meal with us was Hareton Earnshaw. Now, before passing the threshold, I
had noticed over the principal door, among a wilderness of crumbling
griffins and shameless little boys, the name "Hareton Earnshaw" and the
date "1500." Evidently the place had a history.

The snow had fallen so deeply since I entered the house that return
across the moor in the dusk was impossible.

Spending that night at Wuthering Heights on an old-fashioned couch that
filled a recess, or closet, in a disused chamber, I found, scratched on
the paint many times, the names "Catherine Earnshaw," "Catherine
Heathcliff," and again "Catherine Linton." There were many books in the
room in a dilapidated state, and, being unable to sleep, I examined
them. Some of them bore the inscription "Catherine Earnshaw, her book";
and on the blank leaves and margins, scrawled in a childish hand, was a
regular diary. I read: "Hindley is detestable. Heathcliff and I are
going to rebel.... How little did I dream Hindley would ever make me cry
so! Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him sit
or eat with us any more."

When I slept I was harrowed by nightmare, and next morning I gladly left
the house; and, piloted by my landlord across the billowy white ocean of
the moor, I reached the Grange benumbed with cold and as feeble as a
kitten from fatigue.

When my housekeeper, Mrs. Nelly Dean, brought in my supper that night I
asked her why Heathcliff let the Grange and preferred living in a
residence so much inferior.

"He's rich enough to live in a finer house than this," said Mrs. Dean;
"but he's very close-handed. Young Mrs. Heathcliff is my late master's
daughter--Catherine Linton was her maiden name, and I nursed her, poor
thing. Hareton Earnshaw is her cousin, and the last of an old family."

"The master, Heathcliff, must have had some ups and downs to make him
such a churl. Do you know anything of his history?"

"It's a cuckoo's, sir. I know all about it, except where he was born,
and who were his parents, and how he got his money. And Hareton Earnshaw
has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock."

I asked Mrs. Dean to bring her sewing, and continue the story. This she
did, evidently pleased to find me companionable.


_II.--The Story Runs Backward_


Before I came to live here (began Mrs. Dean), I was almost always at
Wuthering Heights, because my mother nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that
was Hareton's father, and I used to run errands and play with the
children. One day, old Mr. Earnshaw, Hareton's grandfather, went to
Liverpool, and promised Hindley and Cathy, his son and daughter, to
bring each of them a present. He was absent three days, and at the end
of that time brought home, bundled up in his arms under his great-coat,
a dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big enough both to walk and talk,
but only able to talk gibberish nobody could understand. He had picked
it up, he said, starving and homeless in the streets of Liverpool. Mrs.
Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors, but Mr. Earnshaw told her
to wash it, give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.
The children's presents were forgotten. This was how Heathcliff, as they
called him, came to Wuthering Heights.

Miss Cathy and he soon became very thick; but Hindley hated him. He was
a patient, sullen child, who would stand blows without winking or
shedding a tear. From the beginning he bred bad feeling in the house.
Old Earnshaw took to him strangely, and Hindley regarded him as having
usurped his father's affections. As for Heathcliff, he was insensible to
kindness. Cathy, a wild slip, with the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile,
and the lightest foot in the parish, was much too fond of Heathcliff.

Old Mr. Earnshaw died quietly in his chair by the fireside one October
evening.

Mr. Hindley, who had been to college, came home to the funeral, and set
the neighbours gossiping right and left, for he brought a wife with him.
What she was and where she was born he never informed us. She evinced a
dislike to Heathcliff, and drove him to the company of the servants, but
Cathy clung to him, and the two promised to grow up together as rude as
savages. Once Hindley shut them out for the night and they came to
Thrushcross Grange, where the Lintons took Cathy in, but would not have
anything to do with Heathcliff, the Spanish castaway, as they called
him. She stayed five weeks with the Lintons, and became very friendly
with the children, Edgar and Isabella, and when she came back was a
dignified little person, and quite a beauty.

Soon after, Hindley's son, Hareton, was born, the mother died, and the
child fell wholly into my hands, for the father grew desperate in his
sorrow, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. His treatment of
Heathcliff now was enough to make a fiend of a saint, and daily the lad
became more savagely sullen. I could not half-tell what an infernal
house we had, till at last nobody decent came near us, except that Edgar
Linton called to see Cathy, who at fifteen was the queen of the
countryside--a haughty and headstrong creature.

One day after Edgar Linton had been over from the Grange, Cathy came
into the kitchen to me and said, "Nelly, will you keep a secret for me?
To-day Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I've given him an
answer. I accepted him, Nelly. Be quick and say whether I was wrong."

"First and foremost," I said sententiously, "do you love Mr. Edgar?"

"I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and
everything he touches, and every word he says. I love his looks, and all
his actions, and him entirely and altogether. There now!"

"Then," said I, "all seems smooth and easy. Where is the obstacle?"

"Here, and here!" replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead,
and the other on her breast. "In my soul and in my heart I'm convinced
I'm wrong! I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be
in heaven; and if the wicked man in there, my brother, had not brought
Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to
marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him, and that
not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I
am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and
Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from
fire. Nelly, I dreamed I was in heaven, but heaven did not seem to be my
home, and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the
angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath
on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy."

Ere this speech was ended, Heathcliff, who had been lying out of sight
on a bench by the kitchen wall, stole out. He had heard Catherine say it
would degrade her to marry him, and he had heard no further.

That night, while a storm rattled over the heights in full fury,
Heathcliff disappeared. Catherine suffered uncontrollable grief, and
became dangerously ill. When she was convalescent she went to
Thrushcross Grange. But Edgar Linton, when he married her, three years
subsequent to his father's death, and brought her here to the Grange,
was the happiest man alive. I accompanied her, leaving little Hareton,
who was now nearly five years old, and had just begun to learn his
letters.

On a mellow evening in September, I was coming from the garden with a
basket of apples I had been gathering, when, as I approached the kitchen
door, I heard a voice say, "Nelly, is that you?"

Something stirred in the porch, and, moving nearer, I saw a tall man,
dressed in dark clothes, with dark hair and face.

"What," I cried, "you come back?"

"Yes, Nelly. You needn't be so disturbed. I want one word with your
mistress."

I went in, and explained to Mr. Edgar and Catherine who was waiting
below.

"Oh, Edgar darling," she panted, flinging her arms round his neck,
"Heathcliff's come back--he is!"

"Well, well," he said, "don't strangle me for that. There's no need to
be frantic. Try to be glad without being absurd!"

When Heathcliff came in, she seized his hands and laughed like one
beside herself.

It seemed that he was staying at Wuthering Heights, invited by Mr.
Earnshaw! When I heard this I had a presentiment that he had better have
remained away.

Later, we learned from Joseph that Heathcliff had called on Earnshaw,
whom he found sitting at cards, had joined in the play, and, seeming
plentifully supplied with money, had been asked by his ancient
persecutor to come again in the evening. He then offered liberal payment
for permission to lodge at the Heights, which Earnshaw's covetousness
made him accept.

Heathcliff now commenced visiting Thrushcross Grange, and gradually
established his right to be expected. A new source of trouble sprang up
in an unexpected form--Isabella Linton evincing a sudden and
irresistible attraction towards Heathcliff. At that time she was a
charming young lady of eighteen. I tried to persuade her to banish him
from her thoughts.

"He's a bird of bad omen, miss," I said, "and no mate for you. How has
he been living? How has he got rich? Why is he staying at Wuthering
Heights in the house of the man whom he abhors? They say Mr. Earnshaw is
worse and worse since he came. They sit up all night together
continually, and Hindley has been borrowing money on his land, and does
nothing but play and drink."

"You are leagued with the rest," she replied, "and I'll not listen to
your slanders." The antipathy of Mr. Linton towards Heathcliff reached a
point at last at which he called on his servants one day to turn him out
of the Grange, whereupon Heathcliff's revenge took the form of an
elopement with Linton's sister. Six weeks later I received a letter of
bitter regret from Isabella, asking me distractedly whether I thought
her husband was a man or a devil, and how I had preserved the common
sympathies of human nature at Wuthering Heights, where they had
returned.

On receiving this letter, I obtained permission from Mr. Linton to go to
the Heights to see his sister, and Heathcliff, on meeting me, urged me
to secure for him an interview with Catherine.

"Nelly," said he, "you know as well as I do that for every thought she
spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me. If he loved her with all
the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years
as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have. The
sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole
affection be monopolised by him."

Well, I argued, and refused, but in the long run he forced me to agree
to put a missive into Mrs. Linton's hand.

When he met her, I saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony,
to look into her face, for he was stricken with the conviction that she
was fated to die.

"Oh, Cathy, how can I bear it?" was the first sentence he uttered.

"You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff," was her reply. "You
have killed me and thriven on it, I think."

"Are you possessed with a devil," he asked, "to talk in that manner to
me when you are dying? You know you lie to say I have killed you, and
you know that I could as soon forget my existence as forget you. Is it
not sufficient that while you are at peace, I shall be in the torments
of hell?"

"I shall not be at peace," moaned Catherine.

"Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart? You loved
me. What right had you to leave me?"

"Let me alone!" sobbed Catherine. "I've done wrong, and I'm dying for
it! Forgive me!"

That night was born the Catherine you, Mr. Lockwood, saw at the Heights,
and her mother's spirit was at home with God.

When in the morning I told Heathcliff, who had been watching near all
night, he dashed his head against the knotted trunk of the tree by which
he stood and howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast, as he
besought her ghost to haunt him. "Be with me always--take any form!" he
cried. "Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"

Life with Heathcliff becoming impossible to Isabella, she left the
neighbourhood, never to revisit it, and lived near London; and there her
son, whom she christened Linton, was born a few months after her escape.
He was an ailing, peevish creature. When Linton was twelve, or a little
more, and Catherine thirteen, Isabella died, and the boy was brought to
Thrushcross Grange. Hindley Earnshaw drank himself to death about the
same time, after mortgaging every yard of his land for cash; and
Heathcliff was the mortgagee. So Hareton Earnshaw, who should have been
the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to dependence on
his father's enemy, in whose house he lived, ignorant that he had been
wronged.

The motives of Heathcliff now became clear. Under the influence of a
passionate but calculating revenge, allied with greed, he was planning
the destruction of the Earnshaw family, and the union of the Wuthering
Heights and Thrushcross Grange estates. To this end, having brought his
weakly son home to the Heights and terrorised him into a pitiable
slavery, he schemed a marriage between him and young Catherine Linton,
who was induced to accept the arrangement through sympathy with her
cousin, and the hope of removing him from the paralysing influence of
his father. The marriage was almost immediately followed by the death of
both Catherine's father and her boyish husband, who, it was afterwards
found, had been coaxed or threatened into bequeathing all his property
to his father. Thus ended Mrs. Dean's story of how the strangely
assorted occupants of Wuthering Heights had come together, my landlord
Heathcliff, the disinherited, poor Hareton Earnshaw, and Catherine
Heathcliff, who had been Catherine Linton and the daughter of Catherine
Earnshaw. I propose riding over to Wuthering Heights to inform my
landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London, and that he
may look out for another tenant for the Grange.


_III.--The Story Runs Forward_


Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty, and I went to the Heights as I
proposed. My housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to
her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not
conscious of anything odd in her request. Hareton Earnshaw unchained the
gate for me. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen, but he
does his best, apparently, to make the least of his advantages.
Catherine, who was preparing vegetables for a meal, looked more sulky
and less spirited than when I had seen her first.

"She does not seem so amiable," I thought, "as Mrs. Dean would persuade
me to believe. She's a beauty, it is true, but not an angel."

I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden, and dropped
Mrs. Dean's note on her knee unnoticed by Hareton. But she asked aloud,
"What is that?" and chucked it off.

"A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange," I
answered. She would gladly have gathered it up at this information, but
Hareton beat her. He seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr.
Heathcliff should look at it first; but later he pulled out the letter,
and flung it on the floor as ungraciously as he could. Catherine perused
it eagerly, and then asked, "Does Ellen like you?"

"Yes, very well," I replied hesitatingly.

Whereupon she became more communicative, and told me how dull she was
now Heathcliff had taken her books away.

When Heathcliff came in, looking restless and anxious, he sent her to
the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the
house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton absolutely dumb, I made a
cheerless meal, and bade adieu early.

*       *       *       *       *

Next September, when going north for shooting, a sudden impulse seized
me to visit Thrushcross Grange and pass a night under my own roof, for
the tenancy had not yet expired. When I reached the Grange before sunset
I found a girl knitting under the porch, and an old woman reclining on
the house-steps, smoking a meditative pipe.

"Is Mrs. Dean within?" I demanded.

"Mistress Dean? Nay!" she answered. "She doesn't bide here; shoo's up at
th' Heights."

"Are you housekeeper, then?"

"Eea, aw keep th' house," she replied.

"Well, I'm Mr. Lockwood, the master. Are there any rooms to lodge me in,
I wonder? I wish to stay all night."

"T' maister!" she cried in astonishment. "Yah sud ha' sent word. They's
nowt norther dry nor mensful abaht t' place!"

Leaving her scurrying about making preparations, I climbed the stony
by-road that branches off to Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. On reaching it I
had neither to climb the gate nor to knock--it yielded to my hand. "This
is an improvement," I thought. I noticed, too, a fragrance of flowers
wafted on the air from among the homely fruit-trees.

"Con-_trary_!" said a voice as sweet as a silver bell "That for the
third time, you dunce! I'm not going to tell you again."

"Contrary, then," answered another in deep but softened tones. "And now
kiss me for minding so well."

The male speaker was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a
table, having a book before him. His handsome features glowed with
pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a
small white hand over his shoulder. So, not to interrupt Hareton
Earnshaw and Catherine Heathcliff, I went round to the kitchen, where my
old friend Nelly Dean sat sewing and singing a song.

Mrs. Dean jumped to her feet as she recognised me. "Why, bless you, Mr.
Lockwood!" she exclaimed. "Pray step in! Have you walked from
Gimmerton?"

"No, from the Grange," I replied; "and while they make me a lodging room
there I want to finish my business with your master."

"What business, sir?" said Nelly.

"About the rent," I answered.

"Oh, then it is Catherine you must settle with, or rather me, as she has
not learned to arrange her affairs yet."

I looked surprised.

"Ah! You have not heard of Heathcliff's death, I see," she continued.

"Heathcliff dead!" I exclaimed. "How long ago?"

"Three months since; but sit down, and I'll tell you all about it."

"I was summoned to Wuthering Heights," she said, "within a fortnight of
your leaving us, and I went gladly for Catherine's sake. Mr. Heathcliff,
who grew more and more disinclined to society, almost banished Earnshaw
from his apartment, and was tired of seeing Catherine--that was the
reason why I was sent for--and the two young people were thrown perforce
much in each other's company in the house, and presently Catherine began
to make it clear to her obstinate cousin that she wished to be friends.
The intimacy ripened rapidly, and, Mr. Lockwood, on their wedding day
there won't be a happier woman in England than myself. Joseph was the
only objector, and he appealed to Heathcliff against 'yon flaysome
graceless quean, that's witched our lad wi' her bold een and her forrad
ways.' But after a burst of passion at the news, Mr. Heathcliff suddenly
calmed down and said to me, 'Nelly, there is a strange change
approaching; I'm in its shadow.'

"Soon after that he took to wandering alone, in a state approaching
distraction. He could not rest; he could not eat; and he would not see
the doctor. One morning as I walked round the house I observed the
master's window swinging open and the rain driving straight in. 'He
cannot be in bed,' I thought, 'those showers would drench him through.'
And so it was, for when I entered the chamber his face and throat were
washed with rain, the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly
still--dead and stark. I called up Joseph. 'Eh, what a wicked 'un he
looks, girning at death,' exclaimed the old man, and then he fell on his
knees and returned thanks that the ancient Earnshaw stock were restored
to their rights.

"I shall be glad when they leave the Heights for the Grange," concluded
Mrs. Dean.

"They are going to the Grange, then?"

"Yes, as soon as they are married; and that will be on New Year's Day."

*       *       *       *       *




ROBERT BUCHANAN


The Shadow of the Sword

Robert Buchanan, poet, novelist, and playwright, was born on
Aug. 18, 1841, at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England, the son
of a poor journeyman tailor from Ayrshire, in Scotland, who
wrote poetry, and wandered about the country preaching
socialism of the Owen type, afterwards editing a Glasgow
journal. Owing, perhaps, in part to his very unconventional
training, Robert Buchanan entered on life with a strange
freshness of vision. Nothing in ordinary human life seemed
common or mean to him, and this sense of wonder, combined with
a power of judgment much steadier than his father's, made him
a poet of considerable genius. "Undertones," published in
1863, and "Idylls and Legends of Inverburn," which appeared
two years later, made him famous. The same qualities which he
displayed in his poetry Buchanan exhibited in his earliest and
best novels. "The Shadow of the Sword," published in 1876, was
originally conceived as a poem, and it still remains one of
the best of modern English prose romances. In his latter years
Robert Buchanan, tortured by the long and painful illness of
his beautiful and gentle wife, wrote a considerable amount of
work with no literary merit; but this does not diminish the
value of his best and earliest work, which undoubtedly
entitles him to a place of importance in English literature.
He died on June 10, 1901.


_I.--The King of the Conscripts_


"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant, in a voice that rang like a
trumpet through the length of the town hall.

No one answered. The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in
consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring
lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when
Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of
poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted
from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of
Russia, Napoleon had called for 200,000 more soldiers, and the little
Breton fishing village of Kromlaix had to provide twenty-five recruits.

"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant again.

The mayor rose up behind the ballot-box on the large table, about which
the villagers were gathered, and looked around in vain for the splendid
figure of the young fisherman.

"Where is your nephew?" he said to Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.

Derval, one of Napoleon's veterans, who had been pensioned after losing
his leg at Austerlitz, looked at his pretty niece, Marcelle, with a
strange pallor on his furrowed, sunburnt face.

"Rohan was too ill to come," said Marcelle, with a troubled look in her
sweet grey eyes. "I will draw in his name."

"Very well, my pretty lass," said the mayor, his grim face softening
into a smile as he looked at the beautiful girl, "you shall draw for
him, and bring him luck."

Marcelle's hand trembled as she put it into the ballot-box. She let it
stay there so long that some of the soldiers began to laugh. But the
village women, gathered in a dense crowd at the back of the hall, gazed
at her with tears in their eyes. They knew what she was doing. She was
praying that she might draw a lucky number for her lover, Rohan.
Twenty-five conscripts were wanted, and those who drew a paper numbered
twenty-six or upwards were free.

"Come, come, my dear!" said the mayor, stroking his moustache, and
nodding encouragingly at Marcelle.

She slowly drew forth a paper, and handed it to her uncle, who opened
it, read it with a stare, and uttered his usual expletive. "Soul of a
crow!" in an awstricken whisper.

"Read it, corporal!" said the mayor, while Marcelle looked wildly at her
uncle.

"It is incredible!" said Corporal Derval, handing the paper to the
sergeant, with the look of amazement still on his face.

"Rohan Gwenfern--one!" shouted the sergeant, while Marcelle clung to her
uncle, and hid her face upon his arm.

Rohan Gwenfern, who had taken a solemn oath that he would never go forth
to slay his fellow-men at the bidding of Napoleon, whom he regarded as a
horrible, murderous monster, found himself, when he returned to Kromlaix
late that evening, in the sorry position of King of the Conscripts. He
was a young man who had led a very solitary life, but solitude, instead
of making him morbid, had strengthened his natural feelings of pity and
affection. His immense physical strength had never been exerted for any
evil, and even in the roughest wrestling matches he had never fought
brutally or cruelly.

He certainly rejoiced in his splendid powers of body; but he had the
gentleness of soul of a poetic mind, as well as the magnanimity that
often goes with great strength. There was, indeed, something lion-like
about him as he strode up to the door of his cottage, with his mane of
yellow hair floating over his broad brows and falling on his shoulders.
An eager crowd was waiting for him, and when he appeared, they all
shouted.

"Here he is at last!" cried a voice, which he recognised as that of
Mikel Grallon. "Three cheers for the King of the Conscripts!"

Some bag-pipe players struck up a merry tune, but Rohan, with a wild
face and stern eyes, pushed his way through the throng into his cottage.
On a seat by the fire his mother sat weeping, her face covered with her
apron; round her was a band of sympathising friends. The scene explained
itself in one flash, and Rohan Gwenfern knew his fate. Pale as death, he
rushed across the floor to his mother's side, just as a troop of young
girls flocked into the house singing the Marseillaise. At their head was
Marcelle.

A hard struggle had gone on in the heart of Rohan's sweetheart. She had
been overcome with grief when she drew the fatal number. But her dismay
had quickly turned into an heroic pride at the thought of her lover
becoming a soldier of Napoleon. From her childhood she had learnt from
her uncle to admire and worship the great emperor who had led the armies
of France from victory to victory, and she did not think that Rohan
would refuse to follow him. It is true that she had often heard Gwenfern
say that he loathed war; but many other men of Kromlaix had said the
same thing; and yet, when the hour came, and they were called to serve
in the Grand Army, they had obeyed.

"Look, Rohan!" she cried, holding up in her hand a rosette with a long,
coloured streamer. "Look! I have brought this for you."

Each of the conscripts wore a similar badge, and old Corporal Derval had
stuck one on his own breast. All the crowd cheered as Marcelle advanced,
with bright eyes and flaming cheeks, to her sweetheart.

"Keep back! Do not touch me!" cried Rohan, his face blazing with strange
anger.

"The boy's mad!" exclaimed Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.

"Do you not understand, Rohan?" exclaimed Marcelle, terrified by her
lover's look. "As you did not come, someone had to draw in your name. I
did so, and you are now the King of the Conscripts, and this is your
badge. Let me fasten it upon your breast!"

In a moment her soft fingers attached the rosette to his jacket. Rohan
did not stir; his eyes were fixed on the ground, but his features worked
convulsively.

"Forward now, all of you to the inn!" said Corporal Derval, when the
cheering was over. "We will drink the health of Number One!"

As everybody was moving towards the door, Rohan started as if from a
trance.

"Stay!" he shouted.

All stood listening, and his widowed mother crept up and clasped his
hand.

"You are all mad," he said, in a wild voice, "and I seem to be going
mad, too. What is this you tell me about a conscription and an emperor?
I do not understand. I only know you are all mad. Napoleon has no right
to compel me to fight for him; and if every Frenchman had my heart, he
would not reign another day. I refuse to be led like a sheep to the
slaughter. He can kill me if he wills, but he cannot force me to kill my
fellow-men. You can go if you like, and do his bloody work. Had I the
power I would serve him as I serve this badge of his!"

Tearing the rosette from his breast, he cast it into the flaming fire.

"Rohan, for God's sake be silent!" cried Marcelle. "You speak like a
madman. It is all my fault. I thought I should bring you good luck by
drawing for you. Won't you forgive me?"

The young fisherman looked sadly into his sweetheart's face, and when he
saw her wet eyes and quivering lips his heart was stirred. He took her
hand and kissed it, but suddenly an ill-favoured face was thrust forward
between the two lovers.

"Isn't it a pity," sneered Mikel Grallon, "to see a pretty girl wasting
herself on a coward, when----"

He did not complete the sentence, for Rohan stretched out his hand and
smote him down. Grallon fell like a log.

A wild cry arose from all the men, the women screamed, even Marcelle
shrank back; and Rohan strode to the door, pushing his way out.

"Hold him! Kill him!" shouted some.

"Arrest him!" cried Corporal Derval.

Rohan hurled his opponents right and left like so many ninepins. They
fell back and gasped. Then, turning his white face for an instant on
Marcelle, her lover passed unmolested out into the darkness.


_II.--In the Cathedral of the Sea_


Along the wild, rugged shore, a little way from Kromlaix, was an immense
cavern of crimson granite, hung with gleaming moss, and washed by the
roaring tides of the sea. Its towering walls had been carved by wind and
water into thousands of beautiful, fantastical forms, and a dim
religious light fell from above through a long, funnel-shaped hole
running from the roof of the cavern to the top of the great cliff.

It was here that Rohan Gwenfern hid from the band of soldiers sent in
pursuit of him. The air was damp and chill, but he breathed it with the
comfort of a hardy animal. He made a bed of dry seaweed on the top of
the precipice leading to the hole in the cliff, where his mother came
and lowered food to him every evening; and Jannedik, a pet goat that
used to follow him everywhere in the days when he was a free man, was
his only companion. Strange and solitary was the life he led, but he
slept as soundly in his bed of seaweed on the wild precipice as he did
in his bed at home.

But one morning, when he awoke, a confused murmur broke upon his ear.
Peering over the ledge, he saw a crowd of soldiers standing on the
shingle at the mouth of the cavern.

"Come down and surrender, in the name of the emperor!" cried the
sergeant.

"Surrender!" shouted all his men. And the vast, dim place rang with the
echoing sound of their voices.

"You can have my dead body if you care to come up here for it!" cried
Rohan, stepping into the light that fell from the hole in the cliff.

The soldiers stared up in astonishment when Rohan appeared on the ledge
of the precipice. He was now a gaunt, forlorn, hunted man, with a few
rags hanging about his body, and a great shock of yellow hair tumbling
below his shoulders. Under the stress of mental suffering his flesh had
wasted from his bones, but his eyes flashed with a terrible light.

"Come down," said the sergeant, raising his gun, "or I will pick you off
your perch as if you were a crow."

Instead of getting behind a rock, Rohan stood up with a strange smile on