‘“Much obliged,” he said. “But I couldn’t gather from Red Jacket exactly what the President said to Monsieur Genet, or to his American gentlemen after Monsieur Genet had ridden away.”

‘I saw Talleyrand was guessing again, for Red Jacket hadn’t told him a word about the white men’s pow-wow.’

‘Why hadn’t he?’ Puck asked.

‘Because Red Jacket was a chief. He told Talleyrand what the President had said to him and Cornplanter; but he didn’t repeat the talk, between the white men, that Big Hand ordered him to leave behind.’

‘Oh!’ said Puck. ‘I see. What did you do?’

‘First I was going to make some sort of tale round it, but Talleyrand was a chief too. So I said, “As soon as I get Red Jacket’s permission to tell that part of the tale, I’ll be delighted to refresh your memory, Abbé.” What else could I have done?

‘“Is that all?” he says, laughing. “Let me refresh your memory. In a month from now I can give you a hundred dollars for your account of the conversation.”

‘“Make it five hundred, Abbé,” I says. ‘”Five, then,” says he.

‘“That will suit me admirably,” I says. “Red Jacket will be in town again by then, and the moment he gives me leave I’ll claim the money.”

‘He had a hard fight to be civil, but he come out smiling.

‘“Monsieur,” he says, “I beg your pardon as sincerely as I envy the noble Huron your loyalty. Do me the honour to sit down while I explain.”

‘There wasn’t another chair, so I sat on the button-box.

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‘He was a clever man. He had got hold of the gossip that the President meant to make a peace treaty with England at any cost. He had found out—from Genet, I reckon, who was with the President on the day the two chiefs met him. He’d heard that Genet had had a huff with the President and had ridden off leaving his business at loose ends. What he wanted—what he begged and blustered to know—was just the very words which the President had said to his gentlemen after Genet had left, concerning the peace treaty with England. He put it to me that in helping him to those very words I’d be helping three great countries as well as mankind. The room was as bare as the palm of your hand, but I couldn’t laugh at him.

‘“I’m sorry,” I says, when he wiped his forehead. “As soon as Red Jacket gives permission—”

‘“You don’t believe me, then?” he cuts in.

‘“Not one little, little word, Abbé,” I says; “except that you mean to be on the winning side. Remember, I’ve been fiddling to all your old friends for months.”

‘Well, then his temper fled him and he called me names.

‘“Wait a minute, ci-devant,” I says at last. “I am half English and half French, but I am not the half of a man. I will tell thee something the Indian told me. Has thee seen the President?”

‘“Oh yes!” he sneers. “I had letters from the Lord Lansdowne to that estimable old man.”

‘“Then,” I says, “thee will understand. The Red Skin said that when thee has met the President thee will feel in thy heart he is a stronger man than thee.”

‘“Go!” he whispers. “Before I kill thee, go.”

‘He looked like it. So I left him.’

‘Why did he want to know so badly?’ said Dan.

‘The way I look at it is that if he had known for certain that Washington meant to make the peace treaty with England at any price, he’d ha’ left old Faucher fumbling about in Philadelphia while he went straight back to France and told old Danton—“It’s no good your wasting time and hopes on the United States, because she won’t fight on our side—that I’ve proof of!” Then Danton might have been grateful and given Talleyrand a job, because a whole mass of things hang on knowing for sure who’s your friend and who’s your enemy. just think of us poor shop-keepers, for instance.’

‘Did Red Jacket let you tell, when he came back?’ Una asked.

‘Of course not. He said, “When Cornplanter and I ask you what Big Hand said to the whites you can tell the Lame Chief. All that talk was left behind in the timber, as Big Hand ordered. Tell the Lame Chief there will be no war. He can go back to France with that word.”

‘Talleyrand and me hadn’t met for a long time except at emigre parties. When I give him the message he just shook his head. He was sorting buttons in the shop.

‘I cannot return to France with nothing better than the word of an unsophisticated savage,” he says.

‘“Hasn’t the President said anything to you?” I asked him.

‘“He has said everything that one in his position ought to say, but—but if only I had what he said to his Cabinet after Genet rode off I believe I could change Europe—the world, maybe.”

‘“I’m sorry,” I says. “Maybe you’ll do that without my help.”

‘He looked at me hard. “Either you have unusual observation for one so young, or you choose to be insolent,” he says.

‘“It was intended for a compliment,” I says. “But no odds. We’re off in a few days for our summer trip, and I’ve come to make my good-byes.”

‘“I go on my travels too,” he says. “If ever we meet again you may be sure I will do my best to repay what I owe you.”

‘“Without malice, Abbé, I hope,” I says.

‘“None whatever,” says he. “Give my respects to your adorable Dr Pangloss” (that was one of his side-names for Toby) “and the Huron.” I never could teach him the difference betwixt Hurons and Senecas.

‘Then Sister Haga came in for a paper of what we call “pilly buttons,” and that was the last I saw of Talleyrand in those parts.’

‘But after that you met Napoleon, didn’t you?’ said Una.

‘Wait Just a little, dearie. After that, Toby and I went to Lebanon and the Reservation, and, being older and knowing better how to manage him, I enjoyed myself well that summer with fiddling and fun. When we came back, the Brethren got after Toby because I wasn’t learning any lawful trade, and he had hard work to save me from being apprenticed to Helmbold and Geyer the printers. ’Twould have ruined our music together, indeed it would. And when we escaped that, old Mattes Roush, the leather-breeches maker round the corner, took a notion I was cut out for skin-dressing. But we were rescued. Along towards Christmas there comes a big sealed letter from the Bank saying that a Monsieur Talleyrand had put five hundred dollars—a hundred pounds—to my credit there to use as I pleased. There was a little note from him inside—he didn’t give any address—to thank me for past kindnesses and my believing in his future, which he said was pretty cloudy at the time of writing. I wished Toby to share the money. I hadn’t done more than bring Talleyrand up to Hundred and Eighteen. The kindnesses were Toby’s. But Toby said, “No! Liberty and Independence for ever. I have all my wants, my son.” So I gave him a set of new fiddle-strings, and the Brethren didn’t advise us any more. Only Pastor Meder he preached about the deceitfulness of riches, and Brother Adam Goos said if there was war the English ’ud surely shoot down the Bank. I knew there wasn’t going to be any war, but I drew the money out and on Red Jacket’s advice I put it into horse-flesh, which I sold to Bob Bicknell for the Baltimore stage-coaches. That way, I doubled my money inside the twelvemonth.’

‘You gipsy! You proper gipsy!’ Puck shouted.

‘Why not? ’Twas fair buying and selling. Well, one thing leading to another, in a few years I had made the beginning of a worldly fortune and was in the tobacco trade.’

‘Ah!’ said Puck, suddenly. ‘Might I inquire if you’d ever sent any news to your people in England—or in France?’

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‘O’ course I had. I wrote regular every three months after I’d made money in the horse trade. We Lees don’t like coming home empty-handed. If it’s only a turnip or an egg, it’s something. Oh yes, I wrote good and plenty to Uncle Aurette, and—Dad don’t read very quickly—Uncle used to slip over Newhaven way and tell Dad what was going on in the tobacco trade.’

‘I see—

Go on, Brother Square-toes,’ said Puck. Pharaoh laughed and went on.

‘Talleyrand he’d gone up in the world same as me. He’d sailed to France again, and was a great man in the Government there awhile, but they had to turn him out on account of some story about bribes from American shippers. All our poor emigres said he was surely finished this time, but Red Jacket and me we didn’t think it likely, not unless he was quite dead. Big Hand had made his peace treaty with Great Britain, just as he said he would, and there was a roaring trade ’twixt England and the United States for such as ’ud take the risk of being searched by British and French men-o’-war. Those two was fighting, and just as his gentlemen told Big Hand ’ud happen—the United States was catching it from both. If an English man-o’-war met an American ship he’d press half the best men out of her, and swear they was British subjects. Most of ’em was! If a Frenchman met her he’d, likely, have the cargo out of her, swearing it was meant to aid and comfort the English; and if a Spaniard or a Dutchman met her—they was hanging on to England’s coat-tails too—Lord only knows what they wouldn’t do! It came over me that what I wanted in my tobacco trade was a fast-sailing ship and a man who could be French, English, or American at a pinch. Luckily I could lay my hands on both articles. So along towards the end of September in the year ’Ninety-nine I sailed from Philadelphia with a hundred and eleven hogshead o’ good Virginia tobacco, in the brig Berthe Aurette, named after Mother’s maiden name, hoping ’twould bring me luck, which she didn’t—and yet she did.’

‘Where was you bound for?’ Puck asked.

‘Er—any port I found handiest. I didn’t tell Toby or the Brethren. They don’t understand the ins and outs of the tobacco trade.’

Puck coughed a small cough as he shifted a piece of wood with his bare foot.

‘It’s easy for you to sit and judge,’ Pharaoh cried. ‘But think o’ what we had to put up with! We spread our wings and run across the broad Atlantic like a hen through a horse-fair. Even so, we was stopped by an English frigate, three days out. He sent a boat alongside and pressed seven able seamen. I remarked it was hard on honest traders, but the officer said they was fighting all creation and hadn’t time to argue. The next English frigate we escaped with no more than a shot in our quarter. Then we was chased two days and a night by a French privateer, firing between squalls, and the dirty little English ten-gun brig which made him sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men. That’s how we reached to the chops of the Channel. Twelve good men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close beside our rudder; our mainsail looking like spectacles where the Frenchman had hit us—and the Channel crawling with short-handed British cruisers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it next time you grumble at the price of tobacco!

‘Well, then, to top it off, while we was trying to get at our leaks, a French lugger come swooping at us out o’ the dusk. We warned him to keep away, but he fell aboard us, and up climbed his JAbbéring red-caps. We couldn’t endure any more—indeed we couldn’t. We went at ’em with all we could lay hands on. It didn’t last long. They was fifty odd to our twenty-three. Pretty soon I heard the cutlasses thrown down and some one bellowed for the sacri captain.

‘“Here I am!” I says. “I don’t suppose it makes any odds to you thieves, but this is the United States brig Berthe Aurette.”

‘“My aunt!” the man says, laughing. “Why is she named that?”

‘“Who’s speaking?” I said. ’Twas too dark to see, but I thought I knew the voice.

‘“Enseigne de Vaisseau Estephe L’Estrange,” he sings out, and then I was sure.

‘“Oh!” I says. “It’s all in the family, I suppose, but you have done a fine day’s work, Stephen.”

‘He whips out the binnacle-light and holds it to my face. He was young L’Estrange, my full cousin, that I hadn’t seen since the night the smack sank off Telscombe Tye—six years before.

‘“Whew!” he says. “That’s why she was named for Aunt Berthe, is it? What’s your share in her, Pharaoh?”

‘“Only half owner, but the cargo’s mine.”

‘“That’s bad,” he says. “I’ll do what I can, but you shouldn’t have fought us.”

‘“Steve,” I says, “you aren’t ever going to report our little fall-out as a fight! Why, a Revenue cutter ’ud laugh at it!”

‘“So’d I if I wasn’t in the Republican Navy,” he says. “But two of our men are dead, d’ye see, and I’m afraid I’ll have to take you to the Prize Court at Le Havre.”

‘“Will they condemn my ’baccy?” I asks.

‘“To the last ounce. But I was thinking more of the ship. She’d make a sweet little craft for the Navy if the Prize Court ’ud let me have her,” he says.

‘Then I knew there was no hope. I don’t blame him—a man must consider his own interests, but nigh every dollar I had was in ship or cargo, and Steve kept on saying, “You shouldn’t have fought us.”

‘Well, then, the lugger took us to Le Havre, and that being the one time we did want a British ship to rescue us, why, o’ course we never saw one. My cousin spoke his best for us at the Prize Court. He owned he’d no right to rush alongside in the face o’ the United States flag, but we couldn’t get over those two men killed, d’ye see, and the Court condemned both ship and cargo. They was kind enough not to make us prisoners—only beggars—and young L’Estrange was given the Berthe Aurette to re-arm into the French Navy.

‘”I’ll take you round to Boulogne,” he says. “Mother and the rest’ll be glad to see you, and you can slip over to Newhaven with Uncle Aurette. Or you can ship with me, like most o’ your men, and take a turn at King George’s loose trade. There’s plenty pickings,” he says.

‘Crazy as I was, I couldn’t help laughing.

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‘“I’ve had my allowance of pickings and stealings,” I says. “Where are they taking my tobacco?” ’Twas being loaded on to a barge.

‘“Up the Seine to be sold in Paris,” he says. “Neither you nor I will ever touch a penny of that money.”

‘“Get me leave to go with it,” I says. “I’ll see if there’s justice to be gotten out of our American Ambassador.”

‘“There’s not much justice in this world,” he says, “without a Navy.” But he got me leave to go with the barge and he gave me some money. That tobacco was all I had, and I followed it like a hound follows a snatched bone. Going up the river I fiddled a little to keep my spirits up, as well as to make friends with the guard. They was only doing their duty. Outside o’ that they were the reasonablest o’ God’s creatures. They never even laughed at me. So we come to Paris, by river, along in November, which the French had christened Brumaire. They’d given new names to all the months, and after such an outrageous silly piece o’ business as that, they wasn’t likely to trouble ’emselves with my rights and wrongs. They didn’t. The barge was laid up below Notre Dame church in charge of a caretaker, and he let me sleep aboard after I’d run about all day from office to office, seeking justice and fair dealing, and getting speeches concerning liberty. None heeded me. Looking back on it I can’t rightly blame ’em. I’d no money, my clothes was filthy mucked; I hadn’t changed my linen in weeks, and I’d no proof of my claims except the ship’s papers, which, they said, I might have stolen. The thieves! The door-keeper to the American Ambassador—for I never saw even the Secretary—he swore I spoke French a sight too well for an American citizen. Worse than that—I had spent my money, d’ye see, and I—I took to fiddling in the streets for my keep; and—and, a ship’s captain with a fiddle under his arm—well, I don’t blame ’em that they didn’t believe me.

‘I come back to the barge one day—late in this month Brumaire it was—fair beazled out. Old Maingon, the caretaker, he’d lit a fire in a bucket and was grilling a herring.

‘“Courage, mon ami,” he says. “Dinner is served.”

‘“I can’t eat,” I says. “I can’t do any more. It’s stronger than I am.”

‘“Bah!” he says. “Nothing’s stronger than a man. Me, for example! Less than two years ago I was blown up in the Orient in Aboukir Bay, but I descended again and hit the water like a fairy. Look at me now,” he says. He wasn’t much to look at, for he’d only one leg and one eye, but the cheerfullest soul that ever trod shoe-leather. “That’s worse than a hundred and eleven hogshead of ’baccy,” he goes on. “You’re young, too! What wouldn’t I give to be young in France at this hour! There’s nothing you couldn’t do,” he says. “The ball’s at your feet—kick it!” he says. He kicks the old fire-bucket with his peg-leg. “General Buonaparte, for example!” he goes on. “That man’s a babe compared to me, and see what he’s done already. He’s conquered Egypt and Austria and Italy—oh! half Europe!” he says, “and now he sails back to Paris, and he sails out to St Cloud down the river here—don’t stare at the river, you young fool! —and all in front of these pig-jobbing lawyers and citizens he makes himself Consul, which is as good as a King. He’ll be King, too, in the next three turns of the capstan—King of France, England, and the world! Think o’ that!” he shouts, “and eat your herring.”

‘I says something about Boney. If he hadn’t been fighting England I shouldn’t have lost my ’baccy—should I?

‘“Young fellow,” says Maingon, “you don’t understand.”

‘We heard cheering. A carriage passed over the bridge with two in it. ‘“That’s the man himself,” says Maingon. “He’ll give ’em something to cheer for soon.” He stands at the salute.

‘“Who’s t’other in black beside him?” I asks, fairly shaking all over.

‘“Ah! he’s the clever one. You’ll hear of him before long. He’s that scoundrel-bishop, Talleyrand.”

‘“It is!” I said, and up the steps I went with my fiddle, and run after the carriage calling, “Abbé, Abbé!”

‘A soldier knocked the wind out of me with the back of his sword, but I had sense to keep on following till the carriage stopped—and there just was a crowd round the house-door! I must have been half-crazy else I wouldn’t have struck up “Si le Roi m’avait donne Paris la grande ville!” I thought it might remind him.

‘“That is a good omen!” he says to Boney sitting all hunched up; and he looks straight at me.

‘“Abbé—oh, Abbé!” I says. “Don’t you remember Toby and Hundred and Eighteen Second Street?”

‘He said not a word. He just crooked his long white finger to the guard at the door while the carriage steps were let down, and I skipped into the house, and they slammed the door in the crowd’s face. ‘“You go there,” says a soldier, and shoves me into an empty room, where I catched my first breath since I’d left the barge. Presently I heard plates rattling next door—there were only folding doors between—and a cork drawn. “I tell you,” someone shouts with his mouth full, “it was all that sulky ass Sieyes’ fault. Only my speech to the Five Hundred saved the situation.”

‘“Did it save your coat?” says Talleyrand. “I hear they tore it when they threw you out. Don’t gasconade to me. You may be in the road of victory, but you aren’t there yet.”

‘Then I guessed t’other man was Boney. He stamped about and swore at Talleyrand.

‘“You forget yourself, Consul,” says Talleyrand, “or rather you remember yourself—Corsican.”

‘“Pig!” says Boney, and worse.

‘“Emperor!” says Talleyrand, but, the way he spoke, it sounded worst of all. Some one must have backed against the folding doors, for they flew open and showed me in the middle of the room. Boney whipped out his pistol before I could stand up.

“General,” says Talleyrand to him, “this gentleman has a habit of catching us canaille en deshabille. Put that thing down.”

‘Boney laid it on the table, so I guessed which was master. Talleyrand takes my hand—“Charmed to see you again, Candide,” he says. “How is the adorable Dr Pangloss and the noble Huron?”

‘“They were doing very well when I left,” I said. “But I’m not.”

‘“Do you sell buttons now?” he says, and fills me a glass of wine off the table.

‘“Madeira,” says he. “Not so good as some I have drunk.”

‘“You mountebank!” Boney roars. “Turn that out.” (He didn’t even say “man,” but Talleyrand, being gentle born, just went on.)

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‘“Pheasant is not so good as pork,” he says. “You will find some at that table if you will do me the honour to sit down. Pass him a clean plate, General.” And, as true as I’m here, Boney slid a plate along just like a sulky child. He was a lanky-haired, yellow-skinned little man, as nervous as a cat—and as dangerous. I could feel that.

‘“And now,” said Talleyrand, crossing his game leg over his sound one, “will you tell me your story?”

‘I was in a fluster, but I told him nearly everything from the time he left me the five hundred dollars in Philadelphia, up to my losing ship and cargo at Le Havre. Boney began by listening, but after a bit he dropped into his own thoughts and looked at the crowd sideways through the front-room curtains. Talleyrand called to him when I’d done.

‘“Eh? What we need now,” says Boney, “is peace for the next three or four years.”

‘“Quite so,” says Talleyrand. “Meantime I want the Consul’s order to the Prize Court at Le Havre to restore my friend here his ship.”

‘“Nonsense!” says Boney. “Give away an oak-built brig of two hundred and seven tons for sentiment? Certainly not! She must be armed into my Navy with ten—no, fourteen twelve- pounders and two long fours. Is she strong enough to bear a long twelve forward?”

‘Now I could ha’ sworn he’d paid no heed to my talk, but that wonderful head-piece of his seemingly skimmed off every word of it that was useful to him.

‘“Ah, General!” says Talleyrand. “You are a magician—a magician without morals. But the brig is undoubtedly American, and we don’t want to offend them more than we have. “

‘“Need anybody talk about the affair?” he says. He didn’t look at me, but I knew what was in his mind—just cold murder because I worried him; and he’d order it as easy as ordering his carriage.

‘“You can’t stop ’em,” I said. “There’s twenty-two other men besides me.” I felt a little more ’ud set me screaming like a wired hare.

‘“Undoubtedly American,” Talleyrand goes on. “You would gain something if you returned the ship—with a message of fraternal good-will—published in the Moniteur” (that’s a French paper like the Philadelphia Aurora).

‘“A good idea!” Boney answers. “One could say much in a message.”

‘“It might be useful,” says Talleyrand. “Shall I have the message prepared?” He wrote something in a little pocket ledger.

‘“Yes—for me to embellish this evening. The Moniteur will publish it tonight.”

‘“Certainly. Sign, please,” says Talleyrand, tearing the leaf out.

‘“But that’s the order to return the brig,” says Boney. “Is that necessary? Why should I lose a good ship? Haven’t I lost enough ships already?”

‘Talleyrand didn’t answer any of those questions. Then Boney sidled up to the table and jabs his pen into the ink. Then he shies at the paper again: “My signature alone is useless,” he says. “You must have the other two Consuls as well. Sieyes and Roger Ducos must sign. We must preserve the Laws.”

‘“By the time my friend presents it,” says Talleyrand, still looking out of window, “only one signature will be necessary.”

‘Boney smiles. “It’s a swindle,” says he, but he signed and pushed the paper across.

‘“Give that to the President of the Prize Court at Le Havre,” says Talleyrand, “and he will give you back your ship. I will settle for the cargo myself. You have told me how much it cost. What profit did you expect to make on it?”

‘Well, then, as man to man, I was bound to warn him that I’d set out to run it into England without troubling the Revenue, and so I couldn’t rightly set bounds to my profits.’

‘I guessed that all along,’ said Puck.

The children laughed.

‘It’s comical enough now,’ said Pharaoh. ‘But I didn’t laugh then. Says Talleyrand after a minute, “I am a bad accountant and I have several calculations on hand at present. Shall we say twice the cost of the cargo?”

‘Say? I couldn’t say a word. I sat choking and nodding like a China image while he wrote an order to his secretary to pay me, I won’t say how much, because you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘“Oh! Bless you, Abbé! God bless you!” I got it out at last.

‘“Yes,” he says, “I am a priest in spite of myself, but they call me Bishop now. Take this for my episcopal blessing,” and he hands me the paper.

‘“He stole all that money from me,” says Boney over my shoulder. “A Bank of France is another of the things we must make. Are you mad?” he shouts at Talleyrand.

‘“Quite,” says Talleyrand, getting up. “But be calm. The disease will never attack you. It is called gratitude. This gentleman found me in the street and fed me when I was hungry.”

‘”I see; and he has made a fine scene of it, and you have paid him, I suppose. Meantime, France waits. “

‘“Oh! poor France!” says Talleyrand. “Good-bye, Candide,” he says to me. “By the way,” he says, “have you yet got Red Jacket’s permission to tell me what the President said to his Cabinet after Monsieur Genet rode away?”

‘I couldn’t speak, I could only shake my head, and Boney—so impatient he was to go on with his doings—he ran at me and fair pushed me out of the room. And that was all there was to it.’ Pharaoh stood up and slid his fiddle into one of his big skirt-pockets as though it were a dead hare.

‘Oh! but we want to know lots and lots more,’said Dan. ‘How you got home—and what old Maingon said on the barge—and wasn’t your cousin surprised when he had to give back the Berthe Aurette, and—’

‘Tell us more about Toby!’ cried Una.

‘Yes, and Red Jacket,’ said Dan.

‘Won’t you tell us any more?’ they both pleaded.

Puck kicked the oak branch on the fire, till it sent up a column of smoke that made them sneeze. When they had finished the Shaw was empty except for old Hobden stamping through the larches.

‘They gipsies have took two,’he said. “My black pullet and my liddle gingy-speckled cockrel.’

‘I thought so,’ said Dan, picking up one tail-feather that the old woman had overlooked.

‘Which way did they go? Which way did the runagates go?’ said Hobden.

‘Hobby!’ said Una. ‘Would you like it if we told Keeper Ridley all your goings and comings?’

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IT WAS almost the end of their visit to the seaside. They had turned themselves out of doors while their trunks were being packed, and strolled over the Downs towards the dull evening sea. The tide was dead low under the chalk cliffs, and the little wrinkled waves grieved along the sands up the coast to Newhaven and down the coast to long, grey Brighton, whose smoke trailed out across the Channel.

They walked to The Gap, where the cliff is only a few feet high. A windlass for hoisting shingle from the beach below stands at the edge of it. The Coastguard cottages are a little farther on, and an old ship’s figurehead of a Turk in a turban stared at them over the wall.

‘This time tomorrow we shall be at home, thank goodness,’ said Una. ‘I hate the sea!’

‘I believe it’s all right in the middle,’ said Dan. ‘The edges are the sorrowful parts.’

Cordery, the coastguard, came out of the cottage, levelled his telescope at some fishing-boats, shut it with a click and walked away. He grew smaller and smaller along the edge of the cliff, where neat piles of white chalk every few yards show the path even on the darkest night.

‘Where’s Cordery going?’ said Una.

‘Half-way to Newhaven,’ said Dan. ‘Then he’ll meet the Newhaven coastguard and turn back. He says if coastguards were done away with, smuggling would start up at once.’

A voice on the beach under the cliff began to sing:

Feet scrabbled on the flinty path. A dark, thin-faced man in very neat brown clothes and broad-toed shoes came up, followed by Puck.

‘Hssh!’ said Puck. ‘You’ll shock these nice young people.’

‘Oh! Shall I? Mille pardons!’ He shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears—spread his hands abroad, and jabbered in French. ‘No comprenny?’ he said. ‘I’ll give it you in Low German.’ And he went off in another language, changing his voice and manner so completely that they hardly knew him for the same person. But his dark beady-brown eyes still twinkled merrily in his lean face, and the children felt that they did not suit the straight, plain, snuffy-brown coat, brown knee-breeches, and broad-brimmed hat. His hair was tied in a short pigtail which danced wickedly when he turned his head.

‘Ha’ done!’ said Puck, laughing. ‘Be one thing or t’other, Pharaoh—French or English or German—no great odds which.’

‘Oh, but it is, though,’ said Una quickly. ‘We haven’t begun German yet, and—and we’re going back to our French next week.’

‘Aren’t you English?’ said Dan. ‘We heard you singing just now.’

‘Aha! That was the Sussex side o’ me. Dad he married a French girl out o’ Boulogne, and French she stayed till her dyin’ day. She was an Aurette, of course. We Lees mostly marry Aurettes. Haven’t you ever come across the saying:

‘Then, are you a smuggler?’ Una cried; and, ‘Have you smuggled much?’ said Dan.

Mr Lee nodded solemnly.

‘Mind you,’ said he, ‘I don’t uphold smuggling for the generality o’ mankind—mostly they can’t make a do of it—but I was brought up to the trade, d’ye see, in a lawful line o’ descent on’—he waved across the Channel—‘on both sides the water. ’Twas all in the families, same as fiddling. The Aurettes used mostly to run the stuff across from Boulogne, and we Lees landed it here and ran it up to London Town, by the safest road.’

‘Then where did you live?’ said Una.

‘You mustn’t ever live too close to your business in our trade. We kept our little fishing smack at Shoreham, but otherwise we Lees was all honest cottager folk—at Warminghurst under Washington—Bramber way—on the old Penn estate.’

‘Ah!’ said Puck, squatted by the windlass. ‘I remember a piece about the Lees at Warminghurst, I do:

I reckon that’s truth, Pharaoh.’

Pharaoh laughed. ‘Admettin’ that’s true,’ he said, ‘my gipsy blood must be wore pretty thin, for I’ve made and kept a worldly fortune.’

‘By smuggling?’ Dan asked.

‘No, in the tobacco trade.’

‘You don’t mean to say you gave up smuggling just to go and be a tobacconist!’ Dan looked so disappointed they all had to laugh.

‘I’m sorry; but there’s all sorts of tobacconists,’ Pharaoh replied. ‘How far out, now, would you call that smack with the patch on her foresail?’ He pointed to the fishing-boats.

‘A scant mile,’ said Puck after a quick look.

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‘Just about. It’s seven fathom under her—clean sand. That was where Uncle Aurette used to sink his brandy kegs from Boulogne, and we fished ’em up and rowed ’em into The Gap here for the ponies to run inland. One thickish night in January of ’Ninety-three, Dad and Uncle Lot and me came over from Shoreham in the smack, and we found Uncle Aurette and the L’Estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in their lugger with New Year’s presents from Mother’s folk in Boulogne. I remember Aunt Cecile she’d sent me a fine new red knitted cap, which I put on then and there, for the French was having their Revolution in those days, and red caps was all the fashion. Uncle Aurette tells us that they had cut off their King Louis’ head, and, moreover, the Brest forts had fired on an English man-o’-war. The news wasn’t a week old.

‘“That means war again, when we was only just getting used to the peace,” says Dad. “Why can’t King George’s men and King Louis’ men do on their uniforms and fight it out over our heads?”

‘“Me too, I wish that,” says Uncle Aurette. “But they’ll be pressing better men than themselves to fight for ’em. The press-gangs are out already on our side. You look out for yours.”

‘“I’ll have to bide ashore and grow cabbages for a while, after I’ve run this cargo; but I do wish”—Dad says, going over the lugger’s side with our New Year presents under his arm and young L’Estrange holding the lantern—“I just do wish that those folk which make war so easy had to run one cargo a month all this winter. It ’ud show ’em what honest work means.”

‘“Well, I’ve warned ye,” says Uncle Aurette. “I’ll be slipping off now before your Revenue cutter comes. Give my love to Sister and take care o’ the kegs. It’s thicking to southward.” ‘I remember him waving to us and young Stephen L’Estrange blowing out the lantern. By the time we’d fished up the kegs the fog came down so thick Dad judged it risky for me to row ’em ashore, even though we could hear the ponies stamping on the beach. So he and Uncle Lot took the dinghy and left me in the smack playing on my fiddle to guide ’em back.

‘Presently I heard guns. Two of ’em sounded mighty like Uncle Aurette’s three-pounders. He didn’t go naked about the seas after dark. Then come more, which I reckoned was Captain Giddens in the Revenue cutter. He was open-handed with his compliments, but he would lay his guns himself. I stopped fiddling to listen, and I heard a whole skyful o’ French up in the fog—and a high bow come down on top o’ the smack. I hadn’t time to call or think. I remember the smack heeling over, and me standing on the gunwale pushing against the ship’s side as if I hoped to bear her off. Then the square of an open port, with a lantern in it, slid by in front of my nose. I kicked back on our gunwale as it went under and slipped through that port into the French ship—me and my fiddle.’

‘Gracious!’ said Una. ‘What an adventure!’

‘Didn’t anybody see you come in?’ said Dan.

‘There wasn’t any one there. I’d made use of an orlop-deck port—that’s the next deck below the gun-deck, which by rights should not have been open at all. The crew was standing by their guns up above. I rolled on to a pile of dunnage in the dark and I went to sleep. When I woke, men was talking all round me, telling each other their names and sorrows just like Dad told me pressed men used to talk in the last war. Pretty soon I made out they’d all been hove aboard together by the press-gangs, and left to sort ’emselves. The ship she was the Embuscade, a thirty-six-gun Republican frigate, Captain Jean Baptiste Bompard, two days out of Le Havre, going to the United States with a Republican French Ambassador of the name of Genet. They had been up all night clearing for action on account of hearing guns in the fog. Uncle Aurette and Captain Giddens must have been passing the time o’ day with each other off Newhaven, and the frigate had drifted past ’em. She never knew she’d run down our smack. Seeing so many aboard was total strangers to each other, I thought one more mightn’t be noticed; so I put Aunt Cecile’s red cap on the back of my head, and my hands in my pockets like the rest, and, as we French say, I circulated till I found the galley.

‘“What! Here’s one of ’em that isn’t sick!” says a cook. “Take his breakfast to Citizen Bompard.”

‘I carried the tray to the cabin, but I didn’t call this Bompard “Citizen.” Oh no! “Mon Capitaine” was my little word, same as Uncle Aurette used to answer in King Louis’ Navy. Bompard, he liked it. He took me on for cabin servant, and after that no one asked questions; and thus I got good victuals and light work all the way across to America. He talked a heap of politics, and so did his officers, and when this Ambassador Genet got rid of his land-stomach and laid down the law after dinner, a rooks’ parliament was nothing compared to their cabin. I learned to know most of the men which had worked the French Revolution, through waiting at table and hearing talk about ’em. One of our forecas’le six-pounders was called Danton and t’other Marat. I used to play the fiddle between ’em, sitting on the capstan. Day in and day out Bompard and Monsieur Genet talked o’ what France had done, and how the United States was going to join her to finish off the English in this war. Monsieur Genet said he’d justabout make the United States fight for France. He was a rude common man. But I liked listening. I always helped drink any healths that was proposed—specially Citizen Danton’s who’d cut off King Louis’ head. An all-Englishman might have been shocked—but that’s where my French blood saved me.

‘It didn’t save me from getting a dose of ship’s fever though, the week before we put Monsieur Genet ashore at Charleston; and what was left of me after bleeding and pills took the dumb horrors from living ’tween decks. The surgeon, Karaguen his name was, kept me down there to help him with his plasters—I was too weak to wait on Bompard. I don’t remember much of any account for the next few weeks, till I smelled lilacs, and I looked out of the port, and we was moored to a wharf-edge and there was a town o’ fine gardens and red-brick houses and all the green leaves o’ God’s world waiting for me outside.

‘“What’s this?” I said to the sick-bay man—Old Pierre Tiphaigne he was. “Philadelphia,” says Pierre. “You’ve missed it all. We’re sailing next week. “

‘I just turned round and cried for longing to be amongst the laylocks.

‘“If that’s your trouble,” says old Pierre, “you go straight ashore. None’ll hinder you. They’re all gone mad on these coasts—French and American together. ’Tisn’t my notion o’ war.” Pierre was an old King Louis man.

‘My legs was pretty tottly, but I made shift to go on deck, which it was like a fair. The frigate was crowded with fine gentlemen and ladies pouring in and out. They sung and they waved French flags, while Captain Bompard and his officers—yes, and some of the men—speechified to all and sundry about war with England. They shouted, “Down with England!”—“Down with Washington!”—“Hurrah for France and the Republic!” I couldn’t make sense of it. I wanted to get out from that crunch of swords and petticoats and sit in a field. One of the gentlemen said to me, “Is that a genuine cap o’ Liberty you’re wearing?” ’Twas Aunt Cecile’s red one, and pretty near wore out. “Oh yes!” I says, “straight from France.” “I’ll give you a shilling for it,” he says, and with that money in my hand and my fiddle under my arm I squeezed past the entry-port and went ashore. It was like a dream—meadows, trees, flowers, birds, houses, and people all different! I sat me down in a meadow and fiddled a bit, and then I went in and out the streets, looking and smelling and touching, like a little dog at a fair. Fine folk was setting on the white stone

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doorsteps of their houses, and a girl threw me a handful of laylock sprays, and when I said “Merci” without thinking, she said she loved the French. They all was the fashion in the city. I saw more tricolour flags in Philadelphia than ever I’d seen in Boulogne, and every one was shouting for war with England. A crowd o’ folk was cheering after our French Ambassador—that same Monsieur Genet which we’d left at Charleston. He was a-horseback behaving as if the place belonged to him—and commanding all and sundry to fight the British. But I’d heard that before. I got into a long straight street as wide as the Broyle, where gentlemen was racing horses. I’m fond o’ horses. Nobody hindered ’em, and a man told me it was called Race Street o’ purpose for that. Then I followed some blacks, which I’d never seen close before; but I left them to run after a great, proud, copper-faced man with feathers in his hair and a red blanket trailing behind him. A man told me he was a real Red Indian called Red Jacket, and I followed him into an alley-way off Race Street by Second Street, where there was a fiddle playing. I’m fond o’ fiddling. The Indian stopped at a baker’s shop—Conrad Gerhard’s it was—and bought some sugary cakes. Hearing what the price was I was going to have some too, but the Indian asked me in English if I was hungry. “Oh yes!” I says. I must have looked a sore scrattel. He opens a door on to a staircase and leads the way up. We walked into a dirty little room full of flutes and fiddles and a fat man fiddling by the window, in a smell of cheese and medicines fit to knock you down. I was knocked down too, for the fat man jumped up and hit me a smack in the face. I fell against an old spinet covered with pill-boxes and the pills rolled about the floor. The Indian never moved an eyelid.

‘“Pick up the pills! Pick up the pills!” the fat man screeches.

‘I started picking ’em up—hundreds of ’em—meaning to run out under the Indian’s arm, but I came on giddy all over and I sat down. The fat man went back to his fiddling.

‘“Toby!” says the Indian after quite a while. “I brought the boy to be fed, not hit.”

‘“What?” says Toby, “I thought it was Gert Schwankfelder.” He put down his fiddle and took a good look at me. “Himmel!” he says. “I have hit the wrong boy. It is not the new boy. Why are you not the new boy? Why are you not Gert Schwankfelder?”

‘“I don’t know,” I said. “The gentleman in the pink blanket brought me.”

‘Says the Indian, “He is hungry, Toby. Christians always feed the hungry. So I bring him.”

‘“You should have said that first,” said Toby. He pushed plates at me and the Indian put bread and pork on them, and a glass of Madeira wine. I told him I was off the French ship, which I had joined on account of my mother being French. That was true enough when you think of it, and besides I saw that the French was all the fashion in Philadelphia. Toby and the Indian whispered and I went on picking up the pills.

‘“You like pills—eh?” says Toby. ‘“No,” I says. “I’ve seen our ship’s doctor roll too many of ’em.”’

‘“Ho!” he says, and he shoves two bottles at me. “What’s those?”

‘“Calomel,” I says. “And t’other’s senna.”’

‘“Right,” he says. “One week have I tried to teach Gert Schwankfelder the difference between them, yet he cannot tell. You like to fiddle?” he says. He’d just seen my kit on the floor.

‘“Oh yes!” says I,

‘“Oho!” he says. “What note is this?” drawing his bow across.

‘He meant it for A, so I told him it was.’

‘“My brother,” he says to the Indian. “I think this is the hand of Providence! I warned that Gert if he went to play upon the wharves any more he would hear from me. Now look at this boy and say what you think.”

‘The Indian looked me over whole minutes—there was a musical clock on the wall and dolls came out and hopped while the hour struck. He looked me over all the while they did it.

‘“Good,” he says at last. “This boy is good.”

‘“Good, then,” says Toby. “Now I shall play my fiddle and you shall sing your hymn, brother. Boy, go down to the bakery and tell them you are young Gert Schwankfelder that was. The horses are in Davy Jones’s locker. If you ask any questions you shall hear from me.”

‘I left ’em singing hymns and I went down to old Conrad Gerhard. He wasn’t at all surprised when I told him I was young Gert Schwankfelder that was. He knew Toby. His wife she walked me into the back-yard without a word, and she washed me and she cut my hair to the edge of a basin, and she put me to bed, and oh! how I slept—how I slept in that little room behind the oven looking on the flower garden! I didn’t know Toby went to the Embuscade that night and bought me off Dr Karaguen for twelve dollars and a dozen bottles of Seneca Oil. Karaguen wanted a new lace to his coat, and he reckoned I hadn’t long to live; so he put me down as “discharged sick.”

‘I like Toby,’ said Una.

‘Who was he?’ said Puck.

‘Apothecary Tobias Hirte,’ Pharaoh replied. ‘One Hundred and Eighteen, Second Street—the famous Seneca Oil man, that lived half of every year among the Indians. But let me tell my tale my own way, same as his brown mare used to go to Lebanon.’

‘Then why did he keep her in Davy Jones’s locker?’ Dan asked.

‘That was his joke. He kept her under David Jones’s hat shop in the “Buck” tavern yard, and his Indian friends kept their ponies there when they visited him. I looked after the horses when I wasn’t rolling pills on top of the old spinet, while he played his fiddle and Red Jacket sang hymns. I liked it. I had good victuals, light work, a suit o’ clean clothes, a plenty music, and quiet, smiling German folk all around that let me sit in their gardens. My first Sunday, Toby took me to his church in Moravian Alley; and that was in a garden too. The women wore long-eared caps and handkerchiefs. They came in at one door and the men at another, and there was a brass chandelier you could see your face in, and a boy to blow the organ bellows. I carried Toby’s fiddle, and he played pretty much as he chose all against the organ and the singing. He was the only one they let do it, for they was a simple-minded folk. They used to wash each other’s feet up in the attic to keep ’emselves humble: which Lord knows they didn’t need.’

page 4

‘How very queer!’ said Una.

Pharaoh’s eyes twinkled. ‘I’ve met many and seen much,’ he said; ‘but I haven’t yet found any better or quieter or forbearinger people than the Brethren and Sistern of the Moravian Church in Philadelphia. Nor will I ever forget my first Sunday—the service was in English that week—with the smell of the flowers coming in from Pastor Meder’s garden where the big peach tree is, and me looking at all the clean strangeness and thinking of ’tween decks on the Embuscade only six days ago. Being a boy, it seemed to me it had lasted for ever, and was going on for ever. But I didn’t know Toby then. As soon as the dancing clock struck midnight that Sunday—I was lying under the spinet—I heard Toby’s fiddle. He’d just done his supper, which he always took late and heavy. “Gert,” says he, “get the horses. Liberty and Independence for Ever! The flowers appear upon the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come. We are going to my country seat in Lebanon.”

‘I rubbed my eyes, and fetched ’em out of the “Buck” stables. Red Jacket was there saddling his, and when I’d packed the saddle-bags we three rode up Race Street to the Ferry by starlight. So we went travelling. It’s a kindly, softly country there, back of Philadelphia among the German towns, Lancaster way. Little houses and bursting big barns, fat cattle, fat women, and all as peaceful as Heaven might be if they farmed there. Toby sold medicines out of his saddlebags, and gave the French war-news to folk along the roads. Him and his long-hilted umberella was as well known as the stage-coaches. He took orders for that famous Seneca Oil which he had the secret of from Red Jacket’s Indians, and he slept in friends’ farmhouses, but he would shut all the windows; so Red Jacket and me slept outside. There’s nothing to hurt except snakes—and they slip away quick enough if you thrash in the bushes.’

‘I’d have liked that!’ said Dan.

‘I’d no fault to find with those days. In the cool o’ the morning the cat-bird sings. He’s something to listen to. And there’s a smell of wild grape-vine growing in damp hollows which you drop into, after long rides in the heat, which is beyond compare for sweetness. So’s the puffs out of the pine woods of afternoons. Come sundown, the frogs strike up, and later on the fireflies dance in the corn. Oh me, the fireflies in the corn! We were a week or ten days on the road, tacking from one place to another—such as Lancaster, Bethlehem-Ephrata—“thou Bethlehem-Ephrata.” No odds—I loved the going about. And so we jogged into dozy little Lebanon by the Blue Mountains, where Toby had a cottage and a garden of all fruits. He come north every year for this wonderful Seneca Oil the Seneca Indians made for him. They’d never sell to any one else, and he doctored ’em with von Swieten pills, which they valued more than their own oil. He could do what he chose with them, and, of course, he tried to make them Moravians. The Senecas are a seemly, quiet people, and they’d had trouble enough from white men—American and English—during the wars, to keep ’em in that walk. They lived on a Reservation by themselves away off by their lake. Toby took me up there, and they treated me as if I was their own blood brother. Red Jacket said the mark of my bare feet in the dust was just like an Indian’s and my style of walking was similar. I know I took to their ways all over.’

‘Maybe the gipsy drop in your blood helped you?’ said Puck.

‘Sometimes I think it did,’ Pharaoh went on. ‘Anyhow, Red Jacket and Cornplanter, the other Seneca chief, they let me be adopted into the tribe. It’s only a compliment, of course, but Toby was angry when I showed up with my face painted. They gave me a side-name which means “Two Tongues”, because, d’ye see, I talked French and English.

‘They had their own opinions (I’ve heard ’em) about the French and the English, and the Americans. They’d suffered from all of ’em during the wars, and they only wished to be left alone. But they thought a heap of the President of the United States. Cornplanter had had dealings with him in some French wars out West when General Washington was only a lad. His being President afterwards made no odds to ’em. They always called him Big Hand, for he was a large-fisted man, and he was all of their notion of a white chief. Cornplanter ’ud sweep his blanket round him, and after I’d filled his pipe he’d begin—“In the old days, long ago, when braves were many and blankets were few, Big Hand said—” If Red Jacket agreed to the say-so he’d trickle a little smoke out of the corners of his mouth. If he didn’t, he’d blow through his nostrils. Then Cornplanter ’ud stop and Red Jacket ’ud take on. Red Jacket was the better talker of the two. I’ve laid and listened to ’em for hours. Oh! they knew General Washington well. Cornplanter used to meet him at Epply’s—the great dancing-place in the city before District Marshal William Nichols bought it. They told me he was always glad to see ’em, and he’d hear ’em out to the end if they had anything on their minds. They had a good deal in those days. I came at it by degrees, after I was adopted into the tribe. The talk up in Lebanon and everywhere else that summer was about the French war with England and whether the United States ’ud join in with France or make a peace treaty with England. Toby wanted peace so as he could go about the Reservation buying his oils. But most of the white men wished for war, and they was angry because the President wouldn’t give the sign for it. The newspaper said men was burning Guy Fawkes images of General Washington and yelling after him in the streets of Philadelphia. You’d have been astonished what those two fine old chiefs knew of the ins and outs of such matters. The little I’ve learned of politics I picked up from Cornplanter and Red Jacket on the Reservation. Toby used to read the Aurora newspaper. He was what they call a “Democrat,” though our Church is against the Brethren concerning themselves with politics.’

‘I hate politics, too,’ said Una, and Pharaoh laughed.

‘I might ha’ guessed it,’ he said. ‘But here’s something that isn’t politics. One hot evening late in August, Toby was reading the newspaper on the stoop and Red Jacket was smoking under a peach tree and I was fiddling. Of a sudden Toby drops his Aurora.

‘“I am an oldish man, too fond of my own comforts,” he says. “I will go to the Church which is in Philadelphia. My brother, lend me a spare pony. I must be there tomorrow night.”

‘“Good!” says Red Jacket, looking at the sun. “My brother shall be there. I will ride with him and bring back the ponies.

‘I went to pack the saddle-bags. Toby had cured me of asking questions. He stopped my fiddling if I did. Besides, Indians don’t ask questions much and I wanted to be like ’em.

‘When the horses were ready I jumped up.

‘“Get off,” says Toby. “Stay and mind the cottage till I come back. The Lord has laid this on me, not on you. I wish He hadn’t.”

‘He powders off down the Lancaster road, and I sat on the doorstep wondering after him. When I picked up the paper to wrap his fiddle-strings in, I spelled out a piece about the yellow fever being in Philadelphia so dreadful every one was running away. I was scared, for I was fond of Toby. We never said much to each other, but we fiddled together, and music’s as good as talking to them that understand.’

page 5

‘Did Toby die of yellow fever?’ Una asked.

‘Not him! There’s justice left in the world still. He went down to the City and bled ’em well again in heaps. He sent back word by Red Jacket that, if there was war or he died, I was to bring the oils along to the City, but till then I was to go on working in the garden and Red Jacket was to see me do it. Down at heart all Indians reckon digging a squaw’s business, and neither him nor Cornplanter, when he relieved watch, was a hard task-master. We hired a boy to do our work, and a lazy grinning runagate he was. When I found Toby didn’t die the minute he reached town, why, boylike, I took him off my mind and went with my Indians again. Oh! those days up north at Canasedago, running races and gambling with the Senecas, or bee-hunting in the woods, or fishing in the lake.’ Pharaoh sighed and looked across the water. ‘But it’s best,’ he went on suddenly, ‘after the first frosts. You roll out o’ your blanket and find every leaf left green over night turned red and yellow, not by trees at a time, but hundreds and hundreds of miles of ’em, like sunsets splattered upside down. On one of such days—the maples was flaming scarlet and gold, and the sumach bushes were redder—Cornplanter and Red Jacket came out in full war-dress, making the very leaves look silly: feathered war-bonnets, yellow doeskin leggings, fringed and tasselled, red horse-blankets, and their bridles feathered and shelled and beaded no bounds. I thought it was war against the British till I saw their faces weren’t painted, and they only carried wrist-whips. Then I hummed “Yankee Doodle” at ’em. They told me they was going to visit Big Hand and find out for sure whether he meant to join the French in fighting the English or make a peace treaty with England. I reckon those two would ha’ gone out on the war-path at a nod from Big Hand, but they knew well, if there was war ’twixt England and the United States, their tribe ’ud catch it from both parties same as in all the other wars. They asked me to come along and hold the ponies. That puzzled me, because they always put their ponies up at the “Buck” or Epply’s when they went to see General Washington in the city.  Besides, I wasn’t exactly dressed for it.’

‘D’you mean you were dressed like an Indian?’ Dan demanded.

Pharaoh looked a little abashed. ‘This didn’t happen at Lebanon,’ he said, ‘but a bit farther north, on the Reservation; and at that particular moment of time, so far as blanket, hair-band, moccasins, and sunburn went, there wasn’t much odds ’twix’ me and a young Seneca buck. You may laugh’—he smoothed down his long-skirted brown coat—‘but I told you I took to their ways all over. I said nothing, though I was bursting to let out the war-whoop like the young men had taught me.’

‘No, and you don’t let out one here, either,’ said Puck before Dan could ask. ‘Go on, Brother Square-toes.’

‘We went on.’ Pharaoh’s narrow dark eyes gleamed and danced. ‘We went on—forty, fifty miles a day, for days on end—we three braves. And how a great tall Indian a-horse-back can carry his war-bonnet at a canter through thick timber without brushing a feather beats me! My silly head was banged often enough by low branches, but they slipped through like running elk. We had evening hymn-singing every night after they’d blown their pipe-smoke to the quarters of heaven. Where did we go? I’ll tell you, but don’t blame me if you’re no wiser. We took the old war-trail from the end of the Lake along the East Susquehanna through the Nantego country, right down to Fort Shamokin on the Senachse river. We crossed the Juniata by Fort Granville, got into Shippensberg over the hills by the Ochwick trail, and then to Williams Ferry (it’s a bad one). From Williams Ferry, across the Shanedore, over the Blue Mountains, through Ashby’s Gap, and so south-east by south from there, till we found the President at the back of his own plantations. I’d hate to be trailed by Indians in earnest. They caught him like a partridge on a stump. After we’d left our ponies, we scouted forward through a woody piece, and, creeping slower and slower, at last if my moccasins even slipped Red Jacket ’ud turn and frown. I heard voices—Monsieur Genet’s for choice—long before I saw anything, and we pulled up at the edge of a clearing where some in grey-and-red liveries were holding horses, and half-a-dozen gentlemen—but one was Genet—were talking among felled timber. I fancy they’d come to see Genet a piece on his road, for his portmantle was with him. I hid in between two logs as near to the company as I be to that old windlass there. I didn’t need anybody to show me Big Hand. He stood up, very still, his legs a little apart, listening to Genet, that French Ambassador, which never had more manners than a Bosham tinker. Genet was as good as ordering him to declare war on England at once. I had heard that clack before on the Embuscade. He said he’d stir up the whole United States to have war with England, whether Big Hand liked it or not.

‘Big Hand heard him out to the last end. I looked behind me, and my two chiefs had vanished like smoke. Says Big Hand, “That is very forcibly put, Monsieur Genet -”

‘”Citizen—citizen!” the fellow spits in. “I, at least, am a Republican!”

“Citizen Genet,” he says, “you may be sure it will receive my fullest consideration.” This seemed to take Citizen Genet back a piece. He rode off grumbling, and never gave a penny. No gentleman!

‘The others all assembled round Big Hand then, and, in their way, they said pretty much what Genet had said. They put it to him, here was France and England at war, in a manner of speaking, right across the United States’ stomach, and paying no regards to any one. The French was searching American ships on pretence they was helping England, but really for to steal the goods. The English was doing the same, only t’other way round, and besides searching, they was pressing American citizens into their Navy to help them fight France, on pretence that those Americans was lawful British subjects. His gentlemen put this very clear to Big Hand. It didn’t look to them, they said, as though the United States trying to keep out of the fight was any advantage to her, because she only catched it from both French and English. They said that nine out of ten good Americans was crazy to fight the English then and there. They wouldn’t say whether that was right or wrong; they only wanted Big Hand to turn it over in his mind. He did—for a while. I saw Red Jacket and Cornplanter watching him from the far side of the clearing, and how they had slipped round there was another mystery. Then Big Hand drew himself up, and he let his gentlemen have it.’

‘Hit ’em?’ Dan asked.

‘No, nor yet was it what you might call swearing. He—he blasted ’em with his natural speech. He asked them half-a-dozen times over whether the United States had enough armed ships for any shape or sort of war with any one. He asked ’em, if they thought she had those ships, to give him those ships, and they looked on the ground, as if they expected to find ’em there. He put it to ’em whether, setting ships aside, their country—I reckon he gave ’em good reasons—whether the United States was ready or able to face a new big war; she having but so few years back wound up one against England, and being all holds full of her own troubles. As I said, the strong way he laid it all before ’em blasted ’em, and when he’d done it was like a still in the woods after a storm. A little man—but they all looked little—pipes up like a young rook in a blowed-down nest, “Nevertheless, General, it seems you will be compelled to fight England.” Quick Big Hand wheeled on him, “And is there anything in my past which makes you think I am averse to fighting Great Britain?”

‘Everybody laughed except him. “Oh, General, you mistake us entirely!” they says. “I trust so,” he says. “But I know my duty. We must have peace with England.”

page 6

‘“At any price?” says the man with the rook’s voice.

‘“At any price,” says he, word by word. “Our ships will be searched—our citizens will be pressed, but—”

‘“Then what about the Declaration of Independence?” says one.

‘“Deal with facts, not fancies,” says Big Hand. “The United States are in no position to fight England.”

‘“But think of public opinion,” another one starts up. “The feeling in Philadelphia alone is at fever heat.”

‘He held up one of his big hands. “Gentlemen,” he says—slow he spoke, but his voice carried far—“I have to think of our country. Let me assure you that the treaty with Great Britain will be made though every city in the Union burn me in effigy.”

‘“At any price?” the actor-like chap keeps on croaking.

‘“The treaty must be made on Great Britain’s own terms. What else can I do?” He turns his back on ’em and they looked at each other and slinked off to the horses, leaving him alone: and then I saw he was an old man. Then Red Jacket and Cornplanter rode down the clearing from the far end as though they had just chanced along. Back went Big Hand’s shoulders, up went his head, and he stepped forward one single pace with a great deep Hough! so pleased he was. That was a statelified meeting to behold—three big men, and two of ’em looking like jewelled images among the spattle of gay-coloured leaves. I saw my chiefs’ war-bonnets sinking together, down and down. Then they made the sign which no Indian makes outside of the Medicine Lodges—a sweep of the right hand just clear of the dust and an inbend of the left knee at the same time, and those proud eagle feathers almost touched his boot-top.’

‘What did it mean?’ said Dan.

‘Mean!’ Pharaoh cried. ‘Why it’s what you—what we—it’s the Sachems’ way of sprinkling the sacred corn-meal in front of—oh! it’s a piece of Indian compliment really, and it signifies that you are a very big chief.

‘Big Hand looked down on ’em. First he says quite softly, “My brothers know it is not easy to be a chief.” Then his voice grew. “My children,” says he, “what is in your minds?”

‘Says Cornplanter, “We came to ask whether there will be war with King George’s men, but we have heard what our Father has said to his chiefs. We will carry away that talk in our hearts to tell to our people.”

‘“No,” says Big Hand. “Leave all that talk behind—it was between white men only—but take this message from me to your people—‘There will be no war.’”

‘His gentlemen were waiting, so they didn’t delay him—, only Cornplanter says, using his old side-name, “Big Hand, did you see us among the timber just now?”

‘“Surely,” says he. “You taught me to look behind trees when we were both young.” And with that he cantered off.

‘Neither of my chiefs spoke till we were back on our ponies again and a half-hour along the home-trail. Then Cornplanter says to Red Jacket, “We will have the Corn-dance this year. There will be no war.” And that was all there was to it.’

Pharaoh stood up as though he had finished.

‘Yes,’ said Puck, rising too. ‘And what came out of it in the long run?’

‘Let me get at my story my own way,’ was the answer. ‘Look! it’s later than I thought. That Shoreham smack’s thinking of her supper.’ The children looked across the darkening Channel. A smack had hoisted a lantern and slowly moved west where Brighton pier lights ran out in a twinkling line. When they turned round The Gap was empty behind them.

‘I expect they’ve packed our trunks by now,’ said Dan. ‘This time tomorrow we’ll be home.’

(a short tale)

LOOK out on a large scale map the place where the Chenab river falls into the Indus fifteen miles or so above the hamlet of Chachuran. Five miles west of Chachuran lies Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the gosain or priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road, but it is no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story.

Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that turns over in silver when the wind blows, from ten to twenty feet high and from three to four miles square. In the heart of the patch hides the gosain of Bubbling Well Road. The villagers stone him when he peers into the daylight, although he is a priest, and he runs back again as a strayed wolf turns into tall crops. He is a one-eyed man and carries, burnt between his brows, the impress of two copper coins. Some say that he was tortured by a native prince in the old days; for he is so old that he must have been capable of mischief in the days of Runjit Singh. His most pressing need at present is a halter, and the care of the British Government.

These things happened when the jungle-grass was tall, and the villagers of Chachuran told me that a sounder of pig had gone into the Arti-goth patch. To enter jungle-grass is always an unwise proceeding, but I went, partly because I knew nothing of pig-hunting, and partly because the villagers said that the big boar of the sounder owned foot long tushes. Therefore I wished to shoot him, in order to produce the tushes in after years, and say that I had ridden him down in fair chase. I took a gun and went into the hot, close patch, believing that it would be an easy thing to unearth one pig in ten square miles of jungle. Mr. Wardle, the terrier, went with me because he believed that I was incapable of existing for an hour without his advice and countenance. He managed to slip in and out between the grass clumps, but I had to force my way, and in twenty minutes was as completely lost as though I had been in the heart of Central Africa. I did not notice this at first till I had grown wearied of stumbling and pushing through the grass, and Mr. Wardle was beginning to sit down very often and hang out his tongue very far. There was nothing but grass everywhere, and it was impossible to see two yards in any direction. The grass stems held the heat exactly as boiler-tubes do.

In half an hour, when I was devoutly wishing that I had left the big boar alone, I came to a narrow path which seemed to be a compromise between a native foot-path and a pig-run. It was barely six inches wide, but I could sidle along it in comfort. The grass was extremely thick here, and where the path was ill defined it was necessary to crush into the tussocks either with both hands before the face, or to back into it, leaving both hands free to manage the rifle. None the less it was a path, and valuable because it might lead to a place.

At the end of nearly fifty yards of fair way, just when I was preparing to back into an unusually stiff tussock, I missed Mr. Wardle, who for his girth is an unusually frivolous dog and never keeps to heel. I called him three times and said aloud, ‘Where has the little beast gone to?’ Then I stepped backwards several paces, for almost under my feet a deep voice repeated, ‘Where has the little beast gone?’ To appreciate an unseen voice thoroughly you should hear it when you are lost in stifling jungle grass. I called Mr. Wardle again and the underground echo assisted me. At that I ceased calling and listened very attentively, because I thought I heard a man laughing in a peculiarly offensive manner. The heat made me sweat, but the laughter made me shake. There is no earthly need for laughter in high grass. It is indecent, as well as impolite. The chuckling stopped, and I took courage and continued to call till I thought that I had located the echo somewhere behind and below the tussock into which I was preparing to back just before I lost Mr. Wardle. I drove my rifle up to the triggers between the grass-stems in a downward and forward direction. Then I waggled it to and fro, but it did not seem to touch ground on the far side of the tussock as it should have done. Every time that I grunted with the exertion of driving a heavy rifle through thick grass, the grunt was faithfully repeated from below, and when I stopped to wipe my face the sound of low laughter was distinct beyond doubting.

I went into the tussock, face first, an inch at a time, my mouth open and my eyes fine, full, and prominent. When I had overcome the resistance of the grass I found that I was looking straight across a black gap in the ground. That I was actually lying on my chest leaning over the mouth of a well so deep I could scarcely see the water in it.

There were things in the water,—black things,—and the water was as black as pitch with blue scum atop. The laughing sound came from the noise of a little spring, spouting half-way down one side of the well. Sometimes as the black things circled round, the trickle from the spring fell upon their tightly-stretched skins, and then the laughter changed into a sputter of mirth. One thing turned over on its back, as I watched, and drifted round and round the circle of the mossy brickwork with a hand and half an arm held clear of the water in a stiff and horrible flourish, as though it were a very wearied guide paid to exhibit the beauties of the place.

I did not spend more than half-an-hour in creeping round that well and finding the path on the other side. The remainder of the journey I accomplished by feeling every foot of ground in front of me, and crawling like a snail through every tussock. I carried Mr. Wardle in my arms and he licked my nose. He was not frightened in the least, nor was I, but we wished to reach open ground in order to enjoy the view. My knees were loose, and the apple in my throat refused to slide up and down. The path on the far side of the well was a very good one, though boxed in on all sides by grass, and it led me in time to a priest’s hut in the centre of a little clearing. When that priest saw my very white face coming through the grass he howled with terror and embraced my boots; but when I reached the bedstead set outside his door I sat down quickly and Mr. Wardle mounted guard over me. I was not in a condition to take care of myself.

When I awoke I told the priest to lead me into the open, out of the Arti-goth patch and to walk slowly in front of me. Mr. Wardle hates natives, and the priest was more afraid of Mr. Wardle than of me, though we were both angry. He walked very slowly down a narrow little path from his hut. That path crossed three paths, such as the one I had come by in the first instance, and every one of the three headed towards the Bubbling Well. Once when we stopped to draw breath, I heard the Well laughing to itself alone in the thick grass, and only my need for his services prevented my firing both barrels into the priest’s back.

When we came to the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went to the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to see the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot.

The villagers told me that the patch of grass was full of devils and ghosts, all in the service of the priest, and that men and women and children had entered it and had never returned. They said the priest used their livers for purposes of witchcraft. When I asked why they had not told me of this at the outset, they said that they were afraid they would lose their reward for bringing news of the pig.

Before I left I did my best to set the patch alight, but the grass was too green. Some fine summer day, however, if the wind is favourable, a file of old newspapers and a box of matches will make clear the mystery of Bubbling Well Road.

(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as he
wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text below
contains some derogatory and/or offensive language)

[a short tale]

MY newly-purchased house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables on the slightest provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim, agent and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah with the receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as ‘Ephraim, Yahudi’—Ephraim the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man should hear my Elahi Bukhsh grinding the second word through his white teeth with all the scorn he dare show before his master. Ephraim was, personally, meek in manner—so meek, indeed, that one could not understand how he had fallen into the profession of bill-collecting. He resembled an over-fed sheep, and his voice suited his figure. There was a fixed, unvarying mask of childish wonder upon his face. If you paid him, he was as one marvelling at your wealth; if you sent him away he seemed puzzled at your hard-heartedness. Never was Jew more unlike his dread breed.Ephraim wore list slippers and coats of duster-cloth, so preposterously patterned that the most brazen of British Subalterns would have shied from them in fear. Very slow and deliberate was his speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no one. After many weeks, Ephraim was induced to speak to me of his friends.

‘There be eight of us in Shushan, and we are waiting till there are ten. Then we shall apply for a synagogue, and get leave from Calcutta. To-day we have no synagogue; and I, only I, am Priest and Butcher to our people. I am of the tribe of Judah—I think, but I am not sure. My father was of the tribe of Judah, and we wish much to get our synagogue. I shall be a priest of that synagogue.’

Shushan is a big city in the North of India, counting its dwellers by the ten thousand; and these eight of the Chosen People were shut up in its midst, waiting till time or chance sent them their full congregation.

Miriam the wife of Ephraim, two little children, an orphan boy of their people, Ephraim’s uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one house, on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre, rotten bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the incessant passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening the children of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and Ephraim’s sons held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never descending to take part in them. At the back of the house stood a small brick enclosure, in which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people after the custom of the Jews. Once the rude door of the square was suddenly smashed open by a struggle from inside, and showed the meek bill-collector at his work, nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over his teeth, and his hands upon a half-maddened sheep. He was attired in strange raiment, having no relation whatever to duster coats or list slippers, and a knife was in his mouth. As he struggled with the animal between the walls, the breath came from him in thick sobs, and the nature of the man seemed changed. When the ordained slaughter was ended, he saw that the door was open and shut it hastily, his hand leaving a red mark on the timber, while his children from the neighbouring house-top looked down awe-stricken and open-eyed. A glimpse of Ephraim busied in one of his religious capacities was nothing to be desired twice.

Summer came upon Shushan, turning the trodden waste-ground to iron, and bringing sickness to the city.

‘It will not touch us,’ said Ephraim confidently. ‘Before the winter we shall have our synagogue. My brother and his wife and children are coming up from Calcutta, and then I shall be the priest of the synagogue.’

Jackrael Israel, the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings to sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being borne down to the river.

‘It will not come near us,’ said Jackrael Israel feebly, ‘for we are the People of God, and my nephew will be priest of our synagogue. Let them die.’ He crept back to his house again and barred the door to shut himself off from the world of the Gentile.

But Miriam, the wife of Ephraim, looked out of the window at the dead as the biers passed and said that she was afraid. Ephraim comforted her with hopes of the synagogue to be, and collected bills as was his custom.

In one night the two children died and were buried early in the morning by Ephraim. The deaths never appeared in the City returns. ‘The sorrow is my sorrow,’ said Ephraim; and this to him seemed a sufficient reason for setting at naught the sanitary regulations of a large, flourishing, and remarkably well-governed Empire.

The orphan boy, dependent on the charity of Ephraim and his wife, could have felt no gratitude, and must have been a ruffian. He begged for whatever money his protectors would give him, and with that fled down-country for his life. A week after the death of her children Miriam left her bed at night and wandered over the country to find them? She heard them crying behind every bush, or drowning in every pool of water in the fields, and she begged the cartmen on the Grand Trunk Road not to steal her little ones from her. In the morning the sun rose and beat upon her bare head, and she turned into the cool wet crops to lie down and never came back; though Hyem Benjamin and Ephraim sought her for two nights.

The look of patient wonder on Ephraim’s face deepened, but he presently found an explanation. ‘There are so few of us here, and these people are so many,’ said he, ‘that, it may be, our God has forgotten us.’

In the house on the outskirts of the city old Jackrael Israel and Hester grumbled that there was no one to wait on them, and that Miriam had been untrue to her race. Ephraim went out and collected bills, and in the evenings smoked with Hyem Benjamin till, one dawning, Hyem Benjamin died, having first paid all his debts to Ephraim. Jackrael Israel and Hester sat alone in the empty house all day, and, when Ephraim returned, wept the easy tears of age till they cried themselves asleep.

A week later Ephraim, staggering under a huge bundle of clothes and cooking-pots, led the old man and woman to the railway station, where the bustle and confusion made them whimper.

‘We are going back to Calcutta,’ said Ephraim, to whose sleeve Hester was clinging. ‘There are more of us there, and here my house is empty.’

He helped Hester into the carriage and, turning back, said to me, ‘I should have been priest of the synagogue if there had been ten of us. Surely we must have been forgotten by our God.’

The remnant of the broken colony passed out of the station on their journey south; while a Subaltern, turning over the books on the bookstall, was whistling to himself ‘The Ten Little Nigger Boys.’

But the tune sounded as solemn as the Dead March.

It was the dirge of the Jews in Shushan.

[a short tale]

Look, you have cast out Love!
What Gods are these
You bid me please?
The Three in One, the One in Three?
Not so! To my own gods I go.
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
(The Convert)

SHE was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man of the Himalayas, and Jadeh his wife. One year their maize failed, and two bears spent the night in their only opium poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarh side ; so, next season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to the Mission to be baptized. The Kotgarh Chaplain christened her Elizabeth, and ‘Lispeth’ is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.

Later, cholera came into the Kotgarh Valley and carried off Sonoo and Jadéh, and Lispeth became half servant, half companion, to the wife of the then Chaplain of Kotgarh. This was after the reign of the Moravian missionaries in that place, but before Kotgarh had quite forgotten her title of ‘Mistress of the Northern Hills.’

Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her own people would have done as much for her under any circumstances, I do not know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill-girl grows lovely, she is worth travelling fifty miles over bad ground to look upon. Lispeth had a Greek face—one of those faces people paint so often, and see so seldom. She was of a pale, ivory colour, and, for her race, extremely tall. Also, she possessed eyes that were wonderful ; and, had she not been dressed in the abominable printcloths affected by Missions, you would, meeting her on the hillside unexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of the Romans going out to slay.

Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it when she reached womanhood, as do some Hill-girls. Her own people hated her because she had, they said, become a white woman and washed herself daily; and the Chaplain’s wife did not know what to do with her. One cannot ask a stately goddess, five feet ten in her shoes, to clean plates and dishes. She played with the Chaplain’s children and took classes in the Sunday School, and read all the books in the house, and grew more and more beautiful, like the Princesses in fairy tales. The Chaplain’s wife said that the girl ought to take service in Simla as a nurse or something ‘genteel.’ But Lispeth did not want to take service. She was very happy where she was.

When travellers—there were not many in those years—came in to Kotgarh, Lispeth used to lock herself into her own room for fear they might take her away to Simla, or out into the unknown world.

One day, a few months after she was seventeen years old, Lispeth went out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English ladies—a mile and a half out, with a carriage-ride back again. She covered between twenty and thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all about and about, between Kotgarh and Narkanda. This time she came back at full dusk, stepping down the breakneck descent into Kotgarh with something heavy in her arms. The Chaplain’s wife was dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth came in breathing heavily and very exhausted with her burden. Lispeth put it down on the sofa, and said simply, ‘This is my husband. I found him on the Bagi Road. He has hurt himself. We will nurse him, and when he is well your husband shall marry him to me.’

This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her matrimonial views, and the Chaplain’s wife shrieked with horror. However, the man on the sofa needed attention first. He was a young Englishman, and his head had been cut to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth said she had found him down the hillside, and had brought him in. He was breathing queerly and was unconscious.

He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, who knew something of medicine ; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be useful. She explained to the Chaplain that this was the man she meant to marry ; and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her severely on the impropriety of her conduct. Lispeth listened quietly, and repeated her first proposition. It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilised Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight. Lispeth, having found the man she worshipped, did not see why she should keep silent as to her choice. She had no intention of being sent away, either. She was going to nurse that Englishman until he was well enough to marry her. This was her programme.

After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the Englishman recovered coherence and thanked the Chaplain and his wife, and Lispeth—especially Lispeth—for their kindness. He was a traveller in the East, he said—they never talked about ‘globe-trotters’ in those days, when the P. & O. fleet was young and small—and had come from Dehra Dun to hunt for plants and butterflies among the Simla hills. No one at Simla, therefore, knew anything about him. He fancied that he must have fallen over the cliff while reaching out for a fern on a rotten tree-trunk, and that his coolies must have stolen his baggage and fled. He thought he would go back to Simla when he was a little stronger. He desired no more mountaineering.

He made small haste to go away, and recovered his strength slowly. Lispeth objected to being advised either by the Chaplain or his wife ; therefore the latter spoke to the Englishman, and told him how matters stood in Lispeth’s heart. He laughed a good deal, and said it was very pretty and romantic, but, as he was engaged to a girl at Home, he fancied that nothing would happen. Certainly he would behave with discretion. He did that. Still he found it very pleasant to talk to Lispeth, and walk with Lispeth, and say nice things to her, and call her pet names while he was getting strong enough to go away. It meant nothing at all to him, and everything in the world to Lispeth. She was very happy while the fortnight lasted, because she had found a man to love.

Being a savage by birth, she took no trouble to hide her feelings, and the Englishman was amused. When he went away, Lispeth walked with him up the Hill as far as Narkanda, very troubled and very miserable. The Chaplain’s wife, being a good Christian and disliking anything in the shape of fuss or scandal—Lispeth was beyond her management entirely—had told the Englishman to tell Lispeth that he was coming back to marry her. ‘She is but a child, you know, and, I fear, at heart a heathen,’ said the Chaplain’s wife. So all the twelve miles up the Hill the Englishman, with his arm round Lispeth’s waist, was assuring the girl that he would come back and marry her; and Lispeth made him promise over and over again. She wept on the Narkanda Ridge till he had passed out of sight along the Muttiani path.

Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarh again, and said to the Chaplain’s wife, ‘He will come back and marry me. He has gone to his own people to tell them so.’ And the Chaplain’s wife soothed Lispeth and said, ‘He will come back.’ At the end of two months Lispeth grew impatient, and was told that the Englishman had gone over the seas to England. She knew where England was, because she had read little geography primers ; but, of course, she had no conception of the nature of the sea, being a Hill-girl. There was an old puzzle-map of the World in the house. Lispeth had played with it when she was a child. She unearthed it again, and put it together of evenings, and cried to herself, and tried to imagine where her Englishman was. As she had no ideas of distance or steamboats her notions were somewhat wild. It would not have made the least difference had she been perfectly correct ; for the Englishman had no intention of coming back to marry a Hill-girl. He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly-hunting in Assam. He wrote a book on the East afterwards. Lispeth’s name did not appear there.

At the end of three months Lispeth made daily pilgrimage to Narkanda to see if her Engl ishman was coming along the road. It gave her comfort, and the Chaplain’s wife finding her happier thought that she was getting over her ‘barbarous and most indelicate folly.’ A little later the walks ceased to help Lispeth, and her temper grew very bad. The Chaplain’s wife thought this a profitable time to let her know the real state of affairs—that the Englishman had only promised his love to keep her quiet—that he had never meant anything, and that it was wrong and improper of Lispeth to think of marriage with an Englishman, who was of a superior clay, besides being promised in marriage to a girl of his own people. Lispeth said that all this was clearly impossible because he had said he loved her, and the Chaplain’s wife had, with her own lips, asserted that the Englishman was coming back.

‘How can what he and you said be untrue?’ asked Lispeth.

‘We said it as an excuse to keep you quiet, child,’ said the Chaplain’s wife.

‘Then you have lied to me,’ said Lispeth, ‘you and he?’

The Chaplain’s wife bowed her head, and said nothing. Lispeth was silent too for a little time; then she went out down the valley, and returned in the dress of a Hill-girl—infamously dirty, but without the nose-stud and ear-rings. She had her hair braided into the long pigtail, helped out with black thread, that Hill-women wear.

‘I am going back to my own people,’ said she. ‘You have killed Lispeth. There is only left old Jadéh’s daughter-the daughter of a pabari and the servant of Tarka Devi. You are all liars, you English.’

By the time that the Chaplain’s wife had recovered from the shock of the announcement that Lispeth had ’verted to her mother’s gods the girl had gone; and she never came back.

She took to her own unclean people savagely, as if to make up the arrears of the life she had stepped out of ; and, in a little time, she married a woodcutter who beat her after the manner of paharis, and her beauty faded soon.

‘There is no law whereby you can account for the vagaries of the heathen,’ said the Chaplain’s wife, ‘and I believe that Lispeth was always at heart an infidel.’ Seeing she had been taken into the Church of England at the mature age of five weeks, this statement does not do credit to the Chaplain’s wife.

Lispeth was a very old woman when she died. She had always a perfect command of English, and when she was sufficiently drunk could sometimes be induced to tell the story of her first love-affair.

It was hard then to realise that the bleared, wrinkled creature, exactly like a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been ‘Lispeth of the Kotgarh Mission.’

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‘IT has nought to do with apes or devils,’ Sir Richard went on, in an undertone. ‘It concerns De Aquila, than whom there was never bolder nor craftier, nor more hardy knight born. And remember he was an old, old man at that time.’‘When?’ said Dan.

‘When we came back from sailing with Witta.’

‘What did you do with your gold?’ said Dan.

‘Have patience. Link by link is chain-mail made. I will tell all in its place. We bore the gold to Pevensey on horseback—three loads of it—and then up to the north chamber, above the Great Hall of Pevensey Castle, where De Aquila lay in winter. He sat on his bed like a little white falcon, turning his head swiftly from one to the other as we told our tale. Jehan the Crab, an old sour man-at-arms, guarded the stairway, but De Aquila bade him wait at the stair-foot, and let down both leather curtains over the door. It was Jehan whom De Aquila had sent to us with the horses, and only Jehan had loaded the gold. When our story was told, De Aquila gave us the news of England, for we were as men waked from a year-long sleep. The Red King was dead—slain (ye remember?) the day we set sail—and Henry, his younger brother, had made himself King of England over the head of Robert of Normandy. This was the very thing that the Red King had done to Robert when our Great William died. Then Robert of Normandy, mad, as De Aquila said, at twice missing of this kingdom, had sent an army against England, which army had been well beaten back to their ships at Portsmouth. A little earlier, and Witta’s ship would have rowed through them.

‘“And now,” said De Aquila, “half the great Barons of the north and west are out against the King between Salisbury and Shrewsbury, and half the other half wait to see which way the game shall go. They say Henry is overly English for their stomachs, because he bath married an English wife and she hath coaxed him to give back their old laws to our Saxons. (Better ride a horse on the bit he knows, I say.) But that is only a cloak to their falsehood.” He cracked his finger on the table where the wine was spilt, and thus he spoke:—

‘“William crammed us Norman barons full of good English acres after Santlache. I had my share too,” he said, and clapped Hugh on the shoulder; “but I warned him—I warned him before Odo rebelled—that he should have bidden the Barons give up their lands and lordships in Normandy if they would be English lords. Now they are all but princes both in England and Normandy—trencher-fed hounds, with a foot in one trough and both eyes on the other! Robert of Normandy has sent them word that if they do not fight for him in England he will sack and harry out their lands in Normandy. Therefore Clare has risen, FitzOsborne has risen, Montgomery has risen—whom our First William made an English earl. Even D’Arcy is out with his men, whose father I remember a little hedge-sparrow knight nearby Caen. If Henry wins, the Barons can still flee to Normandy, where Robert will welcome them. If Henry loses, Robert, he says, will give them more lands in England. Oh, a pest—a pest on Normandy, for she will be our England’s curse this many a long year!”

‘“Amen,” said Hugh. “But will the war come our ways, think you?”

‘“Not from the north,” said De Aquila. “But the sea is always open. If the Barons gain the upper hand Robert will send another army into England for sure, and this time I think he will land here—where his father, the Conqueror, landed. Ye have brought your pigs to a pretty market! Half England alight, and gold enough on the ground”—he stamped on the bars beneath the table—“to set every sword in Christendom fighting.”

‘“What is to do?” said Hugh. “I have no keep at Dallington; and if we buried it, whom could we trust?”

‘“Me,” said De Aquila. “Pevensey walls are strong. No man but Jehan, who is my dog, knows what is between them.” He drew a curtain by the shot-window and showed us the shaft of a well in the thickness of the wall.

‘“I made it for a drinking-well,” he said, “but we found salt water, and it rises and falls with the tide. Hark!” We heard the water whistle and blow at the bottom. “Will it serve?” said he.

‘“Needs must,” said Hugh. “Our lives are in thy hands.” So we lowered all the gold down except one small chest of it by De Aquila’s bed, which we kept as much for his delight in its weight and colour as for any of our needs.

‘In the morning, ere we rode to our Manors, he said: “I do not say farewell; because ye will return and bide here. Not for love nor for sorrow, but to be with the gold. Have a care,” he said, laughing, “lest I use it to make myself Pope. Trust me not, but return!”’

Sir Richard paused and smiled sadly.

‘In seven days, then, we returned from our Manors—from the Manors which had been ours.’

‘And were the children quite well?’ said Una.

‘My sons were young. Land and governance belong by right to young men.’ Sir Richard was talking to himself. ‘It would have broken their hearts if we had taken back our Manors. They made us great welcome, but we could see—Hugh and I could see—that our day was done. I was a cripple and he a one-armed man. No!’ He shook his head. ‘And therefore’—he raised his voice—‘we rode back to Pevensey.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Una, for the knight seemed very sorrowful.

‘Little maid, it all passed long ago. They were young; we were old. We let them rule the Manors. “Aha!” cried De Aquila from his shot-window, when we dismounted. “Back again to earth, old foxes?” but when we were in his chamber above the Hall he puts his arms about us and says, “Welcome, ghosts! Welcome, poor ghosts!” . . . Thus it fell out that we were rich beyond belief, and lonely. And lonely!’

‘What did you do?’ said Dan.

‘We watched for Robert of Normandy,’ said the knight. ‘De Aquila was like Witta. He suffered no idleness. In fair weather he would ride along between Bexlei on the one side, to Cuckmere on the other—sometimes with hawk, sometimes with hound (there are stout hares both on the Marsh and the Downland), but always with an eye to the sea, for fear of fleets from Normandy. In foul weather he would walk on the top of his tower, frowning against the rain—peering here and pointing there. It always vexed him to think how Witta’s ship had come and gone without his knowledge. When the wind ceased and ships anchored, to the wharf’s edge he would go and, leaning on his sword among the stinking fish, would call to the mariners for their news a from France. His other eye he kept landward for word of Henry’s war against the Barons.

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‘Many brought him news—jongleurs, harpers, pedlars, sutlers, priests, and the like; and, though he was secret enough in small things, yet, if their news misliked him, then, regarding neither time nor place nor people, would he curse our King Henry for a fool or a babe. I have heard him cry aloud by the fishing-boats: “If I were King of England I would do thus and thus”; and when I rode out to see that the warning-beacons were laid and dry, he hath often called to me from the shot-window: “Look to it, Richard, do not copy our blind King, but see with thine own eyes and feel with thine own hands.” I do not think he knew any sort of fear. And so we lived at Pevensey, in the little chamber above the Hall.

‘One foul night came word that a messenger of the King waited below. We were chilled after a long riding in the fog towards Bexlei, which is an easy place for ships to land. De Aquila sent word the man might either eat with us or wait till we had fed. Anon Jehan, at the stair-head, cried that he had called for horse, and was gone. “Pest on him!” said De Aquila. “I have more to do than to shiver in the Great Hall for every gadling the King sends. Left he no word?”

‘“None,” said Jehan, “except”—he had been with De Aquila at Santlache—“except he said that if an old dog could not learn new tricks it was time to sweep out the kennel.”

‘“Oho!” said De Aquila, rubbing his nose, “to whom did he say that?”

‘“To his beard, chiefly, but some to his horse’s flank as he was girthing up. I followed him out,” said Jehan the Crab.

‘“What was his shield-mark?”

‘“Gold horseshoes on black,” said the Crab.

‘“That is one of Fulke’s men,” said De Aquila.’

Puck broke in very gently, ‘Gold horseshoes on black is not the Fulkes’ shield. The Fulkes’ arms are——

The knight waved one hand statelily.

‘Thou knowest that evil mans true name,’ he replied, ‘but I have chosen to call him Fulke because I promised him I would not tell the story of his wickedness so that any man might guess it. I have changed all the names in my tale. His children’s children may be still alive.’

‘True—true,’ said Puck, smiling softly. ‘It is knightly to keep faith—even after a thousand years.

Sir Richard bowed a little and went on:—

‘“Gold horseshoes on black?” said De Aquila. “I had heard Fulke had joined the Barons, but if this is true our King must be of the upper hand. No matter, all Fulkes are faithless. Still, I would not have sent the man away empty.”

‘“He fed,” said Jehan. “Gilbert the Clerk fetched him meat and wine from the kitchens. He ate at Gilbert’s table.”

‘This Gilbert was a clerk from Battle Abbey, who kept the accounts of the Manor of Pevensey. He was tall and pale-coloured, and carried those new-fashioned beads for counting of prayers. They were large brown nuts or seeds, and hanging from his girdle with his penner and inkhorn they clashed when he walked. His place was in the great fireplace. There was his table of accounts, and there he lay o’nights. He feared the hounds in the Hall that came nosing after bones or to sleep on the warm ashes, and would slash at them with his beads—like a woman. When De Aquila sat in Hall to do justice, take fines, or grant lands, Gilbert would so write it in the Manor-roll. But it was none of his work to feed our guests, or to let them depart without his lord’s knowledge.

‘Said De Aquila, after Jehan was gone down the stair: “Hugh, hast thou ever told my Gilbert thou canst read Latin hand-of-write?”

‘“No,” said Hugh. “He is no friend to me, or to Odo my hound either.” “No matter,” said De Aquila. “Let him never know thou canst tell one letter from its fellow, and”—here he yerked us in the ribs with his scabbard—“watch him both of ye. There be devils in Africa, as I have heard, but by the Saints there be greater devils in Pevensey!” And that was all he would say.

‘It chanced, some small while afterwards, a Norman man-at-arms would wed a Saxon wench of the Manor, and Gilbert (we had watched him well since De Aquila spoke) doubted whether her folk were free or slave. Since De Aquila would give them a field of good land, if she were free, the matter came up at the justice in Great Hall before De Aquila. First the wench’s father spoke; then her mother; then all together, till the hall rang and the hounds bayed. De Aquila held up his hands. “Write her free,” he called to Gilbert by the fireplace. “A’ God’s Name write her free, before she deafens me! Yes, yes,” he said to the wench that was on her knees at him; “thou art Cerdic’s sister, and own cousin to the Lady of Mercia, if thou wilt be silent. In fifty years there will be neither Norman nor Saxon, but all English,” said he, “and these are the men that do our work!” He clapped the man-at-arms, that was Jehan’s nephew, on the shoulder, and kissed the wench, and fretted with his feet among the rushes to show it was finished. (The Great Hall is always bitter cold.) I stood at his side; Hugh was behind Gilbert in the fireplace making to play with wise rough Odo. He signed to De Aquila, who bade Gilbert measure the new field for the new couple. Out then runs our Gilbert between man and maid, his beads clashing at his waist, and the Hall being empty, we three sit by the fire.

‘Said Hugh, leaning down to the hearthstones, “I saw this stone move under Gilbert’s foot when Odo snuffed at it. Look!” De Aquila digged in the ashes with his sword; the stone tilted; beneath it lay a parchment folden, and the writing atop was: “Words spoken against the King by our Lord of Pevensey—the second part.”

‘Here was set out (Hugh read it us whispering) every jest De Aquila had made to us touching the King; every time he had called out to me from the shot-window, and every time he had said what he would do if he were King of England. Yes, day by day had his daily speech, which he never stinted, been set down by Gilbert, tricked out and twisted from its true meaning, yet withal so cunningly that none could deny who knew him that De Aquila had in some sort spoken those words. Ye see?’

Dan and Una nodded.

‘Yes,’ said Una, gravely. ‘It isn’t what you say so much. It’s what you mean when you say it. Like calling Dan a beast in fun. Only grownups don’t always understand.’

‘“He hath done this day by day before our very face?” said De Aquila.

‘“Nay, hour by hour,” said Hugh. “When De Aquila spoke even now, in the hall, of Saxons and Normans, I saw Gilbert write on a parchment, which he kept beside the Manor-roll, that De Aquila said soon there would be no Normans left in England if his men-at-arms did their work aright.”

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‘“Bones of the Saints!” said De Aquila. “What avail is honour or a sword against a pen? Where did Gilbert hide that writing? He shall eat it.”

‘In his breast when he ran out,” said Hugh. “Which made me look to see where he kept his finished stuff. When Odo scratched at this stone here, I saw his face change. So I was sure.”

‘“He is bold,” said De Aquila. “Do him justice. In his own fashion, my Gilbert is bold.”

‘“Overbold,” said Hugh. “Hearken here,” and he read: “Upon the Feast of St. Agatha, our Lord of Pevensey, lying in his upper chamber, being clothed in his second fur gown reversed with rabbit——”

‘“Pest on him! He is not my tire-woman!” said De Aquila, and Hugh and I laughed.

‘“Reversed with rabbit, seeing a fog over the marshes, did wake Sir Richard Dalyngridge, his drunken cup-mate” (here they laughed at me) and said, ‘Peer out, old fox, for God is on the Duke of Normandy’s side.’”

‘“So did I. It was a black fog. Robert could have landed ten thousand men, and we none the wiser. Does he tell how we were out all day riding the marsh, and how I near perished in a quicksand, and coughed like a sick ewe for ten days after?” cried De Aquila.

‘“No,” said Hugh. “But here is the prayer of Gilbert himself to his master Fulke.”

‘“Ah,” said De Aquila. “Well I knew it was Fulke. What is the price of my blood?”

‘“Gilbert prayeth that when our Lord of Pevensey is stripped of his lands on this evidence which Gilbert hath, with fear and pains, collected——”

‘“Fear and pains is a true word,” said De Aquila, and sucked in his cheeks. “But how excellent a weapon is a pen! I must learn it.”

‘“He prays that Fulke will advance him from his present service to that honour in the Church which Fulke promised him. And lest Fulke should forget, he has written below, ‘To be Sacristan of Battle.’”

‘At this De Aquila whistled. “A man who can plot against one lord can plot against another. When I am stripped of my lands Fulke will whip off my Gilbert’s foolish head. None the less Battle needs a new Sacristan. They tell me the Abbot Henry keeps no sort of rule there.”

‘“Let the Abbot wait,” said Hugh. “It is our heads and our lands that are in danger. This parchment is the second part of the tale. The first has gone to Fulke, and so to the King, who will hold us traitors.”

‘“Assuredly,” said De Aquila. “Fulke’s man took the first part that evening when Gilbert fed him, and our King is so beset by his brother and his Barons (small blame, too!) that he is mad with mistrust. Fulke has his ear, and pours poison into it. Presently the King gives him my land and yours. “This is old,” and he leaned back and yawned.

‘“And thou wilt surrender Pevensey without word or blow?” said Hugh. “We Saxons will fight your King then. I will go warn my nephew at Dallington. Give me a horse!”

‘“Give thee a toy and a rattle,” said De Aquila. “Put back the parchment, and rake over the ashes. If Fulke is given my Pevensey, which is England’s gate, what will he do with it? He is Norman at heart, and his heart is in Normandy, where he can kill peasants at his pleasure. He will open England’s gate to our sleepy Robert, as Odo and Mortain tried to do, and then there will be another landing and another Santlache. Therefore I cannot give up Pevensey.”

‘“Good,” said we two.

‘“Ah, but wait! If my King be made, on Gilbert’s evidence, to mistrust me, he will send his men against me here, and, while we fight, England’s gate is left unguarded. Who will be the first to come through thereby? Even Robert of Normandy. Therefore I cannot fight my King.” He nursed his sword—thus.

‘“This is saying and unsaying like a Norman,” said Hugh. “What of our Manors?”

‘“I do not think for myself,” said De Aquila, “nor for our King, nor for your lands. I think for England, for whom neither King nor Baron thinks. I am not Norman, Sir Richard, nor Saxon, Sir Hugh. English am I.”

‘“Saxon, Norman, or English,” said Hugh, “our lives are thine, however the game goes. When do we hang Gilbert?”

‘“Never,” said De Aquila. “Who knows, he may yet be Sacristan of Battle, for, to do him justice, he is a good writer. Dead men make dumb witnesses. Wait.”

‘“But the King may give Pevensey to Fulke. And our Manors go with it,” said I “Shall we tell our sons?”

‘“No. The King will not wake up a hornets’ nest in the south till he has smoked out the bees in the north. He may hold me a traitor; but at least he sees I am not fighting against him, and every day that I lie still is so much gain to him while he fights the Barons. If he were wise he would wait till that war were over before he made new enemies. But I think Fulke will play upon him to send for me, and if I do not obey the summons that will, to Henry’s mind, be proof of my treason. But mere talk, such as Gilbert sends, is no proof nowadays. We Barons follow the Church, and, like Anselm, we speak what we please. Let us go about our day’s dealings, and say naught to Gilbert.”

‘“Then we do nothing?” said Hugh.

‘“We wait,” said De Aquila. “I am old, but still I find that the most grievous work I know.”

‘And so we found it, but in the end De Aquila was right.

‘A little later in the year, armed men rode over the hill, the Golden Horseshoes flying behind the King’s banner. Said De Aquila, at the window of our chamber: “How did I tell you? Here comes Fulke himself to spy out his new lands which our King hath promised him if he can bring proof of my treason.”

‘“How dost thou know?” said Hugh.

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‘“Because that is what I would do if I were Fulke, but I should have brought more men. My roan horse to your old shoes,” said he, “Fulke brings me the King’s Summons to leave Pevensey and join the war.” He sucked in his cheeks and drummed on the edge of the shaft where the water sounded all hollow.

‘“Shall we go?” said I.

‘“Go! At this time of year? Stark madness,” said he. “Take me from Pevensey to fisk and flyte through fern and forest, and in three days Robert’s keels would be lying on Pevensey mud with ten thousand men! Who would stop them—Fulke?”

‘The horns blew without, and anon Fulke cried the King’s Summons at the great door that De Aquila with all men and horse should join the King’s camp at Salisbury.

‘“How did I tell you?” said De Aquila. “There are twenty Barons ’twixt here and Salisbury could give King Henry good land service, but he has been worked upon by Fulke to send south and call me—me!—off the Gate of England, when his enemies stand about to batter it in. See that Fulke’s men lie in the big south barn,” said he. “Give them drink, and when Fulke has eaten we will drink in my chamber. The Great Hall is too cold for old bones.”

‘As soon as he was off horse Fulke went to the chapel with Gilbert to give thanks for his safe coming, and when he had eaten—he was a fat man, and rolled his eyes greedily at our good roast Sussex wheatears—we led him to the little upper chamber, whither Gilbert had already gone with the Manor-roll. I remember when Fulke heard the tide blow and whistle in the shaft he leaped back, and his long down-turned stirrup-shoes caught in the rushes and he stumbled, so that Jehan behind him found it easy to knock his head against the wall.’

‘Did you know it was going to happen?’ said Dan.

‘Assuredly,’ said Sir Richard, with a sweet smile. ‘I put my foot on his sword and plucked away his dagger, but he knew not whether it was day or night for awhile. He lay rolling his eyes and bubbling with his mouth, and Jehan roped him like a calf. He was cased all in that newfangled armour which we call lizard-mail. Not rings like my hauberk here’—Sir Richard tapped his chest—‘but little pieces of dagger-proof steel overlapping on stout leather. We stripped it off (no need to spoil good harness by wetting it), and in the neck-piece De Aquila found the same folden piece of parchment which we had put back under the hearthstone.

‘At this Gilbert would have run out. I laid my hand on his shoulder. It sufficed. He fell to trembling and praying on his beads.

‘“Gilbert,” said De Aquila, “here be more notable sayings and doings of our Lord of Pevensey for thee to write down. Take penner and inkhorn, Gilbert. We cannot all be Sacristans of Battle.”

‘Said Fulke from the floor, “Ye have bound a King’s messenger. Pevensey shall burn for this.”

‘“Maybe. I have seen it besieged once,” said De Aquila, “but heart up, Fulke. I promise thee that thou shalt be hanged in the middle of the flames at the end of that siege, if I have to share my last loaf with thee; and that is more than Odo would have done when we starved out him and Mortain.”

‘Then Fulke sat up and looked long and cunningly at De Aquila.

‘“By the Saints,” said he, “why didst thou not say thou wast on the Duke’s side at the first?”

‘“Am I?” said De Aquila.

‘Fulke laughed and said, “No man who serves King Henry dare do this much to his messenger. When didst thou come over to the Duke? Let me up and we can smooth it out together.” And he smiled and becked and winked.

‘“Yes, we will smooth it out,” said De Aquila. He nodded to me, and Jehan and I heaved up Fulke—he was a heavy man—and lowered him into the shaft by a rope, not so as to stand on our gold, but dangling by his shoulders a little above. It was turn of ebb, and the water came to his knees. He said nothing, but shivered somewhat.

‘Then Jehan of a sudden beat down Gilbert’s wrist with his sheathed dagger. “Stop!” he said. “He swallows his beads.”

‘“Poison, belike,” said De Aquila. “It is good for men who know too much. I have carried it these thirty years. Give me!”

‘Then Gilbert wept and howled. De Aquila ran the beads through his fingers. The last one—I have said they were large nuts—opened in two halves on a pin, and there was a small folded parchment within. On it was written: “The Old Dog goes to Salisbury to be beaten. I have his Kennel. Come quickly.”

‘“This is worse than poison,” said De Aquila, very softly, and sucked in his cheeks. Then Gilbert grovelled in the rushes, and told us all he knew. The letter, as we guessed, was from Fulke to the Duke (and not the first that had passed between them); Fulke had given it to Gilbert in the chapel, and Gilbert thought to have taken it by morning to a certain fishingboat at the wharf, which trafficked between Pevensey and the French shore. Gilbert was a false fellow, but he found time between his quakings and shakings to swear that the master of the boat knew nothing of the matter.

‘“He hath called me shaved head,” said Gilbert, “and he hath thrown haddock-guts at me; but for all that, he is no traitor.”

‘“I will have no clerk of mine mishandled or miscalled,” said De Aquila. “That seaman shall be whipped at his own mast. Write me first a letter, and thou shalt bear it, with the order for the whipping, to-morrow to the boat.”

‘At this Gilbert would have kissed De Aquila’s hand—he had not hoped to live until the morning—and when he trembled less he wrote a letter as from Fulke to the Duke, saying that the Kennel, which signified Pevensey, was shut, and that the Old Dog (which was De Aquila) sat outside it, and, moreover, that all had been betrayed.

‘“Write to any man that all is betrayed,” said De Aquila, “and even the Pope himself would sleep uneasily. Eh, Jehan? If one told thee all was betrayed, what wouldst thou do?”

‘“I would run away,” said Jehan. “It might be true.”

‘“Well said,” quoth De Aquila. “Write, Gilbert, that Montgomery, the great Earl, hath made his peace with the King, and that little D’Arcy, whom I hate, hath been hanged by the heels. We will give Robert full measure to chew upon. Write also that Fulke himself is sick to death of a dropsy.”

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‘“Nay!s cried Fulke, hanging in the wellshaft. “Drown me out of hand, but do not make a jest of me.”

‘“Jest? I?” said De Aquila. “I am but fighting for life and lands with a pen, as thou hast shown me, Fulke.”

Then Fulke groaned, for he was cold, and, “Let me confess,” said he.

‘“Now, this is right neighbourly,” said De Aquila, leaning over the shaft. “Thou hast read my sayings and doings—or at least the first part of them—and thou art minded to repay me with thy own doings and sayings. Take penner and inkhorn, Gilbert. Here is work that will not irk thee.”

‘“Let my men go without hurt, and I will confess my treason against the King,” said Fulke.

‘“Now, why has he grown so tender of his men of a sudden?” said Hugh to me; for Fulke had no name for mercy to his men. Plunder he gave them, but pity, none.

‘“Té! Té!” said De Aquila. “Thy treason was all confessed long ago by Gilbert. It would be enough to hang Montgomery himself.”

‘“Nay; but spare my men,” said Fulke; and we heard him splash like a fish in a pond, for the tide was rising.

‘“All in good time,” said De Aquila. “The night is young; the wine is old; and we need only the merry tale. Begin the story of thy life since when thou wast a lad at Tours. Tell it nimbly!”

‘“Ye shame me to my soul,” said Fulke.

‘“Then I have done what neither King nor Duke could do,” said De Aquila. “But begin, and forget nothing.”

‘“Send thy man away,” said Fulke.

‘“That much can I do,” said De Aquila. “But, remember, I am like the Danes’ King; I cannot turn the tide.”

‘“How long will it rise?” said Fulke, and splashed anew.

‘“For three hours,” said De Aquila. “Time to tell all thy good deeds. Begin; and, Gilbert,—I have heard thou art somewhat careless—do not twist his words from their true meaning.”

‘So—fear of death in the dark being upon him—Fulke began, and Gilbert, not knowing what his fate might be, wrote it word by word. I have heard many tales, but never heard I aught to match the tale of Fulke, his black life, as Fulke told it hollowly, hanging in the shaft.’

‘Was it bad?’ said Dan, awestruck.

‘Beyond belief,’ Sir Richard answered. ‘None the less, there was that in it which forced even Gilbert to laugh. We three laughed till we ached. At one place his teeth so chattered that we could not well hear, and we reached him down a cup of wine. Then he warmed to it, and smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries, his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also inconceivably a coward); his lack of gear and honour; his despair at their loss; his remedies, and well-coloured contrivances. Yes, he waved the filthy rags of his life before us, as though they had been some proud banner. When he ceased, we saw by torches that the tide stood at the corners of his mouth, and he breathed strongly through his nose.

‘We had him out, and rubbed him; we wrapped him in a cloak, and gave him wine, and we leaned and looked upon him, the while he drank. He was shivering, but shameless.

‘Of a sudden we heard Jehan at the stairway wake, but a boy pushed past him, and stood before us the hall rushes in his hair, all slubbered with sleep. “My father! My father! I dreamed of treachery,” he cried, and babbled thickly.

‘“There is no treachery here,” said Fulke. “Go,” and the boy turned, even then not fully awake, and Jehan led him by the hand to the Great Hall.

‘“Thy only son!” said De Aquila. “Why didst thou bring the child here?”

‘“He is my heir. I dared not trust him to my brother,” said Fulke, and now he was ashamed. De Aquila said nothing, but sat weighing a wine cup in his two hands—thus. Anon, Fulke touched him on the knee.

‘“Let the boy escape to Normandy,” said he, “and do with me at thy pleasure. Yea, hang me to-morrow, with my letter to Robert round my neck, but let the boy go.”

‘“Be still,” said De Aquila. “I think for England.”

‘So we waited what our Lord of Pevensey should devise; and the sweat ran down Fulke’s forehead.

‘At last said De Aquila: “I am too old to judge, or to trust any man. I do not covet thy lands, as thou hast coveted mine; and whether thou art any better or any worse than any other black Angevin thief, it is for thy King to find out. Therefore, go back to thy King, Fulke.”

‘“And thou wilt say nothing of what has passed?” said Fulke.

‘“Why should I? Thy son will stay with me. If the King calls me again to leave Pevensey, which I must guard against England’s enemies; if the King sends his men against me for a traitor; or if I hear that the King in his bed thinks any evil of me or my two knights, thy son will be hanged from out this window, Fulke.”’

‘But it hadn’t anything to do with his son,’ cried Una, startled.

‘How could we have hanged Fulke?’ said Sir Richard. ‘We needed him to make our peace with the King. He would have betrayed half England for the boy’s sake. Of that we were sure.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Una. ‘But I think it was simply awful.’

‘So did not Fulke. He was well pleased.’

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‘What? Because his son was going to be killed?’

‘Nay. Because De Aquila had shown him how he might save the boy’s life and his own lands and honours. “I will do it,” he said. “I swear I will do it. I will tell the King thou art no traitor, but the most excellent, valiant, and perfect of us all. Yes, I will save thee.”

‘De Aquila looked still into the bottom of the cup, rolling the wine-dregs to and fro.

‘“Ay,” he said. “If I had a son, I would, I think, save him. But do not by any means tell me how thou wilt go about it.”

‘“Nay, nay,” said Fulke, nodding his bald head wisely. “That is my secret. But rest at ease, De Aquila, no hair of thy head nor rood of thy land shall be forfeited,” and he smiled like one planning great good deeds.

‘“And henceforward,” said De Aquila, “I counsel thee to serve one master—not two.”

‘“What?” said Fulke. “Can I work no more honest trading between the two sides these troublous times?”

‘“Serve Robert or the King—England or Normandy,” said De Aquila. “I care not which it is, but make thy choice here and now.”

‘“The King, then,” said Fulke, “for I see he is better served than Robert. Shall I swear it?”

‘“No need,” said De Aquila, and he laid his hand on the parchments which Gilbert had written. “It shall be some part of my Gilbert’s penance to copy out the savoury tale of thy life, till we have made ten, twenty, an hundred, maybe, copies. How many cattle, think you, would the Bishop of Tours give for that tale? Or thy brother? Or the Monks of Blois? Minstrels will turn it into songs which thy own Saxon serfs shall sing behind their plough-stilts, and men-at-arms riding through thy Norman towns. From here to Rome, Fulke, men will make very merry over that tale, and how Fulke told it, hanging in a well, like a drowned puppy. This shall be thy punishment, if ever I find thee double-dealing with thy King any more. Meantime, the parchments stay here with thy son. Him I will return to thee when thou hast made my peace with the King. The parchments never.”

Fulke hid his face and groaned.

‘“Bones of the Saints!” said De Aquila, laughing. “The pen cuts deep. I could never have fetched that grunt out of thee with any sword.”

‘“But so long as I do not anger thee, my tale will be secret?” said Fulke.

‘“Just so long. Does that comfort thee, Fulke?” said De Aquila.

‘“What other comfort have ye left me?” he said, and of a sudden he wept hopelessly like a child, dropping his face on his knees.’

‘Poor Fulke,’ said Una.

‘I pitied him also,’ said Sir Richard.

‘“After the spur, corn,” said De Aquila, and he threw Fulke three wedges of gold that he had taken from our little chest by the bedplace.

‘“If I had known this,” said Fulke, catching his breath, “I would never have lifted hand against Pevensey. Only lack of this yellow stuff has made me so unlucky in my dealings.”

‘It was dawn then, and they stirred in the Great Hall below. We sent down Fulke’s mail to be scoured, and when he rode away at noon under his own and the King’s banner very splendid and stately did he show. He smoothed his long beard, and called his son to his stirrup and kissed him. De Aquila rode with him as far as the New Mill landward. We thought the night had been all a dream.’

‘But did he make it right with the King?’ Dan asked. ‘About your not being traitors, I mean?’

Sir Richard smiled. ‘The King sent no second summons to Pevensey, nor did he ask why De Aquila had not obeyed the first. Yes, that was Fulke’s work. I know not how he did it, but it was well and swiftly done.’

‘Then you didn’t do anything to his son?’ said Una.

‘The boy? Oh, he was an imp. He turned the keep doors out of dortoirs while we had him. He sang foul songs, learned in the Barons’ camps—poor fool; he set the hounds fighting in hall; he lit the rushes to drive out, as he said, the fleas; he drew his dagger on Jehan, who threw him down the stairway for it; and he rode his horse through crops and among sheep. But when we had beaten him, and showed him wolf and deer, he followed us old men like a young, eager hound, and called us “uncle.” His father came the summer’s end to take him away, but the boy had no lust to go, because of the otter-hunting, and he stayed on till the fox-hunting. I gave him a bittern’s claw to bring him good luck at shooting. An imp, if ever there was!’

‘And what happened to Gilbert?’ said Dan.

‘Not even a whipping. De Aquila said he would sooner a clerk, however false, that knew the Manor-roll than a fool, however true, that must be taught his work afresh. Moreover, after that night I think Gilbert loved as much as he feared De Aquila. At least he would not leave us—not even when Vivian, the King’s Clerk, would have made him Sacristan of Battle Abbey. A false fellow, but, in his fashion, bold.’

‘Did Robert ever land in Pevensey after all?’ Dan went on.

‘We guarded the coast too well while Henry was fighting his Barons; and three or four years later, when England had peace, Henry crossed to Normandy and showed his brother some work at Tenchebrai that cured Robert of fighting. Many of Henry’s men sailed from Pevensey to that war. Fulke came, I remember, and we all four lay in the little chamber once again, and drank together. De Aquila was right. One should not judge men. Fulke was merry. Yes, always merry—with a catch in his breath.’

‘And what did you do afterwards?’ said Una. ‘We talked together of times past. That is all men can do when they grow old, little maid.’

The bell for tea rang faintly across the meadows. Dan lay in the bows of the Golden Hind; Una in the stern, the book of verses open in her lap, was reading from ‘The Slave’s Dream’:—

‘Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his native land.’

‘I don’t know when you began that,’ said Dan, sleepily.

On the middle thwart of the boat, beside Una’s sun-bonnet, lay an Oak leaf, an Ash leaf, and a Thorn leaf, that must have dropped down from the trees above; and the brook giggled as though it had just seen some joke.

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‘OHÉ, Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo! Bahadur Khan, where are you? Come out of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don’t kill your own kin! Come out to me!’ The deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades. Misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the English wing of the camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. They had been making roads all day, and were tired.

Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd’s feet. ‘Wot’s all that?’ he said thickly. Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through the tent wall. The men swore. ‘It’s that bloomin’ deserter from the Aurangabadis,’ said Ortheris. ‘Git up, some one, an’ tell ’im ’e’s come to the wrong shop.’

‘Go to sleep, little man,’ said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the door. ‘I can’t arise an’ expaytiate with him. ’Tis rainin’ entrenchin’ tools outside.’

‘’Tain’t because you bloomin’ can’t. It’s ’cause you bloomin’ won’t, ye long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. ’Ark to ’im ’owlin’!’

‘Wot’s the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! ’E’s keepin’ us awake!’ said another voice.

A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the darkness—

‘’Tain’t no good, sir. I can’t see ’im. ’E’s ’idin’ somewhere down ’ill.’

Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. ‘Shall I try to get ’im, sir?’ said he.

‘No,’ was the answer. ‘Lie down. I won’t have the whole camp shooting all round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.’

Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the tent wall, he called, as a ’bus conductor calls in a block, ‘’Igher up, there! ’Igher up!’

The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter, who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.

‘An’ that’s all right,’ said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. ‘S’elp me Gawd, tho’, that man’s not fit to live—messin’ with my beauty-sleep this way.’

‘Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,’ said the subaltern incautiously. ‘Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.’

Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental snoring of Learoyd.

The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.

In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.

‘I’m goin’ to lay for a shot at that man,’ said Ortheris, when he had finished washing out his rifle. ‘’E comes up the watercourse every evenin’ about five o’clock. If we go and lie out on the north ’ill a bit this afternoon we’ll get ’im.’

‘You’re a bloodthirsty little mosquito,’ said Mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the air. ‘But I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere’s Jock?’

‘Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, ’cause ’e thinks ’isself a bloomin’ marksman,’ said Ortheris with scorn.

The ‘Mixed Pickles’ were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent. This taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the Aurangabadis going to their road-making.

‘You’ve got to sweat to-day,’ said Ortheris genially. ‘We’re going to get your man. You didn’t knock ’im out last night by any chance, any of you?’

‘No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,’ said a private. ‘He’s my cousin, and I ought to have cleared our dishonour. But good luck to you.’

They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he explained, ‘this is a long-range show, an’ I’ve got to do it.’ His was an almost passionate devotion to his rifle, whom, by barrack-room report, he was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and scuffles he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled slope that commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without.

‘’Ere’s the tail o’ the wood,’ said Ortheris. ‘’E’s got to come up the watercourse, ’cause it gives ’im cover. We’ll lay ’ere. ’Tain’t not arf so bloomin’ dusty neither.’

He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.

‘This is something like,’ he said luxuriously. ‘Wot a ’evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost. How much d’you make it, Mulvaney?’

‘Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air’s so thin.’

Wop! wop! wop! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north hill.

‘Curse them Mixed Pickles firin’ at nothin’! They’ll scare arf the country.’

‘Thry a sightin’ shot in the middle of the row,’ said Mulvaney, the man of many wiles. ‘There’s a red rock yonder he’ll be sure to pass. Quick!’

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Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet threw up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock.

‘Good enough!’ said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. ‘You snick your sights to mine or a little lower. You’re always firin’ high. But remember, first shot to me. O Lordy! but it’s a lovely afternoon.’

The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls.

Then Learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in snorts.

‘One o’ them damned gardeners o’ th’ Pickles,’ said he, fingering the rent. ‘Firin’ to th’ right flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew who he was I’d ’a’ rippen the hide offan him. Look at ma tunic!’

‘That’s the spishil trustability av a marksman. Train him to hit a fly wid a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an’ he loose on anythin’ he sees or hears up to th’ mile. You’re well out av that fancy-firin’ gang, Jock. Stay here.’

‘Bin firin’ at the bloomin’ wind in the bloomin’ treetops,’ said Ortheris with a chuckle. ‘I’ll show you some firin’ later on.’

They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they lay. The Mixed Pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the wood to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted up its voice in the silence, and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump of a blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened and lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, between the whiffs of his pipe—

‘Seems queer—about ’im yonder—desertin’ at all.’

‘’E’ll be a bloomin’ side queerer when I’ve done with ’im,’ said Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.

‘I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin’; but, my faith! I make less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin’ him,’ said Mulvaney.

‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ it. Men do more than more for th’ sake of a lass.’

‘They make most av us ’list. They’ve no manner av right to make us desert.’

‘Ah; they make us ’list, or their fathers do,’ said Learoyd softly, his helmet over his eyes.

Ortheris’s brows contracted savagely. He was watching the valley. ‘If it’s a girl I’ll shoot the beggar twice over, an’ second time for bein’ a fool. You’re blasted sentimental all of a sudden. Thinkin’ o’ your last near shave?’

‘Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin’ o’ what has happened.’

‘An’ fwhat has happened, ye lumberin’ child av calamity, that you’re lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an’ suggestin’ invidious excuses for the man Stanley’s goin’ to kill. Ye’ll have to wait another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an’ bellow melojus to the moon. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you. Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors av Lotharius Learoyd! Stanley, kape a rowlin’ rig’mental eye on the valley.’

‘It’s along o’ yon hill there,’ said Learoyd, watching the bare sub-Himalayan spur that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was speaking more to himself than his fellows. ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘Rumbolds Moor stands up ower Skipton town, an’ Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately Brig. I reckon you’ve never heeard tell o’ Greenhow Hill, but yon bit o’ bare stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin’ is like ut; strangely like. Moors an’ moors an’ moors, wi’ never a tree for shelter, an’ gray houses wi’ flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin’, an’ a windhover goin’ to and fro just like these kites. And cold! A wind that cuts you like a knife. You could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple colour o’ their cheeks an’ nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven into pin-points by the wind. Miners mostly, burrowin’ for lead i’ th’ hillsides, followin’ the trail of th’ ore vein same as a field-rat. It was the roughest minin’ I ever seen. Yo’d come on a bit o’ creakin’ wood windlass like a well-head, an’ you was let down i’ th’ bight of a rope, fendin’ yoursen off the side wi’ one hand, carryin’ a candle stuck in a lump o’ clay with t’other, an’ clickin’ hold of a rope with t’other hand.’

‘An’ that’s three of them,’ said Mulvaney. ‘Must be a good climate in those parts.’

Learoyd took no heed.

‘An’ then yo’ came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees through a mile o’ windin’ drift, an’ you come out into a cave-place as big as Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin’ water from workin’s ’at went deeper still. It’s a queer country, let alone minin’, for the hill is full of those natural caves, an’ the rivers an’ the becks drops into what they call pot-holes, an’ come out again miles away.’

‘Wot was you doin’ there?’ said Ortheris.

‘I was a young chap then, an’ mostly went wi’ ’osses, leadin’ coal and lead ore; but at th’ time I’m tellin’ on I was drivin’ the waggon-team i’ th’ big sumph. I didn’t belong to that country-side by rights. I went there because of a little difference at home, an’ at fust I took up wi’ a rough lot. One night we’d been drinkin’, an’ I must ha’ hed more than I could stand, or happen th’ ale was none so good. Though i’ them days, By for God, I never seed bad ale.’ He flung his arms over his head, and gripped a vast handful of white violets. ‘Nah,’ said he, ‘I never seed the ale I could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I could not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost all th’ others, an’ when I was climbin’ ower one of them walls built o’ loose stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an’ broke my arm. Not as I knawed much about it, for I fell on th’ back of my head, an’ was knocked stupid like. An’ when I come to mysen it were mornin’, an’ I were lyin’ on the settle i’ Jesse Roantree’s house-place, an’ ’Liza Roantree was settin’ sewin’. I ached all ovver, and my mouth were like a lime-kiln. She gave me a drink out of a china mug wi’ gold letters—“A Present from Leeds”—as I looked at many and many a time at after. “Yo’re to lie still while Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm’s broken, and father has sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo’ when he was goin’ to work, an’ carried you here on his back,” sez she. “Oa!” sez I; an’ I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o’ mysen. “Father’s gone to his work these three hours, an’ he said he’d tell ’em to get somebody to drive the tram.” The clock ticked, an’ a bee comed in the house, an’ they rung i’ my head like mill-wheels. An’ she give me another drink an’ settled the pillow. “Eh, but yo’re young to be getten drunk an’ such like, but yo’ won’t do it again, will yo’?”—“Noa,” sez I, “I wouldn’t if she’d not but stop they mill-wheels clatterin’.” ’

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‘Faith, it’s a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you’re sick!’ said Mulvaney. ‘Dir’ cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.’

Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by many women in his life.

‘An’ then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin’ up, an’ Jesse Roantree along with ’im. He was a highlarned doctor, but he talked wi’ poor folk same as theirsens. “What’s ta bin agaate on naa?” he sings out. “Brekkin’ tha thick head?” An’ he felt me all ovver. “That’s none broken. Tha’ nobbut knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an’ that’s daaft eneaf.” An’ soa he went on, callin’ me all the names he could think on, but settin’ my arm, wi’ Jesse’s help, as careful as could be. “Yo’ mun let the big oaf bide here a bit, Jesse,” he says, when he hed strapped me up an’ given me a dose o’ physic; “an’ you an’ ’Liza will tend him, though he’s scarcelins worth the trouble. An’ tha’ll lose tha work,” sez he, “an’ tha’ll be upon th’ Sick Club for a couple o’ months an’ more. Doesn’t tha think tha’s a fool?” ’

‘But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I’d like to know?’ said Mulvaney. ‘Sure, folly’s the only safe way to wisdom, for I’ve thried it.’

‘Wisdom!’ grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin. ‘You’re bloomin’ Solomons, you two, ain’t you?’

Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.

‘And that was how I comed to know ’Liza Roantree. There’s some tunes as she used to sing—aw, she were always singin’—that fetches Greenhow Hill before my eyes as fair as you brow across there. And she would learn me to sing bass, an’ I was to go to th’ chapel wi’ ’em, where Jesse and she led the singin’, th’ old man playin’ the fiddle. He was a strange chap, old Jesse, fair mad wi’ music, an’ he made me promise to learn the big fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and it stood up in a big case alongside o’ th’ eight-day clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi’ th’ fiddle-stick to make him give ower sawin’ at th’ right time.

‘But there was a black drop in it all, an’ it was a man in a black coat that brought it. When th’ Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow, he would always stop wi’ Jesse Roantree, an’ he laid hold of me from th’ beginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it. At th’ same time I jealoused ’at he were keen o’ savin’ ’Liza Roantree’s soul as well, and I could ha’ killed him many a time. An’ this went on till one day I broke out, an’ borrowed th’ brass for a drink from ’Liza. After fower days I come back, wi’ my tail between my legs, just to see ’Liza again. But Jesse were at home an’ th’ preacher—th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough. ’Liza said naught, but a bit o’ red come into her face as were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin’ his best to be civil, “Nay, lad, it’s like this. You’ve getten to choose which way it’s goin’ to be. I’ll ha’ nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin’, an’ borrows my lass’s money to spend i’ their drink. Ho’d tha tongue, ’Liza,” sez he, when she wanted to put in a word ’at I were welcome to th’ brass, and she were none afraid that I wouldn’t pay it back. Then the Reverend cuts in, seein’ as Jesse were losin’ his temper, an’ they fair beat me among them. But it were ’Liza, as looked an’ said naught, as did more than either o’ their tongues, an’ soa I concluded to get converted.’

‘Fwhat!’ shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, ‘Let be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an’ most women; an’ there’s a dale av piety in a girl if the men would only let ut stay there. I’d ha’ been converted myself under the circumstances.’

‘Nay, but,’ pursued Learoyd with a blush, ‘I meaned it.’

Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at the time.

‘Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn’t know you preacher Barraclough—a little white-faced chap, wi’ a voice as ’ud wile a bird off an a bush, and a way o’ layin’ hold of folks as made them think they’d never had a live man for a friend before. You never saw him, an’—an’—you never seed ’Liza Roantree—never seed ’Liza Roantree.…Happen it was as much ’Liza as th’ preacher and her father, but anyways they all meaned it, an’ I was fair shamed o’ mysen, an’ so I become what they called a changed charácter. And when I think on, it’s hard to believe as yon chap going to prayer-meetin’s, chapel, and class-meetin’s were me. But I never had naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o’ shoutin’, and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, “Joyful! Joyful!” and ’at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i’ a coach an’ six. And he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin’, “Doesn’t tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn’t tha feel it?” An’ sometimes I thought I did, and then again I thought I didn’t, an’ how was that?’

‘The iverlastin’ nature av mankind,’ said Mulvaney. ‘An’, furthermore, I misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They’re a new corps anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she’s the mother of them all—ay, an’ the father, too. I like her bekaze she’s most remarkable regimental in her fittings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape Cayenne, but wherever I die, me bein’ fwhat I am, an’ a priest handy, I go under the same orders an’ the same words an’ the same unction as tho’ the Pope himself come down from the roof av St. Peter’s to see me off. There’s neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor between wid her, an’ that’s what I like. But mark you, she’s no manner av Church for a wake man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has his proper work to do. I remember when my father died that was three months comin’ to his grave; begad he’d ha’ sold the shebeen above our heads for ten minutes’ quittance of purgathory. An’ he did all he could. That’s why I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an’ for that reason you’ll find so many women go there. An’ that sames a conundrum.’

‘Wot’s the use o’ worrittin’ ’bout these things?’ said Ortheris. ‘You’re bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any’ow.’ He jerked the cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. ‘’Ere’s my chaplain,’ he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a marionette. ‘’E’s goin’ to teach a man all about which is which, an’ wot’s true, after all, before sundown. But wot ’appened after that, Jock?’

‘There was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th’ gate i’ my face for, and that were my dog Blast, th’ only one saved out o’ a litter o’ pups as was blowed up when a keg o’ minin’ powder loosed off in th’ store-keeper’s hut. They liked his name no better than his business, which were fightin’ every dog he comed across; a rare good dog, wi’ spots o’ black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o’ one side wi’ being driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a mile.

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‘They said I mun give him up ’cause he were worldly and low; and would I let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? “Nay,” says I, “if th’ door isn’t wide enough for th’ pair on us, we’ll stop outside, for we’ll none be parted.” And th’ preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a likin’ for him from th’ first—I reckon that was why I come to like th’ preacher—and wouldn’t hear o’ changin’ his name to Bless, as some o’ them wanted. So th’ pair on us became reg’lar chapel-members. But it’s hard for a young chap o’ my build to cut traces from the world, th’ flesh, an’ the devil all uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time, while th’ lads as used to stand about th’ town-end an’ lean ower th’ bridge, spittin’ into th’ beck o’ a Sunday, would call after me, “Sitha, Learoyd, when’s ta bean to preach, ’cause we’re comin’ to hear tha.”—“Ho’d tha jaw. He hasn’t getten th’ white choaker on ta morn,” another lad would say, and I had to double my fists hard i’ th’ bottom of my Sunday coat, and say to mysen, “If ’twere Monday and I warn’t a member o’ the Primitive Methodists, I’d leather all th’ lot of yond’.” That was th’ hardest of all—to know that I could fight and I mustn’t fight.’

Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney.

‘So what wi’ singin’, practisin’, and classmeetin’s, and th’ big fiddle, as he made me take between my knees, I spent a deal o’ time i’ Jesse Roantree’s house-place. But often as I was there, th’ preacher fared to me to go oftener, and both th’ old man an’ th’ young woman were pleased to have him. He lived i’ Pately Brig, as were a goodish step off, but he come. He come all the same. I liked him as well or better as any man I’d ever seen i’ one way, and yet I hated him wi’ all my heart i’ t’other, and we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please, for I was on my best behaviour, and he was that fair and open that I was bound to be fair with him. Rare good company he was, if I hadn’t wanted to wring his cliver little neck half of the time. Often and often when he was goin’ from Jesse’s I’d set him a bit on the road.’

‘See ’im ’ome, you mean?’ said Ortheris.

‘Ay. It’s a way we have i’ Yorkshire o’ seein’ friends off. Yon was a friend as I didn’t want to come back, and he didn’t want me to come back neither, and so we’d walk together towards Pately, and then he’d set me back again, and there we’d be wal two o’clock i’ the mornin’ settin’ each other to an’ fro like a blasted pair o’ pendulums twixt hill and valley, long after th’ light had gone out i’ ’Liza’s window, as both on us had been looking at, pretending to watch the moon.’

‘Ah!’ broke in Mulvaney, ‘ye’d no chanst against the maraudin’ psalm-singer. They’ll take the airs an’ the graces instid av the man nine times out av ten, an’ they only find the blunder later—the wimmen.’

‘That’s just where yo’re wrong,’ said Learoyd, reddening under the freckled tan of his cheeks. ‘I was th’ first wi ’Liza, an’ yo’d think that were enough. But th’ parson were a steady-gaited sort o’ chap, and Jesse were strong o’ his side, and all th’ women i’ the congregation dinned it to ’Liza ’at she were fair fond to take up wi’ a wastrel ne’er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an’ a fighting dog at his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and saving my soul, but she must mind as she didn’t do herself harm. They talk o’ rich folk bein’ stuck up an’ genteel, but for cast-iron pride o’ respectability there’s naught like poor chapel folk. It’s as cold as th’ wind o’ Greenhow Hill—ay, and colder, for ’twill never change. And now I come to think on it, one at strangest things I know is ’at they couldn’t abide th’ thought o’ soldiering. There’s a vast o’ fightin’ i’ th’ Bible, and there’s a deal of Methodists i’ th’ army; but to hear chapel folk talk yo’d think that soldierin’ were next door, an’ t’other side, to hangin’. I’ their meetin’s all their talk is o’ fightin’. When Sammy Strother were stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he’d sing out, “Th’ sword o’ th’ Lord and o’ Gideon.” They were allus at it about puttin’ on th’ whole armour o’ righteousness, an’ fightin’ the good fight o’ faith. And then, atop o’ ’t all, they held a prayer-meetin’ ower a young chap as wanted to ’list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they’d tell tales in th’ Sunday-school o’ bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o’ Sundays and playin’ truant o’ week-days, and how they took to wrestlin’, dog-fightin’, rabbit-runnin’, and drinkin’, till at last, as if ’twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th’ moors wi’, “an’ then he went and ’listed for a soldier,” an’ they’d all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like a hen drinkin’.’

‘Fwhy is ut?’ said Mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a crack. ‘In the name av God, fwhy is ut? I’ve seen ut, tu. They cheat an’ they swindle an’ they lie an’ they slander, an’ fifty things fifty times worse; but the last an’ the worst by their reckonin’ is to serve the Widdy honest. It’s like the talk av childer—seein’ things all round.’

‘Plucky lot of fightin’ good fights of whatsername they’d do if we didn’t see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin’ as theirs is! Cats on the tiles. T’other callin’ to which to come on. I’d give a month’s pay to get some o’ them broad-backed beggars in London sweatin’ through a day’s road-makin’ an’ a night’s rain. They’d carry on a deal afterwards—same as we’re supposed to carry on. I’ve bin turned out of a measly arf-license pub down Lambeth way, full o’ greasy kebmen, ’fore now,’ said Ortheris with an oath.

‘Maybe you were dhrunk,’ said Mulvaney soothingly.

‘Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk. I was wearin’ the Queen’s uniform.’

‘I’d no particular thought to be a soldier i’ them days,’ said Learoyd, still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, ‘but this sort o’ talk put it i’ my head. They was so good, th’ chapel folk, that they tumbled ower t’other side. But I stuck to it for ’Liza’s sake, specially as she was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were gettin’ up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin’s night after night for a matter of three months.’

‘I know what a horotorio is,’ said Ortheris pertly. ‘It’s a sort of chaplain’s sing-song—words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah choruses.’

‘Most Greenhow Hill folks played some instrument or t’other, an’ they all sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they were so pleased wi’ the noise they made they didn’t fair to want anybody to listen. The preacher sung high seconds when he wasn’t playin’ the flute, an’ they set me, as hadn’t got far with big fiddle, again Willie Satterthwaite, to jog his elbow when he had to get a’ gate playin.’ Old Jesse was happy if ever a man was, for he were th’ conductor an’ th’ first fiddle an’ th’ leadin’ singer, beatin’ time wi’ his fiddle-stick, till at times he’d rap with it on the table, and cry out, “Now, you mun all stop; it’s my turn.” And he’d face round to his front, fair sweating wi’ pride, to sing th’ tenor solos. But he were grandest i’ th’ choruses, waggin’ his head, flinging his arms round like a windmill, and singin’ hisself black in the face. A rare singer were Jesse.

‘Yo’ see, I was not o’ much account wi’ ’em all exceptin’ to ’Liza Roantree, and I had a deal o’ time settin’ quiet at meetings and horotorio practises to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me at beginnin’, it got stranger still at after, when I was shut on it, and could study what it meaned.

‘Just after th’ horotorios came off, ’Liza, as had allus been weakly like, was took very bad. I walked Dr. Warbottom’s horse up and down a deal of times while he were inside, where they wouldn’t let me go, though I fair ached to see her.

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‘ “She’ll be better i’ noo, lad—better i’ noo,” he used to say. “That mun ha’ patience.” Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her lyin’ propped up among th’ pillows. Then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on to th’ settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. Th’ preacher and me and Blast was a deal together i’ them days, and i’ one way we was rare good comrades. But I could ha’ stretched him time and again with a good will. I mind one day he said he would like to go down into th’ bowels o’ th’ earth, and see how th’ Lord had builded th’ framework o’ th’ everlastin’ hills. He were one of them chaps as had a gift o’ sayin’ things. They rolled off the tip of his clever tongue, same as Mulvaney here, as would ha’ made a rare good preacher if he had nobbut given his mind to it. I lent him a suit o’ miner’s kit as almost buried th’ little man, and his white face down i’ th’ coat-collar and hat-flap looked like the face of a boggart, and he cowered down i’ th’ bottom o’ the waggon. I was drivin’ a tram as led up a bit of an incline up to th’ cave where the engine was pumpin’, and where th’ ore was brought up and put into th’ waggons as went down o’ themselves, me puttin’ th’ brake on and th’ horses a-trottin’ after. Long as it was daylight we were good friends, but when we got fair into th’ dark, and could nobbut see th’ day shinin’ at the hole like a lamp at a street-end, I feeled down-right wicked. Ma religion dropped all away from me when I looked back at him as were always comin’ between me and ’Liza. The talk was ’at they were to be wed when she got better, an’ I couldn’t get her to say yes or nay to it. He began to sing a hymn in his thin voice, and I came out wi’ a chorus that was all cussin’ an’ swearin’ at my horses, an’ I began to know how I hated him. He were such a little chap, too. I could drop him wi’ one hand down Garstang’s Copper-hole—a place where th’ beck slithered ower th’ edge on a rock, and fell wi’ a bit of a whisper into a pit as no rope i’ Greenhow could plump.’

Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent violets. ‘Ay, he should see th’ bowels o’ th’ earth an’ never naught else. I could take him a mile or two along th’ drift, and leave him wi’ his candle doused to cry hallelujah, wi’ none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down th’ ladder-way to th’ drift where Jesse Roantree was workin’, and why shouldn’t he slip on th’ ladder, wi’ my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and I put him down wi’ my heel? If I went fust down th’ ladder I could click hold on him and chuck him over my head, so as he should go squshin’ down the shaft, breakin’ his bones at ev’ry timberin’ as Bill Appleton did when he was fresh, and hadn’t a bone left when he wrought to th’ bottom. Niver a blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver an arm to put round ’Liza Roantree’s waist. Niver no more—niver no more.’

The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris, moved by his comrade’s passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow, a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse supplied the necessary small talk till Learoyd picked up his story.

‘But it’s none so easy to kill a man like yon. When I’d given up my horses to th’ lad as took my place and I was showin’ th’ preacher th’ workin’s, shoutin’ into his ear across th’ clang o’ th’ pumpin’ engines, I saw he were afraid o’ naught; and when the lamplight showed his black eyes, I could feel as he was masterin’ me again. I were no better nor Blast chained up short and growlin’ i’ the depths of him while a strange dog went safe past.

‘“Th’ art a coward and a fool,” I said to mysen; an’ I wrestled i’ my mind again’ him till, when we come to Garstang’s Copper-hole, I laid hold o’ the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into the darkest on it. “Now, lad,” I says, “it’s to be one or t’other on us—thee or me—for ’Liza Roantree. Why, isn’t thee afraid for thysen?” I says, for he were still i’ my arms as a sack. “Nay; I’m but afraid for thee, my poor lad, as knows naught,” says he. I set him down on th’ edge, an’ th’ beck run stiller, an’ there was no more buzzin’ in my head like when th’ bee come through th’ window o’ Jesse’s house. “What dost tha mean?” says I.

‘“I’ve often thought as thou ought to know,” says he, “but ’twas hard to tell thee. ’Liza Roantree’s for neither on us, nor for nobody o’ this earth. Dr. Warbottom says—and he knows her, and her mother before her—that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer. He’s known it for many a day. Steady, John! Steady!” says he. And that weak little man pulled me further back and set me again’ him, and talked it all over quiet and still, me turnin’ a bunch o’ candles in my hand, and counting them ower and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were th’ regular preachin’ talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin to think as he were more of a man than I’d ever given him credit for, till I were cut as deep for him as I were for mysen.

‘Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they lasted, and I said to mysen, “’Liza Roantree hasn’t six months to live.” And when we came into th’ daylight again we were liked dead men to look at, an’ Blast come behind us without so much as waggin’ his tail. When I saw ’Liza again she looked at me a minute and says, “Who’s telled tha? For I see that knows.” And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I fair broke down.

‘Yo’see, I was a young chap i’ them days, and had seen naught o’ life, let alone death, as is allus a-waitin’. She telled me as Dr. Warbottom said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin’ to Bradford, to Jesse’s brother David, as worked i’ a mill, and I mun hold up like a man and a Christian, and she’d pray for me. Well, and they went away, and the preacher that same back end o’ th’ year were appointed to another circuit, as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow Hill.

‘I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th’ chapel, but ’tweren’t th’ same thing at after. I hadn’t Liza’s voice to follow i’ th’ singin’, nor her eyes a’shinin’ acrost their heads. And i’ th’ class-meetings they said as I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn’t a word to say for mysen.

‘Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn’t behave ourselves over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they’d come to take us up. I can’t tell how we got through th’ time, while i’ th’ winter I gave up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th’ door o’ th’ house, in a long street o’ little houses. He’d been sendin’ th’ children ’way as were clatterin’ their clogs in th’ causeway, for she were asleep.

‘“Is it thee?” he says; “but you’re not to see her. I’ll none have her wakened for a nowt like thee. She’s goin’ fast, and she mun go in peace. Thou’lt never be good for naught i’ th’ world, and as long as thou lives thou’ll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!” So he shut the door softly i’ my face.

‘Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about right, and I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting sergeant. The old tales o’ th’ chapel folk came buzzin’ into my head. I was to get away, and this were th’ regular road for the likes o’ me. I ’listed there and then, took th’ Widow’s shillin’, and had a bunch o’ ribbons pinned i’ my hat.

‘But next day I found my way to David Roantree’s door, and Jesse came to open it. Says he, “Thou’s come back again wi’ th’ devil’s colours flyin’—thy true colours, as I always telled thee.”

‘But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say good-bye, till a woman calls down th’ stair-way, “She says John Learoyd’s to come up.” Th’ old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on my arm, quite gentle like. “But thou’lt be quiet, John,” says he, “for she’s rare and weak. Thou was allus a good lad.”

‘Her eyes were all alive wi’ light, and her hair was thick on the pillow round her, but her cheeks were thin—thin to frighten a man that’s strong. “Nay, father, yo mayn’t say th’ devil’s colours. Them ribbons is pretty.” An’ she held out her hands for th’ hat, an’ she put all straight as a woman will wi’ ribbons. “Nay, but what they’re pretty,” she says. “Eh, but I’d ha’ liked to see thee i’ thy red coat, John, for thou was allus my own lad—my very own lad, and none else.”

‘She lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i’ a gentle grip, and they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. “Now yo’ mun get away, lad,” says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs.

‘Th’ recruiting sergeant were waitin’ for me at th’ corner public-house. “Yo’ve seen your sweetheart?” says he. “Yes, I’ve seen her,” says I. “Well, we’ll have a quart now, and you’ll do your best to forget her,” says he, bein’ one o’ them smart, bustlin’ chaps. “Ay, sergeant,” says I. “Forget her.” And I’ve been forgettin’ her ever since.

He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted; Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white crawled up the watercourse.

‘See that beggar? … Got ’im.’

Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.

‘That’s a clean shot, little man,’ said Mulvaney.

Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away. ‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ him, too,’ said he.

Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile of the artist who looks on the completed work.

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HIS mother, a devout and well-born Roman widow, decided that he was doing himself no good in an Eastern Legion so near to free-thinking Constantinople, and got him seconded for civil duty in Antioch, where his uncle, Lucius Sergius, was head of the urban Police. Valens obeyed as a son and as a young man keen to see life, and, presently, cast up at his uncle’s door.‘That sister-in-law of mine,’ said the elder, ‘never remembers me till she wants something. What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing, Uncle.’

‘Meaning everything?’

‘That’s what mother thinks. But I haven’t.’

‘We shall see. Your quarters are across the inner courtyard. Your—er—baggage is there already. . . . Oh, I shan’t interfere with your private arrangements! I’m not the uncle with the rough tongue. Get your bath. We’ll talk at supper.’

But before that hour ‘Father Serga,’ as the Prefect of Police was called, learned from the Treasury that his nephew had marched overland from Constantinople in charge of a treasure-convoy which, after a brush with brigands in the pass outside Tarsus, he had duly delivered.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about it?’ his uncle asked at the meal.

‘I had to report to the Treasury first,’ was the answer.

Serga looked at him. ‘Gods! You are like your father,’ said he. ‘Cilicia is scandalously policed.’

‘So I noticed. They ambushed us not five miles from Tarsus town. Are we given to that sort of thing here?’

‘You make yourself at home early. No. We are not, but Syria is a Non-regulation Province—under the Emperor—not the Senate. We’ve the entire unaccountable East to one side; the scum of the Mediterranean on the other; and all hellicat Judaea southward. Anything can happen in Syria. D’you like the prospect?’

‘I shall—under you.’

‘It’s in the blood. The same with men as horses. Now what have you done that distresses your mother so?’

‘She’s a little behind the times, sir. She follows the old school, of course—the home-worships, and the strict Latin Trinity. I don’t think she recognises any Gods outside Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.’

‘I don’t either—officially.’

‘Nor I, as an officer, sir. But one wants more than that, and—and—what I learned in Byzant squared with what I saw with the Fifteenth.’

‘You needn’t go on. All Eastern Legions are alike. You mean you follow Mithras—eh?’

The young man bowed his head slightly.

‘No harm, boy. It’s a soldier’s religion, even if it comes from outside.’

‘So I thought. But Mother heard of it. She didn’t approve and—I suppose that’s why I’m here.’

‘Off the trident and into the net! Just like a woman! All Syria is stuffed with Mithraism. My objection to fancy religions is that they mostly meet after dark, and that means more work for the Police. We’ve a College here of stiff-necked Hebrews who call themselves Christians.’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ said Valens. ‘There isn’t a ceremony or symbol they haven’t stolen from the Mithras ritual.’

‘’No news to me! Religions are part of my office-work; and they’ll be part of yours. Our Synagogue Jews are fighting like Scythians over this new faith.’

‘Does that matter much?’

‘So long as they fight each other, we’ve only to keep the ring. Divide and rule—especially with Hebrews. Even these Christians are divided now. You see—one part of their worship is to eat together.’

‘Another theft! The Supper is the essential Symbol with us,’ Valens interrupted.

‘With us, it’s the essential symbol of trouble for your uncle, my dear. Anyone can become a Christian. A Jew may; but he still lives by his Law of Moses (I’ve had to master that cursed code, too), and it regulates all his doings. Then he sits down at a Christian love-feast beside a Greek or Westerner, who doesn’t kill mutton or pig—No! No! Jews don’t touch pork—as the Jewish Law lays down. Then the tables are broken up—but not by laughter—No! No! Riot!’

‘That’s childish,’ said Valens.

‘’Wish it were. But my lictors are called in to keep order, and I have to take the depositions of Synagogue Jews, denouncing Christians as traitors to Caesar. If I chose to act on half the stuff their Rabbis swear to, I’d have respectable little Jew shop-keepers up every week for conspiracy. Never decide on the evidence, when you’re dealing with Hebrews! Oh, you’ll get your bellyful of it! You’re for Market-duty to-morrow in the Little Circus ward, all among ’em. And now, sleep you well! I’ve been on this frontier as far back. as anyone remembers—that’s why they call me the Father of Syria—and oh—it’s good to see a sample of the old stock again!’

Next morning, and for many weeks after, Valens found himself on Market-inspection duty with a fat Aedile, who flew into rages because the stalls were not flushed down at the proper hour. A couple of his uncle’s men were told off to him, and, of course, introduced him to the thieves’ and prostitutes’ quarters, to the leading gladiators, and so forth.

One day, behind the Little Circus, near Singon Street, he ran into a mob, where a race-course gang were trying to collect, or evade, some bets on recent chariot-races. The Aedile said it was none of his affair and turned back. The lictors closed up behind Valens, but left the situation in his charge. Then a small hard man with eyebrows was punted on to his chest, amid howls from all around that he was the ringleader of a conspiracy. ‘Yes,’ said Valens, ‘that was an old trick in Byzant; but I think we’ll take you, my friend.’ Turning the small man loose, he gathered in the loudest of his accusers to appear before his uncle.

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‘You were quite right,’ said Serga next day.

‘That gentleman was put up to the job—by someone else. I ordered him one Roman dozen. Did you get the name of the man they were trying to push off on you?’

‘Yes. Gaius Julius Paulus. Why?’

‘I guessed as much. He’s an old acquaintance of mine, a Cilician from Tarsus. Well-born—a citizen by descent, and well-educated, but his people have disowned him. So he works for his living.’

‘He spoke like a well-born. He’s in splendid training, too. ’Felt him. All muscle.’

‘Small wonder. He can outmarch a camel. He is really the Prefect of this new sect. He travels all over our Eastern Provinces starting their Colleges and keeping them up to the mark. That’s why the Synagogue Jews are hunting him. If they could run him in on the political charge, it would finish him.’

‘Is he seditious, then?’

‘Not in the least. Even if he were, I wouldn’t feed him to the Jews just because they wanted it. One of our Governors tried that game down-coast—for the sake of peace—some years ago. He didn’t get it. Do you like your Market-work, my boy?’

‘It’s interesting. D’you know, uncle, I think the Synagogue Jews are better at their slaughter-house arrangements than we.’

‘They are. That’s what makes ’em so tough. A dozen stripes are nothing to Apella, though he’ll howl the yard down while he’s getting ’em. You’ve the Christians’ College in your quarter. How do they strike you?’

‘’Quiet enough. They’re worrying a bit over what they ought to eat at their love-feasts.’

‘I know it. Oh, I meant to tell you—we mustn’t try ’em too high just now, Valens. My office reports that Paulus, your small friend, is going down-country for a few days to meet another priest of the College, and bring him back to help smooth over their difficulties about their victuals. That means their congregation will be at loose ends till they return. Mass without mind always comes a cropper. So, now is when the Synagogue Jews will try to compromise them. I don’t want the poor devils stampeded into what can be made to look like political crime. ‘’Understand?’

Valens nodded. Between his uncle’s discursive evening talks, studded with kitchen-Greek and out-of-date Roman society-verses; his morning tours with the puffing Aedile; and the confidences of his lictors at all hours; he fancied he understood Antioch.

So he kept an eye on the rooms in the colonnade behind the Little Circus, where the new faith gathered. One of the many Jew butchers told him that Paulus had left affairs in the hands of some man called Barnabas, but that he would come back with one, Petrus—evidently a well-known character—who would settle all the food-differences between Greek and Hebrew Christians. The butcher had no spite against Greek Christians as such, if they would only kill their meat like decent Jews.

Serga laughed at this talk, but lent Valens an extra man or two, and said that this lion would be his to tackle, before long.

The boy found himself rushed into the arena one hot dusk, when word had come that this was to be a night of trouble. He posted his lictors in an alley within signal, and entered the common-room of the College, where the love-feasts were held. Everyone seemed as friendly as a Christian—to use the slang of the quarter—and Barnabas, a smiling, stately man by the door, specially so.

‘I am glad to meet you,’ he said. ‘You helped our Paulus in that scuffle the other day. We can’t afford to lose him. I wish he were back!’

He looked nervously down the hall, as it filled with people, of middle and low degree, setting out their evening meal on the bare tables, and greeting each other with a special gesture.

‘I assure you,’ he went on, his eyes still astray, ‘we’ve no intention of offending any of the brethren. Our differences can be settled if only——’

As though on a signal, clamour rose from half a dozen tables at once, with cries of ‘Pollution! Defilement! Heathen! The Law! The Law! Let Caesar know!’ As Valens backed against the wall, the crowd pelted each other with broken meats and crockery, till at last stones appeared from nowhere.

‘It’s a put-up affair,’ said Valens to Barnabas.

‘Yes. They come in with stones in their breasts. Be careful! They’re throwing your way,’ Barnabas replied. The crowd was well-embroiled now. A section of it bore down to where they stood, yelling for the justice of Rome. His two lictors slid in behind Valens, and a man leaped at him with a knife.

Valens struck up the hand, and the lictors had the man helpless as the weapon fell on the floor. The clash of it stilled the tumult a little. Valens caught the lull, speaking slowly: ‘Oh, citizens,’ he called, ‘must you begin your love-feasts with battle? Our tripe-sellers’ burial-club has better manners.’

A little laughter relieved the tension.

‘The Synagogue has arranged this,’ Barnabas muttered. ‘The responsibility will be laid on me.’

‘Who is the Head of your College?’ Valens called to the crowd.

The cries rose against each other.

‘Paulus! Saul! He knows the world —— No! No! Petrus! Our Rock! He won’t betray us. Petrus, the Living Rock.’

‘When do they come back?’ Valens asked. Several dates were given, sworn to, and denied.

‘Wait to fight till they return. I’m not a priest; but if you don’t tidy up these rooms, our Aedile (Valens gave him his gross nick-name in the quarter) will fine the sandals off your feet. And you mustn’t trample good food either. When you’ve finished, I’ll lock up after you. Be quick. I know our Prefect if you don’t.’

They toiled, like children rebuked. As they passed out with baskets of rubbish, Valens smiled. The matter would not be pressed further.

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‘Here is our key,’ said Barnabas at the end. ‘The Synagogue will swear I hired this man to kill you.’

‘Will they? Let’s look at him.’

The lictors pushed their prisoner forward.

‘Ill-fortune!’ said the man. ‘I owed you for my brother’s death in Tarsus Pass.’

‘Your brother tried to kill me,’ Valens retorted.

The fellow nodded.

‘Then we’ll call it even-throws,’ Valens signed to the lictors, who loosed hold. ‘Unless you really want to see my uncle?’

The man vanished like a trout in the dusk. Valens returned the key to Barnabas, and said:

‘If I were you, I shouldn’t let your people in again till your leaders come back. You don’t know Antioch as I do.’

He went home, the grinning lictors behind him, and they told his uncle, who grinned also, but said that he had done the right thing—even to patronising Barnabas.

‘Of course, I don’t know Antioch as you do; but, seriously, my dear, I think you’ve saved their Church for the Christians this time. I’ve had three depositions already that your Cilician friend was a Christian hired by Barnabas. ’Just as well for Barnabas that you let the brute go.’

‘You told me you didn’t want them stampeded into trouble. Besides, it was fair-throws. I may have killed his brother after all. We had to kill two of ’em.’

‘Good! You keep a level head in a tight corner. You’ll need it. There’s no lying about in secluded parks for us! I’ve got to see Paulus and Petrus when they come back, and find out what they’ve decided about their infernal feasts. Why can’t they all get decently drunk and be done with it?’

‘They talk of them both down-town as though they were Gods. By the way, uncle, all the riot was worked up by Synagogue Jews sent from Jerusalem—not by our lot at all.’

‘You don’t say so? Now, perhaps, you understand why I put you on market-duty with old Sow-Belly! You’ll make a Police-officer yet.’

Valens met the scared, mixed congregation round the fountains and stalls as he went about his quarter. They were rather relieved at being locked out of their rooms for the time; as well as by the news that Paulus and Petrus would report to the Prefect of Police before addressing them on the great food-question.

Valens was not present at the first part of that interview, which was official. The second, in the cool, awning-covered courtyard, with drinks and hors-d’œuvre, all set out beneath the vast lemon and lavender sunset, was much less formal.

‘You have met, I think,’ said Serga to the little lean Paulus as Valens entered.

‘Indeed, yes. Under God, we are twice your debtors,’ was the quick reply.

‘Oh, that was part of my duty. I hope you found our roads good on your journey,’ said Valens.

‘Why, yes. I think they were.’ Paulus spoke as if he had not noticed them.

‘We should have done better to come by boat,’ said his companion, Petrus, a large fleshy man, with eyes that seemed to see nothing, and a half-palsied right hand that lay idle in his lap.

‘Valens came overland from Byzant,’ said his uncle. ‘He rather fancies his legs.’

‘He ought to at his age. What was your best day’s march on the Via Sebaste?’ Paulus asked interestedly, and, before he knew, Valens was reeling off his mileage on mountain-roads every step of which Paulus seemed to have trod.

‘That’s good,’ was the comment. ‘And I expect you march in heavier order than I.’

‘What would you call your best day’s work? ‘ Valens asked in turn.

‘I have covered . . .’ Paulus checked himself. ‘And yet not I but the God,’ he muttered. ‘It’s hard to cure oneself of boasting.’

A spasm wrenched Petrus’ face.

‘Hard indeed,’ said he. Then he addressed himself to Paulus as though none other were present. ‘It is true I have eaten with Gentiles and as the Gentiles ate. Yet, at the time, I doubted if it were wise.’

‘That is behind us now,’ said Paulus gently.

‘The decision has been taken for the Church—that little Church which you saved, my son.’ He turned on Valens with a smile that half-captured the boy’s heart. ‘Now—as a Roman and a Police-officer—what think you of us Christians?’

‘That I have to keep order in my own ward.’

‘Good! Caesar must be served. But—as a servant of Mithras, shall we say—how think you about our food-disputes?’

Valens hesitated. His uncle encouraged him with a nod. ‘As a servant of Mithras I eat with any initiate, so long as the food is clean,’ said Valens.

‘But,’ said Petrus, ‘that is the crux.’

‘Mithras also tells us,’ Valens went on, ‘to share a bone covered with dirt, if better cannot be found.’

‘You observe no difference, then, between peoples at your feasts?’ Paulus demanded.

‘How dare we? We are all His children. Men make laws. Not Gods,’ Valens quoted from the old Ritual.

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‘Say that again, child!’

‘Gods do not make laws. They change men’s hearts. The rest is the Spirit.’

‘You heard it, Petrus? You heard that? It is the utter Doctrine itself!’ Paulus insisted to his dumb companion.

Valens, a little ashamed of having spoken of his faith, went on:

‘They tell me the Jew butchers here want the monopoly of killing for your people. Trade feeling’s at the bottom of most of it.’

‘A little more than that perhaps,’ said Paulus. ‘Listen a minute.’ He threw himself into a curious tale about the God of the Christians, Who, he said, had taken the shape of a Man, and Whom the Jerusalem Jews, years ago, had got the authorities to deal with as a conspirator. He said that he himself, at that time a right Jew, quite agreed with the sentence, and had denounced all who followed the new God. But one day the Light and the Voice of the God broke over him, and he experienced a rending change of heart—precisely as in the Mithras creed. Then he met, and had been initiated by, some men who had walked and talked and, more particularly, had eaten, with the new God before He was killed, and who had seen Him after, like Mithras, He had risen from His grave. Paulus and those others—Petrus was one of them—had next tried to preach Him to the Jews, but that was no success; and, one thing leading to another, Paulus had gone back to his home at Tarsus, where his people disowned him for a renegade. There he had broken down with overwork and despair. Till then, he said, it had never occurred to any of them to show the new religion to any except right Jews; for their God had been born in the shape of a Jew. Paulus himself only came to realise the possibilities of outside work, little by little. He said he had all the foreign preaching in his charge now, and was going to change the whole world by it.

Then he made Petrus finish the tale, who explained, speaking very slowly, that he had, some years ago, received orders from the God to preach to a Roman officer of Irregulars down-country; after which that officer and most of his people wanted to become Christians. So Petrus had initiated them the same night, although none of them were Hebrews. ‘And,’ Petrus ended, ‘I saw there is nothing under heaven that we dare call unclean.’

Paulus turned on him like a flash and cried ‘You admit it! Out of your own mouth it is evident.’ Petrus shook like a leaf and his right hand almost lifted.

‘Do you too twit me with my accent?’ he began, but his face worked and he choked.

‘Nay! God forbid! And God once more forgive me!’ Paulus seemed as distressed as he, while Valens stared at the extraordinary outbreak.

‘Talking of clean and unclean,’ his uncle said tactfully, ‘there’s that ugly song come up again in the City. They were singing it on the city-front yesterday, Valens. Did you notice?’

He looked at his nephew, who took the hint.

‘If it was “Pickled Fish,” sir, they were. Will it make trouble?’

‘As surely as these fish’—-a jar of them stood on the table—‘make one thirsty. How does it go? Oh yes.’ Serga hummed

Oie-eaah!
’From the Shark and the Sardine—
the clean and the unclean—
To the Pickled Fish of Galilee,
said Petrus, shall be mine.

He twanged it off to the proper gutter-drawl.

(Ha-ow?)
In the nets or on the line,
Till the Gods Themselves decline.
(Whe-en?)
When the Pickled Fish of Galilee
ascend the Esquiline!

That’ll be something of a flood—worse than live fish in trees! Hey?’

‘It will happen one day,’ said Paulus.

He turned from Petrus, whom he had been soothing tenderly, and resumed in his natural, hardish voice:

‘Yes. We owe a good deal to that Centurion being converted when he was. It taught us that the whole world could receive the God; and it showed me my next work. I came over from Tarsus to teach here for a while. And I shan’t forget how good the Prefect of Police was to us then.’

‘For one thing, Cornelius was an early colleague,’ Serga smiled largely above his strong cup. ‘“Prime companion”—how does it go?—“we drank the long, long Eastern day out together,” and so on. For another, I know a good workman when I see him. That camel-kit you made for my desert-tours, Paul, is as sound as ever. And for a third—which to a man of my habits is most important—that Greek doctor you recommended me is the only one who understands my tumid liver.’

He passed a cup of all but unmixed wine, which Paulus handed to Petrus, whose lips were flaky white at the corners.

‘But your trouble,’ the Prefect went on, ‘will come from your own people. Jerusalem never forgives. They’ll get you run in on the charge of laesa majestatis soon or late.’

‘Who knows better than I?’ said Petrus. ‘And the decision we all have taken about our love-feasts may unite Hebrew and Greek against us. As I told you, Prefect, we are asking Christian Greeks not to make the feasts difficult for Christian Hebrews by eating meat that has not been lawfully killed. (Our way is much more wholesome, anyhow.) Still, we may get round that. But there’s one vital point. Some of our Greek Christians bring food to the love-feasts that they’ve bought from your priests, after your sacrifices have been offered. That we can’t allow.’

Paulus turned to Valens imperiously.

‘You mean they buy Altar-scraps,’ the boy said. ‘But only the very poor do it; and it’s chiefly block-trimmings. The sale’s a perquisite of the Altar-butchers. They wouldn’t like its being stopped.’

‘Permit separate tables for Hebrew and Greek, as I once said,’ Petrus spoke suddenly.

‘That would end in separate churches. There shall be but one Church,’ Paulus spoke over his shoulder, and the words fell like rods. ‘You think there may be trouble, Valens?’

‘My uncle——’ Valens began.

‘No, no!’ the Prefect laughed. ‘Singon Street Markets are your Syria. Let’s hear what our Legate thinks of his Province.’

Valens flushed and tried to pull his wits together.

‘Primarily,’ he said, ‘it’s pig, I suppose. Hebrews hate pork.’

‘Quite right, too. Catch me eating pig east the Adriatic! I don’t want to die of worms. Give me a young Sabine tush-ripe boar! I have spoken!’

Serga mixed himself another raw cup and took some pickled Lake fish to bring out the flavour.

‘But, still,’ Petrus leaned forward like a deaf man, ‘if we admitted Hebrew and Greek Christians to separate tables we should escape——’

‘Nothing, except salvation,’ said Paulus. ‘We have broken with the whole Law of Moses. We live in and through and by our God only. Else we are nothing. What is the sense of harking back to the Law at meal-times? Whom do we deceive? Jerusalem? Rome? The God? You yourself have eaten with Gentiles! You yourself have said——’

‘One says more than one means when one is carried away,’ Petrus answered, and his face worked again.

‘This time you will say precisely what is meant,’ Paulus spoke between his teeth. ‘We will keep the Churches one—in and through the Lord. You dare not deny this?’

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‘I dare nothing—the God knows! But I have denied Him. . . . I denied Him. . . . And He said—He said I was the Rock on which His Church should stand.’

‘I will see that it stands, and yet not I——’ Paulus’ voice dropped again. ‘To-morrow you will speak to the one Church of the one Table the world over.’

‘That’s your business,’ said the Prefect. ‘But I warn you again, it’s your own people who will make you trouble.’

Paulus rose to say farewell, but in the act he staggered, put his hand to his forehead and, as Valens steered him to a divan, collapsed in the grip of that deadly Syrian malaria which strikes like a snake. Valens, having suffered, called to his rooms for his heavy travelling-fur. His girl, whom he had bought in Constantinople a few months before, fetched it. Petrus tucked it awkwardly round the shivering little figure; the Prefect ordered lime juice and hot water, and Paulus thanked them and apologised, while his teeth rattled on the cup.

‘Better to-day than to-morrow,’ said the Prefect. ‘Drink—sweat—and sleep here the night. Shall I send for my doctor?’

But Paulus said that the fit would pass naturally, and as soon as he could stand he insisted on going away with Petrus, late though it was, to prepare their announcement to the Church.

‘Who was that big, clumsy man?’ his girl asked Valens as she took up the fur. ‘He made more noise than the small one, who was really suffering.’

‘He’s a priest of the new College by the Little Circus, dear. He believes, uncle told me, that he once denied his God, Who, he says, died for him.’

She halted in the moonlight, the glossy jackal skins over her arm.

‘Does he? My God bought me from the dealers like a horse. Too much, too, he paid. Didn’t he? ’Fess, thou?’

‘No, thee!’ emphatically.

‘But I wouldn’t deny my God—living or dead! … Oh—but not dead! My God’s going to live—for me. Live—live Thou, my heart’s blood, for ever!’

It would have been better had Paulus and Petrus not left the Prefect’s house so late; for the rumour in the city, as the Prefect knew, and as the long conference seemed to confirm, was that Caesar’s own Secretary of State in Rome was, through Paulus, arranging for a general defilement of the Hebrew with the Greek Christians, and that after this had been effected, by promiscuous eating of unlawful foods, all Jews would be lumped together as Christians—members, that is, of a mere free-thinking sect instead of the very particular and troublesome ‘Nation of Jews within the Empire.’ Eventually, the story went, they would lose their rights as Roman citizens, and could then be sold on any slave-stand.

‘Of course,’ Serga explained to Valens next day, ‘that has been put about by the Jerusalem Synagogue. Our Antioch Jews aren’t clever enough. Do you see their game? Petrus is a defiler of the Hebrew nation. If he is cut down to-night by some properly primed young zealot so much the better.’

‘He won’t be,’ said Valens. ‘I’m looking after him.’

‘‘Hope so. But, if he isn’t knifed,’ Serga went on, ‘they’ll try to work up city riots on the grounds that, when all the Jews have lost their civil rights, he’ll set up as a sort of King of the Christians.’

‘At Antioch? In the present year of Rome? That’s crazy, Uncle.’

‘Every crowd is crazy. What else do we draw pay for? But, listen. Post a Mounted Police patrol at the back of the Little Circus. Use ’em to keep the people moving when the congregation comes out. Post two of your men in the Porch of their College itself. Tell Paulus and Petrus to wait there with them, till the streets are clear. Then fetch ’em both over here. Don’t hit till you have to. Hit hard before the stones fly. Don’t get my little horses knocked about more than you can help, and—look out for “Pickled Fish”!’

Knowing his own quarter, it seemed to Valens as he went on duty that evening, that his uncle’s precautions had been excessive. The Christian Church, of course, was full, and a large crowd waited outside for word of the decision about the feasts. Most of them seemed to be Christians of sorts, but there was an element of gesticulating Antiochene loafers, and like all crowds they amused themselves with popular songs while they waited. Things went smoothly, till a group of Christians raised a rather explosive hymn, which ran

‘Enthroned above Caesar
and Judge of the Earth!
We wait on Thy coming—oh tarry not long!
As the Kings of the Sunrise
Drew sword at Thy Birth,
So we arm in this midnight of insult and wrong!’

‘Yes—and if one of their fish-stalls is bumped over by a camel—it’s my fault!’ said Valens. ‘Now they’ve started it!’

Sure enough, voices on the outskirts broke into ‘Pickled Fish,’ but before Valens could speak, they were suppressed by someone crying:

‘Quiet there, or you’ll get your pickle before your fish.’

It was close on twilight when a cry rose from within the packed Church, and its congregation breasted out into the crowd. They all talked about the new orders for their love-feasts, most of them agreeing that they were sensible and easy. They agreed, too, that Petrus (Paulus did not seem to have taken much part in the debate) had spoken like one inspired, and they were all extremely proud of being Christians. Some of them began to link arms across the alley, and strike into the ‘Enthroned above Caesar’ chorus.

‘And this, I think,’ Valens called to the young Commandant of the Mounted Patrol, ‘is where we’ll begin to steer ’em home. Oh! And “Let night also have her well-earned hymn,” as Uncle ’ud say.’

There filed out from behind the Little Circus four blaring trumpets, a standard, and a dozen Mounted Police. Their wise little grey Arabs sidled, passaged, shouldered, and nosed softly into the mob, as though they wanted petting, while the trumpets deafened the narrow street. An open square, near by, eased the pressure before long. Here the Patrol broke into fours, and gridironed it, saluting the images of the Gods at each corner and in the centre. People stopped, as usual, to watch how cleverly the incense was cast down over the withers into the spouting cressets; children reached up to pat horses which they said they knew; family groups re-found each other in the smoky dusk; hawkers offered cooked suppers; and soon the crowd melted into the main traffic avenues. Valens went over to the Church porch, where Petrus and Paulus waited between his lictors.

‘That was well done,’ Paulus began.

‘How’s the fever?’ Valens asked.

‘I was spared for to-day. I think, too, that by The Blessing we have carried our point.’

‘Good hearing! My uncle bids me say you are welcome at his house.’

‘That is always a command,’ said Paulus, with a quick down-country gesture. ‘Now that this day’s burden is lifted, it will be a delight.’

Petrus joined up like a weary ox. Valens greeted him, but he did not answer.

‘Leave him alone,’ Paulus whispered. ‘The virtue has gone out of me—him—for the while.’ His own face looked pale and drawn.

The street was empty, and Valens took a short cut through an alley, where light ladies leaned out of windows and laughed. The three strolled easily together, the lictors behind them, and far off they heard the trumpets of the Night Horse saluting some statue of a Caesar, which marked the end of their round. Paulus was telling Valens how the whole Roman Empire would be changed by what the Christians had agreed to about their love-feasts, when an impudent little Jew boy stole up behind them, playing ‘Pickled Fish’ on some sort of desert bag-pipe.

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‘Can’t you stop that young pest, one of you?’ Valens asked laughing. ‘You shan’t be mocked on this great night of yours, Paulus.’

The lictors turned back a few paces, and shook a torch at the brat, but he retreated and drew them on. Then they heard Paulus shout, and when they hurried back, found Valens prostrate and coughing—his blood on the fringe of the kneeling Paul’s robe. Petrus stooped, waving a helpless hand above them.

‘Someone ran out from behind that well-head. He stabbed him as he ran, and ran on. Listen!’ said Paulus.

But there was not even the echo of a footfall for clue, and the Jew boy had vanished like a bat. Said Valens from the ground

‘Home! Quick! I have it!’

They tore a shutter out of a shop-front, lifted and carried him, while Paulus walked beside. They set him down in the lighted inner courtyard of the Prefect’s house, and a lictor hurried for the Prefect’s physician.

Paulus watched the boy’s face, and, as Valens shivered a little, called to the girl to fetch last night’s fur rug. She brought it, laid the head on her breast, and cast herself beside Valens.

‘It isn’t bad. It doesn’t bleed much. So it can’t be bad—can it?’ she repeated. Valens’ smile reassured her, till the Prefect came and recognised the deadly upward thrust under the ribs. He turned on the Hebrews.

‘To-morrow you will look for where your Church stood,’ said he.

Valens lifted the hand that the girl was not kissing.

‘No—no!’ he gasped. ‘The Cilician did it! For his brother! He said it.’

‘The Cilician you let go to save these Christians because I——?’ Valens signed to his uncle that it was so, while the girl begged him to steal strength from her till the doctor should come.

‘Forgive me,’ said Serga to Paulus. ‘None the less I wish your God in Hades once for all. . . . But what am I to write his mother? Can’t either of you two talking creatures tell me what I’m to tell his mother?’

‘What has she to do with him?’ the slave-girl cried. ‘He is mine—mine! I testify before all Gods that he bought me! I am his. He is mine.’

‘We can deal with the Cilician and his friends later,’ said one of the lictors. ‘ But what now?’

For some reason, the man, though used to butcher-work, looked at Petrus.

‘Give him drink and wait,’ said Petrus. ‘I have—seen such a wound.’ Valens drank and a shade of colour came to him. He motioned the Prefect to stoop.

‘What is it? Dearest of lives, what troubles?’

‘The Cilician and his friends. . . . Don’t be hard on them. . . . They get worked up. . . . They don’t know what they are doing. . . . Promise!’

‘This is not I, child. It is the Law.’

‘’No odds. You’re Father’s brother. . . . Men make laws—not Gods. . . . Promise! . . . It’s finished with me.’

Valens’ head eased back on its yearning pillow.

Petrus stood like one in a trance. The tremor left his face as he repeated

‘“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Heard you that, Paulus? He, a heathen and an idolator, said it!’

‘I heard. What hinders now that we should baptize him?’ Paulus answered promptly.

Petrus stared at him as though he had come up out of the sea.

‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘It is the little maker of tents. . . . And what does he now—command?’

Paulus repeated the suggestion.

Painfully, that other raised the palsied hand that he had once held up in a hall to deny a charge.

‘Quiet!’ said he. ‘Think you that one who has spoken Those Words needs such as we are to certify him to any God?’

Paulus cowered before the unknown colleague, vast and commanding, revealed after all these years.

‘As you please—as you please,’ he stammered, overlooking the blasphemy. ‘Moreover there is the concubine.’

The girl did not heed, for the brow beneath her lips was chilling, even as she called on her God who had bought her at a price that he should not die but live.

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THEY had bought peppermints up at the village, and were coming home past little St. Barnabas’ Church, when they saw Jimmy Kidbrooke, the carpenter’s baby, kicking at the churchyard gate, with a shaving in his mouth and the tears running down his cheeks.Una pulled out the shaving and put in a peppermint. Jimmy said he was looking for his grand-daddy—he never seemed to take much notice of his father—so they went up between the old graves, under the leaf-dropping limes, to the porch, where Jim trotted in, looked about the empty Church, and screamed like a gate-hinge.

Young Sam Kidbrooke’s voice came from the bell-tower and made them jump.

‘Why, Jimmy,’he called, ‘what are you doin’ here? Fetch him, Father!’

Old Mr Kidbrooke stumped downstairs, jerked Jimmy on to his shoulder, stared at the children beneath his brass spectacles, and stumped back again. They laughed: it was so exactly like Mr Kidbrooke.

‘It’s all right,’ Una called up the stairs. ‘We found him, Sam. Does his mother know?’

‘He’s come off by himself. She’ll be justabout crazy,’ Sam answered.

‘Then I’ll run down street and tell her.’ Una darted off.

‘Thank you, Miss Una. Would you like to see how we’re mendin’ the bell-beams, Mus’ Dan?’

Dan hopped up, and saw young Sam lying on his stomach in a most delightful place among beams and ropes, close to the five great bells. Old Mr Kidbrooke on the floor beneath was planing a piece of wood, and Jimmy was eating the shavings as fast as they came away. He never looked at Jimmy; Jimmy never stopped eating; and the broad gilt-bobbed pendulum of the church clock never stopped swinging across the white-washed wall of the tower.

Dan winked through the sawdust that fell on his upturned face. ‘Ring a bell,’ he called.

‘I mustn’t do that, but I’ll buzz one of ’em a bit for you,’ said Sam. He pounded on the sound-bow of the biggest bell, and waked a hollow groaning boom that ran up and down the tower like creepy feelings down your back. just when it almost began to hurt, it died away in a hurry of beautiful sorrowful cries, like a wine-glass rubbed with a wet finger. The pendulum clanked—one loud clank to each silent swing.

Dan heard Una return from Mrs Kidbrooke’s, and ran down to fetch her. She was standing by the font staring at some one who kneeled at the Altar-rail.

‘Is that the Lady who practises the organ?’ she whispered.

‘No. She’s gone into the organ-place. Besides, she wears black,’ Dan replied.

The figure rose and came down the nave. It was a white-haired man in a long white gown with a sort of scarf looped low on the neck, one end hanging over his shoulder. His loose long sleeves were embroidered with gold, and a deep strip of gold embroidery waved and sparkled round the hem of his gown.

‘Go and meet him,’ said Puck’s voice behind the font. ‘It’s only Wilfrid.’

‘Wilfrid who?’ said Dan. ‘You come along too.’

‘Wilfrid—Saint of Sussex, and Archbishop of York. I shall wait till he asks me.’ He waved them forward. Their feet squeaked on the old grave-slabs in the centre aisle. The Archbishop raised one hand with a pink ring on it, and said something in Latin. He was very handsome, and his thin face looked almost as silvery as his thin circle of hair.

‘Are you alone?’ he asked.

‘Puck’s here, of course,’ said Una. ‘Do you know him?’

‘I know him better now than I used to.’ He beckoned over Dan’s shoulder, and spoke again in Latin. Puck pattered forward, holding himself as straight as an arrow. The Archbishop smiled.

‘Be welcome,’ said he. ‘Be very welcome.’

‘Welcome to you also, O Prince of the church,’ Puck replied.

The Archbishop bowed his head and passed on, till he glimmered like a white moth in the shadow by the font.

‘He does look awfully princely,’ said Una. ‘Isn’t he coming back?’

‘Oh yes. He’s only looking over the church. He’s very fond of churches,’ said Puck. ‘What’s that?’

The Lady who practices the organ was speaking to the blower-boy behind the organ-screen. ‘We can’t very well talk here,’ Puck whispered. ‘Let’s go to Panama Corner.’

He led them to the end of the south aisle, where there is a slab of iron which says in queer, long-tailed letters: Orate P. Annema Jhone Coline. The children always called it Panama Corner.

The Archbishop moved slowly about the little church, peering at the old memorial tablets and the new glass windows. The Lady who practises the organ began to pull out stops and rustle hymn-books behind the screen.

‘I hope she’ll do all the soft lacey tunes—like treacle on porridge,’ said Una.

‘I like the trumpety ones best,’ said Dan. ‘Oh, look at Wilfrid! He’s trying to shut the Altar-gates!’

‘Tell him he mustn’t,’ said Puck, quite seriously.

He can’t, anyhow,’ Dan muttered, and tiptoed out of Panama Corner while the Archbishop patted and patted at the carved gates that always sprang open again beneath his hand.

‘That’s no use, sir,’ Dan whispered. ‘Old Mr Kidbrooke says Altar-gates are just the one pair of gates which no man can shut. He made ’em so himself.’

The Archbishop’s blue eyes twinkled. Dan saw that he knew all about it.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Dan stammered—very angry with Puck.

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‘Yes, I know! He made them so Himself.’ The Archbishop smiled, and crossed to Panama Corner, where Una dragged up a certain padded arm-chair for him to sit on.

The organ played softly. ‘What does that music say?’he asked.

Una dropped into the chant without thinking: ‘“O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever.” We call it the Noah’s Ark, because it’s all lists of things—beasts and birds and whales, you know.’

‘Whales?’ said the Archbishop quickly.

‘Yes—“O ye whales, and all that move in the waters,”’ Una hummed—‘“Bless ye the Lord.” It sounds like a wave turning over, doesn’t it?’

‘Holy Father,’ said Puck with a demure face, ‘is a little seal also “one who moves in the water”?’

‘Eh? Oh yes—yess!’ he laughed. ‘A seal moves wonderfully in the waters. Do the seal come to my island still?’

Puck shook his head. ‘All those little islands have been swept away.’

‘Very possible. The tides ran fiercely down there. Do you know the land of the Sea-calf, maiden?’

‘No—but we’ve seen seals—at Brighton.’

‘The Archbishop is thinking of a little farther down the coast. He means Seal’s Eye—Selsey—down Chichester way—where he converted the South Saxons,’ Puck explained.

‘Yes—yess; if the South Saxons did not convert me,’ said the Archbishop, smiling. ‘The first time I was wrecked was on that coast. As our ship took ground and we tried to push her off, an old fat fellow of a seal, I remember, reared breast-high out of the water, and scratched his head with his flipper as if he were saying: “What does that excited person with the pole think he is doing” I was very wet and miserable, but I could not help laughing, till the natives came down and attacked us.’

‘What did you do?’ Dan asked.

‘One couldn’t very well go back to France, so one tried to make them go back to the shore. All the South Saxons are born wreckers, like my own Northumbrian folk. I was bringing over a few things for my old church at York, and some of the natives laid hands on them, and—and I’m afraid I lost my temper.’

‘It is said—’ Puck’s voice was wickedly meek—‘that there was a great fight.’

‘Eh, but I must ha’ been a silly lad.’ Wilfrid spoke with a sudden thick burr in his voice. He coughed, and took up his silvery tones again. ‘There was no fight really. My men thumped a few of them, but the tide rose half an hour before its time, with a strong wind, and we backed off. What I wanted to say, though, was, that the seas about us were full of sleek seals watching the scuffle. My good Eddi—my chaplain—insisted that they were demons. Yes—yess! That was my first acquaintance with the South Saxons and their seals.’

‘But not the only time you were wrecked, was it?’ said Dan.

‘Alas, no! On sea and land my life seems to have been one long shipwreck.’ He looked at the Jhone Coline slab as old Hobden sometimes looks into the fire. ‘Ah, well!’

‘But did you ever have any more adventures among the seals?” said Una, after a little.

‘Oh, the seals! I beg your pardon. They are the important things. Yes—yess! I went back to the South Saxons after twelve—fifteen—years. No, I did not come by water, but overland from my own Northumbria, to see what I could do. It’s little one can do with that class of native except make them stop killing each other and themselves—’

‘Why did they kill themselves?’ Una asked, her chin in her hand.

‘Because they were heathen. When they grew tired of life (as if they were the only people!) they would jump into the sea . They called it going to Wotan. It wasn’t want of food always—by any means. A man would tell you that he felt grey in the heart, or a woman would say that she saw nothing but long days in front of her; and they’d saunter away to the mud-flats and—that would be the end of them, poor souls, unless one headed them off. One had to run quick, but one can’t allow people to lay hands on themselves because they happen to feel grey. Yes—yess—Extraordinary people, the South Saxons. Disheartening, sometimes. … What does that say now?’ The organ had changed tune again.

‘Only a hymn for next Sunday,’ said Una. ‘“The Church’s One Foundation.” Go on, please, about running over the mud. I should like to have seen you.’

‘I dare say you would, and I really could run in those days. Ethelwalch the King gave me some five or six muddy parishes by the sea, and the first time my good Eddi and I rode there we saw a man slouching along the slob, among the seals at Manhood End. My good Eddi disliked seals—but he swallowed his objections and ran like a hare.’

‘Why?’said Dan.

‘For the same reason that I did. We thought it was one of our people going to drown himself. As a matter of fact, Eddi and I were nearly drowned in the pools before we overtook him. To cut a long story short, we found ourselves very muddy, very breathless, being quietly made fun of in good Latin by a very well-spoken person. No—he’d no idea of going to Wotan. He was fishing on his own beaches, and he showed us the beacons and turf-heaps that divided his land from the church property. He took us to his own house, gave us a good dinner, some more than good wine, sent a guide with us into Chichester, and became one of my best and most refreshing friends. He was a Meon by descent, from the west edge of the kingdom; a scholar educated, curiously enough, at Lyons, my old school; had travelled the world over, even to Rome, and was a brilliant talker. We found we had scores of acquaintances in common. It seemed he was a small chief under King Ethelwalch, and I fancy the King was somewhat afraid of him. The South Saxons mistrust a man who talks too well. Ah! Now, I’ve left out the very point of my story. He kept a great grey-muzzled old dog-seal that he had brought up from a pup. He called it Padda—after one of my clergy. It was rather like fat, honest old Padda. The creature followed him everywhere, and nearly knocked down my good Eddi when we first met him. Eddi loathed it. It used to sniff at his thin legs and cough at him. I can’t say I ever took much notice of it (I was not fond of animals), till one day Eddi came to me with a circumstantial account of some witchcraft that Meon worked. He would tell the seal to go down to the beach the last thing at night, and bring him word of the weather. When it came back, Meon might say to his slaves, “Padda thinks we shall have wind tomorrow. Haul up the boats!” I spoke to Meon casually about the story, and he laughed.

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‘He told me he could judge by the look of the creature’s coat and the way it sniffed what weather was brewing. Quite possible. One need not put down everything one does not understand to the work of bad spirits—or good ones, for that matter.’ He nodded towards Puck, who nodded gaily in return.

‘I say so,’ he went on, ‘because to a certain extent I have been made a victim of that habit of mind. Some while after I was settled at Selsey, King Ethelwalch and Queen Ebba ordered their people to be baptized. I fear I’m too old to believe that a whole nation can change its heart at the King’s command, and I had a shrewd suspicion that their real motive was to get a good harvest. No rain had fallen for two or three years, but as soon as we had finished baptizing, it fell heavily, and they all said it was a miracle.’

‘And was it?’ Dan asked.

‘Everything in life is a miracle, but’—the Archbishop twisted the heavy ring on his finger—‘I should be slow—ve-ry slow should I be—to assume that a certain sort of miracle happens whenever lazy and improvident people say they are going to turn over a new leaf if they are paid for it. My friend Meon had sent his slaves to the font, but he had not come himself, so the next time I rode over—to return a manuscript—I took the liberty of asking why. He was perfectly open about it. He looked on the King’s action as a heathen attempt to curry favour with the Christians’ God through me the Archbishop, and he would have none of it.

‘“My dear man,” I said, “admitting that that is the case, surely you, as an educated person, don’t believe in Wotan and all the other hobgoblins any more than Padda here?” The old seal was hunched up on his ox-hide behind his master’s chair.

‘“Even if I don’t,” he said, “why should I insult the memory of my fathers’ Gods? I have sent you a hundred and three of my rascals to christen. Isn’t that enough?”

‘“By no means,” I answered. “I want you.”

‘“He wants us! What do you think of that, Padda?” He pulled the seal’s whiskers till it threw back its head and roared, and he pretended to interpret. “No! Padda says he won’t be baptized yet awhile. He says you’ll stay to dinner and come fishing with me tomorrow, because you’re over-worked and need a rest.”

‘“I wish you’d keep yon brute in its proper place,” I said, and Eddi, my chaplain, agreed.

‘“I do,” said Meon. “I keep him just next my heart. He can’t tell a lie, and he doesn’t know how to love any one except me. It ’ud be the same if I were dying on a mud-bank, wouldn’t it, Padda?”

‘“Augh! Augh!” said Padda, and put up his head to be scratched.

‘Then Meon began to tease Eddi: “Padda says, if Eddi saw his Archbishop dying on a mud-bank Eddi would tuck up his gown and run. Padda knows Eddi can run too! Padda came into Wittering Church last Sunday—all wet—to hear the music, and Eddi ran out.”

‘My good Eddi rubbed his hands and his shins together, and flushed. “Padda is a child of the Devil, who is the father of lies!” he cried, and begged my pardon for having spoken. I forgave him.

‘“Yes. You are just about stupid enough for a musician,” said Meon. “But here he is. Sing a hymn to him, and see if he can stand it. You’ll find my small harp beside the fireplace.”

‘Eddi, who is really an excellent musician, played and sang for quite half an hour. Padda shuffled off his ox-hide, hunched himself on his flippers before him, and listened with his head thrown back. Yes—yess! A rather funny sight! Meon tried not to laugh, and asked Eddi if he were satisfied.

‘It takes some time to get an idea out of my good Eddi’s head. He looked at me.

‘“Do you want to sprinkle him with holy water, and see if he flies up the chimney? Why not baptize him?” said Meon.

‘Eddi was really shocked. I thought it was bad taste myself.

‘“That’s not fair,” said Meon. “You call him a demon and a familiar spirit because he loves his master and likes music, and when I offer you a chance to prove it you won’t take it. Look here! I’ll make a bargain. I’ll be baptized if you’ll baptize Padda too. He’s more of a man than most of my slaves.”

‘“One doesn’t bargain—or joke—about these matters,” I said. He was going altogether too far.

‘“Quite right,” said Meon; “I shouldn’t like any one to joke about Padda. Padda, go down to the beach and bring us tomorrow’s weather!”

‘My good Eddi must have been a little over-tired with his day’s work. “I am a servant of the church,” he cried. “My business is to save souls, not to enter into fellowships and understandings with accursed beasts.”

‘“Have it your own narrow way,” said Meon. “Padda, you needn’t go.” The old fellow flounced back to his ox-hide at once.

‘“Man could learn obedience at least from that creature,” said Eddi, a little ashamed of himself. Christians should not curse.

‘“Don’t begin to apologise Just when I am beginning to like you,” said Meon. “We’ll leave Padda behind tomorrow—out of respect to your feelings. Now let’s go to supper. We must be up early tomorrow for the whiting.”

‘The next was a beautiful crisp autumn morning—a weather-breeder, if I had taken the trouble to think; but it’s refreshing to escape from kings and converts for half a day. We three went by ourselves in Meon’s smallest boat, and we got on the whiting near an old wreck, a mile or so off shore. Meon knew the marks to a yard, and the fish were keen. Yes—yess! A perfect morning’s fishing! If a Bishop can’t be a fisherman, who can?’ He twiddled his ring again. ‘We stayed there a little too long, and while we were getting up our stone, down came the fog. After some discussion, we decided to row for the land. The ebb was just beginning to make round the point, and sent us all ways at once like a coracle.’

‘Selsey Bill,’ said Puck under his breath. ‘The tides run something furious there.’

‘I believe you,’ said the Archbishop. ‘Meon and I have spent a good many evenings arguing as to where exactly we drifted. All I know is we found ourselves in a little rocky cove that had sprung up round us out of the fog, and a swell lifted the boat on to a ledge, and she broke up beneath our feet. We had just time to shuffle through the weed before the next wave. The sea was rising. ‘“It’s rather a pity we didn’t let Padda go down to the beach last night,” said Meon. “He might have warned us this was coming.”

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‘“Better fall into the hands of God than the hands of demons,” said Eddi, and his teeth chattered as he prayed. A nor’-west breeze had just got up—distinctly cool.

‘“Save what you can of the boat,” said Meon; “we may need it,” and we had to drench ourselves again, fishing out stray planks.’

‘What for?’ said Dan.

‘For firewood. We did not know when we should get off. Eddi had flint and steel, and we found dry fuel in the old gulls’ nests and lit a fire. It smoked abominably, and we guarded it with boat-planks up-ended between the rocks. One gets used to that sort of thing if one travels. Unluckily I’m not so strong as I was. I fear I must have been a trouble to my friends. It was blowing a full gale before midnight. Eddi wrung out his cloak, and tried to wrap me in it, but I ordered him on his obedience to keep it. However, he held me in his arms all the first night, and Meon begged his pardon for what he’d said the night before—about Eddi, running away if he found me on a sandbank, you remember.

‘“You are right in half your prophecy,” said Eddi. “I have tucked up my gown, at any rate.” (The wind had blown it over his head.) “Now let us thank God for His mercies.”

‘“Hum!” said Meon. “If this gale lasts, we stand a very fair chance of dying of starvation.”

‘“If it be God’s will that we survive, God will provide,” said Eddi. “At least help me to sing to Him.” The wind almost whipped the words out of his mouth, but he braced himself against a rock and sang psalms.

‘I’m glad I never concealed my opinion—from myself—that Eddi was a better man than I. Yet I have worked hard in my time—very hard! Yes—yess! So the morning and the evening were our second day on that islet. There was rain-water in the rock-pools, and, as a churchman, I knew how to fast, but I admit we were hungry. Meon fed our fire chip by chip to eke it out, and they made me sit over it, the dear fellows, when I was too weak to object. Meon held me in his arms the second night, just like a child. My good Eddi was a little out of his senses, and imagined himself teaching a York choir to sing. Even so, he was beautifully patient with them.

‘I heard Meon whisper, “If this keeps up we shall go to our Gods. I wonder what Wotan will say to me. He must know I don’t believe in him. On the other hand, I can’t do what Ethelwalch finds so easy—curry favour with your God at the last minute, in the hope of being saved—as you call it. How do you advise, Bishop?”

‘“My dear man,” I said, “if that is your honest belief, I take it upon myself to say you had far better not curry favour with any God. But if it’s only your Jutish pride that holds you back, lift me up, and I’ll baptize you even now.”

‘“Lie still,” said Meon. “I could judge better if I were in my own hall. But to desert one’s fathers’ Gods—even if one doesn’t believe in them—in the middle of a gale, isn’t quite—What would you do yourself?”

‘I was lying in his arms, kept alive by the warmth of his big, steady heart. It did not seem to me the time or the place for subtle arguments, so I answered, “No, I certainly should not desert my God.” I don’t see even now what else I could have said.

‘“Thank you. I’ll remember that, if I live,” said Meon, and I must have drifted back to my dreams about Northumbria and beautiful France, for it was broad daylight when I heard him calling on Wotan in that high, shaking heathen yell that I detest so.

‘“Lie quiet. I’m giving Wotan his chance,” he said. Our dear Eddi ambled up, still beating time to his imaginary choir.

‘“Yes. Call on your Gods,” he cried, “and see what gifts they will send you. They are gone on a journey, or they are hunting.”

‘I assure you the words were not out of his mouth when old Padda shot from the top of a cold wrinkled swell, drove himself over the weedy ledge, and landed fair in our laps with a rock-cod between his teeth. I could not help smiling at Eddi’s face. “A miracle! A miracle!” he cried, and kneeled down to clean the cod.

‘“You’ve been a long time finding us, my son,” said Meon. “Now fish—fish for all our lives. We’re starving, Padda.”

‘The old fellow flung himself quivering like a salmon backward into the boil of the currents round the rocks, and Meon said, “We’re safe. I’ll send him to fetch help when this wind drops. Eat and be thankful.”

‘I never tasted anything so good as those rock-codlings we took from Padda’s mouth and half roasted over the fire. Between his plunges Padda would hunch up and purr over Meon with the tears running down his face. I never knew before that seals could weep for joy—as I have wept.

‘“Surely,” said Eddi, with his mouth full, “God has made the seal the loveliest of His creatures in the water. Look how Padda breasts the current! He stands up against it like a rock; now watch the chain of bubbles where he dives; and now—there is his wise head under that rock-ledge! Oh, a blessing be on thee, my little brother Padda!”

‘“You said he was a child of the Devil!” Meon laughed.

‘“There I sinned,” poor Eddi answered. “Call him here, and I will ask his pardon. God sent him out of the storm to humble me, a fool.”

‘“I won’t ask you to enter into fellowships and understandings with any accursed brute,” said Meon, rather unkindly. “Shall we say he was sent to our Bishop as the ravens were sent to your prophet Elijah?”

‘“Doubtless that is so,” said Eddi. “I will write it so if I live to get home.”

‘“No—no!” I said. “Let us three poor men kneel and thank God for His mercies.”

‘We kneeled, and old Padda shuffled up and thrust his head under Meon’s elbows. I laid my hand upon it and blessed him. So did Eddi.

‘“And now, my son,” I said to Meon, “shall I baptize thee?”

‘“Not yet,” said he. “Wait till we are well ashore and at home. No God in any Heaven shall say that I came to him or left him because I was wet and cold. I will send Padda to my people for a boat. Is that witchcraft, Eddi?”

‘“Why, no. Surely Padda will go and pull them to the beach by the skirts of their gowns as he pulled me in Wittering Church to ask me to sing. Only then I was afraid, and did not understand,” said Eddi.

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‘“You are understanding now,” said Meon, and at a wave of his arm off went Padda to the mainland, making a wake like a war-boat till we lost him in the rain. Meon’s people could not bring a boat across for some hours; even so it was ticklish work among the rocks in that tideway. But they hoisted me aboard, too stiff to move, and Padda swam behind us, barking and turning somersaults all the way to Manhood End!’

‘Good old Padda!’ murmured Dan.

‘When we were quite rested and re-clothed, and his people had been summoned—not an hour before—Meon offered himself to be baptized.’

‘Was Padda baptized too?’ Una asked.

‘No, that was only Meon’s joke. But he sat blinking on his ox-hide in the middle of the hall. When Eddi (who thought I wasn’t looking) made a little cross in holy water on his wet muzzle, he kissed Eddi’s hand. A week before Eddi wouldn’t have touched him. That was a miracle, if you like! But seriously, I was more glad than I can tell you to get Meon. A rare and splendid soul that never looked back—never looked back!’ The Arch- bishop half closed his eyes.

‘But, sir,’ said Puck, most respectfully, ‘haven’t you left out what Meon said afterwards?’ Before the Bishop could speak he turned to the children and went on: ‘Meon called all his fishers and ploughmen and herdsmen into the hall and he said: “Listen, men! Two days ago I asked our Bishop whether it was fair for a man to desert his fathers’ Gods in a time of danger. Our Bishop said it was not fair. You needn’t shout like that, because you are all Christians now. My red war-boat’s crew will remember how near we all were to death when Padda fetched them over to the Bishop’s islet. You can tell your mates that even in that place, at that time, hanging on the wet, weedy edge of death, our Bishop, a Christian, counselled me, a heathen, to stand by my fathers’ Gods. I tell you now that a faith which takes care that every man shall keep faith, even though he may save his soul by breaking faith, is the faith for a man to believe in. So I believe in the Christian God, and in Wilfrid His Bishop, and in the Church that Wilfrid rules. You have been baptized once by the King’s orders. I shall not have you baptized again; but if I find any more old women being sent to Wotan, or any girls dancing on the sly before Balder, or any men talking about Thun or Lok or the rest, I will teach you with my own hands how to keep faith with the Christian God. Go out quietly; you’ll find a couple of beefs on the beach.” Then of course they shouted “Hurrah!” which meant “Thor help us!” and—I think you laughed, sir?’

‘I think you remember it all too well,’ said the Archbishop, smiling. ‘It was a joyful day for me. I had learned a great deal on that rock where Padda found us. Yes—yess! One should deal kindly with all the creatures of God, and gently with their masters. But one learns late.’

He rose, and his gold-embroidered sleeves rustled thickly.

The organ cracked and took deep breaths.

‘Wait a minute,’ Dan whispered. ‘She’s going to do the trumpety one. It takes all the wind you can pump. It’s in Latin, sir.’

‘There is no other tongue,’ the Archbishop answered.

‘It’s not a real hymn,’ Una explained. ‘She does it as a treat after her exercises. She isn’t a real organist, you know. She just comes down here sometimes, from the Albert Hall.’

‘Oh, what a miracle of a voice!’ said the Archbishop.

It rang out suddenly from a dark arch of lonely noises—every word spoken to the very end:

‘Dies Irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.’

The Archbishop caught his breath and moved forward. The music carried on by itself a while.

‘Now it’s calling all the light out of the windows,’ Una whispered to Dan.

‘I think it’s more like a horse neighing in battle,’ he whispered back. The voice continued:

‘Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchre regionum.’

Deeper and deeper the organ dived down, but far below its deepest note they heard Puck’s voice joining in the last line:

‘Coget omnes ante thronum.’

As they looked in wonder, for it sounded like the dull jar of one of the very pillars shifting, the little fellow turned and went out through the south door.

‘Now’s the sorrowful part, but it’s very beautiful.’ Una found herself speaking to the empty chair in front of her.

‘What are you doing that for?’ Dan said behind her. ‘You spoke so politely too.’

‘I don’t know … I thought—’ said Una. ‘Funny!’

‘’Tisn’t. It’s the part you like best,’ Dan grunted.

The music had turned soft—full of little sounds that chased each other on wings across the broad gentle flood of the main tune. But the voice was ten times lovelier than the music.

‘Recordare Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa Tuae viae,
Ne me perdas illi die!’

There was no more. They moved out into the centre aisle.

‘That you?’ the Lady called as she shut the lid. ‘I thought I heard you, and I played it on purpose.’

‘Thank you awfully,’ said Dan. ‘We hoped you would, so we waited. Come on, Una, it’s pretty nearly dinner-time.’

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THE Cantor of St. Illod’s being far too enthusiastic a musician to concern himself with its Library, the Sub-Cantor, who idolised every detail of the work, was tidying up, after two hours’ writing and dictation in the Scriptorium. The copying-monks handed him in their sheets—it was a plain Four Gospels ordered by an Abbot at Evesham—and filed out to vespers. John Otho, better known as John of Burgos, took no heed. He was burnishing a tiny boss of gold in his miniature of the Annunciation for his Gospel of St. Luke, which it was hoped that Cardinal Falcodi, the Papal Legate, might later be pleased to accept.‘Break off, John,’ said the Sub-Cantor in an undertone.

‘Eh? Gone, have they? I never heard. Hold a minute, Clement.’

The Sub-Cantor waited patiently. He had known John more than a dozen years, coming and going at St. Illod’s, to which monastery John, when abroad, always said he belonged. The claim was gladly allowed, for, more even than other Fitz Othos, he seemed to carry all the Arts under his hand, and most of their practical receipts under his hood.

The Sub-Cantor looked over his shoulder at the pinned-down sheet where the first words of the Magnificat were built up in gold washed with red-lac for a background to the Virgin’s hardly yet fired halo. She was shown, hands joined in wonder, at a lattice of infinitely intricate arabesque, round the edges of which sprays of orange-bloom seemed to load the blue hot air that carried back over the minute parched landscape in the middle distance.

‘You’ve made her all Jewess,’ said the SubCantor, studying the olive-flushed cheek and the eyes charged with foreknowledge.

‘What else was Our Lady?’ John slipped out the pins. ‘Listen, Clement. If I do not come back, this goes into my Great Luke, whoever finishes it.’ He slid the drawing between its guard-papers.

‘Then you’re for Burgos again—as I heard?’

‘In two days. The new Cathedral yonder—but they’re slower than the Wrath of God, those masons—is good for the soul.’

‘Thy soul?’ The Sub-Cantor seemed doubtful.

‘Even mine, by your permission. And down south—on the edge of the Conquered Countries—Granada way—there’s some Moorish diaper-work that’s wholesome. It allays vain thought and draws it toward the picture—as you felt, just now, in my Annunciation.’

‘She—it was very beautiful. No wonder you go. But you’ll not forget your absolution, John?’

‘Surely.’ This was a precaution John no more omitted on the eve of his travels than he did the recutting of the tonsure which he had provided himself with in his youth, somewhere near Ghent. The mark gave him privilege of clergy at a pinch, and a certain consideration on the road always.

‘You’ll not forget, either, what we need in the Scriptorium. There’s no more true ultramarine in this world now. They mix it with that German blue. And as for vermilion——’

‘I’ll do my best always.’

‘And Brother Thomas’ (this was the Infirmarian in charge of the monastery hospital) ‘he needs——’

‘He’ll do his own asking. I’ll go over his side now, and get me re-tonsured.’

John went down the stairs to the lane that divides the hospital and cook-house from the back-cloisters. While he was being barbered, Brother Thomas (St. Illod’s meek but deadly persistent Infirmarian) gave him a list of drugs that he was to bring back from Spain by hook, crook, or lawful purchase. Here they were surprised by the lame, dark Abbot Stephen, in his fur-lined night-boots. Not that Stephen de Sautré was any spy; but as a young man he had shared an unlucky Crusade, which had ended, after a battle at Mansura, in two years’ captivity among the Saracens at Cairo where men learn to walk softly. A fair huntsman and hawker, a reasonable disciplinarian, but a man of science above all, and a Doctor of Medicine under one Ranulphus, Canon of St. Paul’s, his heart was more inthe monastery’s hospital work than its religious. He checked their list interestedly, adding items of his own. After the Infirmarian had withdrawn, he gave John generous absolution, to cover lapses by the way; for he did not hold with chance-bought Indulgences.

‘And what seek you this journey?’ he demanded, sitting on the bench beside the mortar and scales in the little warm cell for stored drugs.

‘Devils, mostly,’ said John, grinning.

‘In Spain? Are not Abana and Phar-par——?’

John, to whom men were but matter for drawings, and well-born to boot (since he was a de Sanford on his mother’s side), looked the Abbot full in the face and—‘Did you find it so?’ said he.

‘No. They were in Cairo too. But what’s your special need of ’em?’

‘For my Great Luke. He’s the masterhand of all Four when it comes to devils.’

‘No wonder. He was a physician. You’re not.’

‘Heaven forbid! But I’m weary of our Church-pattern devils. They’re only apes and goats and poultry conjoined. ’Good enough for plain red-and-black Hells and Judgment Days—but not for me.’

‘What makes you so choice in them?’

‘Because it stands to reason and Art that there are all musters of devils in Hell’s dealings. Those Seven, for example, that were haled out of the Magdalene. They’d be she-devils—no kin at all to the beaked and horned and bearded devils-general.’

The Abbot laughed.

‘And see again! The devil that came out of the dumb man. What use is snout or bill to him? He’d be faceless as a leper. Above all—God send I live to do it!—the devils that entered the Gadarene swine. They’d be—they’d be—I know not yet what they’d be, but they’d be surpassing devils. I’d have ’em diverse as the Saints themselves. But now, they’re all one pattern, for wall, window, or picture-work.’

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‘Go on, John. You’re deeper in this mystery than I’

‘Heaven forbid! But I say there’s respect due to devils, damned tho’ they be.’

‘Dangerous doctrine.’

‘My meaning is that if the shape of anything be worth man’s thought to picture to man, it’s worth his best thought.’

‘That’s safer. But I’m glad I’ve given you Absolution.’

‘There’s less risk for a craftsman who deals with the outside shapes of things—for Mother Church’s glory.’

‘Maybe so, but, John’—the Abbot’s hand almost touched John’s sleeve—‘tell me, now, is—is she Moorish or—or Hebrew?’

‘She’s mine,’ John returned.

‘Is that enough?’

‘I have found it so.’

‘Well—ah well! It’s out of my jurisdiction, but—how do they look at it down yonder?’

‘Oh, they drive nothing to a head in Spain—neither Church nor King, bless them! There’s too many Moors and Jews to kill them all, and if they chased ’em away there’d be no trade nor farming. Trust me, in the Conquered Countries, from Seville to Granada, we live lovingly enough together—Spaniard, Moor, and Jew. Ye see, we ask no questions.’

‘Yes—yes,’ Stephen sighed. ‘And always there’s the hope she may be converted.’

‘Oh yes, there’s always hope.’

The Abbot went on into the hospital. It was an easy age before Rome tightened the screw as to clerical connections. If the lady were not too forward, or the son too much his father’s beneficiary in ecclesiastical preferments and levies, a good deal was overlooked. But, as the Abbot had reason to recall, unions between Christian and Infidel led to sorrow. None the less, when John with mule, mails, and man, clattered off down the lane for Southampton and the sea, Stephen envied him.

He was back, twenty months later, in good hard case, and loaded down with fairings. A lump of richest lazuli, a bar of orange-hearted vermilion, and a small packet of dried beetles which make most glorious scarlet, for the SubCantor. Besides that, a few cubes of milky marble, with yet a pink flush in them, which could be slaked and ground down to incomparable background-stuff. There were quite half the drugs that the Abbot and Thomas had demanded, and there was a long deep-red cornelian necklace for the Abbot’s Lady—Anne of Norton. She received it graciously, and asked where John had come by it.

‘Near Granada,’ he said.

‘You left all well there?’ Anne asked. (Maybe the Abbot had told her something of John’s confession.)

‘I left all in the hands of God.’

‘Ah me! How long since?’

‘Four months less eleven days.’

‘Were you—with her?’

‘In my arms. Childbed.’

‘And?’

‘The boy too. There is nothing now.’

Anne of Norton caught her breath.

‘I think you’ll be glad of that,’ she said after a while.

‘Give me time, and maybe I’ll compass it. But not now.’

‘You have your handiwork and your art, and—John—remember there’s no jealousy in the grave.’

‘Ye-es! I have my Art, and Heaven knows I’m jealous of none.’

‘Thank God for that at least,’ said Anne of Norton, the always ailing woman who followed the Abbot with her sunk eyes. ‘And be sure I shall treasure this’—she touched the beads—‘as long as I shall live.’

‘I brought—trusted—it to you for that,’ he replied, and took leave. When she told the Abbot how she had come by it, he said nothing, but as he and Thomas were storing the drugs that John handed over in the cell which backs on to the hospital kitchen-chimney, he observed, of a cake of dried poppy juice: ‘This has power to cut off all pain from a man’s body.’

‘I have seen it,’ said John.

‘But for pain of the soul there is, outside God’s Grace, but one drug; and that is a man’s craft, learning, or other helpful motion of his own mind.’

‘That is coming to me, too,’ was the answer.

John spent the next fair May day out in the woods with the monastery swineherd and all the porkers; and returned loaded with flowers and sprays of spring, to his own carefully kept place in the north bay of the Scriptorium. There, with his travelling sketch-books under his left elbow, he sunk himself past all recollections in his Great Luke.

Brother Martin, Senior Copyist (who spoke about once a fortnight), ventured to ask, later, how the work was going.

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‘All here!’ John tapped his forehead with his pencil. ‘It has been only waiting these months to—ah God!—be born. Are ye free of your plain-copying, Martin?’

Brother Martin nodded. It was his pride that John of Burgos turned to him, in spite of his seventy years, for really good page-work.

‘Then see!’ John laid out a new vellum—thin but flawless. ‘There’s no better than this sheet from here to Paris. Yes! Smell it if you choose. Wherefore—give me the compasses and I’ll set it out for you—if ye make one letter lighter or darker than its next, I’ll stick ye like a pig.’

‘Never, John!’ The old man beamed happily. ‘But I will! Now, follow! Here and here, as I prick, and in script of just this height to the hair’s-breadth, yell scribe the thirty-first and thirty-second verses of Eighth Luke.’

‘Yes, the Gadarene Swine! “And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the abyss. And there was a herd of many swine”’—— Brother Martin naturally knew all the Gospels by heart.

‘Just so! Down to “and he suffered them.” Take your time to it. My Magdalene has to come off my heart first.’

Brother Martin achieved the work so perfectly that John stole some soft sweetmeats from the Abbot’s kitchen for his reward. The old man ate them; then repented; then confessed and insisted on penance. At which, the Abbot, knowing there was but one way to reach the real sinner, set him a book called De Virtutibus Herbarum to fair-copy. St. Illod’s had borrowed it from the gloomy Cistercians, who do not hold with pretty things, and the crabbed text kept Martin busy just when John wanted him for some rather specially spaced letterings.

‘See now,’ said the Sub-Cantor improvingly. ‘You should not do such things, John. Here’s Brother Martin on penance for your sake——’

‘No—for my Great Luke. But I’ve paid the Abbot’s cook. I’ve drawn him till his own scullions cannot keep straight-faced. He’ll not tell again.’

‘Unkindly done! And you’re out of favour with the Abbot too. He’s made no sign to you since you came back—never asked you to high table.’

‘I’ve been busy. Having eyes in his head, Stephen knew it. Clement, there’s no Librarian from Durham to Torre fit to clean up after you.’

The Sub-Cantor stood on guard; he knew where John’s compliments generally ended.

‘But outside the Scriptorium——’

‘Where I never go.’ The Sub-Cantor had been excused even digging in the garden, lest it should mar his wonderful book-binding hands.

‘In all things outside the Scriptorium you are the master-fool of Christendie. Take it from me, Clement. I’ve met many.’

‘I take everything from you,’ Clement smiled benignly. ‘You use me worse than a singing-boy.

They could hear one of that suffering breed in the cloister below, squalling as the Cantor pulled his hair.

‘God love you! So I do! But have you ever thought how I lie and steal daily on my travels—yes, and for aught you know, murder—to fetch you colours and earths?’

‘True,’ said just and conscience-stricken Clement. ‘I have often thought that were I in the world—which God forbid!—I might be a strong thief in some matters.’

Even Brother Martin, bent above his loathed De Virtutibus, laughed.

But about mid-summer, Thomas the Infirmarian conveyed to John the Abbot’s invitation to supper in his house that night, with the request that he would bring with him anything that he had done for his Great Luke.

‘What’s toward?’ said John, who had been wholly shut up in his work.

‘Only one of his “wisdom” dinners. You’ve sat at a few since you were a man.’

‘True: and mostly good. How would Stephen have us——?’

‘Gown and hood over all. There will be a doctor from Salerno—one Roger, an Italian. Wise and famous with the knife on the body. He’s been in the Infirmary some ten days, helping me—even me!’

‘’Never heard the name. But our Stephen’s physicus before sacerdos, always.’

‘And his Lady has a sickness of some time. Roger came hither in chief because of her.’

‘Did he? Now I think of it, I have not seen the Lady Anne for a while.’

‘Ye’ve seen nothing for a long while. She has been housed near a month—they have to carry her abroad now.’

‘So bad as that, then?’

‘Roger of Salerno will not yet say what he thinks. But——’

‘God pity Stephen! . . . Who else at table, besides thee?’

‘An Oxford friar. Roger is his name also. A learned and famous philosopher. And he holds his liquor too, valiantly.’

‘Three doctors—counting Stephen. I’ve always found that means two atheists.’

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Thomas looked uneasily down his nose. ‘That’s a wicked proverb,’ he stammered. ‘You should not use it.’

‘Hoh! Never come you the monk over me, Thomas! You’ve been Infirmarian at St. Illod’s eleven years—and a lay-brother still. Why have you never taken orders, all this while?’

‘I—I am not worthy.’

‘Ten times worthier than that new fat swine—Henry Who’s-his-name—that takes the Infirmary Masses. He bullocks in with the Viaticum, under your nose, when a sick man’s only faint from being bled. So the man dies—of pure fear. Ye know it! I’ve watched your face at such times. Take Orders, Didymus. You’ll have a little more medicine and a little less Mass with your sick then; and they’ll live longer.’

‘I am unworthy—unworthy,’ Thomas repeated pitifully.

‘Not you—but—to your own master you stand or fall. And now that my work releases me for awhile, I’ll drink with any philosopher out of any school. And, Thomas,’ he coaxed, ‘a hot bath for me in the Infirmary before vespers.’

When the Abbot’s perfectly cooked and served meal had ended, and the deep-fringed naperies were removed, and the Prior had sent in the keys with word that all was fast in the Monastery, and the keys had been duly returned with the word, ‘Make it so till Prime,’ the Abbot and his guests went out to cool themselves in an upper cloister that took them, by way of the leads, to the South Choir side of the Triforium. The summer sun was still strong, for it was barely six o’clock, but the Abbey Church, of course, lay in her wonted darkness. Lights were being lit for choir-practice thirty feet below.

‘Our Cantor gores them no rest,’ the Abbot whispered. ‘Stand by this pillar and we’ll hear what he’s driving them at now.’

‘Remember, all!’ the Cantor’s hard voice came up. ‘This is the soul of Bernard himself, attacking our evil world. Take it quicker than yesterday, and throw all your words clean-bitten from you. In the loft there! Begin!’

The organ broke out for an instant, alone and raging. Then the voices crashed together into that first fierce line of the ‘De Contemptu Mundi.’

‘Hora novissima—tempora pessima’—a dead pause till the assenting sunt broke, like a sob, out of the darkness, and one boy’s voice, clearer than silver trumpets, returned the long-drawn vigilemus.

‘Ecce minaciter, imminet Arbiter’ (organ and voices were leashed togethor in terror and warning, breaking away liquidly to the ‘ille supremus’). Then the tone-colours shifted for the prelude to ‘Imminet, imminet, ut mala terminet——’

‘Stop! Again!’ cried the Cantor ; and gave his reasons a little more roundly than was natural at choir-practice.

‘Ah! Pity o’ man’s vanity! He’s guessed we are here. Come away!’ said the Abbot. Anne of Norton, in her carried chair, had been listening too, further along the dark Triforium, with Roger of Salerno. John heard her sob. On the way back, he asked Thomas how her health stood. Before Thomas could reply the sharp-featured Italian doctor pushed between them. ‘Following on our talk together, I judged it best to tell her,’ said he to Thomas.

‘What?’ John asked simply enough.

‘What she knew already.’ Roger of Salerno launched into a Greek quotation to the effect that every woman knows all about everything.

‘I have no Greek,’ said John stiffly. Roger of Salerno had been giving them a good deal of it, at dinner.

‘Then I’ll come to you in Latin. Ovid hath it neatly. “Utque malum late solet immedicabile cancer——” but doubtless you know the rest, worthy Sir.’

‘Alas! My school-Latin’s but what I’ve gathered by the way from fools professing to heal sick women. “Hocus-pocus——” but doubtless you know the rest, worthy Sir.’

Roger of Salerno was quite quiet till they regained the dining-room, where the fire had been comforted and the dates, raisins, ginger, figs, and cinnamon-scented sweetmeats set out, with the choicer wines, on the after-table. The Abbot seated himself, drew off his ring, dropped it, that all might hear the tinkle, into an empty silver cup, stretched his feet towards the hearth, and looked at the great gilt and carved rose in the barrel-roof. The silence that keeps from Compline to Matins had closed on their world. The bull-necked Friar watched a ray of sunlight split itself into colours on the rim of a crystal salt-cellar; Roger of Salerno had re-opened some discussion with Brother Thomas on a type of spotted fever that was baffling them both in England and abroad; John took note of the keen profile, and—it might serve as a note for the Great Luke—his hand moved to his bosom. The Abbot saw, and nodded permission. John whipped out silver-point and sketch-book.

‘Nay—modesty is good enough—but deliver your own opinion,’ the Italian was urging the Infirmarian. Out of courtesy to the foreigner nearly all the talk was in table-Latin; more formal and more copious than monk’s patter. Thomas began with his meek stammer.

‘I confess myself at a loss for the cause of the fever unless—as Varro saith in his De Re Rustica—certain small animals which the eye cannot follow enter the body by the nose and mouth, and set up grave diseases. On the other hand, this is not in Scripture.’

Roger of Salerno hunched head and shoulders like an angry cat. ‘Always that!’ he said, and John snatched down the twist of the thin lips.

‘Never at rest, John.’ The Abbot smiled at the artist. ‘You should break off every two hours for prayers, as we do. St. Benedict was no fool. Two hours is all that a man can carry the edge of his eye or hand.’

‘For copyists—yes. Brother Martin is not sure after one hour. But when a man’s work takes him, he must go on till it lets him go.’

‘Yes, that is the Demon of Socrates,’ the Friar from Oxford rumbled above his cup.

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‘The doctrine leans toward presumption,’ said the Abbot. ‘Remember, “Shall mortal man be more just than his Maker?”’

‘There is no danger of justice’; the Friar spoke bitterly. ‘But at least Man might be suffered to go forward in his Art or his thought. Yet if Mother Church sees or hears him move anyward, what says she? “No!” Always “No.”’

‘But if the little animals of Varro be invisible’—this was Roger of Salerno to Thomas—‘how are we any nearer to a cure?’

‘By experiment’—the Friar wheeled round on them suddenly. ‘By reason and experiment. The one is useless without the other. But Mother Church——’

‘Ay !’ Roger de Salerno dashed at the fresh bait like a pike. ‘Listen, Sirs. Her bishops—our Princes—strew our roads in Italy with carcasses that they make for their pleasure or wrath. Beautiful corpses! Yet if I—if we doctors—so much as raise the skin of one of them to look at God’s fabric beneath, what says Mother Church? “Sacrilege! Stick to your pigs and dogs, or you burn!”’

‘And not Mother Church only!’ the Friar chimed in. ‘Every way we are barred—barred by the words of some man, dead a thousand years, which are held final. Who is any son of Adam that his one say—so should close a door towards truth? I would not except even Peter Peregrinus, my own great teacher.’

‘Nor I Paul of Aegina,’ Roger of Salerno cried. ‘Listen, Sirs! Here is a case to the very point. Apuleius affirmeth, if a man eat fasting of the juice of the cut-leaved buttercup—sceleratus we call it, which means “rascally”’—this with a condescending nod towards John—‘his soul will leave his body laughing. Now this is the lie more dangerous than truth, since truth of a sort is in it.’

‘He’s away!’ whispered the Abbot despairingly.

‘For the juice of that herb, I know by experiment, burns, blisters, and wries the mouth. I know also the rictus, or pseudo-laughter, on the face of such as have perished by the strong poisons of herbs allied to this ranunculus. Certainly that spasm resembles laughter. It seems then, in my judgment, that Apuleius, having seen the body of one thus poisoned, went off at score and wrote that the man died laughing.’

‘Neither staying to observe, nor to confirm observation by experiment,’ added the Friar, frowning.

Stephen the Abbot cocked an eyebrow toward John.

‘How think you?’ said he.

‘I’m no doctor,’ John returned, ‘but I’d say Apuleius in all these years might have been betrayed by his copyists. They take short-cuts to save ’emselves trouble. Put case that Apuleius wrote the soul seems to leave the body laughing, after this poison. There’s not three copyists in five (my judgment) would not leave out the “seems to.” For who’d question Apuleius? If it seemed so to him, so it must be. Otherwise any child knows cut-leaved buttercup.’

‘Have you knowledge of herbs?’ Roger of Salerno asked curtly.

‘Only that, when I was a boy in convent, I’ve made tetters round my mouth and on my neck with buttercup juice, to save going to prayer o’ cold nights.’

‘Ah!’ said Roger. ‘I profess no knowledge of tricks.’ He turned aside, stiffly.

‘No matter! Now for your own tricks, John,’ the tactful Abbot broke in. ‘You shall show the doctors your Magdalene and your Gadarene Swine and the devils.’

‘Devils? Devils? I have produced devils by means of drugs; and have abolished them by the same means. Whether devils be external to mankind or immanent, I have not yet pronounced.’ Roger of Salerno was still angry.

‘Ye dare not,’ snapped the Friar from Oxford. ‘Mother Church makes Her own devils.’

‘Not wholly! Our John has come back from Spain with brand-new ones.’ Abbot Stephen took the vellum handed to him, and laid it tenderly on the table. They gathered to look. The Magdalene was drawn in palest, almost transparent, grisaille, against a raging, swaying background of woman-faced devils, each broke to and by her special sin, and each, one could see, frenziedly straining against the Power that compelled her.

‘I’ve never seen the like of this grey shadowwork,’ said the Abbot. ‘How came you by it?’

‘Non nobis! It came to me,’ said John, not knowing he was a generation or so ahead of his time in the use of that medium.

‘Why is she so pale?’ the Friar demanded.

‘Evil has all come out of her—she’d take any colour now.’

‘Ay, like light through glass. I see.’

Roger of Salerno was looking in silence—his nose nearer and nearer the page. ‘It is so,’ he pronounced finally. ‘Thus it is in epilepsy—mouth, eyes, and forehead—even to the droop of her wrist there. Every sign of it! She will need restoratives, that woman, and, afterwards, sleep natural. No poppy juice, or she will vomit on her waking. And thereafter—but I am not in my Schools.’ He drew himself up. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘you should be of Our calling. For, by the Snakes of Aesculapius, you see!’

The two struck hands as equals.

‘And how think you of the Seven Devils?’ the Abbot went on.

These melted into convoluted flower—or flame-like bodies, ranging in colour from phosphorescent green to the black purple of outworn iniquity, whose hearts could be traced beating through their substance. But, for sign of hope and the sane workings of life, to be regained, the deep border was of conventionalised spring flowers and birds, all crowned by a kingfisher in haste, atilt through a clump of yellow iris.

Roger of Salerno identified the herbs and spoke largely of their virtues.

‘And now, the Gadarene Swine,’ said Stephen. John laid the picture on the table.

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Here were devils dishoused, in dread of being abolished to the Void, huddling and hurtling together to force lodgment by every opening into the brute bodies offered. Some of the swine fought the invasion, foaming and jerking; some were surrendering to it, sleepily, as to a luxurious back-scratching; others, wholly possessed, whirled off in bucking droves for the lake beneath. In one corner the freed man stretched out his limbs all restored to his control, and Our Lord, seated, looked at him as questioning what he would make of his deliverance.

‘Devils indeed!’ was the Friar’s comment. ‘But wholly a new sort.’

Some devils were mere lumps, with lobes and protuberances—a hint of a fiend’s face peering through jelly-like walls. And there was a family of impatient, globular devillings who had burst open the belly of their smirking parent, and were revolving desperately toward their prey. Others patterned themselves into rods, chains and ladders, single or conjoined, round the throat and jaws of a shrieking sow, from whose ear emerged the lashing, glassy tail of a devil that had made good his refuge. And there were granulated and conglomerate devils, mixed up with the foam and slaver where the attack was fiercest. Thence the eye carried on to the insanely active backs of the downward-racing swine, the swineherd’s aghast face, and his dog’s terror.

Said Roger of Salerno, ‘I pronounce that these were begotten of drugs. They stand outside the rational mind.’

‘Not these,’ said Thomas the Infirmarian, who as a servant of the Monastery should have asked his Abbot’s leave to speak. ‘Not these—look!—in the bordure.’

The border to the picture was a diaper of irregular but balanced compartments or cellules, where sat, swam, or weltered, devils in blank, so to say—things as yet uninspired by Evil—indifferent, but lawlessly outside imagination. Their shapes resembled, again, ladders, chains, scourges, diamonds, aborted buds, or gravid phosphorescent globes-some well-nigh starlike.

Roger of Salerno compared them to the obsessions of a Churchman’s mind.

‘Malignant?’ the Friar from Oxford questioned.

‘“Count everything unknown for horrible,”’ Roger quoted with scorn.

‘Not I. But they are marvellous—marvellous. I think——’

The Friar drew back. Thomas edged in to see better, and half opened his mouth.

‘Speak,’ said Stephen, who had been watching him. ‘We are all in a sort doctors here.’

‘I would say then’—Thomas rushed at it as one putting out his life’s belief at the stake—‘that these lower shapes in the bordure may not be so much hellish and malignant as models and patterns upon which John has tricked out and embellished his proper devils among the swine above there!’

‘And that would signify?’ said Roger of Salerno sharply.

‘In my poor judgment, that he may have seen such shapes—without help of drugs.’

‘Now who—who,’ said John of Burgos, after a round and unregarded oath, ‘has made thee so wise of a sudden, my Doubter?’

‘I wise? God forbid! Only John, remember—one winter six years ago—the snow-flakes melting on your sleeve at the cookhouse-door. You showed me them through a little crystal, that made small things larger.’

‘Yes. The Moors call such a glass the Eye of Allah,’ John confirmed.

‘You showed me them melting—six-sided. You called them, then, your patterns.’

‘True. Snow-flakes melt six-sided. I have used them for diaper-work often.’

‘Melting snow-flakes as seen through a glass? By art optical?’ the Friar asked.

‘Art optical? I have never heard!’ Roger of Salerno cried.

‘John,’ said the Abbot of St. Illod’s commandingly, ‘was it—is it so?’

‘In some sort,’ John replied, ‘Thomas has the right of it. Those shapes in the bordure were my workshop-patterns for the devils above. In my craft, Salerno, we dare not drug. It kills hand and eye. My shapes are to be seen honestly, in nature.’

The Abbot drew a bowl of rose-water towards him. ‘When I was prisoner with—with the Saracens after Mansura,’ he began, turning up the fold of his long sleeve, ‘there were certain magicians—physicians—who could show—’ he dipped his third finger delicately in the water—‘all the firmament of Hell, as it were, in—’ he shook off one drop from his polished nail on to the polished table—‘even such a supernaculum as this.’

‘But it must be foul water—not clean,’ said John.

‘Show us then—all—all,’ said Stephen. ‘I would make sure—once more.’ The Abbot’s voice was official.

John drew from his bosom a stamped leather box, some six or eight inches long, wherein, bedded on faded velvet, lay what looked like silver-bound compasses of old box-wood, with a screw at the head which opened or closed the legs to minute fractions. The legs terminated, not in points, but spoon-shapedly, one spatula pierced with a metal-lined hole less than a quarter of an inch across, the other with a half-inch hole. Into this latter John, after carefully wiping with a silk rag, slipped a metal cylinder that carried glass or crystal, it seemed, at each end.

‘Ah! Art optic!’ said the Friar. ‘But what is that beneath it?’

It was a small swivelling sheet of polished silver no bigger than a florin, which caught the light and concentrated it on the lesser hole. John adjusted it without the Friar’s proffered help.

‘And now to find a drop of water,’ said he, picking up a small brush.

‘Come to my upper cloister. The sun is on the leads still,’ said the Abbot, rising.

They followed him there. Half-way along, a drip from a gutter had made a greenish puddle in a worn stone. Very carefully, John dropped a drop of it into the smaller hole of the compassleg, and, steadying the apparatus on a coping, worked the screw in the compass joint, screwed the cylinder, and swung the swivel of the mirror till he was satisfied.

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‘Good!’ He peered through the thing. ‘My Shapes are all here. Now look, Father! If they do not meet your eye at first, turn this nicked edge here, left- or right-handed.’

‘I have not forgotten,’ said the Abbot, taking his place. ‘Yes! They are here—as they were in my time—my time past. There is no end to them, I was told . . . . There is no end!’

‘The light will go. Oh, let me look! Suffer me to see, also!’ the Friar pleaded, almost shouldering Stephen from the eye-piece. The Abbot gave way. His eyes were on time past. But the Friar, instead of looking, turned the apparatus in his capable hands.

‘Nay, nay,’ John interrupted, for the man was already fiddling at the screws. ‘Let the Doctor see.’

Roger of Salerno looked, minute after minute. John saw his blue-veined cheek-bones turn white. He stepped back at last, as though stricken.

‘It is a new world—a new world, and—Oh, God Unjust!—I am old!’

‘And now Thomas,’ Stephen ordered.

John manipulated the tube for the Infirmarian, whose hands shook, and he too looked long. ‘It is Life,’ he said presently in a breaking voice. ‘No Hell! Life created and rejoicing—the work of the Creator. They live, even as I have dreamed. Then it was no sin for me to dream. No sin—O God—no sin!’

He flung himself on his knees and began hysterically the Benedicite omnia Opera.

‘And now I will see how it is actuated,’ said the Friar from Oxford, thrusting forward again.

‘Bring it within. The place is all eyes and ears,’ said Stephen.

They walked quietly back along the leads, three English counties laid out in evening sunshine around them; church upon church, monastery upon monastery, cell after cell, and the bulk of a vast cathedral moored on the edge of the banked shoals of sunset.

When they were at the after-table once more they sat down, all except the Friar, who went to the window and huddled bat-like over the thing. ‘I see! I see!’ he was repeating to himself.

‘He’ll not hurt it,’ said John. But the Abbot, staring in front of him, like Roger of Salerno, did not hear. The Infirmarian’s head was on the table between his shaking arms.

John reached for a cup of wine.

‘It was shown to me,’ the Abbot was speaking to himself, ‘in Cairo, that man stands ever between two Infinities—of greatness and littleness. Therefore, there is no end—either to life—or—’

‘And I stand on the edge of the grave,’ snarled Roger of Salerno. ‘Who pities me?’

‘Hush!’ said Thomas the Infirmarian. ‘The little creatures shall be sanctified—sanctified to the service of His sick.’

‘What need?’ John of Burgos wiped his lips. ‘It shows no more than the shapes of things. It gives good pictures. I had it at Granada. It was brought from the East, they told me.’

Roger of Salerno laughed with an old man’s malice. ‘What of Mother Church? Most Holy Mother Church? If it comes to Her ears that we have spied into Her Hell without Her leave, where do we stand?’

‘At the stake,’ said the Abbot of St. Illod’s, and, raising his voice a trifle ‘You hear that? Roger Bacon, heard you that?’

The Friar turned from the window, clutching the compasses tighter.

‘No, no!’ he appealed. ‘Not with Falcodi—not with our English-hearted Foulkes made Pope. He’s wise—he’s learned. He reads what I have put forth. Foulkes would never suffer it.’

‘“Holy Pope is one thing, Holy Church another,”’ Roger quoted.

‘But I—I can bear witness it is no Art Magic,’ the Friar went on. ‘Nothing is it, except Art optical-wisdom after trial and experiment, mark you. I can prove it, and—my name weighs with men who dare think.’

‘Find them!’ croaked Roger of Salerno. ‘Five or six in all the world. That makes less than fifty pounds by weight of ashes at the stake. I have watched such men—reduced.’

‘I will not give this up!’ The Friar’s voice cracked in passion and despair. ‘It would be to sin against the Light.’

‘No, no! Let us—let us sanctify the little animals of Varro,’ said Thomas.

Stephen leaned forward, fished his ring out of the cup, and slipped it on his finger. ‘My sons,’ said he, ‘we have seen what we have seen.’

‘That it is no magic but simple Art,’ the Friar persisted.

‘‘Avails nothing. In the eyes of Mother Church we have seen more than is permitted to man.’

‘But it was Life—created and rejoicing,’ said Thomas.

‘To look into Hell as we shall be judged—as we shall be proved—to have looked, is for priests only.’

‘Or green-sick virgins on the road to sainthood who, for cause any midwife could give you——’

The Abbot’s half-lifted hand checked Roger of Salerno’s outpouring.

‘Nor may even priests see more in Hell than Church knows to be there. John, there is respect due to Church as well as to Devils.’

‘My trade’s the outside of things,’ said John quietly. ‘I have my patterns.’

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‘But you may need to look again for more,’ the Friar said.

‘In my craft, a thing done is done with. We go on to new shapes after that.’

‘And if we trespass beyond bounds, even in thought, we lie open to the judgment of the Church,’ the Abbot continued.

‘But thou knowest—knowest!’ Roger of Salerno had returned to the attack. ‘Here’s all the world in darkness concerning the causes of things—from the fever across the lane to thy Lady’s—throe own Lady’s—eating malady. Think!’

‘I have thought upon it, Salerno! I have thought indeed.’

Thomas the Infirmarian lifted his head again; and this time he did not stammer at all. ‘As in the water, so in the blood must they rage and war with each other! I have dreamed these ten years—I thought it was a sin—but my dreams and Varro’s are true! Think on it again! Here’s the Light under our very hand!’

‘Quench it! You’d no more stand to roasting than—any other. I’ll give you the case as Church—as I myself—would frame it. Our John here returns from the Moors, and shows us a hell of devils contending in the compass of one drop of water. Magic past clearance! You can hear the faggots crackle.’

‘But thou knowest! Thou hast seen it all before! For man’s poor sake! For old friendship’s sake—Stephen !’ The Friar was trying to stuff the compasses into his bosom as he appealed.

‘What Stephen de Sautré knows, you his friends know also. I would have you, now, obey the Abbot of St. Illod’s. Give to me!’ He held out his ringed hand.

‘May I—may John here—not even make a drawing of one—one screw?’ said the broken Friar, in spite of himself.

‘Nowise!’ Stephen took it over. ‘Your dagger, John. Sheathed will serve.’

He unscrewed the metal cylinder, laid it on the table, and with the dagger’s hilt smashed some crystal to sparkling dust which he swept into a scooped hand and cast behind the hearth.

‘It would seem,’ said he, ‘the choice lies between two sins. To deny the world a Light which is under our hand, or to enlighten the world before her time. What you have seen, I saw long since among the physicians at Cairo. And I know what doctrine they drew from it. Hast thou dreamed, Thomas? I also—with fuller knowledge. But this birth, my sons, is untimely. It will be but the mother of more death, more torture, more division, and greater darkness in this dark age. Therefore I, who know both my world and the Church, take this Choice on my conscience. Go! It is finished.’

He thrust the wooden part of the compasses deep among the beech logs till all was burned.