a touch of contempt may go with love, and, indeed, competent observers
have held that this mixture makes the very finest cement. Certain it
is that when Bob answered pathetically, "But I don't want to leave
this roof, I--I _can't_, Miss Ormiston, you know!" she missed her
opportunity of pointing out that this confession stultified every one
of his previous utterances. She began a sentence, indeed, but broke
off, with her grey eyes fixed on the ground; and when at length she
lifted them, Bob felt something take him by the throat. The few
words he proceeded to blurt out stunned him much as if a grenade had
exploded close at hand. But when Miss Ormiston burst into tears and
declared she must go upstairs at once and pack her box, he recovered,
and, looking about, found the aspect of the world bewilderingly
changed. There were valleys where hills had stood a moment before.

"I'll go at once and tell my father," he said, drawing a full breath
and looking like the man he was for the moment.

"And," sobbed Miss Ormiston, "I'll go at once and pack my box."

Herein she showed foresight, for as soon as Bob's interview with his
father was over, she was commanded to leave the premises in time to
catch the early train next morning.

Then the Haydon family sat down and talked to Bob.

They began by pooh-poohing the affair. Then, inconsequently, they
talked of disgrace, and of scratching his name out of the Family
Bible, and said they would rather follow him to his grave than see him
married to Miss Ormiston. Lastly, Mrs. Haydon asked Bob who had nursed
him, and taught him to walk, and read and know virtue when he saw it.
Bob, in the words of the poet, replied, "My mother." "Very well then,"
said Mrs. Haydon.

After forty-eight hours of this Bob wrote to Miss Ormiston, saying,
"My father's indignation is natural, and can only be conquered by
time. But I love you always."

Miss Ormiston replied, "Your father's indignation is natural, perhaps.
But if you love me, it might be conquered by something else," or words
to that effect. At any rate, her letter implied that as it was Bob,
and not his father, who proposed to make her a wife, it was on Bob,
and not on his father, that she laid the responsibility of fulfilling
the promise.

But Bob was weak as water. Love had given him one brief glimpse of the
real world: then his father and mother began to talk, and the covers
of the Family Bible closed like gates upon his prospect. At the end
of a week he wrote--"Nothing shall shake me, dear Ethel. Still, some
consideration is due to them; for I am their only son."

To this Ethel Ormiston sent no answer; but reflected "And what
consideration is due to me? for you are my only lover."

For a while Bob thought of enlisting, and then of earning an honest
wage as a farm-labourer; but rejected both notions, because his
training had not taught him that independence is better than
respectability--yea, than much broadcloth. It was not that he hankered
after the fleshpots, but that he had no conception of a world without
fleshpots. In the end his father came to him and said--

"Will you give up this girl?"

And Bob answered--

"I'm sorry, father, but I can't."

"Very well. Rather than see this shame brought on the family, I will
send you out to Australia. I have written to my friend Morris, at
Ballawag, New South Wales, three hundred miles from Sydney, and he is
ready to take you into his office. You have broken my heart and your
mother's, and you must go."

And Bob--this man of twenty-one or more--obeyed his father in this,
and went. I can almost forgive him, knowing how the filial habit
blinds a man. But I cannot forgive the letter he wrote to Miss
Ormiston--whom he wished to make his wife, please remember.
Nevertheless she forgave him. She had found another situation, and was
working on. Her parents were dead.

Five years passed, and Bob's mother died--twelve years, and his father
died also, leaving him the lion's share of the money. During this time
Bob had worked away at Ballawag and earned enough to set up as lawyer
on his own account. But because a man cannot play fast and loose with
the self-will that God gave him and afterwards expect to do much
in the world, he was a moderately unsuccessful man still when the
inheritance dropped in. It gave him a fair income for life. When the
letter containing the news reached him, he left the office, walked
back to his house, and began to think. Then he unlocked his safe and
took out Ethel Ormiston's letters. They made no great heap; for of
late their correspondence had dwindled to an annual exchange of
good wishes at Christmas. She was still earning her livelihood as a
governess.

Bob thought for a week, and then wrote. He asked Ethel Ormiston to
come out and be his wife. You will observe that the old curse still
lay on him. A man--even a poor one--that was worth kicking would have
gone and fetched her; and Bob had plenty of money. But he asked her to
come out and begged her to cable "Yes" or "No."

She cabled "Yes." She would start within the month from Plymouth, in
the sailing-ship _Grimaldi_. She chose a sailing-ship because it was
cheaper.

So Bob travelled down to Sydney to welcome his bride. He stepped on
the _Grimaldi's_ deck within five minutes of her arrival, and asked
if a Miss Ormiston were on board. There advanced a middle-aged woman,
gaunt, wrinkled and unlovely--not the woman he had chosen, but the
woman he had made.

"Ethel?" was all he found to say.

"Yes, Bob; I am Ethel. And God forgive you."

Of the change in him she said nothing; but held out her hand with a
smile.

"Marry me, Bob, or send me back: I give you leave to do either, and
advise you to send me back. Twelve years ago you might have been proud
of me, and so I might have helped you. As it is, I have travelled far,
and am tired. I can never help you now."

And though he married her, she never did.


II.--BOANERGES.

"Bill Penberthy's come back, I hear."

The tin-smith was sharpening his pocket-knife on the parapet of the
bridge, and, without troubling to lift his eyes, threw just enough
interrogation into the remark to show that he meant it to lead to
conversation. Every one of the dozen men around him held a knife, so
that a stranger, crossing the bridge, might have suspected a popular
rising in the village. But, as a matter of fact, they were merely
waiting for their turn. There is in the parapet one stone upon which
knives may be sharpened to an incomparable edge; and, for longer
than I can remember, this has supplied the men of Gantick with the
necessary excuse for putting their heads together on fine evenings and
discussing the news.

"Ay, he's back."

"Losh, Uncle, I'd no idea you was there," said the tin-smith, wheeling
round. "And how's your lad looking?"

"Tolerable--tolerable. 'A's got a black suit, my sonnies, and a white
tie, and a soft hat that looks large on the head, but can be folded
and stowed in your tail pocket." Complacency shone over the speaker's
shrivelled cheeks, and beamed from his horn-spectacles. "You can tell
'en at a glance for a Circuit-man and no common Rounder."

"'A's fully knowledgeable by all accounts; learnt out, they tell me."

"You shall hear 'en for yourselves at meeting to-morrow. He conducts
both services. Now don't tempt me any more, that's good souls: for
when he'd no sooner set foot in th' house and kissed his mother than
he had us all down on our knees giving hearty thanks in the most
beautiful language, I said to myself, 'many's the time I've had two
minds about the money spent in making ye a better man than your
father;' but fare thee well, doubt! I don't begrudge it, an' there's
an end."

A small girl came running down the street to the bridge-end.

"Uncle Penberthy," she panted, "your tall son--Mr. William--said I
was to run down and fetch 'ee home at once."

"Nothin' wrong with 'en, I hope?"

"I think he's going to hold a prayer."

The little man looked at the blade of his knife for a moment, half
regretfully: then briskly clasped it, slipped it into his pocket, and
hobbled away after the messenger.

The whitewashed front of the Meeting House was bathed, next evening,
with soft sunset yellow when Mr. Penberthy the elder stole down
the stairs between the exhortations, as his custom was, and stood
bareheaded in the doorway respiring the cool air. As a deacon he
temperately used the privileges of his office, and one of these was
a seat next the door. The Meeting House was really no more than a
room--a long upper chamber over a store; and its stairway descended
into the street so sharply that it was possible, even for a
short-armed man, to sit on the lowest step and shake hands with a
friend in the street.

The roadway was deserted for a while. Across the atmosphere there
reigned that hush which people wonder at on Sundays, forgetting that
nature is always still and that nine-tenths of the week's hubbub is
made by man. Down the pale sky came a swallow, with another in chase:
their wings were motionless as they swept past the doorway, but the
air whizzed with the speed of their flight, and in a moment was silent
again. Then from the upper room a man's voice began to roar out upon
the stillness. It roared, it broke out in thick sobs that shook the
closed windows in their fastenings, it wrestled with emotion for
utterance, and, overcoming it, rose into a bellow again; but, whether
soaring or depressed, the strain upon it was never relaxed. Uncle
Penberthy, listening to his son, felt an oppression of his own chest
and drew his breath uneasily.

The tin-smith came round the corner and halted by the door.

"That son o' yours is a boundless man," he observed with an upward
nod.

"How did he strike ye this morning?"

"I don't remember to have been so powerfully moved in my life. Perhaps
you and me being cronies for thirty year, and he your very son, may
have helped to the more effectual working; but be that as it may, I
couldn't master my dinner afterwards, and that's the trewth. Ah, he's
a man, Uncle; and there's no denying we wanted one of that sort to
awaken us to a fit sense. What a dido he do kick up, to be sure!"

The tin-smith shifted his footing uneasily as if he had something to
add.

"I hope you won't think it onneighbourly or disrespectful that I didn'
come agen this evenin'," he begun, after a pause.

"Not at all, Jem, not at all."

"Because, you see--"

"Yes, yes, I quite see."

"I wouldn' have ye think--but there, I'm powerful glad you see." His
face cleared. "Good evenin' to ye, Uncle!"

He went on with a brisker step, while Uncle Penberthy drew a few more
lingering breaths and climbed the stairs again to the close air of the
meeting-room.

"I'm afraid, father, that something in my second exhortation
displeased you," said the Rev. William Penberthy as he walked home
from service between his parents. He was a tall fellow with a
hatchet-shaped face and eyes set rather closely together.

"Not at all, my son. What makes ye deem it?" The little man tilted
back his bronzed top-hat and looked up nervously.

"Because you went out in the middle of service."

"'Tis but father's habit, William," old Mrs. Penberthy made haste to
explain, laying a hand on his arm. She was somewhat stouter of build
and louder of voice than her husband, but stood in just the same awe
of her son. "He's done it regular since he was appointed deacon."

"Why?" asked William, stonily.

Uncle Penberthy pulled off his hat to extract a red handkerchief from
its crown, removed his spectacles, and wiped them hurriedly.

"Them varmints of boys," he stammered, "be so troublesome round the
door--occasion'lly, that is."

"Was that so to-night?"

"Why, no."

"But you were absent at least twenty minutes--all through the silent
prayer and half way through the third exhortation." He gazed sternly
at the amiable old man. "You didn't hear me treat that difficulty
in Colossians, two, twenty to twenty-three? If you have time, we'll
discuss it after private worship to-night. If I can make you see it
in what I am sure is the right light, it will lead you to think more
seriously of that glass of beer you have fallen into the habit of
taking with your supper."

It is but a fortnight since the Rev. William Penberthy came home; but
in that fortnight his father and mother have aged ten years. The
old man, when I took him my watch to regulate the other day--for on
week-days he is a watch-maker--began to ask questions, as eagerly as a
child, about the village news. It turned out that, for a whole week,
he had not been down to sharpen his knife upon the bridge. He has
given up his glass of beer, too, and altogether the zeal of his house
is eating him up.

This morning the new minister climbed into the van with his
carpet-bag. He is off to some Conference or other, and will be back
again the day after to-morrow. Ten minutes after he had gone his
father and mother shut up the shop and went out together. They mean
to take a whole holiday and hear all the news. It was pitiful to
see their fumbling haste as they helped one another to put up the
shutters; and almost more pitiful to mark, as they hurried down the
street arm in arm, their conscientious but feeble endeavour to look
something more staid than a couple of children just out of school.




TWO MONUMENTS.


MY DEAR YOUNG LADY,--

Our postman here does not deliver parcels until the afternoon--which
nobody grumbles at, because of his infirmity and his long and useful
career. The manuscript, therefore, of your novel, _Sunshine and
Shadow_, has not yet reached me. But your letter--in which, you beg me
to send an opinion upon the work, with some advice upon your chances
of success in literature--I found on my breakfast-table, as well
as the photograph which you desire (perhaps wisely) to face the
title-page. I trust you will forgive the slight stain in the lower
left-hand corner of the portrait, which I return: for it is the
strawberry-season here, and in course of my reflections I had the
misfortune to let the cardboard slip between my fingers and fall
across the edge of the plate.

I have taken the resolution to send my advice before it can be
shaken by a perusal of _Sunshine and Shadow_. But it is difficult
nevertheless. I might say bluntly that, unless the camera lies, your
face is not one to stake against Fame over a game of hazard. You
remember John Lyly's "Cupid and my Campaspe"?--and how Cupid losing,

"_down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none lenows how)_ ..."

--and so on, with the rest of his charms, one by one? I might assure
you that when maidens play against Fame they risk all these treasures
and more, without hope of leniency from their opponent, who (you will
note) is the same sex. But you will answer by return of post, that
this is no business of mine, and that I exhibit the usual impertinence
of man when asked to consider woman's serious aspiration. You will
protest that you are ready to stake all this. Very well, then: listen,
if you have patience, to a little story that I came upon, a week
since, about a man who spent his days at this game of hazard. It was
called _The Two Monuments_.

When the Headmaster of the Grammar-School came to add up the marks
for the term's work and examination--which he always did without a
mistake--it was discovered that in the Upper Fourth (the top form)
Thompson had beaten Jenkins _major_ by sixteen. So Thompson received
a copy of the _Memoirs of Eminent Etonians_, bound in tree-calf, and
took it home under his arm, wondering what "Etonians" were, but too
proud to ask. And Jenkins _major_ received nothing; and being too weak
to punch Thompson's head (as he desired) waylaid him opposite the
cemetery gate on his way home, and said--

"_Parvenu!_"

--which was doubly insulting; for, in the first place, French was
Thompson's weakest subject, and secondly, his father was a haberdasher
in a small way, who spoke with awe of the Jenkinses as a family that
had practised law in the town for six generations. Thompson himself
was aware of the glamour such a lineage conferred. It was wholly due
to his ignorance of French that he retorted--

"You're another!"

Young Jenkins explained the term, with a wave of his hand towards the
cemetery gate.

"You'll find my family in there, and inside a rail of their own. And
you needn't think I wanted that prize. _I_'ve got a grandfather."

So, no doubt, had Thompson; but, to find him, he must have consulted
the parish books and searched among the graves at the northern end of
the burial-ground for one decorated with a tin label and the number
2054. He gazed in at the sacred acre of the Jenkinses and the
monuments emblazoned with "J.P.," "Recorder of this Borough," "Clerk
of the Peace for the County," and other proud appendices in gilt
lettering: and, in the heat of his heart, turned upon Jenkins _major_.

"You just wait till we die, and see which of us two has the finer
tombstone!"

Thereupon he stalked home and read the _Memoirs of Eminent Etonians_,
and learnt from their perusal that it was indeed possible to earn
a finer tombstone than any Jenkins possessed. At the end of the
Christmas term, too, he acquired a copy of Dr. Smiles's famous work on
_Self-Help_, and this really set his feet in the path to his desire.

He determined, after weighing the matter carefully, to be a poet: for
it seemed to him that of all the noble professions this was the only
one the initial expense of which could be covered by his patrimony.
The paper, ink, and pens came cheaply enough (though the waste was
excessive); and for his outfit of high thoughts and emotions he pawned
not merely the possessions that you, my dear young lady, are
so willing to cast on the table--charms of face and graces of
person--for, as a man, he valued these lightly; but the strength in
his arms, the taste of meat and wine, the cunning of horsemanship, of
boat-sailing, of mountain-climbing, the breathless joy of the diver,
the languid joy of the dancer, the feel of the canoe-paddle shaken
in the rapid, the delicious lassitude of sleep in wayside-inns, and
lastly the ecstasy of love and fatherhood--all these he relinquished
for a tombstone that should be handsomer than Jenkins's. Jenkins,
meanwhile, was articled to his father, and, having passed the
necessary examinations with credit, became a solicitor and married
into a county family.

Thompson, I need hardly tell you, was by this time settled in London
and naturally spent a good deal of his leisure time in Westminster
Abbey. The monuments there profoundly affected his imagination, and
gave him quite new ambitions with regard to the tombstone that towered
at the back of all his day-dreams. When first he trod the Embankment,
in thin boots with a few pence in his pocket, it had appeared to him
in slate with a terrific inscription in gilt letters--inscriptions in
which "Benefactor of His Species," "Take him for All in All We shall
not Look upon his Like Again" took the place of the pettifogging
"Clerk of the Peace" or "J.P." tagged on to the names of the
Jenkinses. By degrees, however, he abated a little of the inscription
and made up for it by trebling the costliness of the stone.

From slate it grew to granite--to marble--to alabaster, with painted
cherubs and a coat of arms. At one time he brooded, for a whole week,
over a flamboyant design with bosses of lapis lazuli at the four
corners; and only gave it up for a life-size recumbent figure in
alabaster with four gryphons supporting the sarcophagus. As the soles
of his boots thickened with prosperity, so did his stone grow in
solidity. Finally an epic of his--_Adrastus_--took the town by
storm, and three editions were exhausted in a single week. When this
happened, he sat down with a gigantic sheet of cartridge paper before
him and spent a whole year in setting out the elaborated design. By
his will he left all his money to pay for the structure: for his
father and mother were dead and he had neither wife nor child.

When all was finished he rubbed his hands, packed up his bag and took
a third-class ticket down to his native town, to have a contemptuous
look at the Jenkins monuments and see how Jenkins _major_ was getting
on.

Jenkins _major_ was up in the cemetery, among his fathers. And on top
of Jenkins rested a granite cross--sufficiently handsome, to be sure,
for a solicitor, but nothing out of the way. "J.P." was carved upon
it; though, as Jenkins had an absurdly long Christian name (Marmaduke
Augustus St. John), these letters were squeezed a bit in the right arm
of the cross. Underneath was engraved--

"_ERECTED BY HIS DISCONSOLATE
WIFE AND CHILDREN.

A Father kind, a Husband dear,
A faithful Friend, lies buried here_."

Thompson perused the doggerel once, twice, and a third time; and
chuckled contemptuously. "So Jenkins has come to this. God bless me,
how life in a provincial town does narrow a man!"

"_A Father kind, a Husband dear_..."

--and he went away chuckling, but with no malice at all in his breast.

Jenkins slept forgiven beneath his twopenny-halfpenny tombstone, and
Thompson, reflecting that not only was his own monument designed (with
a canopy of Carrara marble), but the cost of it invested in the three
per cents., walked contentedly back to the station, repeating on his
way with gentle scorn--

"_A Father kind, a Husband dear,
A faithful Friend, lies buried here_."

The jingle lulled him asleep in his railway carriage, and he awoke in
London. Driving home, he paid the cabby, rushed up to his room three
stairs at a bound, unlocked his safe and pulled out the great design.
In one corner he had even drawn up a list of the eminent men who
should be his pall-bearers. Certainly such a tomb would make Jenkins
turn in his grave.

He spread the plan on the table, with a paper-weight on each corner,
and sat down before it. After considering it for an hour, he arose
dissatisfied.

"Jenkins had a heap of flowers over him--common flowers, to be sure,
but fresh enough. I dare say I could arrange for a supply, though.
It's that confounded doggerel--

'_A Father kind, a Husband dear_.'

"That's Mrs. Jenkins's taste, I suppose. Still--of course I could
better the verse; but one can't stick up a lie over one's remains. I
wish to God I had a disconsolate wife, or a child, if only to spite
Jenkins."

And I believe, my dear young lady, that underneath his tomb (whereon
there now stands a marble figure of Fame and blows a gilt trumpet) he
is still wishing it.




EGG-STEALING.


It wanted less than an hour to high water when Miss Marty Lear heard
her brother's boat take ground on the narrow beach below the garden,
and set the knives and glasses straight while she listened for the
click of the garden-latch.

A line of stunted hazels ran along the foot of the garden and hid the
landing-place from Miss Lear as she stood at the kitchen window gazing
down steep alleys of scarlet runners. But above the hazels she could
look across to the fruit-growing village of St. Kits, and catch a
glimpse at high tide of the intervening river, or towards low water of
the mud-banks shining in the sun.

It was Miss Lear's custom to look much on this landscape from this
window: had, in fact, been her habit for close upon forty years. And
this evening, when the latch clicked at length, and her brother in
his market-suit come slouching up the path between the parallels of
garden-stuff, her eyes rested all the while upon the line of grey
water above and beyond his respectable hat.

Nor, when he entered the kitchen, hitched this hat upon a peg in the
wall--where its brim accurately fitted a sort of dull halo in the
whitewash--did he appear to want any welcome from her. He was a
long-jawed man of sixty-five, she a long-jawed woman of sixty-one; and
they understood each other's ways, having kept this small and desolate
farm together for thirty years--that is, since their father's death.

A cold turnip-pasty stood on the table, with the cider-jug that Job
Lear regularly emptied at supper. These suggested no small-talk, and
the pair sat down to eat in silence.

It was only while holding out his plate for a second helping of the
pasty that Job spoke with a full mouth.

"Who d'ee reckon I ran across to-day, down in Troy?"

Miss Marty cut the slice without troubling to say that she had not a
notion.

"Why, that fellow Amos Trudgeon," he went on.

"Yes?"

"'Pears to me you must be failin' if you disremembers 'en: son of old
Sal Trudgeon, that used to keep the jumble-shop 'cross the water: him
that stole our eggs back-along, when father was livin'."

"I remember."

"I thought you must. Why, you gave evidence, to be sure. Be dashed!
now I come to mind, if you wasn' the first to wake the house an' say
you heard a man hollerin' out down 'pon the mud."

"Iss, I was."

"An' saved his life, though you did get 'en two months in Bodmin Gaol
by it. Up to the arm-pits he was, an' not five minutes to live, when
we hauled 'en out, an' wonderin' what he could be doin' there, found
he'd been stealin' our eggs. He inquired after you to-day."

"Did he?"

"Iss. 'How's Miss Marty?' says he. 'Agein' rapidly,' says I. The nerve
that some folks have! Comes up to me as cool as my lord and holds
out a hand. He've a-grown into a sort of commercial; stomach like a
bow-window, with a watch-guard looped across. I'd a mind to say 'Eggs'
to 'en, it so annoyed me."

"I hope you didn't."

"No. 'Twould have seemed like bearin' malice. 'Tis an old tale, after
all, that feat of his."

"Nine an' thirty year, come seventeenth o' September next. Did he say
any more?"

"Said the weather-glass was risin', but too fast to put faith in."

"I mean, did he ask any more about me?"

"Iss: wanted to know if you was married. I reckon he meant that for a
bit o' pleasantness."

"Not that! Ah, not that!"

Job laid down knife and fork with their points resting on the rim
of his plate, and, with a lump of pasty in one cheek, looked at his
sister. She had pushed back her chair a bit, and her fingers were
plucking the edge of the table-cloth.

"Not that!" she repeated once more, and hardly above a whisper. She
did not lift her eyes. Before Job could speak--

"He was my lover," she said, and shivered.

"Mar--ty--"

She looked up now, hardened her ugly, twitching face, forced her eyes
to meet her brother's, and went on breathlessly--

"I swear to you, Job--here, across this table--he was my lover; and
I ruined 'en. He was the only man, 'cept you and father, that ever
kissed me; and I betrayed 'en. As the Lord liveth, I stood up in the
box and swore away his name to save mine. An' what's more, he made
me."

"Mar--ty Lear!"

"Don't hinder me, Job. It's God's truth I'm tellin' 'ee. His folks
were a low lot, an' father'd have broken every bone o' me. But we used
to meet in the orchard 'most every night. Don't look so, brother. I'm
past sixty, an' nothin' known; an' now evil an' good's the same to
me."

"Go on."

"Well, the last night he came over 'twas spring tides, an' past the
flood. I was waitin' for 'en in the orchard, down in the corner by the
Adam's Pearmain. We could see the white front o' the house from there,
and us in the dark shadow: and there was the gap handy, that Amos
could snip through at a pinch--you fenced it up yoursel' the very
summer that father died in the fall. That night, Amos was late an' the
dew heavy, an' no doubt I lost my temper waitin' out there in the long
grass. We had words, I know; an' I reckon the tide ran far out while
we quarrelled. Anyway, he left me in wrath, an' I stood there under
the appletree, longin' for 'en to come back an' make friends again.
But the time went on, an' I didn' hear his footstep--no, nor his oars
pullin' away--though hearkenin' with all my ears.

"An' then I heard a terrible sound." Miss Marty paused and drew the
back of her hand across her dry lips before proceeding.

"--a terrible sound--a sort of low breathin', but fierce; an'
something worse, a suck-suckin' of the mud below; an' I ran down. I
suppose, in his anger, he took no care how he walked round the point
(for he al'ays moored his boat round the point, out o' sight), an'
went wide an' was taken. There he was, above his knees in it, and
far out it seemed to me, in the light o' the young moon. For all his
fightin', he heard me, and whispers out o' the dark--

"'Little girl, it's got me. Hush! don't shout, or they'll catch you.'

"'Can't you get out?' I whispered back.

"'No,' says he, 'I'm afraid I can't, unless you run up to the linhay
an' fetch a rope.'

"It was no more I stayed to hear, but ran up hot-foot to the linhay
and back inside the minute, with the waggon rope.

"'Hold the end,' he panted, 'and throw with all your strength.' And I
threw, but the rope fell short. Twice again I threw, but missed each
cast by a yard and more. He wouldn't let me come near the mud.

"Then I fell to runnin' to an' fro on the edge o' the firm ground, an'
sobbin' between my teeth because I could devise nothin'. And all the
while he was fightin' hard.

"'I'll run an' call father an' Job,' says I.

"'Hush'ee now! Be you crazed? Do you want to let 'em know all?'

"'But it'll kill you, dear, won't it?'

"'Likely it will,' said he. Then, after a while of battlin', he