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Title: The Shadow of a Crime
       A Cumbrian Romance

Author: Hall Caine

Release Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #14262]

Language: English

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THE SHADOW OF A CRIME

A CUMBRIAN ROMANCE

by

HALL CAINE

1885


Author of "The Manxman," "The Deemster" etc.

"_Whom God's hand rests on, has God
At his right hand_."




NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

1895





TO

MY ABLE FELLOW-JOURNALIST

JOHN LOVELL

WHO IN A DARKER HOUR OF LABOR AND MISGIVING
CHEERED ME WITH AN ESTIMATE OF THIS NOVEL
THAT THE PUBLIC HAS SINCE RATIFIED.




CONTENTS


Chapter

I. The City of Wythburn

II. The Crime in the Night

III. In the Red Lion

IV. The Outcast

V. The Empty Saddle

VI. The House on the Moss

VII. Sim's Cave

VIII. Robbie's Redemption

IX. The Shadow of the Crime

X. Mattha Branth'et "Flytes" the Parson

XI. Liza's Wiles

XII. The Flight on the Fells

XIII. A 'Batable Point

XIV. Until the Day Break

XV. Ralph's Sacrifice

XVI. At Sunrise on the Raise

XVII. The Garths: Mother and Son

XVIII. The Dawn of Love

XIX. The Betrothal

XX. "Fool, of Thyself Speak Well"

XXI. Mrs. Garth at Shoulthwaite

XXII. The Threatened Outlawry

XXIII. She Never Told Her Love

XXIV. Treason or Murder

XXV. Liza's Device

XXVI. "Fool, Do Not Flatter"

XXVII. Ralph at Lancaster

XXVIII. After Word Comes Weird

XXIX. Robbie's Quest Begun

XXX. A Race Against Life

XXXI. Robbie, Speed On!

XXXII. What the Snow Gave Up

XXXIII. Sepulture at Last

XXXIV. Fate that Impedes, Fall Back

XXXV. Robbie's Quest Ended

XXXVI. Rotha's Confession

XXXVII. Which Indictment?

XXXVIII. Peine Forte et Dure

XXXIX. The Fiery Hand

XL. Garth and the Quakers

XLI. A Horse's Neigh

XLII. The Fatal Witness

XLIII. Love Known at Last

XLIV. The Clew Discovered

XLV. The Condemned in Doomsdale

XLVI. The Skein Unravelled

XLVII. The Black Camel at the Gate

XLVIII. "Out, Out, Brief Candle"

XLIX. Peace, Peace, and Rest

L. Next Morning

LI. Six Months After




PREFACE.


The central incident of this novel is that most extraordinary of all
punishments known to English criminal law, the _peine forte et dure_.
The story is not, however, in any sense historical. A sketchy
background of stirring history is introduced solely in order to
heighten the personal danger of a brave man. The interest is domestic,
and, perhaps, in some degree psychological. Around a pathetic piece of
old jurisprudence I have gathered a mass of Cumbrian folk-lore and
folk-talk with which I have been familiar from earliest youth. To
smelt and mould the chaotic memories into an organism such as may
serve, among other uses, to give a view of Cumberland life in little,
has been the work of one year.

The story, which is now first presented as a whole, has already had a
career in the newspapers, and the interest it excited in those
quarters has come upon me as a surprise. I was hardly prepared to find
that my plain russet-coated dalesmen were in touch with popular
sympathy; but they have made me many friends. To me they are very
dear, for I have lived their life. It is with no affected regret that
I am now parting with these companions to make way for a group of
younger comrades.

There is one thing to say which will make it worth while to trouble
the reader with this preface. A small portion of the dialogue is
written in a much modified form of the Cumbrian dialect. There are
four variations of dialect in Cumberland, and perhaps the dialect
spoken on the West Coast differs more from the dialect spoken in the
Thirlmere Valley than the latter differs from the dialect spoken in
North Lancashire. The _patois_ problem is not the least serious of the
many difficulties the novelist encounters. I have chosen to give a
broad outline of Cumbrian dialect, such as bears no more exact
relation to the actual speech than a sketch bears to a finished
picture. It is right as far as it goes.

A word as to the background of history. I shall look for the sympathy
of the artist and the forgiveness of the historian in making two or
three trifling legal anachronisms that do not interfere with the
interest of the narrative. The year of the story is given, but the aim
has been to reflect in these pages the black cloud of the whole period
of the Restoration as it hung over England's remotest solitudes. In my
rude sketch of the beginnings of the Quaker movement I must disclaim
any intention of depicting the precise manners or indicating the exact
doctrinal beliefs of the revivalists. If, however, I have described
the Quakers as singing and praying with the fervor of the Methodists,
it must not be forgotten that Quietism was no salient part of the
Quakerism of Fox; and if I have hinted at Calvinism, it must be
remembered that the "dividing of God's heritage" was one of the causes
of the first schism in the Quaker Society.

H.C.

New Court, Lincoln's Inn.




THE SHADOW OF A CRIME.




CHAPTER I.

THE CITY OF WYTHBURN.

     Tar-ry woo', tar-ry woo',
       Tar-ry woo' is ill to spin:
     Card it weel, card it weel,
       Card it weel ere you begin.     _Old Ballad._


The city of Wythburn stood in a narrow valley at the foot of
Lauvellen, and at the head of Bracken Water. It was a little but
populous village, inhabited chiefly by sheep farmers, whose flocks
grazed on the neighboring hills. It contained rather less than a
hundred houses, all deep thatched and thick walled. To the north lay
the mere, a long and irregular water, which was belted across the
middle by an old Roman bridge of bowlders. A bare pack-horse road
wound its way on the west, and stretched out of sight to the north and
to the south. On this road, about half a mile within the southernmost
extremity of Bracken Water, two hillocks met, leaving a natural
opening between them and a path that went up to where the city stood.
The dalesmen called the cleft between the hillocks the city gates; but
why the gates and why the city none could rightly say. Folks had
always given them these names. The wiser heads shook gravely as they
told you that city should be sarnty, meaning the house by the
causeway. The historians of the plain could say no more.

They were rude sons and daughters of the hills who inhabited this
mountain home two centuries ago. The country around them was alive
with ghostly legend. They had seen the lights dance across Deer Garth
Ghyll, and had heard the wail that came from Clark's Loup. They were
not above trembling at the mention of these mysteries when the moon
was flying across a darksome sky, when the wind moaned about the
house, and they were gathered around the ingle nook. They had few
channels of communication with the great world without. The pack-horse
pedler was their swiftest newsman; the pedler on foot was their weekly
budget. Five miles along the pack-horse road to the north stood their
market town of Gaskarth, where they took their wool or the cloth they
had woven from it. From the top of Lauvellen they could see the white
sails of the ships that floated down the broad Solway. These were all
but their only glimpses of the world beyond their mountains. It was a
mysterious and fearsome world.

There was, however, one link that connected the people of Wythburn
with the world outside. To the north of the city and the mere there
lived a family of sheep farmers who were known as the Rays of
Shoulthwaite Moss. The family consisted of husband and wife and two
sons. The head of the house, Angus Ray, came to the district early in
life from the extreme Cumbrian border. He was hardly less than a giant
in stature. He had limbs of great length, and muscles like the gnarled
heads of a beech. Upon settling at Wythburn, he speedily acquired
property of various kinds, and in the course of a few years he was the
largest owner of sheep on the country side. Certainly, fortune favored
Angus Ray, and not least noticeably when in due course he looked about
him for a wife.

Mary Ray did not seem to have many qualities in common with her
husband. She had neither the strength of limb nor the agile grace of
the mountaineer. This was partly the result of the conditions under
which her girlhood had been spent. She was the only child of a
dalesman, who had so far accumulated estate in land as to be known in
the vernacular as a statesman. Her mother had died at her birth, and
before she had attained to young womanhood her father, who had married
late in life, was feeble and unfit for labor. His hand was too
nervous, his eye too uncertain, his breath too short for the constant
risks of mountaineering; so he put away all further thought of adding
store to store, and settled himself peaceably in his cottage under
Castenand, content with the occasional pleasures afforded by his
fiddle, an instrument upon which he had from his youth upward shown
some skill. In this quiet life his daughter was his sole companion.

There was no sight in Wythburn more touching than to see this girl
solacing her father's declining years, meeting his wishes with
anticipatory devices, pampering him in his whims, soothing him in the
imaginary sorrows sometimes incident to age, even indulging him with a
sort of pathetic humor in his frequent hallucinations. To do this she
had to put by a good many felicities dear to her age and condition,
but there was no apparent consciousness of self-sacrifice. She had
many lovers, for in these early years she was beautiful; and she had
yet more suitors, for she was accounted rich. But neither flattery nor
the fervor of genuine passion seemed to touch her, and those who
sought her under the transparent guise of seeking her father usually
went away as they came. She had a smile and the cheeriest word of
welcome for all alike, and so the young dalesmen who wooed her from
the ignoble motive came to think her a little of a coquette, while
those who wooed her from the purer impulse despaired of ruffling with
the gentlest gales of love the still atmosphere of her heart.

One day suddenly, however, the old statesman died, and his fiddle was
heard no more across the valley in the quiet of the evening, but was
left untouched for the dust to gather on it where he himself had hung
it on the nail in the kitchen under his hat. Then when life seemed to
the forlorn girl a wide blank, a world without a sun in it, Angus Ray
went over for the first time as a suitor to the cottage under
Castenand, and put his hand in hers and looked calmly into her eyes.
He told her that a girl could not live long an unfriended life like
hers--that she should not if she could; she could not if she
would--would she not come to him?

It was the force of the magnet to the steel. With swimming eyes she
looked up into his strong face, tender now with a tremor never before
seen there; and as he drew her gently towards him her glistening tears
fell hot and fast over her brightening and now radiant face, and, as
though to hide them from him, she laid her head on his breast. This
was all the wooing of Angus Ray.

They had two sons, and of these the younger more nearly resembled his
mother. Willy Ray had not merely his mother's features; he had her
disposition also. He had the rounded neck and lissom limbs of a woman;
he had a woman's complexion, and the light of a woman's look in his
soft blue eyes. When the years gave a thin curly beard to his cheek
they took nothing from its delicate comeliness. It was as if nature
had down to the last moment meant Willy for a girl. He had been an apt
scholar at school, and was one of the few persons in Wythburn having
claims to education. Willy's elder brother, Ralph, more nearly
resembled his father. He had his father's stature and strength of
limb, but some of his mother's qualities had also been inherited by
him. In manner he was neither so austere and taciturn as his father,
nor so gentle and amiable as his mother. He was by no means a scholar,
and only the strong hand of his father had kept him as a boy in fear
of the penalties incurred by the truant. Courage and resolution were
his distinguishing characteristics.

On one occasion, when rambling over the fells with a company of
schoolfellows, a poor blind lamb ran bleating past them, a black cloud
of ravens, crows, and owl-eagles flying about it. The merciless birds
had fallen upon the innocent creature as it lay sleeping under the
shadow of a tree, had picked at its eyes and fed on them, and now, as
the blood trickled in red beads down its nose, they croaked and cried
and screamed to drive it to the edge of a precipice and then over to
its death in the gulf beneath, there to feast on its carcass. It was
no easy thing to fend off the cruel birds when in sight of their prey,
but, running and capturing the poor lamb, Ralph snatched it up in his
arms at the peril of his own eyes, and swung a staff about his head to
beat off the birds as they darted and plunged and shrieked about him.

It was natural that a boy like this should develop into the finest
shepherd on the hills. Ralph knew every path on the mountains, every
shelter the sheep sought from wind and rain, every haunt of the fox.
At the shearing, at the washing, at the marking, his hand was among
the best; and when the flocks had to be numbered as they rushed in
thousands through the gate, he could count them, not by ones and twos,
but by fours and sixes. At the shearing feasts he was not above the
pleasures of the country dance, the Ledder-te-spetch, as it was
called, with its one, two, three--heel and toe--cut and shuffle. And
his strong voice, that was answered oftenest by the echo of the
mountain cavern, was sometimes heard to troll out a snatch of a song
at the village inn. But Ralph, though having an inclination to
convivial pleasures, was naturally of a serious, even of a solemn
temperament. He was a rude son of a rude country,--rude of hand, often
rude of tongue, untutored in the graces that give beauty to life.

By the time that Ralph had attained to the full maturity of his
manhood, the struggles of King and Parliament were at their height.
The rumor of these struggles was long in reaching the city of
Wythburn, and longer in being discussed and understood there; but, to
everybody's surprise, young Ralph Ray announced his intention of
forthwith joining the Parliamentarian forces. The extraordinary
proposal seemed incredible; but Ralph's mind was made up. His father
said nothing about his son's intentions, good or bad. The lad was of
age; he might think for himself. In his secret heart Angus liked the
lad's courage. Ralph was "nane o' yer feckless fowk." Ralph's mother
was sorely troubled; but just as she had yielded to his father's will
in the days that were long gone by, so she yielded now to his. The
intervening years had brought an added gentleness to her character;
they had made mellower her dear face, now ruddy and round, though
wrinkled. Folks said she had looked happier and happier, and had
talked less and less, as the time wore on. It had become a saying in
Wythburn that the dame of Shoulthwaite Moss was never seen without a
smile, and never heard to say more than "God bless you!" The tears
filled her eyes when her son came to kiss her on the morning when he
left her home for the first time, but she wiped them away with her
housewife's apron, and dismissed him with her accustomed blessing.

Ralph Ray joined Cromwell's army against the second Charles at Dunbar,
in 1650. Between two and three years afterwards he returned to
Wythburn city and resumed his old life on the fells. There was little
more for the train-bands to do. Charles had fled, peace was restored,
the Long Parliament was dissolved, Cromwell was Lord Protector.
Outwardly the young Roundhead was not altered by the campaign. He had
passed through it unscathed. He was somewhat graver in manner; there
seemed to be a little less warmth and spontaneity in his greeting; his
voice had lost one or two of its cheerier notes; his laughter was less
hearty and more easily controlled. Perhaps this only meant that the
world was doing its work with him. Otherwise he was the same man.

When Ralph returned to Wythburn he brought with him a companion much
older than himself, who forthwith became an inmate of his father's
home, taking part as a servant in the ordinary occupations of the male
members of the household. This man had altogether a suspicious and
sinister aspect which his manners did nothing to belie. His name was
James Wilson, and he was undoubtedly a Scot, though he had neither the
physical nor the moral characteristics of his race. His eyes were
small, quick, and watchful, beneath heavy and jagged brows. He was
slight of figure and low of stature, and limped on one leg. He spoke
in a thin voice, half laugh, half whimper, and hardly ever looked into
the face of the person with whom he was conversing. There was an air
of mystery about him which the inmates of the house on the Moss did
nothing to dissipate. Ralph offered no explanation to the gossips of
Wythburn of Wilson's identity and belongings; indeed, as time wore on,
it could be observed that he showed some uneasiness when questioned
about the man.

At first Wilson contrived to ingratiate himself into a good deal of
favor among the dalespeople. There was then an insinuating smoothness
in his speech, a flattering, almost fawning glibness of tongue, which
the simple folks knew no art to withstand. He seemed abundantly
grateful for some unexplained benefits received from Ralph. "Atweel,"
Wilson would say, with his eyes on the ground,--"atweel I lo'e the
braw chiel as 'twere my ain guid billie."

Ralph paid no heed to the brotherly protestations of his admirer, and
exchanged only such words with him as their occupations required. Old
Angus, however, was not so passive an observer of his new and
unlooked-for housemate. "He's a good for nought sort of a fellow,
slenken frae place to place wi' nowt but a sark to his back," Angus
would say to his wife. Mr. Wilson's physical imperfections were an
offence in the dalesman's eyes: "He's as widderful in his wizzent old
skin as his own grandfather." Angus was not less severe on Wilson's
sly smoothness of manner. "Yon sneaking old knave," he would say, "is
as slape as an eel in the beck; he'd wammel himself into crookedest
rabbit hole on the fell." Probably Angus entertained some of the
antipathy to Scotchmen which was peculiar to his age. "I'll swear he's
a taistrel," he said one day; "I dare not trust him with a mess of
poddish until I'd had the first sup."

In spite of this determined disbelief on the part of the head of the
family, old Wilson remained for a long time a member of the household
at Shoulthwaite Moss, following his occupations with constancy, and
always obsequious in the acknowledgment of his obligations. It was
observed that he manifested a peculiar eagerness when through any
stray channel intelligence was received in the valley of the sayings
and doings in the world outside. Nothing was thought of this until one
day the passing pedler brought the startling news that the Lord
Protector was dead. The family were at breakfast in the kitchen of the
old house when this tardy representative of the herald Mercury
arrived, and, in reply to the customary inquiry as to the news he
carried, announced the aforesaid fact. Wilson was alive to its
significance with a curious wakefulness.

"It's braw tidings ye bring the day, man," he stammered with evident
concern, and with an effort to hide his nervousness.

"Yes, the old man's dead," said the pedler, with an air of consequence
commensurate with his message. "I reckon," he added, "Oliver's son
Richard will be Protector now."

"A sairy carle, that same Richard," answered Wilson; "I wot th' young
Charles 'ul soon come by his ain, and then ilka ane amang us 'ul see a
bonnie war-day. We've playt at shinty lang eneugh. Braw news,
man--braw news that the corbie's deid."

Wilson had never before been heard to say so much or to speak so
vehemently. He got up from the table in his nervousness, and walked
aimlessly across the floor.

"Why are you poapan about," asked Angus, in amazement; "snowkin like a
pig at a sow?"

At this the sinister light in Wilson's eyes that had been held in
check hitherto seemed at once to flash out, and he turned hotly upon
his master, as though to retort sneer for sneer. But, checking
himself, he took up his bonnet and made for the door.

"Don't look at me like that," Angus called after him, "or, maybe I'll
clash the door in thy face."

Wilson had gone by this time, and turning to his sons, Angus
continued,--

"Did you see how the waistrel snirpt up his nose when the pedler said
Cromwell was dead?"

It was obvious that something more was soon to be made known relative
to their farm servant. The pedler had no difficulty in coming to the
conclusion that Wilson was some secret spy, some disguised enemy of
the Commonwealth, and perhaps some Fifth Monarchy man, and a rank
Papist to boot. Mrs. Ray's serene face was unruffled; she was sure the
poor man meant no harm. Ralph was silent, as usual, but he looked
troubled, and getting up from the table soon afterwards he followed
the man whom he had brought under his father's roof, and who seemed
likely to cause dissension there.

Not long after this eventful morning, Ralph overheard his father and
Wilson in hot dispute at the other side of a hedge. He could learn
nothing of a definite nature. Angus was at the full pitch of
indignation. Wilson, he said, had threatened him; or, at least, his
own flesh and blood. He had told the man never to come near
Shoulthwaite Moss again.

"An' he does," said the dalesman, his eyes aflame, "I'll toitle him
into the beck till he's as wankle as a wet sack."

He was not so old but that he could have kept his word. His great
frame seemed closer knit at sixty than it had been at thirty. His
face, with its long, square, gray beard, looked severer than ever
under his cloth hood. Wilson returned no more, and the promise of a
drenching was never fulfilled.

The ungainly little Scot did not leave the Wythburn district. He
pitched his tent with the village tailor in a little house at
Fornside, close by the Moss. The tailor himself, Simeon Stagg, was
kept pitiably poor in that country, when one sack coat of homespun
cloth lasted a shepherd half a lifetime. He would have lived a
solitary as well as a miserable life but for his daughter Rotha, a
girl of nineteen, who kept his little home together and shared his
poverty when she might have enjoyed the comforts of easier homes
elsewhere.

"Your father is nothing but an ache and a stound to you, lass," Sim
would say in a whimper. "It'll be well for you, Rotha, when you give
me my last top-sark and take me to the kirkyard yonder," the little
man would snuffle audibly.

"Hush, father," the girl would say, putting the palm of her hand
playfully over his mouth, "you'll be sonsie-looking yet."

Sim was heavily in debt, and this preyed on his mind. He had always
been a grewsome body, sustaining none of the traditions of his craft
for perky gossip. Hence he was no favorite in Wythburn, where few or
none visited him. Latterly Sim's troubles seemed to drive him from his
home for long walks in the night. While the daylight lasted his work
gave occupation to his mind, but when the darkness came on he had no
escape from haunting thoughts, and roamed about the lanes in an effort
to banish them. It was to this man's home that Wilson turned when he
was shut out of Shoulthwaite Moss. Naturally enough, the sinister Scot
was a welcome if not an agreeable guest when he came as lodger, with
money to pay, where poverty itself seemed host.

Old Wilson had not chosen the tailor's house as his home on account of
any comforts it might be expected to afford him. He had his own
reasons for not quitting Wythburn after he had received his very
unequivocal "sneck posset." "Better a wee bush," he would say, "than
na bield". Shelter certainly the tailor's home afforded him; and that
was all that he required for the present. Wilson had not been long in
the tailor's cottage before Sim seemed to grow uneasy under a fresh
anxiety, of which his lodger was the subject. Wilson's manners had
obviously undergone a change. His early smoothness, his slavering
glibness, had disappeared. He was now as bitter of speech as he had
formerly been conciliatory. With Sim and his troubles, real and
imaginary, he was not at all careful to exhibit sympathy. "Weel, weel,
ye must lie heids and thraws wi' poverty, like Jock an' his mither";
or, "If ye canna keep geese ye mun keep gezlins."

Sim was in debt to his landlord, and over the idea of ejectment from
his little dwelling the tailor would brood day and night. Folks said
he was going crazed about it. None the less was Sim's distress as
poignant as if the grounds for it had been more real. "Haud thy
bletherin' gab," Wilson said one day; "because ye have to be cannie
wi' the cream ye think ye must surely be clemm'd." Salutary as some of
the Scotsman's comments may have been, it was natural that the change
in his manners should excite surprise among the dalespeople. The good
people expressed themselves as "fairly maizelt" by the transformation.
What did it all mean? There was surely something behind it.

The barbarity of Wilson's speech was especially malicious when
directed against the poor folks with whom he lived, and who, being
conscious of how essential he was to the stability of the household,
were largely at his mercy. It happened on one occasion that when
Wilson returned to the cottage after a day's absence, he found Sim's
daughter weeping over the fire.

"What's now?" he asked. "Have ye nothing in the kail?"

Rotha signified that his supper was ready.

"Thou limmer," said Wilson, in his thin shriek, "how long 'ul thy dool
last? It's na mair to see a woman greet than to see a goose gang
barefit."

Ralph Ray called at the tailor's cottage the morning after this, and
found Sim suffering under violent excitement, of which Wilson's
behavior to Rotha had been the cause. The insults offered to himself
he had taken with a wince, perhaps, but without a retort. Now that his
daughter was made the subject of them, he was profoundly agitated.

"There I sat," he cried, as his breath came and went in gusts,--"there
I sat, a poor barrow-back't creature, and heard that old savvorless
loon spit his spite at my lass. I'm none of a brave man, Ralph: no, I
must be a coward, but I went nigh to snatching up yon flail of his and
striking him--aye, killing him!--but no, it must be that I'm a
coward."

Ralph quieted him as well as he could, telling him to leave this thing
to him. Ralph was perhaps Sim's only friend. He would often turn in
like this at Sim's workroom as he passed up the fell in the morning.
People said the tailor was indebted to Ralph for proofs of friendship
more substantial than sympathy. And now, when Sim had the promise of a
strong friend's shoulder to lean on, he was unmanned, and wept. Ralph
was not unmoved as he stood by the forlorn little man, and clasped his
hands in his own and felt the warm tears fall over them.

As the young dalesman was leaving the cottage that morning, he
encountered in the porch the subject of the conversation, who was
entering in. Taking him firmly but quietly by the shoulder, he led him
back a few paces. Sim had leapt up from his bench, and was peering
eagerly through the window. But Ralph did no violence to his lodger.
He was saying something with marked emphasis, but the words escaped
the tailor's ears. Wilson was answering nothing. Loosing his hold of
him, Ralph walked quietly away. Wilson entered the cottage with a
livid face, and murmuring, as though to himself,--

"Aiblins we may be quits yet, my chiel'. A great stour has begoon, my
birkie. Your fire-flaucht e'e wull na fley me. Your Cromwell's gane,
an' all traitors shall tryste wi' the hangman."

It was clear that whatever the mystery pertaining to the Scotchman,
Simeon Stagg seemed to possess some knowledge of it. Not that he ever
explained anything. His anxiety to avoid all questions about his
lodger was sufficiently obvious. Yet that he had somehow obtained some
hint of a dark side to Wilson's character, every one felt satisfied.
No other person seemed to know with certainty what were Wilson's means
of livelihood. The Scotchman was not employed by the farmers and
shepherds around Wythburn, and he had neither land nor sheep of his
own. He would set out early and return late, usually walking in the
direction of Gaskarth. One day Wilson rose at daybreak, and putting a
threshing-flail over his shoulder, said he would be away for a week.
That week ensuing was a quiet one for the inmates of the cottage at
Fornside.

Sim's daughter, Rotha, had about this time become a constant helper at
Shoulthwaite Moss, where, indeed, she was treated with the cordiality
proper to a member of the household. Old Angus had but little sympathy
to spare for the girl's father, but he liked Rotha's own cheerfulness,
her winsomeness, and, not least, her usefulness. She could milk and
churn, and bake and brew. This was the sort of young woman that Angus
liked best. "Rotha's a right heartsome lassie," he said, as he heard
her in the dairy singing while she worked. The dame of Shoulthwaite
loved every one, apparently, but there were special corners in her
heart for her favorites, and Rotha was one of them.

"Cannot that lass's father earn aught without keeping yon sulking
waistrel about him?" asked the old dalesman one day.

It was the first time he had spoken of Wilson since the threatened
ducking. Being told of Wilson's violence to Rotha, he only said, "It's
an old saying, 'A blate cat makes a proud mouse.'" Angus was never
heard to speak of Wilson again.

Nature seemed to have meant Rotha for a blithe, bird-like soul, but
there were darker threads woven into the woof of her natural
brightness. She was tall, slight of figure, with a little head of
almost elfish beauty. At milking, at churning, at baking, her voice
could be heard, generally singing her favorite border song:--

    "Gae tak this bonnie neb o' mine,
       That pecks amang the corn,
     An' gi'e't to the Duke o' Hamilton
       To be a touting horn."

"Robin Redbreast has a blithe interpreter," said Willy Ray, as he
leaned for a moment against the open door of the dairy in passing out.
Rotha was there singing, while in a snow-white apron, and with arms
bare above the elbows, she weighed the butter of the last churning
into pats, and marked each pat with a rude old mark. The girl dropped
her head and blushed as Willy spoke. Of late she had grown unable to
look the young man in the face. Willy did not speak again. His face
colored, and he went away. Rotha's manner towards Ralph was different.
He spoke to her but rarely, and when he did so she looked frankly into
his face. If she met him abroad, as she sometimes did when carrying
water from the well, he would lift her pails in his stronger hands
over the stile, and at such times the girl thought his voice seemed
softer.

"I am thinking," said Mrs. Ray to her husband, as she was spinning in
the kitchen at Shoulthwaite Moss,--"I am thinking," she said, stopping
the wheel and running her fingers through the wool, "that Willy is
partial to the little tailor's winsome lass."

"And what aboot Ralph?" asked Angus.




CHAPTER II.

THE CRIME IN THE NIGHT.


On the evening of the day upon which old Wilson was expected back at
Fornside, Ralph Ray turned in at the tailor's cottage. Sim's distress
was, if possible, even greater than before. It seemed as if the gloomy
forebodings of the villagers were actually about to be realized, and
Sim's mind was really giving way. His staring eyes, his unconscious,
preoccupied manner as he tramped to and fro in his little work-room,
sitting at intervals, rising again and resuming his perambulations,
now gathering up his tools and now opening them out afresh, talking
meantime in fitful outbursts, sometimes wholly irrelevantly and
occasionally with a startling pertinency,--all this, though no more
than an excess of his customary habit, seemed to denote a mind
unstrung. The landlord had called that morning for his rent, which was
long in arrears. He must have it. Sim laughed when he told Ralph this,
but it was a shocking laugh; there was no heart in it. Ralph would
rather have heard him whimper and shuffle as he had done before.

"You shall not be homeless, Sim, if the worst comes to the worst," he
said.

"Homeless, not I!" and the little man laughed again. Ralph felt
unease. This change was not for the better. Rotha had been sitting at
the window to catch the last glimmer of daylight as she spun. It was
dusk, but not yet too dark for Ralph to see the tears standing in her
eyes. Presently she rose and went out of the room.

"Never fear that I shall be clemm'd," said Sim. "No, no," he said,
with a grin of satisfied assurance.

"God forbid!" said Ralph, "but things should be better soon. This is
the back end, you know."

"Aye," answered the tailor, with a shrug that resembled a shiver.

"And they say," continued Ralph, "the back end is always the bare
end."

"And they say, too," said Sim, "change is leetsome, if it's only out
of bed into the beck!"

The tailor laughed loud, and then stopped himself with a suddenness
quite startling. The jest sounded awful on his lips. "You say the back
end's the bare end," he said, coming up to where Ralph sat in pain and
amazement; "mine's all bare end. It's nothing but 'bare end' for some
of us. Yesterday morning was wet and cold--you know how cold it was.
Well, Rotha had hardly gone out when a tap came to the door, and what
do you think it was? A woman, a woman thin and blear-eyed. Some one
must have counted her face bonnie once. She was scarce older than my
own lass, but she'd a poor weak barn at her breast and a wee lad that
trudged at her side. She was wet and cold, and asked for rest and
shelter for herself and the children-rest and shelter," repeated the
tailor in a lower tone, as though muttering to himself,--"rest and
shelter, and from me."

"Well?" inquired Ralph, not noticing Sim's self-reference.

"Well?" echoed Sim, as though Ralph should have divined the sequel.

"Had the poor creature been turned out of her home?"

"That and worse," said the little tailor, his frame quivering with
emotion. "Do you know the king's come by his own again?" Sim was
speaking in an accent of the bitterest mockery.

"Worse luck," said Ralph; "but what of that?"

"Why," said Sim, almost screaming, "that every man in the land who
fought for the Commonwealth eight years ago is like to be shot as a
traitor. Didn't you know that, my lad?" And the little man put his
hands with a feverish clutch on Ralph's shoulders, and looked into his
face.

For an instant there was a tremor on the young dalesman's features,
but it lasted only long enough for Sim to recognize it, and then the
old firmness returned.

"But what of the poor woman and her barns?" Ralph said, quietly.

"Her husband, an old Roundhead, had fled from a warrant for his
arrest. She had been cast homeless into the road, she and all her
household; her aged mother had died of exposure the first bitter
night, and now for two long weeks she had walked on and on--on and
on--her children with her--on and on--living Heaven knows how!"

A light now seemed to Ralph to be cast on the great change in his
friend; but was it indeed fear for his (Ralph's) well-being that had
goaded poor Sim to a despair so near allied to madness?

"What about Wilson?" he asked, after a pause.

The tailor started at the name.

"I don't know--I don't know at all," he answered, as though eager to
assert the truth of a statement never called into dispute.

"Does he intend to come back to Fornside to-night, Sim?"

"So he said."

"What, think you, is his work at Gaskarth?"

"I don't know--I know nothing--at least--no, nothing."

Ralph was sure now. Sim was too eager to disclaim all knowledge of his
lodger's doings. He would not recognize the connection between the
former and present subjects of conversation.

The night had gathered in, and the room was dark except for the
glimmer of a little fire on the open hearth. The young dalesman looked
long into it: his breast heaved with emotion, and for the first time
in his manhood big tears stood in his eyes. It must be so; it must be
that this poor forlorn creature, who had passed through sufferings of
his own, and borne them, was now shattered and undone at the prospect
of disaster to his friend. Did he know more than he had said? It was
vain to ask. Would he--do anything? Ralph glanced at the little man:
barrow-backed he was, as he had himself said. No, the idea seemed
monstrous. The young man rose to go; he could not speak, but he took
Sim's hand in his and held it. Then he stooped and kissed him on the
cheek.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning, soon after daybreak, all Wythburn was astir. People were
hurrying about from door to door and knocking up the few remaining
sleepers. The voices of the men sounded hoarse in the mist of the
early morning; the women held their heads together and talked in
whispers. An hour or two later two or three horsemen drove up to the
door of the village inn. There was a bustle within; groups of boys
were congregated outside. Something terrible had happened in the
night. What was it?

Willie Ray, who had left home at early dawn, came back to Shoulthwaite
Moss with flushed face and quick-coming breath. Ralph and his mother
were at breakfast. His father, who had been at market the preceding
day, had not risen.

"Dreadful, dreadful!" cried Willy. "Old Wilson is dead. Found dead in
the dike between Smeathwaite and Fornside. Murdered, no doubt, for his
wages; nothing left about him."

"Heaven bless us!" cried Mrs. Ray, "to kill a poor man for his week's
wage!" And she sank back into the chair from which she had risen in
her amazement.

"They've taken his body to the Red Lion, and the coroner is there from
Gaskarth."

Willy was trembling in every limb.

Ralph rose as one stupefied. He said nothing, but taking down his hat
he went out. Willy looked after him, and marked that he took the road
to Fornside.

When he got there he found the little cottage besieged. Crowds of
women and boys stood round the porch and peered in at the window.
Ralph pushed his way through them and into the house. In the kitchen
were the men from Gaskarth and many more. On a chair near the cold
hearth, where no fire had been kindled since he last saw it, sat Sim
with glassy eyes. His neck was bare and his clothes disordered. At his
back stood Rotha, with her arms thrown round her father's neck. His
long, thin fingers were clutching her clasped hands as with a vise.

"You must come with us," said one of the strangers, addressing the
tailor. He was justice and coroner of the district.

Sim said nothing and did not stir. Then the young girl's voice broke
the dreadful silence.

"Come, father; let us go."

Sim rose at this, and walked like one in a dream. Ralph took his arm,
and as the people crowded upon them, he pushed them aside, and they
passed out.

The direction of the company through the gray mist of that morning was
towards the place where the body lay. Sim was to be accused of the
crime. After the preliminaries of investigation were gone through, the
witnesses were called. None had seen the murder. The body of the
murdered man had been found by a laborer. There was a huge sharp stone
under the head, and death seemed to have resulted from a fracture of
the skull caused by a heavy fall. There was no appearance of a blow.
As to Sim, the circumstantial evidence looked grave. Old Wilson had
been seen to pass through Smeathwaite after dark; he must have done so
to reach his lodgings at the tailor's house. Sim had been seen abroad
about the same hour. This was not serious; but now came Sim's
landlord. He had called on the tailor the previous morning for his
rent and could not get it. Late the same night Sim had knocked at his
door with the money.

"When I ax't him where he'd come from so late," said the man, "he
glower't at me daiztlike, and said nought."

"What was his appearance?"

"His claes were a' awry, and he keep't looking ahint him."

At this there was a murmur among the bystanders. There could not be a
doubt of Sim's guilt.

At a moment of silence Ralph stepped out. He seemed much moved. Might
he ask the witnesses some questions? Certainly. It was against the
rule, but still he might do so. Then he inquired exactly into the
nature of the wound that had apparently caused death. He asked for
precise information as to the stone on which the head of the deceased
was found lying.

It lay fifty yards to the south of the bridge.

Then he argued that as there was no wound on the dead man other than
the fracture of the skull, it was plain that death had resulted from a
fall. How the deceased had come by that fall was now the question. Was
it not presumable that he had slipped his foot and had fallen? He
reminded them that Wilson was lame on one leg. If the fall were the
result of a blow, was it not preposterous to suppose that a man of
Sim's slight physique could have inflicted it? Under ordinary
circumstances, only a more powerful man than Wilson himself could have
killed him by a fall.

At this the murmur rose again among the bystanders, but it sounded to
Ralph like the murmur of beasts being robbed of their prey.

As to the tailor having been seen abroad at night, was not that the
commonest occurrence? With the evidence of Sim's landlord Ralph did
not deal.

It was plain that Sim could not be held over for trial on evidence
such as was before them. He was discharged, and an open verdict was
returned. The spectators were not satisfied, however, to receive the
tailor back again as an innocent man. Would he go upstairs and look at
the body? There was a superstition among them that a dead body would
bleed at a touch from the hand of the murderer. Sim said nothing, but
stared wildly about him.

"Come, father," said Rotha, "do as they wish."

The little man permitted himself to be led into the room above. Ralph
followed with a reluctant step. He had cleared his friend, but looked
more troubled than before. When the company reached the bedside, Ralph
stood at its head while one of the men took a cloth off the dead man's
face.

There was a stain of earth on it.

Then they drew Sim up in front of it. When his eyes fell on the white,
upturned face, he uttered a wild cry and fell senseless to the floor.
Ha! The murmur rose afresh. Then there was a dead silence. Rotha was
the first to break the awful stillness. She knelt over her father's
prostrate form, and said amid stifling sobs,--

"Tell them it is not true; tell them so, father."

The murmur came again. She understood it, and rose up with flashing
eyes.

"_I_ tell them it is not true," she said. Then stepping firmly to the
bedside, she cried, "Look you all! I, his daughter, touch here this
dead man's hand, and call on God to give a sign if my father did this
thing."

So saying, she took the hand of the murdered man, and held it
convulsively in her own.

The murmur died to a hush of suspense and horror. The body remained
unchanged. Loosing her grip, she turned on the bystanders with a look
of mingled pride and scorn.

"Take this from heaven for a witness that my father is innocent."

The tension was too much for the spectators, and one by one they left
the room. Ralph only remained, and when Sim returned to consciousness
he raised him up, and took him back to Fornside.




CHAPTER III.

IN THE RED LION.

     What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here?
                                       _Midsummer Night's Dream._


Time out of mind there had stood on the high street of Wythburn a
modest house of entertainment, known by the sign of the Red Lion.
Occasionally it accommodated the casual traveller who took the valley
road to the north, but it was intended for the dalesmen, who came
there after the darkness had gathered in, and drank a pot of
home-brewed ale as they sat above the red turf fire.

This was the house to which Wilson's body had been carried on the
morning it was found on the road. That was about Martinmas. One night,
early in the ensuing winter, a larger company than usual was seated in
the parlor of the little inn. It was a quaint old room, twice as long
as it was broad, and with a roof so low that the taller shepherds
stooped as they walked under its open beams.

From straps fixed to the rafters hung a gun, a whip, and a horn. Two
square windows, that looked out over the narrow causeway, were covered
by curtains of red cloth. An oak bench stood in each window recess.
The walls throughout were panelled in oak, which was carved here and
there in curious archaic devices. The panelling had for the most part
grown black with age; the rosier spots, that were polished to the
smoothness and brightness of glass, denoted the positions of
cupboards. Strong settles and broad chairs stood in irregular places
about the floor, which was of the bare earth, grown hard as stone, and
now sanded. The chimney nook spanned the width of one end of the room.
It was an open ingle with seats in the wall at each end, and the fire
on the ground between them. A goat's head and the horns of an ox were
the only ornaments of the chimney-breast, which was white-washed.

On this night of 1660 the wind was loud and wild without. The
snowstorm that had hung over the head of Castenand in the morning had
come down the valley as the day wore on. The heavy sleet rattled at
the windows. In its fiercer gusts it drowned the ring of the lusty
voices. The little parlor looked warm and snug with its great cobs of
old peat glowing red as they burnt away sleepily on the broad hearth.
At intervals the door would open and a shepherd would enter. He had
housed his sheep for the night, and now, seated as the newest comer on
the warmest bench near the fire, with a pipe in one hand and a pot of
hot ale in the other, he was troubled by the tempest no more.

"At Michaelmas a good fat goose, at Christmas stannen' pie, and good
yal awt year roond," said an old man in the chimney corner. This was
Matthew Branthwaite, the wit and sage of Wythburn, once a weaver, but
living now on the husbandings of earlier life. He was tall and slight,
and somewhat bent with age. He was dressed in a long brown sack coat,
belted at the waist, below which were pockets cut perpendicular at the
side. Ribbed worsted stockings and heavy shoes made up, with the
greater garment, the sum of his visible attire. Old Matthew had a vast
reputation for wise saws and proverbs; his speech seemed to be made of
little else; and though the dalespeople had heard the old sayings a
thousand times, these seemed never to lose anything of their piquancy
and rude force.

"It's a bad night, Mattha Branthet," said a new-comer.

"Dost tak me for a born idiot?" asked the old man. "Dost think I
duddent known that afore I saw thee, that thou must be blodderen oot,'
It's a bad neet, Mattha Branthet?'" There was a dash of rustic spite
in the old man's humor which gave it an additional relish.

"Ye munnet think to win through the world on a feather bed, lad," he
added.

The man addressed was one Robbie Anderson, a young fellow who had for
a long time indulged somewhat freely in the good ale which the sage
had just recommended for use all the year round. Every one had said he
was going fast to his ruin, making beggars of himself and of all about
him. It was, nevertheless, whispered that Robbie was the favored
sweetheart among many of Matthew Branthwaite's young daughter Liza;
but the old man, who had never been remarkable for sensibility, had
said over and over again, "She'll lick a lean poddish stick, Bobbie,
that weds the like of thee." Latterly the young man had in a silent
way shown some signs of reform. He had not, indeed, given up the good
ale to which his downfall had been attributed; but when he came to the
Red Lion he seemed to sleep more of his time there than he drank. So
the village philosopher had begun to pat him on the back, and say,
encouragingly, "There's nowt so far aslew, Bobbie, but good manishment
may set it straight."

Robbie accepted his rebuff on this occasion with undisturbed
equanimity, and, taking a seat on a bench at the back, seemed soon to
be lost in slumber.

The dalesmen are here in strength to-night. Thomas Fell, the miller of
Legberthwaite, is here, with rubicund complexion and fully developed
nose. Here, too, is Thomas's cousin, Adam Rutledge, fresh from an
adventure at Carlisle, where he has tasted the luxury of Doomsdale, a
noisome dungeon reserved for witches and murderers, but sometimes
tenanted by obstreperous drunkards. Of a more reputable class here is
Job Leathes, of Dale Head, a tall, gaunt dalesman, with pale gray
eyes. Here is Luke Cockrigg, too, of Aboonbeck Bank; and stout John
Jackson, of Armboth, a large and living refutation of the popular
fallacy that the companionship of a ghost must necessarily induce such
appalling effects as are said to have attended the apparitions which
presented themselves to the prophets and seers of the Hebrews. John
has slept for twenty years in the room at Armboth in which the
spiritual presence is said to walk, and has never yet seen anything
more terrible than his own shadow. Here, too, at Matthew Branthwaite's
side, sits little blink-eyed Reuben Thwaite, who _has_ seen the
Armboth bogle. He saw it one night when he was returning home from the
Red Lion. It took the peculiar form of a lime-and-mould heap, and,
though in Reuben's case the visitation was not attended by convulsions
or idiocy, the effect of it was unmistakable. When Reuben awoke next
morning he found himself at the bottom of a ditch.

"A wild neet onyways, Mattha," says Reuben, on Robbie Anderson's
retirement. "As I com alang I saw yan of Angus Ray haystacks blown
flat on to the field--doon it went in a bash--in ya bash frae top to
bottom."

"That minds me of Mother Garth and auld Wilson haycocks," said
Matthew.

"Why, what was that?" said Reuben.

"Deary me, what thoo minds it weel eneuf. It was the day Wilson was
cocking Angus hay in the low meedow. Mistress Garth came by in the
evening, and stood in the road opposite to look at the north leets.
'Come, Sarah,' says auld Wilson, 'show us yan of thy cantrips; I
divn't care for thee.' But he'd scarce said it when a whirlblast came
frae the fell and owerturn't iv'ry cock. Then Sarah she laughed oot
loud, and she said, 'Ye'll want na mair cantrips, I reckon.' She was
reet theer."

"Like eneuf," said several voices amid a laugh.

"He was hard on Mother Garth was Wilson," continued Matthew; "I nivver
could mak ought on it. He called her a witch, and seurly she is a laal
bit uncanny."

"Maybe she wasn't always such like," said Mr. Jackson.

"Maybe not, John," said Matthew; "but she was olas a cross-grained yan
sin the day she came first to Wy'burn."

"I thought her a harmless young body with her babby,' said Mr.
Jackson.

"Let me see," said Reuben Thwaite; "that must be a matter of
six-and-twenty year agone."

"Mair ner that," said Matthew. "It was long afore I bought my new
loom, and that's six-and-twenty year come Christmas."

"Ey, I mind they said she'd run away frae the man she'd wedded
somewhere in the north," observed Adam Rutledge through the pewter
which he had raised to his lips. "Ower fond of his pot for Sarah."

"Nowt o' t' sort," said Matthew. "He used to pommel and thresh her up
and doon, and that's why she cut away frae him, and that's why she's
sic a sour yan."

"Ey, that's reets on it," said Reuben.

"But auld Wilson's spite on her olas did cap me a laal bit," said
Matthew again. "He wanted her burnt for a witch. 'It's all stuff and
bodderment aboot the witches,' says I to him ya day; 'there be none.
God's aboon the devil!' 'Nay, nay,' says Wilson, 'it'll be past
jookin' when the heed's off. She'll do something for some of us yit.'"

"Hush," whispered Reuben, as at that moment the door opened and a
tall, ungainly young dalesman, with red hair and with a dogged
expression of face, entered the inn.

A little later, amid a whirl of piercing wind, Ralph Ray entered,
shaking the frozen snow from his cloak with long skirts, wet and cold,
his staff in his hand, and his dog at his heels. Old Matthew gave him
a cheery welcome.

"It's like ye'd as lief be in this snug room as on the fell to-neet,
Ralph?" There was a twinkle in the old man's eye; he had meant more
than he said.

"I'd full as soon be here as in Sim's cave, Matthew, if that's what
you mean," said Ralph, as he held the palms of his hands to the fire
and then rubbed them on his knees.

"Thou wert nivver much of a fool, Ralph," Matthew answered. And with a
shovel that facetious occupant of the hearth lifted another cob of
turf on to the fire.

"It's lang sin' Sim sat aboon sic a lowe as that," he added, with a
motion of his head downwards.

"Worse luck," said Ralph in a low tone, as though trying to avoid the
subject.

"Whear the pot's brocken, there let the sherds lie, lad," said the old
man; "keep thy breath to cool thy poddish, forby thy mug of yal, and
here't comes."

As he spoke the hostess brought up a pot of ale, smoking hot, and put
it in Ralph's hand.

"Let every man stand his awn rackups, Ralph. Sim's a bad lot, and reet
serv'd."

"You have him there, Mattha Branthet," said the others with a laugh,
"a feckless fool." The young dalesman leaned back on the bench, took a
draught of his liquor, rested the pot on his knee, and looked into the
fire with the steady gaze of one just out of the darkness. After a
pause he said quietly,--

"I'll wager there's never a man among you dare go up to Sim's cave
to-night. Yet you drive him up there every night of the year."

"Bad dreams, lad; bad dreams," said the old man, shaking his head with
portentous gravity, "forby the boggle of auld Wilson--that's maybe
what maks Sim ga rakin aboot the fell o' neets without ony eerand."

"Ay, ay, that's aboot it," said the others, removing their pipes
together and speaking with the gravity and earnestness of men who had
got a grip of the key to some knotty problem. "The ghost of auld
Wilson."

"The ghost of some of your stout sticks, I reckon," said Ralph,
turning upon them with a shadow of a sneer on his frank face.

His companions laughed. Just then the wind rose higher than before,
and came in a gust down the open chimney. The dogs that had been
sleeping on the sanded floor got up, walked across the room with
drooping heads, and growled. Then they lay down again and addressed
themselves afresh to sleep. The young dalesman looked into the mouth
of his pewter and muttered, as if to himself,--

"Because there was no evidence to convict the poor soul, suspicion,
that is worse than conviction, must so fix upon him that he's afraid
to sleep his nights in his bed at home, but must go where never a
braggart loon of Wythburn dare follow him."

"Aye, lad," said the old man, with a wink of profound import, "foxes
hev holes."

The sally was followed by a general laugh.

Not noticing it, Ralph said,--

"A hole, indeed! a cleft in the bare rock, open to nigh every wind,
deluged by every rain, desolate, unsheltered by bush or bough--a hole
no fox would house in."

Ralph was not unmoved, but the sage in the chimney corner caught
little of the contagion of his emotion. Taking his pipe out of his
mouth, and with the shank of it marking time to the doggerel, he
said,--

    "Wheariver there's screes
     There's mair stones nor trees."

The further sally provoked a louder laugh. Just then another gust came
down the chimney and sent a wave of mingled heat and cold through the
room. The windows rattled louder with the wind and crackled sharper
with the pelting sleet. The dogs rose and growled.

"Be quiet there," cried Ralph. "Down, Laddie, down." Laddie, a
large-limbed collie, with long shaggy coat still wet and matted and
glistening with the hard unmelted snow, had walked to the door and put
his nose to the bottom of it.

"Some one coming," said Ralph, turning to look at the dog, and
speaking almost under his breath.

Robbie Anderson, who had throughout been lounging in silence on the
bench near the door, got up sleepily, and put his great hand on the
wooden latch. The door flew open by the force of the storm outside. He
peered for a moment into the darkness through the blinding sleet. He
could see nothing.

"No one here!" he said moodily.

And, putting his broad shoulder to the stout oak door, he forced it
back. The wind moaned and hissed through the closing aperture. It was
like the ebb of a broken wave to those who had heard the sea. Turning
about, as the candles on the table blinked, the young man lazily
dashed the rain and sleet from his beard and breast, and lay down
again on the settle, with something between a shiver and a yawn.
"Cruel night, this," he muttered, and so saying, he returned to his
normal condition of somnolence.

The opening and the closing of the door, together with the draught of
cold air, had awakened a little man who occupied that corner of the
chimney nook which faced old Matthew. Coiled up with his legs under
him on the warm stone seat, his head resting against one of the two
walls that bolstered him up on either hand, beneath a great flitch of
bacon that hung there to dry, he had lain asleep throughout the
preceding conversation, only punctuating its periods at intervals with
somewhat too audible indications of slumber. In an instant he was on
his feet. He was a diminutive creature, with something infinitely
amusing in his curious physical proportions. His head was large and
well formed; his body was large and ill formed; his legs were short
and shrunken. He was the schoolmaster of Wythburn, and his name Monsey
Laman. The dalesmen found the little schoolmaster the merriest comrade
that ever sat with them over a glass. He had a crack for each of them,
a song, a joke, a lively touch that cut and meant no harm. They called
him "the little limber Frenchman," in allusion to a peculiarity of
gait which in the minds of the heavy-limbed mountaineers was somehow
associated with the idea of a French dancing master.

With the schoolmaster's awakening the conversation in the inn seemed
likely to take a livelier turn. Even the whistling sleet appeared to
become less fierce and terrible. True, the stalwart dalesman on the
door bench yawned and slept as before; but even Ralph's firm lower lip
began to relax, and he was never a gay and sportive elf. The rest of
the company charged their pipes afresh and called on the hostess for
more spiced ale.

"'Blessing on your heart,' says the proverb, 'you brew good ale.' It's
a Christian virtue, eh, Father?" said Monsey, addressing Matthew in
the opposite corner.

"Praise the ford as ye find it," said that sage; "I've found good yal
maks good yarn. Folks that wad put doon good yal ought to be
theirselves putten doon."

"Then you must have been hanged this many a long year, Father
Matthew," said Monsey, "for you've put down more good ale than any man
in Wythburn."

Old Matthew had to stand the laugh against himself this time. In the
midst of it he leaned over to Ralph, and, as though to cover his
discomfiture, whispered, "He's gat a lad's heart, the laal man has."

Then, with the air of one about to communicate a novel idea,--

"And sic as ye gie, sic will ye get, frae him."

"Well, well," he added aloud, "ye munnet think I cannot stand my
rackups."

The old man, despite this unexpected fall, was just beginning to show
his mettle. The sententious graybeard was never quite so happy, never
looked quite so wise, never shook his head with such an air of
good-humored consequence, never winked with such profundity of
facetiousness, as when "the laal limber Frenchman" was giving a "merry
touch." Wouldn't Monsey sing summat and fiddle to it too; aye, that he
would, Mattha knew reet weel.

"Sing!" cried the little man,--"sing! Monsieur, the dog shall try me
this conclusion. If he wag his tail, then will I sing; if he do not
wag his tail, then--then will I not be silent. What say you Laddie?"
The dog responded to the appeal with an opportune if not an
intelligent wag of that member on which so momentous an issue hung.
From one of the rosy closets in the wall a fiddle was forthwith
brought out, and soon the noise of the tempest was drowned in the
preliminary tuning of strings and running of scales.

"You shall beat the time, my patriarch," said Monsey.

"Nay, man; it's thy place to kill it," answered Matthew.

"Then you shall mark the beat, or beat the mark, or make your mark.
You could never write, you know."

It was a sight not to be forgotten to see the little schoolmaster
brandishing his fiddlestick, beating time with his foot, and breaking
out into a wild shout when he hit upon some happy idea, for he
rejoiced in a gift of improvisation. A burst of laughter greeted the
climax of his song, which turned on an unheroic adventure of old
Matthew's. The laughter had not yet died away when a loud knocking
came to the door. Ralph jumped to his feet.

"I said some one was coming; and he's been here before, whoever he
is."

At that he walked to the door and opened it. Laddie was there before
him.

"Is Ralph Ray here?"

It was the voice of a woman, charged with feeling.

Ralph's back had been to the light, and hence his face had not been
recognized. But the light fell on the face of the new-comer.

"Rotha!" he said. He drew her in, and was about to shut out the storm
behind her.

"No," she said almost nervously. "Come with me; some one waits outside
to see you; some one who won't--can't come in."

She was wet; her hair was matted over her forehead, the sleet lying in
beads upon it. A hood that had been pulled hurriedly over her head was
blown partly aside. Ralph would have drawn her to the fire.

"Not yet," she said again. Her eyes looked troubled, startled,
denoting pain.

"Then I will go with you at once," he said.

They turned; Laddie darted out before them, and in a moment they were
in the blackness of the night.




CHAPTER IV.

THE OUTCAST.


The storm had abated. The sleet and rain had ceased, but the wind
still blew fierce and strong, driving black continents of cloud across
a crescent moon. It was bitingly cold. Rotha walked fast and spoke
little. Ralph understood their mission. "Is he far away?" he said.

"Not far."

Her voice had a tremor of emotion, and as the wind carried it to him
it seemed freighted with sadness. But the girl would have hidden her
fears.

"Perhaps he's better now," she said.

Ralph quickened his steps. The dog had gone on in front, and was lost
in the darkness.

"Give me your hand, Rotha; the sleet is hard and slape."

"Don't heed me, Ralph; go faster; I'll follow."

Just then a sharp bark was heard close at hand, followed by another
and another, but in a different key. Laddie had met a friend.

"He's coming," Rotha said, catching her breath.

"He's here."

With the shrill cry of a hunted creature that has got back, wounded,
to its brethren, Sim seemed to leap upon them out of the darkness.

"Ralph, take me with you--take me with you; do not let me go back to
the fell to-night. I cannot go--no, believe me, I cannot--I dare not.
Take me, Ralph; have mercy on me; do not despise me for the coward
that I am; it's enough to make me curse the great God--no, no; not
that neither. But, Ralph, Ralph--"

The poor fellow would have fallen breathless and exhausted at Ralph's
feet, but he held him up and spoke firmly but kindly to him,--

"Bravely, Sim; bravely, man; there," he said, as the tailor regained
some composure.

"You sha'n't go back to-night. How wet you are, though! There's not a
dry rag to your body, man. You must first return with me to the fire
at the Red Lion, and then we'll go--"

"No, no, no!" cried Sim; "not there either--never there; better the
wind and rain, aye, better anything, than that."

And he turned his head over his shoulder as though peering into the
darkness behind. Ralph understood him. There were wilder companions
for this poor hunted creature than any that lived on the mountains.

"But you'll never live through the night in clothes like these."

Sim shivered with the cold; his teeth chattered; his lank hands shook
as with ague.

"Never live? Oh, but I must not die, Ralph; no not yet--not yet."

Was there, then, something still left in life that a poor outcast like
this should cling to it?

"I'll go back with you," he said more calmly. They turned, and with
Sim between them Ralph and Rotha began to retrace their steps. They
had not far to go, when Sim reeled like a drunken man, and when they
were within a few paces he stopped.

"No," he said, "I can't." His breath was coming quick and fast.

"Come, man, they shall give you the ingle bench; I'll see to that.
Come now," said Ralph soothingly.

"I've walked in front of this house for an hour to-night, I have,"
said Sim, "to and fro, to and fro, waiting for you; waiting, waiting;
starting at my own shadow cast from the dim lowe of the windows, and
then flying to hide when the door did at last--at long last--open or
shut."

Ralph shuddered. It had been as he thought. Then he said,--

"Yes, yes; but you'll come now, like a brave fellow--'a braw chiel,'
you know."

Sim started at the pleasantry with which Ralph had tried to soothe his
spirits. It struck a painful memory. Ralph felt it too.

"Come," he said, in an altered tone.

"No," cried Sim, clasping his hands over his head. "They're worse than
wild beasts, they are. To-night I went up to the cave as usual. The
wind was blowing strong and keen in the valley; it had risen to a
tempest on the screes. I went in and turned up the bracken for my bed.
Then the rain began to fall; and the rain became hail, and the hail
became sleet, and pelted in upon me, it did. The wind soughed about my
lone home--my home!"

Again Sim reeled in the agony of his soul.

"This is peace to that wind," he continued; "yes, peace. Then the
stones began to rumble down the rocks, and the rain to pour in through
the great chinks in the roof of the cave. Yet I stayed there--I
stayed. Well, the ghyll roared louder and louder. It seemed to
overflow the gullock, it did. I heard the big bowders shifted from
their beds by the tumbling waters. They rolled with heavy thuds down
the brant sides of the fell--down, down, down. But I kept closer,
closer. Presently I heard the howl of the wolves--"

"No, Sim; not that, old friend." "Yes, the pack from Lauvellen. They'd
been driven out of their caves--not even they could live in their
caves tonight." The delirium of Sim's spirit seemed to overcome him.

"No more now, man," said Ralph, putting his arm about him. "You're
safe, at least, and all will be well with you."

"Wait. Nearer and nearer they came, nearer and nearer, till I knew
they were above me, around me. Yet I kept close, I did, I almost felt
their breath. Well, well, at last I saw two red eyes gleaming at me
through the darkness--"

"You're feverish to-night, Sim," interrupted Ralph.

"Then a great flash of lightning came. It licked the ground afore
me--ay, licked. Then a burst of thunder--it must have been a
thunderbolt--I couldn't hear the wind and sleet and water. I fainted,
that must have been it. When I came round I groped about me where I
lay--"

"A dream, Sim."

"No, it was no dream! What was it I touched? I was delivered! Thank
heaven, _that_ death was not mine. I rose, staggered out, and fled."

By the glimmering light from the windows of the inn--there came the
sound of laughter from within--Ralph could see that hysterical tears
coursed down the poor tailor's cheeks. Rotha stood aside, her hands
covering her face.

"And, at last, when you could not meet me here, you went to Fornside
for Rotha to seek me?" asked Ralph.

"Yes, I did. Don't despise me--don't do that." Then in a supplicating
tone he added,--

"I couldn't bear it from you, Ralph."

The tears came again. The direful agony of Sim's soul seemed at length
to conquer him, and he fell to the ground insensible. In an instant
Rotha was on her knees in the hardening road at her father's side; but
she did not weep.

"We have no choice now," she said in a broken voice.

"None," answered Ralph. "Let me carry him in."

When the door of the inn had closed behind Ralph as he went out with
Rotha, old Matthew Branthwaite, who had recovered his composure after
Monsey's song, and who had sat for a moment with his elbow on his
knee, his pipe in his hand and his mouth still open, from which the
shaft had just been drawn, gave a knowing twitch to his wrinkled face
as he said,--

"So, so, that's the fell the wind blows frae!"

"Blow low, my black feutt," answered Monsey, "and don't blab."

"When the whins is oot of blossom, kissing's oot o' fashion--nowt will
come of it," replied the sage on reflection.

"Wrong again, great Solomon!" said Monsey. "Ralph is not the man to
put away the girl because her father is in disgrace."

"Do ye know he trystes with the lass?"

"Not I."

"Maybe ye'r like the rest on us: ye can make nowt on him, back ner
edge."

"Right now, great sage; the sun doesn't shine through him."

"He's a great lounderan fellow," said one of the dalesmen, speaking
into the pewter at his mouth. He was the blacksmith of Wythburn.

"What do you say?" asked Monsey.

"Nowt!" the man growled sulkily.

"So ye said nowt?" inquired Matthew.

"Nowt to you, or any of you."

"Then didst a nivver hear it said, 'He that talks to himsel' clatters
to a fool'?"

The company laughed.

"No," resumed Matthew, turning to the schoolmaster, "Ralph will nivver
tryste with the lass of yon hang-gallows of a tailor. The gallows
rope's all but roond his neck already. It's awesome to see him in his
barramouth in the fell side. He's dwinnelt away to a atomy.

"It baffles me where he got the brass frae to pay his rent," said one
of the shepherds. "Where did he get it, schoolmaster?"

Monsey answered nothing. The topic was evidently a fearsome thing to
him. His quips and cracks were already gone.

"Where did he get it, _I_ say?" repeated the man; with the air of one
who was propounding a trying problem.

Old Matthew removed his pipe.

"A fool may ask mair questions ner a doctor can answer."

The shepherd shifted in his seat.

"That Wilson was na shaks nowther," continued Matthew quietly. "He was
accustomed to 'tummel' his neighbors, and never paused to inquire into
their bruises. He'd olas the black dog on his back--leastways
latterly. Ey, the braizzant taistrel med have done something for Ralph
an he lived langer. He was swearing what he'd do, the ungratefu' fool;
auld Wilson was a beadless body."

"They say he threatened Ralph's father, Angus," said Monsey, with a
perceptible shiver.

"Ay, but Angus is bad to bang. I mind his dingin' ower a bull on its
back. A girt man, Angus, and varra dreadfu' when he's angert."

"Dus'ta mind the fratch thoo telt me aboot atween Angus and auld
Wilson?" said Reuben Thwaite to Matthew Branthwaite.

"What quarrel was that?" asked Monsey.

"Why, the last fratch of all, when Wilson gat the sneck posset frae
Shoulthwaite," said Matthew.

"I never heard of it," said the schoolmaster.

"There's nowt much to hear. Ralph and mysel' we were walking up to the
Moss together ya day, when we heard Angus and Wilson at a bout of
words. Wilson he said to Angus with a gay, bitter sneer, 'Ye'll fain
swappit wi' me yet,' said he. 'He'll yoke wi' an unco weird. Thy braw
chiel 'ul tryste wi' th' hangman soon, I wat.' And Angus he was fair
mad, I can tell ye, and he said to Wilson, 'Thoo stammerin' and
yammerin' taistrel, thoo; I'll pluck a lock of thy threep. Bring the
warrant, wilt thoo? Thoo savvorless and sodden clod-heed! I'll whip
thee with the taws. Slipe, I say, while thoo's weel--slipe!'"

"And Angus would have done it, too, and not the first time nowther,"
said little Reuben, with a knowing shake of the head.

"Well, Matthew, what then?" said Monsey.

"Weel, with that Angus he lifted up his staff, and Wilson shrieked oot
afore he gat the blow. But Angus lowered his hand and said to him,
says he, 'Time eneuf to shriek when ye're strucken.'"

"And when the auld one did get strucken, he could not shriek," added
Reuben.

"We know nowt of that reetly," said Matthew, "and maybe nivver will."

"What was that about a warrant?" said Monsey.

"Nay, nay, laal man, that's mair ner ony on us knows for certain."
"But ye have a notion on it, have ye not?" said Reuben, with a twinkle
which was intended to flatter Matthew into a communicative spirit.

"I reckon I hev," said the weaver, with a look of self-satisfaction.

"Did Ralph understand it?" asked Monsey.

"Not he, schoolmaister. If he did, I could mak' nowt on him, for I
asked him theer and then."

"But ye knows yersel' what the warrant meant, don't ye?" said Reuben
significantly.

"Weel, man, it's all as I telt ye; the country's going to the dogs,
and young Charles he's cutting the heed off nigh a'most iv'ry man as
fought for Oliver agen him. And it's as I telt ye aboot the spies of
the government, there's a spy ivrywhear--maybe theer's yan here
now--and auld Wilson he was nowt ner mair ner less ner a spy, and he
meant to get a warrant for Ralph Ray, and that's the lang and short on
it."

"I reckon Sim made _the_ short on it," said Reuben with a smirk. "He
scarce knew what a good turn he was doing for young Ralph yon neet in
Martinmas."

"But don't they say Ralph saved Wilson's life away at the wars?" said
Monsey. "Why could he want to inform against him and have him hanged?"

"A dog winnet yowl an ye hit him with a bone, but a spy is worse ner
ony dog," answered Matthew sententiously.

"But _why_ could he wish to do it?"

"His fratch with Angus, that was all."

"There must have been more than that, Matthew, there must."

"I never heeard on it, then."

"Old Wilson must have had money on him that night," said Monsey, who
had been looking gravely into the fire, his hands clasped about his
knees. Encouraged by this support of the sapient idea he had hinted
at, the shepherd who had spoken before broke in with, "Where else did
he get it _I_ say?"

"Ye breed of the cuckoo," said Matthew, "ye've gat no rhyme but yan."

Amid the derisive laughter that followed, the door of the inn was
again opened, and in a moment more Ralph Ray stood in the middle of
the floor with Simeon Stagg in his arms. Rotha was behind, pale but
composed. Every man in the room rose to his feet. The landlord stepped
forward, with no pleasant expression on his face; and from an inner
room his wife came bustling up. Little Monsey stood clutching and
twitching his fingers. Old Matthew had let the pipe drop out of his
mouth, and it lay broken on the hearth.

"He has fainted," said Ralph, still holding his burden; "turn that
bench to the fire."

No one stirred. Every one stood for the moment as if stupefied. Sim's
head hung over Ralph's arm: his face was as pale as death.

"Out of the way," said Ralph, brushing past a great lumbering fellow,
with his mouth agape.

The company found their tongues at last. Were they to sit with "this
hang-gallows of a tailor"? The landlord, thinking himself appealed to,
replied that he "couldn't hev na brulliment" in his house.

"There need be no broil," said Ralph, laying the insensible form on a
seat and proceeding to strip off the wet outer garments. Then turning
to the hostess, he said,--

"Martha, bring me water, quick."

Martha turned about and obeyed him without a word.

"He'll be better soon," said Ralph to Robbie Anderson. He was
sprinkling water on the white face that lay before him. Robbie had
recovered his wakefulness, and was kneeling at Sim's feet, chafing his
hands.

Rotha stood at her father's side, motionless.

"There, he's coming to. Martha," said Ralph, "hadn't you better take
Rotha to the kitchen fire?"

The two women left the room.

Sim's eyes opened; there was a watery humor in them which was not
tears. The color came back to his cheeks, but with the return of
consciousness his face grew thinner and more haggard. He heaved a
heavy sigh, and seemed to realize his surroundings. With the only hand
disengaged (Robbie held one of them) he clutched at Ralph's belt.

"I'm better--let me go," he said in a hoarse voice, trying to rise.

"No!" said Ralph,--"no!" and he gently pushed him back into his
recumbent position.

"You had best let the snuffling waistrel go," said one of the men in a
surly tone. "Maybe he never fainted at all."

It was the blacksmith who had growled at the mention of Ralph's name
in Ralph's absence. They called him Joe Garth.

"Be silent, you loon," answered Robbie Anderson, turning upon the last
speaker.

Ralph seemed not to have heard him.

"Here," he said, tossing Sim's coat to Matthew, who had returned with
a new pipe to his seat in the chimney corner, "dry that at the fire."
The coat had been growing hard with the frost.

"This wants the batling stone ower it," said the old weaver, spreading
it out before him.

"See to this, schoolmaster," said Ralph, throwing Sim's cap into his
lap.

Monsey jumped, with a scream, out of his seat as though stung by an
adder.

Ralph looked at him for a moment with an expression of pity.

"I might have known you were timid at heart, schoolmaster. Perhaps
you're gallant over a glass."

There could be no doubt of little Monsey's timidity. All his jests had
forsaken him.

Sim had seen the gesture that expressed horror at contact even with
his clothes. He was awake to every passing incident with a feverish
alertness.

"Let me go," he said again, with a look of supplicatory appeal.

Old Matthew got up and opened the door.

"Sista, there's some betterment in the weather, now; it teem't awhile
ago."

"What of that?" asked Ralph; but he understood the observation.

"For God's sake let me go," cried Sim in agony, looking first at one
face and then at another.

"No," said Ralph, and sat down beside him. Robbie had gone back to his
bench.

"Ye'll want the bull-grips to keep _him_ quiet," said old Matthew to
Ralph, with a sneer.

"And the ass's barnicles to keep your tongue in your mouth," added
Ralph sternly.

"For fault of wise men fools sit on the bench, or we should hev none
of this," continued Matthew. "I reckon some one that's here is nigh
ax't oot by Auld Nick in the kirk of the nether world."

"Then take care you're not there yourself to give something at the
bridewain."

Old Mathew grumbled something under his breath.

There was a long silence. Ralph had rarely been heard to speak so
bitterly. It was clear that opposition had gone far enough. Sim's
watery eyes were never for an instant still. Full of a sickening
apprehension, they cast furtive glances into every face. The poor
creature seemed determined to gather up into his wretched breast the
scorn that was blasting it. The turf on the hearth gave out a great
heat, but the tailor shivered as with cold. Then Ralph reached the
coat and cap, and, after satisfying himself that they were dry, he
handed them back to Sim, who put them on. Perhaps he had mistaken the
act, for, rising to his feet, Sim looked into Ralph's face
inquiringly, as though to ask if he might go.

"Not yet, Sim," said Ralph. "You shall go when I go. You lodge with me
to-night."

Monsey in the corner looked aghast, and crept closer under the flitch
of bacon that hung above him.

"Men," said Ralph, "hearken here. You call it a foul thing to kill a
man, and so it is."

Monsey turned livid; every one held his breath. Ralph went on,--

"Did you ever reflect that there are other ways of taking a man's life
besides killing him?"

There was no response. Ralph did not seem to expect one, for he
continued,--

"You loathe the man who takes the blood of his fellow-man, and you're
right so to do. It matters nothing to you that the murdered man may
have been a worse man than the murderer. You're right there too. You
look to the motive that inspired the crime. Is it greed or revenge?
Then you say, 'This man must die.' God grant that such horror of
murder may survive among us." There was a murmur of assent.

"But it is possible to kill without drawing blood. We may be murderers
and never suspect the awfulness of our crime. To wither with
suspicion, to blast with scorn, to dog with cruel hints, to torture
with hard looks',--this is to kill without blood. Did you ever think
of it? There are worse hangmen than ever stood on the gallows."

"Ay, but _he's_ shappin' to hang hissel'," muttered Matthew
Branthwaite. And there was some inaudible muttering among the others.

"I know what you mean," Ralph continued. "That the guilty man whom the
law cannot touch is rightly brought under the ban of his fellows. Yes,
it is Heaven's justice."

Sim crept closer to Ralph, and trembled perceptibly.

"Men, hearken again," said Ralph. "You know I've spoken up for Sim,"
and he put his great arm about the tailor's shoulders; "but you don't
know that I have never asked him, and he has never said whether he is
innocent or not. The guilty man may be in this room, and he may not be
Simeon Stagg. But if he were my own brother--my own father--"

Old Matthew's pipe had gone out; he was puffing at the dead shaft. Sim
rose up; his look of abject misery had given place to a look of
defiance; he stamped on the floor.

"Let me go; let me go," he cried.

Robbie Anderson came up and took him by the hand; but Sim's brain
seemed rent in twain, and in a burst of hysterical passion he fell
back into his seat, and buried his head in his breast.

"He'll be hanged with the foulest collier yet," growled one of the
men. It was Joe Garth again. He was silenced once more. The others had
begun to relent.

"I've not yet asked him if he is innocent," continued Ralph; "but this
persecution drives me to it, and I ask him now."

"Yes, yes," cried Sim, raising his head, and revealing an awful
countenance. A direful memory seemed to haunt every feature.

"Do you know the murderer?"

"I do--that is--what am I saying?--let me go."

Sim had got up, and was tramping across the floor. Ralph got up too,
and faced him.

"It is your duty, in the sight of Heaven, to give that man's name."

"No, no; heaven forbid," cried Sim.

"It is your duty to yourself and to--"

"I care nothing for myself."

"And to your daughter--think of that. Would you tarnish the child's
name with the sin laid on the father's--"

"God in heaven help me!" cried Sim, tremulous with emotion. "Ralph,
Ralph, ask me no more--you don't know what you ask."

"It is your duty to Heaven, I say."

He put his hand on Sim's shoulder, and looked steadily in his eyes.
With a fearful cry Sim broke from his grasp, sprung to the door, and
in an instant was lost in the darkness without. Ralph stood where Sim
had left him, transfixed by some horrible consciousness. A slow
paralysis seemed to possess all his senses. What had he read in those
eyes that seemed to live before him still?

"Good neet," said old Matthew as he got up and trudged out. Most of
the company rose to go. "Good night," said more than one, but Ralph
answered nothing. Robbie Anderson was last.

"Good night, Ralph," he said. His gruff voice was thick in his throat.

"Aye, good night, lad," Ralph answered vacantly.

Robbie had got to the door, and was leaning with one hand on the
door-frame. Coming back, he said,--

"Ralph, where may your father be to-night?"

"At Gaskarth--it's market day--he took the last shearing."

He spoke like one in a sleep. Then Robbie left him.

"Is Rotha ready to go?" he asked.




CHAPTER V.

THE EMPTY SADDLE.

     The night has been unruly:...
     Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death.
                                       _Macbeth_.


The storm was now all but over. The moon shone clear, and the clouds
that scudded across its face were few. Lauvellen, to the east, was
visible to the summit; and Raven Craig, to the west, loomed black
before the moon. A cutting wind still blew, and a frost had set in
sharp and keen. Already the sleet that had fallen was frozen in sheets
along the road, which was thereby made almost impassable even to the
sure footsteps of the mountaineer. The trees no longer sighed and
moaned with the wind; on the stiffening firs lay beads of frozen snow,
and the wind as it passed through them soughed. The ghylls were fuller
and louder, and seemed to come from every hill; the gullocks
overflowed, but silence was stealing over the streams, and the deeper
rivers seemed scarcely to flow.

Ralph and Rotha walked side by side to Shoulthwaite Moss. It was
useless for the girl to return to Fornside, Ralph had said. Her father
would not be there, and the desolate house was no place for her on a
night like this. She must spend the night under his mother's charge.

They had exchanged but few words on setting out. The tragedy of her
father's life was settling on the girl's heart with a nameless misery.
It is the first instinct of the child's nature to look up to the
parent as its refuge, its tower of strength. That bulwark may be
shattered before the world, and yet to the child's intuitive feeling
it may remain the same. Proudly, steadfastly the child heart continues
to look up to the wreck that is no wreck in the eyes of its love. Ah!
how well it is if the undeceiving never comes! But when all that
seemed strong, when all that seemed true, becomes to the unveiled
vision weak and false, what word is there that can represent the
sadness of the revealment?

"Do you think, Ralph, that I could bear a terrible answer if I were to
ask you a terrible question?"

Rotha broke the silence between them with these words. Ralph replied
promptly,--

"Yes, I do. What would you ask?"

The girl appeared powerless to proceed. She tried to speak and
stopped, withdrawing her words and framing them afresh, as though
fearful of the bluntness of her own inquiry. Her companion perceived
her distress, and coming to her relief with a cheerier tone, he
said,--

"Don't fear to ask, Rotha. I think I can guess your question. You want
to know if--"

"Ralph," the girl broke in hurriedly--she could better bear to say the
word herself than to hear him say it--"Ralph, he is my father, and
that has been enough. I could not love him the less whatever might
happen. I have never asked him--anything. He is my father, and though
he be--whatever he may be--he is my father _still_, you know. But,
Ralph, tell me--you say I can bear it--and I can--I feel I can
now--tell me, Ralph, _was_ it poor father after all?"

Rotha had stopped and covered up her face in her hands. Ralph stopped
too. His voice was deep and thick as he answered slowly,--

"No, Rotha, it was not."

"_Not_ father?" cried the girl; "you know it was not?"

"I _know_ it was not."

The voice again was not the voice of one who brings glad tidings, but
the words were themselves full of gladness for the ear on which they
fell, and Rotha seemed almost overcome by her joy. She clutched
Ralph's arm with both hands.

"Heaven be praised!" she said; "now I can brave anything--poor, poor
father!"

After this the girl almost leapt over the frozen road in the ecstasy
of her new-found delight. The weight of weary months of gathering
suspense seemed in one moment to have fallen from her forever. Half
laughing, half weeping, she bounded along, the dog sporting beside
her. Her quick words rippled on the frosty air. Occasionally she
encountered a flood that swept across the way from the hills above to
the lake beneath, but her light foot tripped over it before a hand
could be offered her. Their path lay along the pack-horse road by the
side of the mere, and time after time she would scud down to the
water's edge to pluck the bracken that grew there, or to test the thin
ice with her foot. She would laugh and then be silent, and then break
out into laughter again. She would prattle to herself unconsciously
and then laugh once more. All the world seemed made anew to this happy
girl to-night.

True enough, nature meant her for a heartsome lass. Her hair was dark,
and had a tangled look, as though lately caught in brambles or still
thick with burrs. Her dark eyebrows and long lashes shaded the darkest
of black-brown eyes. Her mouth was alive with sensibility. Every shade
of feeling could play upon her face. Her dress was loose, and somewhat
negligently worn; one never felt its presence or knew whether it were
poor or fine. Her voice, though soft, was generally high-pitched, not
like the whirl of wind through the trees, but like its sigh through
the long grass, and came, perhaps, to the mountain girl from the
effort to converse above the sound of these natural voices. There was
a tremor in her voice sometimes, and, when she was taken unawares, a
sidelong look in her eyes. There was something about her in these
serious moods that laid hold of the imagination. She had surely a well
of strength which had been given for her own support and the solace of
others at some future moment, only too terrible. But not to-night, as
she tripped along under the moonlight, did the consciousness of that
moment overshadow her.

And what of Ralph, who strode solemnly by her side? A change had come
over him of late. He spoke little, and never at all of the scenes he
had witnessed in his long campaign--never of his own share in them. He
had become at once an active and a brooding man. The shadow of a
supernatural presence seemed to hang over everything. Tonight that
shadow was blacker than before.

In the fulness of her joy Rotha had not marked the tone in which Ralph
spoke when he gave her in a word all the new life that bounded in her
veins. But that tone was one of sadness, and that word had seemed to
drain away from veins of his some of the glad life that now pulsated
in hers. Was it nothing that the outcast among men whom he alone, save
this brave girl, had championed, had convinced him of his innocence?
Nothing that the light of a glad morning had broken on the long night
of the blithe creature by his side, and brightened her young life with
the promise of a happier future?

"Look, Ralph, look at the withered sedge, all frost-covered!" said
Rotha in her happiness, tripping up to his side, with a sprig newly
plucked in her hand. Ralph answered her absently, and she rattled on
to herself, "Rotha shall keep you, beautiful sedge! How you glisten in
the moonlight!" Then the girl broke out with a snatch of an old Border
ballad,--

     Dacre's gane to the war, Willy,
     Dacre's gane to the war;
     Dacre's lord has crossed the ford,
     And left us for the war.

"Poor father," she said more soberly, "poor father; but he'll come
back home now--come back to our _own_ home again"; and then,
unconscious of the burden of her song, she sang,--

     Naworth's halls are dead, Willy,
     Naworth's halls are dead;
     One lonely foot sounds on the keep,
     And that's the warder's tread.

The moon shone clearly; the tempest had lulled, and the silvery voice
of the girl was all that could be heard above the distant rumble of
the ghylls and the beat of Ralph's heavy footsteps. In a moment Rotha
seemed to become conscious that her companion was sad as well as
silent. How had this escaped her so long? she thought.

"But you don't seem quite so glad, Ralph," she said in an altered
tone, half of inquiry, half of gentle reproach, as of one who felt
that her joy would have been the more if another had shared it.

"Don't I? Ah, but I _am_ glad--that is, I'm glad your father won't
need old Mattha's bull-grips," he said, with an attempt to laugh at
his own pleasantry.

How hollow the laugh sounded on his own ears! It was not what his
father would have called heartsome. What was this sadness that was
stealing over him and stiffening every sense? Had he yet realized it
in all its fulness? Ralph shook himself and struck his hand on his
breast, as though driving out the cold. He could not drive out the
foreboding that had taken a seat there since Sim looked last in his
eyes and cried, "Let me go."

Laddie frisked about them, and barked back at the echo of his own
voice, that resounded through the clear air from the hollow places in
the hills. They had not far to go now. The light of the kitchen window
at Shoulthwaite would be seen from the turn of the road. Only through
yonder belt of trees that overhung the "lonnin," and they would be in
the court of Angus Ray's homestead.

"Ralph," said Rotha--she had walked in silence for some little
time--"all the sorrow of my life seems gone. You have driven it all
away." Her tremulous voice belied the light laugh that followed.

He looked down at her tear-dimmed eyes. Was her great sorrow indeed
gone? Had he driven it away from her? If so, was it not all, and more,
being gathered up into his own heart instead? Was it not so?

"You have borne it bravely, Rotha--very bravely," he answered. "Do you
think, now, that I could have borne it as you have done?"

There was a tremor in his tone and a tenderness of expression in his
face that Rotha had never before seen there.

"Bear it as I have done?" she repeated. "There is nothing you could
not bear." And her radiant face was lit up in that white moonlight
with a perfect sunshine of beauty.

"I don't know, Rotha, my girl," he answered falteringly; "I don't
know--yet." The last words were spoken with his head dropped on to his
breast.

Rotha stepped in front of him, and, putting her hand on his shoulder,
stopped him and looked searchingly in his face.

"What is this sadness, Ralph? Is there something you have not told
me--something behind, which, when it comes, will take the joy out of
this glad news you give me?"

"I could not be so cruel as that, Rotha; do you think I could?"

A smile was playing upon his features as he smoothed her hair over her
forehead and drew forward the loose hood that had fallen from it.

"And there is nothing to come after--nothing?"

"Nothing that need mar your happiness, my girl, or disturb your love.
You love your father, do you not?"

"Better than all the world!" Rotha answered impulsively. "Poor
father!"

"Better than all the world," echoed Ralph vacantly, and with something
like a sigh. Her impetuous words seemed to touch him deeply, and he
repeated them once more, but they died away on his lips. "Better than
all the--" Then they walked on.

They had almost reached the belt of trees that overhung the road.

"Ralph," said Rotha, pausing, "may I--kiss you?"

He stooped and kissed her on the forehead. Then the weight about his
heart seemed heavier than before. By that kiss he felt that between
him and the girl at his side there was a chasm that might never be
bridged. Had he loved her? He hardly knew; he had never put it to
himself so. Did she not love him? He could not doubt it. And her kiss!
yes, it was the kiss of love; but _what_ love? The frank, upturned
face answered him but too well.

They were within the shadow of the trees now, and could see the lights
at Shoulthwaite. In two minutes more their journey would be done.

"Take my hand, Rotha; you might slip on the frosty road in darkness
like this."

The words were scarcely spoken, when Rotha gave a little cry and
stumbled. "In an instant Ralph's arm was about her, and she had
regained her feet.

"What is that?" she said, trembling with fear, and turning backwards.

"A drift of frozen sleet, no doubt," Ralph said, kicking with his foot
at the spot where Rotha slipped.

"No, no," she answered, trembling now with some horrible apprehension.

Ralph had stepped back, and was leaning over something that lay across
the road. The dog was snuffling at it.

"What is it?" said Rotha nervously.

He did not answer. He was on his knees beside it; his hands were on
it. There was a moment of agonizing suspense.

"What is it?" Rotha repeated.

Still there came no reply. Ralph had risen, but he knelt again. His
breath was coming fast. Rotha thought she could hear the beating of
his heart.

"Oh, but I must know!" cried the girl. And she stepped backward as
though to touch for herself the thing that lay there.

"Nothing," said Ralph, rising and taking her firmly by the hand that
she had outstretched,--"nothing--a sack of corn has fallen from the
wagon, nothing more." He spoke in a hoarse whisper.

He drew her forward a few paces, but she stopped. The dog was standing
where Ralph had knelt, and was howling wofully.

"Laddie, come here," Ralph said; "Rotha, come away."

"I could bear the truth, Ralph--I think I could," she answered.

He put his arm about her, and drew her along without a word. She felt
his powerful frame quiver and his strong voice die within him. She
guessed the truth. She knew this man as few had known him, as none
other could know him.

"Go back, Ralph," she said; "I'll hurry on." And still the dog howled
behind them.

Ralph seemed not to hear her, but continued to walk by her side. Her
heart sank, and she looked piteously into his face.

And now the noise reached them of hurrying footsteps in front. People
were coming towards them from the house. Lanterns were approaching
them. In another moment they were in the court. All was astir. The
whole household seemed gathered there, and in the middle of the yard
stood the mare Betsy, saddled but riderless, her empty wool-creels
strapped to her sides.

"Thank Heaven, here is Ralph," said Willy. He was standing bareheaded,
with the bridle in his hand.

"Bless thee!" cried Mrs. Ray as her son came up to her. "Here is the
mare back home, my lad, but where is thy father?"

"The roads are bad to-night, mother," Ralph said, with a violent
effort to control the emotion that was surging up to his throat.

"God help us, Ralph; you can't mean that!" said Willy, catching his
brother's drift.

"Give me the lantern, boy," said Ralph to a young cowherd that stood
near. "Rotha, my lass, take mother into the house." Then he stepped up
to where his mother stood petrified with dismay, and kissed her
tenderly. He had rarely done so before. The good dame understood him
and wept. Rotha put her arms about the mother's neck and kissed her
too, and helped her in.

Willy was unmanned. "You don't mean that you know that father--"

He could say no more. Ralph had raised the lantern to the level of the
mare's creels to remove the strap that bound them, and the light had
fallen on his face.

"Ralph, is he hurt--much hurt?"

"He is--dead!"

Willy fell back as one that had been dealt a blow.

"God help me! O God, help me!" he cried.

"Give me the reins," said Ralph, "and be here when I come back. I
can't be long. Keep the door of the kitchen shut--mother is there. Go
into his room, and see that all is ready."

"No, no, I can't do that." Willy was shuddering visibly.

"Remain here, at least, and give no warning when I return."

"Take me with you, Ralph; I can't stay here alone."

"Take the lantern, then," said Ralph.

And the brothers walked, with the mare between them, to where the path
was, under the shadow of the trees. What shadow had fallen that night
on their life's path, which Time might never raise? Again and again
the horse slipped its foot on the frozen road. Again and again Willy
would have stopped and turned back; but he went on-he dared not to
leave his brother's side. The dog howled in front of them. They
reached the spot at last.

Angus Ray lay there, his face downwards. The mighty frame was still
and cold and stiff as the ice beneath it. The strong man had fallen
from the saddle on to his head, and, dislocating his neck, had met
with instant death. Close at hand were the marks of the horse's
sliding hoofs. She had cast one of her shoes in the fall, and there it
lay. Her knees, too, were still bleeding.

"Give me the lantern, Willy," said Ralph, going down on his knees to
feel the heart. He had laid his hand on it before, and knew too well
it did not beat. But he opened the cloak and tried once more. Willy
was walking to and fro across the road, not daring to look down. And
in the desolation of that moment the great heart of his brother failed
him too, and he dropped his head over the cold breast beside which he
knelt, and from eyes unused to weep the tears fell hot upon it.

"Take the lantern again, Willy," Ralph said, getting up. Then he
lifted the body on to the back of the mare that stood quietly by their
side.

As he did so a paper slipped away from the breast of the dead man.

Willy picked it up, and seeing "Ralph Ray" written on the back of it,
he handed it to his brother, who thrust it into a pocket unread.

Then the two walked back, their dread burden between them.




CHAPTER VI.

THE HOUSE ON THE MOSS.


When the dawn of another day rose over Shoulthwaite, a great silence
had fallen on the old house on the moss. The man who had made it what
it was--the man who had been its vital spirit--slept his last deep
sleep in the bedroom known as the kitchen loft. Throughout forty years
his had been the voice first heard in that mountain home when the
earliest gleams of morning struggled through the deep recesses of the
low mullioned windows. Perhaps on the day following market day he
sometimes lay an hour longer; but his stern rule of life spared none,
and himself least of all. If at sixty his powerful limbs were less
supple than of old, if his Jove-like head with its flowing beard had
become tipped with the hoar frost, he had relaxed nothing of his rigid
self-government on that account. When the clock in the kitchen had
struck ten at night, Angus had risen up, whatever his occupation,
whatever his company, and retired to rest. And the day had hardly
dawned when he was astir in the morning, rousing first the men and
next the women of his household. Every one had waited for his call.
There had been no sound more familiar than that of his firm footstep,
followed by the occasional creak of the old timbers, breaking the
early stillness. That footstep would be heard no more.

Dame Ray sat in a chair before the kitchen fire. She had sat there the
whole night through, moaning sometimes, but speaking hardly at all.
Sleep had not come near her, yet she scarcely seemed to be awake. Last
night's shock had more than half shattered her senses, but it had
flashed upon her mind a vision of her whole life. Only half conscious
of what was going on about her, she saw vividly as in a glass the
incidents of those bygone years, that had lain so long unremembered.
The little cottage under Castenand; her old father playing his fiddle
in the quiet of a summer evening; herself, a fresh young maiden,
busied about him with a hundred tender cares; then a great sorrow and
a dead waste of silence,--all this appeared to belong to some earlier
existence. And then the sun had seemed to rise on a fuller life that
came later. A holy change had come over her, and to her transfigured
feeling the world looked different. But that bright sun had set now,
and all around was gloom. Slowly she swayed herself to and fro hour
after hour in her chair, as one by one these memories came back to
her--came, and went, and came again.

On Rotha the care of the household had fallen. The young girl had sat
long by the old dame overnight, holding her hand and speaking softly
to her between the outbursts of her own grief. She had whispered
something about brave sons who would yet be her great stay, and then
the comforter herself had needed comfort and her voice of solace had
been stilled. When the daylight came in at the covered windows, Rotha
rose up unrefreshed; but with a resolute heart she set herself to the
duties that had dropped so unexpectedly upon her. She put the
spinning-wheel into the neuk window-stand and the woo-wheel against
the wall. They would not be wanted now. She cleared the sconce and
took down the flitches that hung from the rannel-tree to dry. Then she
cooked the early breakfast of oatmeal porridge, and took the milk that
the boy brought from the cow shed and put it into the dishes that she
had placed on the long oak table which stretched across the kitchen.

Willy Ray had been coming and going most of the night from the kitchen
to his own room--a little carpeted closet of a bedroom that went out
from the first landing on the stairs, and looked up to the ghyll at
the back. The wee place was more than his sleeping-room; he had his
books there, but he had neither slept nor read that night. He wandered
about aimlessly, with the eyes of one walking in his sleep, breaking
out sometimes into a little hysterical scream, followed by a shudder,
and then a sudden disappearance. Death had come to him for the first
time, and in a fearful guise. Its visible presence appalled him. He
was as feeble as a child now. He was ready to lean on the first strong
human arm that offered; and though Rotha understood but vaguely the
troubles that beset his mind, her quick instinct found a sure way to
those that lay heavy at his heart. She comforted him with what good
words she could summon, and he came again and again to her with his
odd fancies and his recollections of the poor feeble philosophy which
he had gleaned from books. The look in the eyes of this simple girl
and the touch of her hand made death less fearsome than anything
besides. Willy seemed to lean on Rotha, and she on her part appeared
to grow stronger as she felt this.

Ralph had gone to bed much as usual the night before--after he had
borne upstairs what lay there. He was not seen again until morning,
and when he came down and stood for a moment over his mother's chair
as she sat gazing steadfastly into the fire, Rotha was stooping over
the pan, with the porridge thivle in her hand. She looked up into his
face, while his hand rested with a speechless sympathy on his mother's
arm, and she thought that, mingled with a softened sorrow, there was
something like hope there. The sadness of last night was neither in
his face nor in his voice. He was even quieter than usual, but he
appeared to have grown older in the few hours that had intervened.
Nevertheless, he went through his ordinary morning's work about the
homestead with the air of one whose mind was with him in what he did.
After breakfast he took his staff out of the corner and set out for
the hills, his dog beside him.

During the day, Rotha, with such neighborly help as it was the custom
to tender, did all the little offices incident to the situation. She
went in and out of the chamber of the dead, not without awe, but
without fear. She had only once before looked on death, or, if she had
seen it twice before this day, her first sight of it was long ago, in
that old time of which memory scarcely held a record, when she was
carried in her father's arms into a darkened room like this and held
for a moment over the white face that she knew to be the face of her
mother. But, unused as she had been to scenes made solemn by death,
she appeared to know her part in this one.

Intelligence of the disaster that had fallen on the household at
Shoulthwaite Moss was not long in circulating through Wythburn. One
after another, the shepherds and their wives called in, and were taken
to the silent room upstairs. Some offered such rude comfort as their
sympathetic hearts but not too fecund intellects could devise, and as
often as not it was sorry comfort enough. Some stood all but
speechless, only gasping out at intervals, "Deary me." Others, again,
seemed afflicted with what old Matthew Branthwaite called "doddering"
and a fit of the "gapes."

It was towards nightfall when Matthew himself came to Shoulthwaite.
"I'm the dame's auldest neighbor," he had said at the Red Lion that
afternoon, when the event of the night previous had been discussed.
"It's nobbut reet 'at I should gang alang to her this awesome day.
She'll be glad of the neighborhood of an auld friend's crack." They
were at their evening meal of sweet broth when Matthew's knock came to
the door, followed, without much interval, by his somewhat gaunt
figure on the threshold.

"Come your ways in," said Mrs. Ray. "And how fend you, Mattha?"

"For mysel', I's gayly. Are ye middlin' weel?" the old man said.

"I'm a lang way better, but I'm going yon way too. It's far away the
bainer way for me now." And Mrs. Ray put her apron to her eyes.

"Ye'll na boune yit, Mary," said Matthew. "Ye'll na boune yon way for
mony a lang year yit. So dunnet ye beurt, Mary."

Mattha's blubbering tones somewhat discredited his stoical advice.

Rotha had taken down a cup, and put the old man to sit between herself
and Willy, facing Mrs. Ray.

"I met Ralph in the morning part," said Matthew; "he telt me all the
ins and outs aboot it. I reckon he were going to the kirk garth aboot
the berryin'."

Mrs. Ray raised her apron to her eyes again. Willy got up and left the
room. He at least was tortured by this kind of comfort.

"He's of the bettermer sort, _he_ is," said Matthew with a motion of
his head towards the door at which Willy had gone out. "He taks it
bad, does Willy. Ralph was chapfallen a laal bit, but not ower much.
Deary me, but ye've gat all sorts of sons though you've nobbut two.
Weel, weel," he added, as though reconciling himself to Willy's
tenderness and Ralph's hardness of heart, "if there were na fells
there wad be na dales."

Matthew had turned over his cup to denote that his meal was finished.
The dame rose and resumed her seat by the fire. During the day she had
been more cheerful, but with the return of the night she grew again
silent, and rocked herself in her chair.

"It's just t'edge o' dark, lass," said Matthew to Rotha while filling
his pipe. "Wilt thoo fetch the cannels?"

The candles were brought, and the old man lit his pipe from one of
them and sat down with Mrs. Ray before the fire.

"Dus'ta mind when Angus coomt first to these parts?" he said. "_I_ do
reet weel. I can a' but fancy I see him now at the manor'al court at
Deer Garth Bottom. What a man he was, to be sure! Ralph's nobbut a bit
boy to what his father was then. Folks say father and son are as like
as peas, but nowt of the sort. Ye could nivver hev matched Angus in
yon days for limb and wind. Na, nor sin' nowther. And there was yan o'
the lasses frae Castenand had set een on Angus, but she nivver let
wit. As bonny a lass as there was in the country side, she was. They
say beauty withoot bounty's but bauch, but she was good a' roond. She
was greetly thought on. Dus'ta mind I was amang the lads that went
ahint her--I was, mysel'. But she wad hev nowt wi' me; she trysted wid
Angus; so I went back home and broke the click reel of my new loom
straight away. And it's parlish odd I've not lived marraless iver
sin'."

This reminiscence of his early and all but only love adventure seemed
to touch a sensitive place in the old man's nature, and he pulled for
a time more vigorously at his pipe.

Mrs. Ray Still sat gazing into the fire, hardly heeding the old
weaver's garrulity, and letting him chatter on as he pleased.
Occasionally she would look anxiously over her shoulder to ask Rotha
if Ralph had got back, and on receiving answer that he had not yet
been seen she would resume her position, and, with an absent look in
her eyes, gaze back into the fire. When a dog's bark would be heard in
the distance above the sound of the wind, she would break into
consciousness afresh, and bid Rotha prepare the supper. But still
Ralph did not come. Where could he be?

It was growing late when Matthew got up to go. He had tried his best
to comfort his old neighbor in her sorrow. He had used up all his saws
and proverbs that were in the remotest degree appropriate to the
occasion, and he had thrown in a few that were not remarkable for
appositeness or compatibility. All alike had passed by unheeded. The
dame had taken the good will for the good deed, and had not looked the
gift-horses too closely in the mouth.

"Good night, Mattha Branthet," she said, in answer to his good by;
"good night, and God bless thee."

Matthew had opened the door, and was looking out preparatory to his
final leavetaking.

"The sky's over-kessen to-neet," he said. "There's na moon yit, and
t'wind's high as iver. Good neet, Mary; it's like ye'll be a' thrang
eneuf to-morrow wi' the feast for the berryin', and it's like eneuf ma
mistress and laal Liza will be ower at the windin'."

The dame sighed audibly.

"And keep up a blithe heart, Mary. Remember, he that has gude crops
may thole some thistles."

When the door had closed behind the weaver, Willy came back to the
kitchen from his little room.

"Ralph not home yet?" he said, addressing Rotha.

"Not yet," the girl answered, trying vainly to conceal some
uneasiness.

"I wonder what Robbie Anderson wanted with him? He was here twice, you
know, in the morning. And the schoolmaster--what could little Monsey
have to say that he looked so eager? It is not his way."

"Be sure it was nothing out of the common," said Rotha. "What happened
last night makes us all so nervous."

"True; but there was a strange look about both of them--at least I
thought so, though I didn't heed it then. They say misfortunes never
come singly. I wish Ralph were home."

Mrs. Ray had risen from her seat at the fire, and was placing one of
the candles upon a small table that stood before the neuk window.

With her back to the old dame, Rotha put her finger on her lip as a
motion to Willy to say no more.




CHAPTER VII.

SIM'S CAVE.


When Ralph retired to his own room on the night of his father's death
there lay a heavier burden at his heart than even that dread
occurrence could lodge there. To such a man as he was, death itself
was not so terrible but that many passions could conquer the fear of
it. As for his father, he had not tasted death; he had not seen it;
his death was but a word; and the grave was not deep. No, the grave
was not deep. Ah, what sting lay in that thought!--what fresh sting
lay there!

Ralph called up again the expression on the face of Simeon Stagg as he
asked him in the inn that night (how long ago it seemed!) to give the
name of the man who had murdered Wilson. "It's your duty in the sight
of Heaven," he had said; "would you tarnish the child's name with the
guilt laid on the father's?" Then there had come into Sim's eyes
something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, "Ralph, you don't
know what you ask." Ah, did he not know now but too well? Ralph walked
across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing
him down. The grave was not deep--oh, would it were, would it were!
Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old
book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left
behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before.
And the father who had borne him in his arms--whom he had borne--what
had he sent before?

Ralph tramped heavily to and fro. His dog slept on the mat outside his
door, and, unused to such continued sounds within, began to scrape and
growl.

After all, there was no certain evidence yet. To-morrow morning he
would go up the fell and see Sim alone. He must know the truth. If it
concerned him as closely as he divined, the occasion to conceal it was
surely gone by with this night's event. Then Robbie Anderson,--what
did he mean? Ralph recalled some dim memory of the young dalesman
asking about his father. Robbie was kind to Sim, too, when the others
shunned him. What did it all mean?

With a heavy heart Ralph began to undress. He had unbelted himself and
thrown off his jerkin, when he thought of the paper that had fallen
from his father's open breast as he lifted him on to the mare. What
was it? Yes, there it was in his pocket, and with a feverish anxiety
Ralph opened it.

Had he clung to any hope that the black cloud that appeared to be
hanging over him would not, after all, envelop him? Alas! that last
vestige of hope must leave him. The paper was a warrant for his own
arrest on a charge of treason. It had been issued at the court of the
high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired
to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the
trained bands of the rebel army of the "late usurper." It was signed
and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson,
King's agent. It was dated too; yes, two days before Wilson's death.

All was over now; this was the beginning of the end; the shadow had
fallen. By that paradox of nature which makes disaster itself less
hard to bear than the apprehension of disaster, Ralph felt relieved
when he knew the worst. There was much of the mystery still
unexplained, but the morrow would reveal it; and Ralph lay down to
sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier
heart.

When he took up his shepherd's staff that morning, he turned towards
Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half
faced the purple heights of Blencathra. It was brant from side to
side, and as rugged as steep. Ralph did not ascend the screes, out
went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders.
The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but
perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the
frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he
passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep
of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind
carried their call away until it died off into a moan.

When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the
protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him.
Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head
sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the
thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's
voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a
cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a
man to pass in. Great bowlders stood above and about it.

The sun could never shine into it. A huge rock stood alone and
apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an
iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim
where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look.
Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in
that Solitary place. The weird ditty suited well with both.

     She lean'd her head against a thorn,
      _The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_;
     And there she has her young babe born,
      _And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.

     She's howket a grave by the light o' the moon,
      _The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_;
     And there she's buried her sweet babe in,
      _And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.

The singer stopped, as though conscious of the presence of a listener,
and looking up from where he sat on a round block of timber, cutting
up a similar block into firewood, he saw Ralph Ray leaning on his
staff near the cave's mouth. He had already heard of the sorrow that
had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite. With an unspeakable look
of sympathy in his wild, timid eyes, as though some impulse of
affection urged him to throw his arms about Ralph and embrace him,
while some sense of shame impelled him to kneel at his feet, Sim
approached him, and appeared to make an effort to speak. But he could
say nothing. Ralph understood his silence and was grateful for it.
They went into the cave, and sat down in the dusk.

"You can tell me all about it, now," Ralph said, without preamble of
any sort, for each knew well what lay closest at the other's heart.
"He is gone now, and we are here together, with none but ourselves to
hear."

"I knew you must know it one day," Sim said, "but I tried hard to hide
it from you--I did, believe me, I tried hard--I tried, but it was not
to be."

"It is best so," Ralph answered; "you must not bear the burden of
guilt that is not your own."

"I'm no better than guilty myself," said Sim. "I don't reckon myself
innocent; not I. No, I don't reckon myself innocent."

"I think I understand you, Sim; but you were not guilty of the deed?"

"No, but I might have been--I might but for an accident--the accident
of a moment; but I've thought sometimes that the crime is not in the
deed, but the intention. No, Ralph, I _am_ the guilty man, after all:
your father had never thought of the crime, not he, but I had brooded
over it."

"Did you go out that night intending to do it?" Ralph said.

"Yes; at least I think I did, but I don't feel sure; my mind was in a
broil; I hardly knew what I meant to do. If Wilson had told me as I
met him in the road--as I intended to meet him--that he had come back
to do what he had threatened to do so often--then--yes, _then_, I must
have done it--I _must_."

"What had he threatened?" Ralph asked, but there was no note of
inquiry in his voice. "Whom did it concern?"

"It concerned yourself, Ralph," said Sim, turning his head aside. "But
no matter about that," he added. "It's over now, it is."

Ralph drew out of his pocket the paper that had fallen from his
father's breast.

"Is this what you mean?" he said, handing it to Sim.

Sim carried it to the light to read it. Returning to where Ralph sat,
he cried in a shrill voice,--

"Then he _had_ come back to do it. O God, why should it be murder to
kill a scoundrel?"

"Did you know nothing of this until now?"

"Nothing. Wilson threatened it, as I say; he told me he'd hang you on
the nearest gibbet, he did--you who'd saved his life--leastways, so
they say--the barren-hearted monster!"

"It's ill-luck to serve a bad man, Sim. Well?"

"I never quite thought he'd do it; no, I never did quite think it. Why
is it not a good deed to kill a bad man?"

"How did it happen, Sim?" said Ralph.

"I hardly know--that's the truth. You mind well enough it was the day
that Abraham Coward, my landlord, called for his rent. It was the day
the poor woman and her two wee barns took shelter with me. You looked
in on me that night, you remember. Well, when you left me--do you
recollect _how_?"

"Yes, Sim."

"My heart was fair maizlet before, but that--that--kiss infected my
brain. I must have been mad, Ralph, that's the fact, when I thought of
what the man meant to do to the only friend I had left in the
world--my own friend and my poor little girl's. I went out to the
lanes and wandered about. It was very dark. Suddenly the awful thought
came back upon me, it did. I was standing at the crossways, where the
road goes off to Gaskarth. I knew Wilson must come by that road.
Something commanded me to walk on. I had been halting, but now a
dreadful force compelled me to go--ay, compelled me. I don't know what
it was, but it seemed as if I'd no power against it, none. It stifled
all my scruples, all of them, and I ran--yes, ran. But I was weak, and
had to stop for breath. My heart was beating loud, and I pressed my
hand hard upon it as I leaned against the wall of the old bridge
yonder. It went thump, thump. Then I could hear him coming. I knew his
step. He was not far off, but I couldn't stir; no, not stir. My breath
seemed all to leave me when I moved. He was coming closer, he was, and
in the distance beyont him I could hear the clatter of a horse's feet
on the road. The man on the horse was far off, but he galloped, he
galloped. It must be done now, I thought; now or not at all. I--I
picked up a stone that lay near, I did, and tried to go forward, but
fell back, back. I was powerless. That weakness was agony, it was.
Wilson had not reached the spot where I stood when the man on the
horse had overtaken him. I heard him speak as the man rode past. Then
I saw it was your father, and that he turned back. There were high
words on his side, and I could hear Wilson's bitter laugh--you
recollect that laugh?"

"Yes, yes; well?"

"In a moment Angus had jumped from the horse's back--and then I heard
a thud--and that's all."

"Is that all you know?"

"Not all; no, not all, neither. Your father had got up into the saddle
in an instant, and I labored out into the middle of the road. He saw
me and stopped. 'Ye've earned nowt of late,' he said; 'tak this, my
man, and gae off and pay your rent.' Then he put some money into my
hand from his purse and galloped on. I thought he'd killed Wilson, and
I crept along to look at the dead man. I couldn't find him at first,
and groped about in the darkness till my hand touched his face. Then I
thought he was alive, I did. The touch flayt me, and I fled away--I
don't know how. Ralph, I saw the mark of my hand on his face when they
drew me up to it next day in the bedroom of the inn. That night I paid
my rent with your father's money, and then I went home."

"It was my father's money, then--not Wilson's?" said Ralph.

"It was as I say," Sim answered, as though hurt by the implication.

Ralph put his hand on Sim's shoulder. Self-condemned, this poor man's
conscience was already a whirlpool that drew everything to itself.

"Tell me, Sim--that is, if you can--tell me how you came to suspect
Wilson of these dealings."

As he said this Ralph tapped with his fingers the warrant which Sim
had returned to him.

"By finding that James Wilson was not his name."

"So you found that, did you; how?"

"It was Mother Garth's doings, not mine," said Sim.

"What did she tell you?"

"Nothing; that is, nothing about Wilson going by a false name. No; I
found that out for myself, though it was all through her that I found
it."

"You knew it all that bad night in Martinmas, did you not?"

"That's true enough, Ralph. The old woman, she came one night and
broke open Wilson's trunk, and carried off some papers--leastways one
paper."

"You don't know what it was?"

"No. It was in one of Wilson's bouts away at--at Gaskarth, so he said.
Rotha was at the Moss: she hadn't come home for the night. I had
worked till the darknin', and my eyes were heavy, they were, and then
I had gone into the lanes. The night came on fast, and when I turned
back I heard men singing and laughing as they came along towards me."

"Some topers from the Red Lion, that was all?"

"Yes, that was all. I jumped the dike and crossed the fields instead
of taking the road. As I came by Fornside I saw that there was a light
in the little room looking to the back. It was Wilson's room; he would
have no other. I thought he had got back, and I crept up--I don't know
why--I crept up to the window and looked in. It was not Wilson who was
there. It was Mrs. Garth. She had the old man's trunk open, and was
rummaging among some papers at the bottom of it."

"Did you go in to her?"

"I was afeart of the woman, Ralph; but I did go in, dotherin' and
stammerin'."

"What did she say?"

"She was looking close at a paper as I came upon her. She started a
little, but when she saw who it was she bashed down the lid of the
trunk and brushed past me, with the paper in her hand. 'You can tell
him, if you like, that I have been here.' That was all she said, and
before I had turned about she had gone, she had. What was that paper,
Ralph; do you know?"

"Perhaps time will tell, perhaps not."

"There was something afoot atween those two; what was it?"

"Can't you guess? You discovered his name."

"Wilson Garth, that was it. That was the name I found on his papers.
Yes, I opened the trunk and looked at them when the woman had gone;
yes, I did that."

"You remember how she came to these parts? That was before my time of
rememb