"LIBRA R.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 U N IVER.SITY 
 Of ILLI NOIS 
 
 H£6s 
 v.l 
 
 ITH & SON'S 
 
 ION LIBRARY, 
 
 RAND, LONDON, 
 
 ?AILWAY BOOKSTALLS. H 
 
 eceived from Subscribers in SETS only. 
 ERMS. 
 
 IEIR BOOKS FROM A Cot/NY RY BOOKSTALL 
 
 . • 6 Month! ia Months. 
 
 me - - £0 12 -J to 
 
 For*T»REE „ - , - -. 1 3 O - 2 2 O 
 
 For FCttJR 
 For. SIX'- 
 ^For TWBfcVB 
 
 M 
 
 >» 
 
 1 8 O 
 1 IS O 
 8 O O -6 
 
 
 £' 
 
 ■ 
 
 e 
 
 ■ 
 
 M
 

 
 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 /
 
 
 NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS 
 
 AT ALL THE LIBRARIES. 
 
 THRO' LOVE AND AVAR. By Violet Fane, author of 
 
 ' Sophy ; or, The Adventures of a Savage,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. By A. J. Duffield, 
 
 author of ' Needless Misery,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 FAIR KATHERINE. By Darley Dale. 3 vols. 
 A FAIRE DAMZELL. By Esme Stuart. 3 vols. 
 DOROTHY DRAKE. By Frederick H. Moore. 2 vols. 
 
 HURST & BLACKETT, 13, 4REAT MARLBOROUGH STREET
 
 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN BERWICK HARWOOD 
 
 AUTHOlt OF 
 
 "LADY FLA VIA," "LOKD LYNNS WIFE," "THE TENTH EAEL/' 
 
 &C. &C. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES, 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1886. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 *A3 
 
 V, I 
 
 
 c^ 
 
 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 >i 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 
 
 A steep grey wall of limestone, polished 
 like marble in some parts by the wash of 
 the waves ; a smooth pavement of sea-sand 
 
 *, forming the floor of the irregular horseshoe 
 of the bay; to the north a jutting rocky 
 
 x headland, weed-draped and wild: to the 
 south a caverned cliff, scooped into fantastic 
 
 x grottoes by the impact of many thousand 
 tides ; in front a dark blue line, where the 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 summer sea seemed to lie asleep, heaving 
 softly, while the white-winged gulls skim- 
 med and shrieked over its slowly rippling 
 surface — such was the scene. 
 
 It was a pretty spot enough. The Norse- 
 men who had drawn up their pirate galleyr 
 there of old had called the place Odin's 
 Horseshoe. It lay convenient for the pur- 
 pose of their forays, since there was a 
 gentle slope at one point, leading to a cleft 
 in the towering cliff-wall, up which abroad 
 path, almost a road, gave easy access to 
 the fertile country inland. 
 
 Just above high-water mark, among 
 husre boulders that had rolled in a land- 
 slip of forgotten ages from above, seated 
 on a fragment of rock, reading, was a 
 young woman, neatly attired, and whose 
 vocation in life might have been guessed, 
 even had not an empty child's-carriage
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 3 
 
 stood beside her, and a child's form been 
 discernible at some little distance, playing 
 among the loose sand-heaps and water- 
 worn stones, and shallow pools haunted 
 by tiny crabs and star-fish and glistening 
 jelly-fish left behind by the ebb-tide, that 
 lay between her and the black, project- 
 ing promontory that stretched grimly out 
 to seaward. 
 
 The novel which the girl was reading — 
 one of those gaudily-bound two-shilling 
 works of fiction that one sees on railway 
 bookstalls — was to all appearance a deeply 
 interesting one, since she seldom found 
 time to throw a cursory glance at her 
 charge, now straying and playing afar off 
 among the pools and the rocks, encrusted 
 with limpets and weed — red, green, orange, 
 purple ; while, as regarded the signs of the 
 weather, she was utterly blind and heed- 
 
 b 2
 
 4 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 less. The day was fine : it was hot, still, 
 summer weather. And yet the climate of 
 our island is proverbially fickle, and on 
 that Yorkshire coast, as on the sandier 
 and natter coasts of Lincoln and Xorfolk, 
 the German Ocean has a trick of running 
 in like a racehorse at fullest speed when 
 wind and tide serve. But probably the 
 nursemaid — an attendant, evidently, in 
 some wealthy household, as might be 
 guessed from her dress, from that of the 
 fair young child now straying on tiny feet 
 ever further and further away from the 
 dry, loose sand, and the prosaic board that 
 gave notice as to the illicit removal of 
 sand and shingle from the foreshore with- 
 out the consent of the Admiralty, in- 
 dicated — knew no more of the sea than 
 could be learnt from Brighton beach or 
 the pier at Heme Bay. Yet the wind had
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 5 
 
 freshened. There was a darkling line to 
 seaward that, to experienced eyes, boded 
 mischief. The blue of the summer sky 
 was cloaked by a huge semi-transparent 
 veil of thready vapour, like a giant wind- 
 ing-sheet. Even in the very foam-bells 
 as they went racing past, even in the 
 low menace of the rising surf, even in 
 the shriller cry and more petulantly flap- 
 ping wings of the restless sea-birds, there 
 was warning. 
 
 But sometimes such warnings are thrown 
 away. The wind gained strength ; so did 
 the tide. The cloud-bank crept stealthily 
 on. Hoarser and louder grew the noise 
 of the waves when some low reef of black- 
 ened rocks barred their progress. Yes, 
 the great sea was coming in with swifter, 
 longer strides than were common. The 
 wind freshened in unison with the rush
 
 6 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 of the tide. Neptune and iEolus were, 
 for once, of a mind. Little of this recked 
 the girl who sat there alone too much 
 absorbed by the sorrows of an imaginary 
 heroine, by the struggles of a fictitious 
 hero, to heed the an^er of the coming 
 storm. Higher and higher, like a wrath : 
 ful snake upreared, rose the foamy crest 
 of each pellucid wave. Louder grew the 
 moan of the breeze, hoarser the sullen 
 splash of the breakers. Yet she read on 
 complacently. 
 
 Fast, fast the tide was coming in : not 
 inch by inch, foot by foot, as on our steep 
 and shingly southern shores of England, 
 but with racing speed, sending its skir- 
 mishers before it, in the shape of tongues 
 of white water that darted insidiously 
 into hollows, and quickened muddy sloughs, 
 and turned runlets into tidal streams, and
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 7 
 
 at last advancing as a low, blue wall top- 
 ped with frothy foam, and hissing as it 
 came. The nursemaid, intent on her novel, 
 was quite unaware of the danger at hand. 
 It was not, strictly speaking, a danger to 
 her. She was in no bodily peril. On 
 such a day as this, the tide might very 
 probably reach as far as high-water mark ; 
 but beyond that mark, calculated on a 
 long series of averages, the flood was not 
 likely to reach, and above it was the slop- 
 ing under-clifF and the broad, safe road 
 down which the perambulator had been 
 impelled so easily. A pretty toy-carriage 
 this, with its crimson-silk cushions and 
 silvered axles — a costly little bit of the 
 coach-builder's work. No, the handmaiden, 
 only let her stay where she was, incurred 
 no risk, however the strong sea might rise 
 and the wild wind blow. But the child ?
 
 5 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 Further, and further yet, the tiny figure 
 had strayed away from the side of the 
 careless attendant, hidden now and again 
 by some cairn of weed-crusted rocks, or 
 by some post of sturdy, blackened wood, 
 from the broken top of which the green 
 sea-grass hung, long and dank, like the 
 hair of a mermaid. It was a case to ex- 
 emplify the old homely proverb which 
 teaches us tha,t out of sight is too often 
 out of mind. The wind rose, and so did 
 the sea. Gull and gannet swooped and 
 screamed over the foamy expanse of in- 
 coming water. Far off, on lonely rocks 
 that rose like watch-towers above the wave 
 perched the black cormorant, scanning the 
 rushing waters, and intent on prey. Still 
 unobserved, unnoticed, the richly-dressed 
 child strayed on, nearer, ever nearer, to 
 the tumultuous sea. The distance rapidly
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 9 
 
 lessened. The tide came on, swift and 
 strong, like an attacking army flushed 
 with success. 
 
 At last — at last the girl who had been 
 reading so long upon the solitary shore 
 lifted her head, and let the book she had 
 been holding drop upon her knee. What 
 had scared her was a sound, terrible and 
 sudden almost as the trumpet-call of an 
 avenging angel. The noise came from the 
 right hand, where the cliffs of the irregu- 
 lar horseshoe which formed the bay ap- 
 proached most closely to the sea. Those 
 who have heard the tide break into St. 
 Guthlac's Cave seldom forget the hoarse, 
 hollow roar with which, through fissure 
 and cranny high above, the tortured air 
 is forced out of the grotto by the rush of 
 hurrying water. The waves had reached 
 it now, and hence the clamour and con-
 
 10 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 fused medley of sound, as if of human 
 voices crying aloud in dire extremity of 
 terror or of pain. Already the surges 
 were leaping up the lower courses of the 
 rock-wall, bursting into cleft and cavern, 
 tossing feathery spray high into the air, 
 and swirling round in miniature whirl- 
 pools, where eddying currents encounter- 
 ed one another at the foot of the beetling 
 precipice. It grew darker; rain fell in 
 dashing sheets, and the breeze was almost 
 a gale, the cloud- wrack rolling on over- 
 head, the angry sea below. 
 
 For an instant or two the girl stared 
 stupidly at the sudden turmoil of sea and 
 storm, but then a thought occurred to her 
 that stung her to the quick, and in a mo- 
 ment she was on her feet. 
 
 ' The child! the child !' she cried, aloud, 
 and never had her voice sounded harsh
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 11 
 
 and strange in her own ears as it now did. 
 Breathlessly, almost incredulously, she 
 looked around her, shading her eyes with 
 her outspread hand because of the fierce 
 rain that lashed her face, but she could see 
 nothing of her charge. The little figure 
 had wholly disappeared. In vain she 
 peered to left and right. Nothing was 
 visible but rock and post and sandbank, to 
 the right the cliff bastion, honeycombed 
 by caves, and already assailed by the sea, 
 and to northward the rugged, rocky point 
 that ran out to seaward. Yes, there was 
 one indication. From where she stood 
 she could see the print of tiny feet dis- 
 tinctlv visible in the moist, smooth sand, 
 and which certainly led towards the jut- 
 ting headland, heavily tapestried with dark 
 wrack-weed. 
 
 'The child! the child!' she exclaimed
 
 12 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 again, with white lips, as she darted for- 
 ward. The footprints guided her to a 
 broad and shallow pool, bordered by lim- 
 pet-grown stones, and where the sea- 
 anemone and the soldier crab and spider 
 crab dwelt in comfort anions: the clefts of 
 rock. Beyond there was a belt of small 
 pebbles that bore no mark, but not far 
 away the traces were again dimly visible, 
 half effaced by the water that had oozed 
 through the low-lying sand. Hurrying 
 forward in breathless haste, as if to meet 
 the fast-advancing sea. she reached the 
 place where yet the footmarks could be 
 seen, and with haggard eyes gazed around. 
 But she could see nothing, nothing — no- 
 thing but the white waves rolling in, leap- 
 ing hungrily around, as if intent on prey, 
 and the tumbled rocks and weed-masses of 
 the black headland, and the bare stretch of
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 13 
 
 sand so soon to be devoured by the sea. 
 The child ! where, where was the child ? 
 
 The girl was not brave beyond the 
 average of her sex and class, but now her 
 nerves were strung to unusual tension, 
 and she pressed on where many a stout- 
 hearted man would have quailed. Behind 
 lay safety ; in front was the terrible sea. 
 On she went. Blacker and blacker grew 
 the sky, louder the shriek of the storm- 
 wind, hoarser the clamour of the wild 
 waves. On she went, like some soldier in 
 face of a battery hailing grape and shell. 
 Courage, after all, is only a question of 
 nerve. Some of us fmht with sheer o;ood- 
 humoured indifference to danger, others in 
 a sort of hysterical paroxysm of fright and 
 rage, and others, again, because they fear 
 the stern sergeant, the angry captain, 
 shame and punishment, more than hostile
 
 14 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 shot. So it was with this handmaiden. 
 She did not dare to go back without her 
 little charge — did not dare to say that, 
 through her negligence, the great sea had 
 the child in its grip ; and then, too, she 
 bitterly reproached herself for the careless- 
 ness that had brought her nursling into 
 such sore peril ; so on she pressed, regard- 
 less that every step she took carried her 
 further and further from the firm ground 
 and the safe, easy cliff-path, nearer and 
 nearer to the gaping jaws of death. On 
 she went. 
 
 The sand, intersected by watercourses 
 where land-springs trickled from the hills, 
 by mounds of broken rock, by pools and 
 hollows, sloped upwards towards the rocky 
 promontory that stretched out to sea, so 
 that the girl found herself traversing a 
 succession of short banks, broken here and
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 15 
 
 there by heaps of disjected stones, over 
 some of which the waves broke already. 
 Often she paused and looked around, 
 shading her eyes with her outspread hand, 
 for it was hard to see through spray and 
 rain and the gathering blackness of the 
 bursting storm ; but she could see nothing. 
 Twice or thrice she called aloud. Strange- 
 ly did her own voice sound in her bewil- 
 dered ear as she raised it amidst the roar 
 of the breakers and the scream of the wind. 
 But nothing could be heard or seen of the 
 lost one. 
 
 There were the tiny footsteps ever and 
 anon as a guide, straying, wandering, 
 devious, but always trending towards the 
 bleak, storm-swept headland that jutted 
 forth to sea. There, in front, was the 
 promontory, like a great black wall, shut- 
 ting out all view of the coast towards the
 
 16 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 north — hard to be climbed by a bold and 
 strong man ; inaccessible, no doubt, to a 
 woman or a child — and over the seaward 
 end of this rampart the waves broke, send- 
 ing up columns of sparkling spray. A 
 giant now could not have rounded the 
 point. But there had been a tongue of 
 dry sand long ago visible beyond the black 
 stones, and even the tottering steps of 
 heedless infancy might then have achieved 
 what now was beyond the compass of 
 earthly strength and daring. 
 
 The footsteps lured the child's negligent 
 attendant on, nearer and yet nearer to 
 the perilous point over which broke the 
 billows, exulting in their might. Scram- 
 bling over the slippery stones of the reefs 
 that barred her way, wading recklessly 
 through the deepening pools, and presently 
 regaining the firm sand — wet, weary, breath-
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. * 17 
 
 less — she pushed on, all unaware of the 
 mortal risk she ran, unconscious even that 
 the path between her and security was 
 all but blocked, and that all her speed 
 might probably be unavailing to secure 
 her a safe retreat to the dry land behind 
 her. But though the water often reached 
 her feet, and the roar of the surges grew 
 momentarily more menacing, she followed 
 the small footprints that led towards the. 
 headland, now washed by the furious sea, 
 and almost hidden at times by the sheets 
 and columns of glittering spray that broke 
 so high above the rocky wall. 
 • Too late ! too late now ! The time was 
 past for safety or retreat. The swiftest 
 runner that ever won a wreath in the 
 Olympian Games could not now have 
 escaped on flying feet from the triumphant 
 sea. The tide came in like a racehorse, 
 vol. i. c
 
 18 ' SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and all access to the firm dry land was cut 
 off by the swooping flood. 
 
 All unconscious of the imminence of the 
 danger, of the doom that awaited her, the 
 seeker pressed on. There was something 
 touching in the girl's utter abnegation of 
 self, or selfish fear, as, with the splashing 
 water bathing her feet, and the shrill cry 
 of the wild sea-mews ringing in her ears, 
 she tracked the little footprints of her lost 
 charge. Her hat had fallen off ; her loos- 
 ened hair streamed unheeded. She was 
 knee-deep soon in the rush of frothy, bub- 
 bling whiteness, and stru^led hard to make 
 her way towards where, on a dry patch 
 of high-lying sand-slope, the little foot- 
 marks might yet be seen. 
 
 In came the tide like a mill-race. The 
 water deepened rapidly, and the girl reeled, 
 threw up her arms, and made a despair-
 
 TINY FOOTSTEPS. 19 
 
 ing effort to scramble up the sandbank. 
 A great wave came rolling in, white-crest- 
 ed, tall, curling over as it reached her in 
 its resistless strength, and she was torn 
 away from her foothold, and washed, help- 
 less as a dead leaf upon a river's current, 
 into the foamy reflux of the billow. The 
 eddy set strongly in, once the black rocks 
 of the jutting headland had been reached, 
 to southward, and, amidst the swirl and 
 ripple and tossing v^avelets of the eddy, 
 she floated away — floated away even as 
 human institutions, creeds, and empires 
 drift ever and always before the all-de- 
 stroying stream of Time. No doubt she 
 cried aloud, but the harsh, complaining 
 shriek of the hovering sea-gull, the howl 
 of the gale, and the roar of the waves 
 drowned her feeble voice as she was swept 
 
 away amidst the breakers. 
 
 c2
 
 20 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LITTLE DON. 
 
 c Northward ho ! Hurrah ! Drink about r 
 .mates ! Here's luck !' bawled out a rough 
 voice, as a rough man half rose to his 
 sea-booted feet, and flourished aloft a tin 
 pannikin that presumably contained some 
 liquor more potent than those of which 
 Good Templars approve. 'And here's to 
 the captain, with three times three, and a 
 cheer over !' 
 
 ' Hark to Linconlshire Bill !' echoed half- 
 a-dozen more. ' Captain Obadiah Jedson 
 and his luck !'
 
 LITTLE DON. 21 
 
 And up went six, or more than six, 
 mugs and tin pannikins to the lips of their 
 respective owners ; but there was no cheer- 
 ing, perhaps because, in deeper and more 
 ringing tones, a powerful voice struck 
 in— 
 
 ' Drink my health, lads and lasses, if ye 
 think fit, only be sober and sparing in your 
 cups, since we have a long march before 
 us, and work on the morrow. But drink 
 not to luck, if you love me, as coupled 
 with my name. How often am I to tell 
 you that luck, as you ignorantly call it, is 
 of another world, not this ? — that it is lent 
 as a loan, not given as a gift ? — and that, 
 if rashly boasted of or unthankfully taken, 
 it is as the fairy gold we've most of us 
 heard tell of when we were bairns in the 
 ingle-nook, and, like fairy gold, will turn 
 to dust and withered ivy-leaves on our
 
 22 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 hands ? Wherefore let none of this com- 
 pany of ours make brag or vaunt of good 
 fortune as linked with the name of Obadiah 
 Jedson.' 
 
 The speaker — a man of unusual, almost 
 gigantic, height, but gaunt and lean — was 
 standing erect beside the smoky crackling 
 lire of thorns and wreck-wood, and thus 
 formed the central figure of as strange a 
 group as ever, allowing for the difference 
 of time and climate, Salvator Rosa drew. 
 There were sixteen or seventeen of them 
 in all, men and women, scattered in atti- 
 tudes more or less picturesque among a 
 cluster of dry sand-hills, overgrown with 
 reeds, rushes, and couch-grass, just above 
 high-water mark, and a little to the north- 
 ward of a headland of black, broken, 
 weecl-draped rocks that thrust itself bold- 
 ly forward into the sea, quite intercepting
 
 LITTLE DON. 23 
 
 any prospect of the shore that lay beyond 
 — a queer company of persons, composed 
 as it was of men, women, and lads, in 
 nearly equal numbers. Weather-beaten as 
 they were, and so roughly and unconven- 
 tionally attired, on account of the wild 
 weather to which they were constantly ex- 
 posed, and of the hazardous and toilsome 
 nature of their trade, that it was hard to 
 ascertain at a glance the age and sex of 
 the wearer, they gathered around a sput- 
 tering fire of sea-borne wood and shrubs 
 hastily cut for fuel, over which, by a rusty 
 chain, on a tripod of long sticks, swung a 
 huge black gipsy kettle, watched by a 
 dark-haired woman on her knees, around 
 w^hose sleek head a yellow handkerchief 
 was twisted turban-wise. 
 
 And yet these strange people were not 
 gipsies, nor smugglers, while even the least
 
 24 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 experienced observer could scarcely have 
 fallen into the error of confounding them 
 with the ordinary tramps, of whom we 
 have but too many in our English common- 
 wealth. Every one of them had a sort of 
 sturdy independence of bearing, such as 
 befits those who follow an honourable and 
 lawful calling, and none the less if it be a 
 perilous one. At the same time there was 
 not in their eyes the patient, bovine look 
 with which we are so familiar in those of 
 the rustic who mends a heclsre, drives a 
 cart, and takes his turn at plough. In some 
 parts of England such a set of wayfarers 
 would have been a living puzzle, liable to 
 the gravest suspicions ; but from Tweed to 
 Humber, and from Humbcr to the Wash, 
 and so far down as Lowestoft, coastguards- 
 men and police knew them for nothing worse 
 than Obadiah Jedson's gang of jet-hunters.
 
 LITTLE DON. 25 
 
 The industry of jet-hunting is, as its 
 name implies, very precarious. England 
 has almost a monopoly in the world's 
 markets of the genuine jet, that fossil 
 which was broken off untold centuries 
 ago from pine forests that once stood 
 where now the North Sea rolls between 
 our own coasts and' those of Denmark. We 
 have very little of that other fossil product 
 of those ancient groves long submerged 
 which is costlier than jet. Most of the 
 amber is picked up among Danish dunes 
 and in North German estuaries ; but the 
 jet is found on our own foreshores, and it 
 is found irregularly as to time and season 
 and place, some famous digging having 
 become utterly sterile, while others, long 
 reputed to be barren or exhausted, furnish 
 valuable yields. 'The sand is alive!' is a 
 not infrequent phrase on the lips of the
 
 26 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 jet-seeker, and to him, with his intimate 
 knowledge of the coast-line, it really does 
 seem as if the beach on which he picks up 
 his livelihood were a living thing. He is 
 cognisant of its changes where a mere 
 landsman would see no change : how cliffs 
 crumble, how the sea encroaches here, and 
 there falls back, how quicksands ' travel, 7 
 and the set of currents alters, and a storm 
 may make a difference of a hundred pounds 
 to the jet-hunters, and produce who knows 
 what of profit for the dealers of Whitby 
 and Scarborough. 
 
 It is not wholesome, in all respects, that 
 life of the hunter after jet, for it has a 
 gambling element in it, as has that of the 
 gold-digger or the washer of diamonds. It 
 is very possible to work for a season and 
 go empty-handed away. It is very usual 
 to labour for six weeks or two months with
 
 LITTLE DON. 27 
 
 little or no success, and then in some few 
 days to make as much as would provide 
 subsistence for the rest of the year, were 
 the jet-hunter quite free from debts of 
 some sort : which is rare. , Some of the 
 lads who toil with these companies are 
 sent by their fathers — thrifty yeomen of 
 the Yorkshire dales — with just doled-out 
 coins enough to buy bread and cheese till 
 ' harst ' shall call them back to help on the 
 farm ; while some of the older workers 
 exist on small advances from jewellers in 
 the towns until a lucky find shall give 
 them months of rest and plenty. 
 
 No gang on the Yorkshire coast was quite 
 so famous or so prosperous as that which 
 hailed Obadiah Jedson as its captain ; and, 
 indeed, its prosperity was largely due to 
 his extraordinary skill, or, as was generally 
 averred, to his remarkable good fortune.
 
 28 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ' He's putting by — more and more in 
 Bank — year after year,' was whispered 
 respectfully from one to another among 
 the members of his company, to whom the 
 idea of a jet-hunter's saving money was 
 something as unprecedented as the same 
 phenomenon would have appeared amongst 
 the reckless buccaneers of Kyd's and 
 Blackbeard's time. It was seldom that 
 these adventurers, when successful, thought 
 of a provision for the future, or, indeed, of 
 anything beyond the discharge of pressing- 
 debts and a few months or weeks of hard- 
 earned idleness. Theirs was not an easy 
 trade. They had to face all weathers 
 without flinching, and the rather that 
 storms, with the abrupt alterations which 
 a tempest produces, gave them their best 
 chance. They were constantly wet, and 
 often hungry. To be bowed and racked
 
 LITTLE DON. 29 
 
 by rheumatic pains was a common end to 
 their career. Occasionally an imprudent 
 member of the tribe was overtaken by the 
 rising tide, and, more frequently, the 
 shifting quicksands of the coast took toll 
 of their numbers. But there was a strange 
 sort of fascination in the life, for all that — 
 perhaps due to the hold which the possible 
 prizes that might be gained were able to 
 take of the imagination of these rude 
 beings, to whom such hauls as were some- 
 times made appeared of dazzling value. 
 
 ( Why, whatever now !' — ' How came it 
 here, mates ?' — l And all alone, too !' — ' Just 
 as if it dropped frae the moon !' 
 
 The object of these comments was a tiny, 
 a very tiny boy, richly dressed, who stood 
 at the edge of the natural circle, or hollow, 
 within which the jet-hunters held their 
 wild bivouac, and gazed with great, solemn
 
 30 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 eyes at the strange group below. Seldom, 
 perhaps, has there been seen a more beau- 
 tiful child than this, as he stood wonder- 
 ingly, with his dark brown hair falling in 
 heavy curls, and with such a face as is 
 more often seen on a painter's canvas than 
 in real life. Young and solitary as he 
 was, he showed no sign of fear, but con- 
 tinued to gaze gravely at the strangely- 
 attired beings gathered around the smoky 
 fire of wreck-wood. 
 
 ' It's just a fairy elf!' muttered a North- 
 umbrian, who had not shaken off the 
 Border superstitions of his infancy. 
 
 ' More like one of the angels out of 
 heaven !' indignantly rejoined the woman 
 with the yellow turban knotted round her 
 sleek, dark hair, and who had in her hand 
 
 / 7 
 
 the long iron ladle with which she had 
 been distributing the contents of the
 
 LITTLE DON. 31 
 
 steaming cauldron. ' Saw ever ony one a 
 fairer bit of a bairn thing ? and what brings 
 the pretty darling here alone, so near the 
 cruel sea, and a storm coming on too ?' 
 
 For at this moment the- shrieking of 
 the wind and the first dash of the rain, 
 mingling with the hoarse roar of the 
 billows, gave token of the approaching 
 
 tempest. 
 
 ' Peace, all !' said the captain of the gang, 
 as he rose from his seat, and, stalking 
 slowly to the highest part of the ridge 
 which shut in the sand-hills from the sea, 
 shaded his keen eyes with his broad hand, 
 and, tossing back his mane of coal-black 
 hair, took a long survey of the sands, and 
 of a narrow and difficult path that led in 
 zigzag fashion up the cliff, and which 
 appeared, at first sight, better fitted for 
 the tread of the wild goat or the hill-fox 
 
 •
 
 32 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 than either of men or of beasts of burden. 
 No signs of human presence could be 
 detected anywhere. To seaward not a 
 sail ; on the cliff-top no form. Along the 
 narrow and arduous path that led upwards, 
 nothing was to be seen save the rank 
 grass that waved wildly as the wind in- 
 creased from a breeze to a gale. Over the 
 extremity of the jutting headland of black, 
 broken rocks, weed-draped and piled up 
 steeply as a rugged rampart erected by the 
 mighty hands of Titans, the sea was already 
 breaking in sheets and showers of spray, 
 while rapidly the tide ran in, and louder 
 grew the shriek of the gale. 
 
 Nothing could be more utterly, piteously 
 alone than the child seemed to be — alone 
 beneath the lowering skv — alone in that 
 desolate place, so near the hungry sea that 
 was rushing in, driven by the storm-wind.
 
 LITTLE DON. 33 
 
 Yet he showed no sign of fear, as so many 
 children of his age do when left alone. 
 High above him stood the towering form of 
 the captain of jet-hunters, looking down, 
 with unusual softness in his .dark eyes, at 
 the little intruder on his bivouac. Un- 
 usually soft, too, was Obadiah Jedson's deep 
 voice as he stretched out one of his huge 
 bony hands, and said, gently, 
 
 'Young master — my dear — will you come 
 with me — away out of the rain ?' 
 
 The child looked up doubtfully, and for 
 a moment seemed about to cry. But 
 Obadiah, gaunt and wild to look upon, had 
 yet one of those faces that children instinct- 
 ively confide in, so that after a brief pause 
 the boy clasped his tiny white fingers 
 around the lean brown one which the cap- 
 tain held out, and permitted himself to be 
 led, unresisting, to the neighbourhood of 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 the fire, where all the members of the band 
 gathered around him in a ring. 
 
 1 Belongs to gentlefolks if ever a bairn 
 did f — ' More like a little lord, wi' his fine 
 clothes, and those fearless eyes of his, like 
 a lion's !' 
 
 'How came he here, though, on the sands, 
 by himself?' was a very general question; 
 and the query was one which it was easier 
 to ask than to answer. Clearly, no relative, 
 no friend, no servant was in sight, either 
 on shore or cliff-crest, whose presence could 
 account for that of the solitary child. It 
 really was as though the tiny creature — he 
 could not have been more than four years 
 old — had dropped from the sk} T upon that 
 bleak and desolate beach. How came he 
 here ? To whom did he belong ? One or 
 two of the women, by Obadiah's directions, 
 had propped some frowsy scraps of tarpaulin
 
 LITTLE DON. 35 
 
 on poles, so as to afford the boy — delicately- 
 nurtured, no doubt — some shelter from the 
 driving rain, as the storm increased. But 
 the boy seemed to care little for the 
 rain, but preferred to stand at Obadiah's 
 side, holding the captain's bony forefinger 
 in the grasp of his small hand, and with 
 dauntless eyes surveyed the quaint figures 
 around him. It was manifest that the little 
 intruder had taken a childish fancy to this 
 rough, grim giant of the sea-beach. 
 
 Conjecture being 'exhausted, it was 
 thought best to question the child himself. 
 
 'What is your name, little master?' asked 
 the tall captain, a curious sort of respect, 
 as for the superior station of his small guest, 
 mingling with the natural gentleness of his 
 tone when speaking to a child. 
 
 ' Don,' answered the boy readily, but with 
 a grave sort of wonder, as if it were sur- 
 
 d2
 
 36 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 prising that a man of Obadiah Jedson's 
 stature should be ignorant of so rudimentary 
 a fact. 
 
 The captain looked down at the little 
 head that seemed so far beneath him, and 
 was puzzled. 
 
 ' Do they call you nothing but Don, my 
 dear?' he inquired, softly and patiently — 
 1 no other name, I mean, as all of us have 
 two names — some more,' he explained. 
 
 The child shook his beautiful head, on 
 which the brown curls glistened silken. 
 
 ' Always Don,' he made answer. 
 
 'But is it a Christian name, or else a 
 surname?' asked the woman with the yellow 
 kerchief twisted round her sleek head. 
 The question was too much for the tiny 
 creature's limited experience. 
 
 'Sometimes Master Don,' he answered, 
 half-petulantly, and with an infantine
 
 LITTLE DON. 37 
 
 frown. ' Nurse says that ; papa never. I 
 want to go home.' 
 
 .And then he began to sob, and it was 
 necessary to soothe and comfort him. In 
 the meantime, there he was, and nobody, 
 not even the captain — by common consent 
 the shrewdest of the party — could guess 
 how he came there, or what steps ought to 
 be taken. That the boy was of gentle 
 blood and nurture none could doubt. 
 Even the exceeding delicacy of his com- 
 plexion and the beauty of his little white 
 hands told of the care that had been taken 
 to shield him from hardship, while, on the 
 other side, his frank, bold eyes indicated 
 an open and courageous nature. He was 
 handsomely, and somewhat fancifully, 
 dressed. There were silver buttons on his 
 tunic of green velvet, and the black belt 
 around his waist was fastened by a massive
 
 38 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 clasp of solid silver. The jaunty little cap 
 was of velvet, too, and all his clothes were 
 new and good. But it was impossible, no 
 matter how artfully, or with what patient 
 kindness the questions were put, to elicit 
 from him anything that would throw a 
 light on who he was or whence he came. 
 The one thing clear in the boy's mind was 
 his own identity. He was 'Don,' certainly 
 ' Don,' and knew no other name. Papa 
 was papa, home was home, and nurse was 
 nurse. He seemed, with the short memory 
 of early childhood, even to have forgotten 
 how he came into the jet-hunters' camp, 
 and when questioned as to the path that 
 he had followed, pointed vaguely towards 
 the sea, now rolling in, wave after wave. 
 Then he seemed to be tired, and hungry 
 perhaps ; and Kezia, the woman with the 
 yellow handkerchief tied turban-wise
 
 LITTLE DON. 39 
 
 around her head, and who seemed to be 
 one of the kindest of the company, drew 
 him underneath the rough screen of tar- 
 paulin, and brought on a platter some of 
 the steaming food from the gipsy cauldron, 
 and, with some trouble, coaxed him to eat ; 
 after which he grew drowsy, and lay on 
 the rush-covered side of the sand-hill, 
 asleep, while a council was held to deliber- 
 ate about his fate. 
 
 Many and wild were the guesses that 
 were hazarded as to the manner in which 
 this little waif of the Yorkshire sea-beach 
 had come to be in the neighbourhood of 
 the bivouac. Shipwreck was more than 
 once suggested ; but this was laughed to 
 
 scorn. 
 
 'The boy hadn't a wet thread upon him,' 
 said one of the most experienced of the 
 gang ; ' and how should one even of their
 
 40 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 dandy pleasure- craft get wrecked on a fine 
 morning without the coastguard sighting 
 the job? Or how should such a lamb as 
 that young thing come living to the land 
 while strong men perished ? No, no ; 
 there's been guilery here.' 
 
 ' Guilery !' echoed the women, horrified, 
 but with a pleasant sort of horror. i What 
 sort of guilery, when it's about a lad bairn 
 like this, Measter Saunders ?' 
 
 Measter Saunders, who was esteemed 
 among the hunters of jet as an oracle second 
 only to the captain, nodded his head as 
 solemnly as the late Lord Thurlow, in ermine 
 and fall-bottomed wig, might have done. 
 
 1 There's cheatery o' more sorts than one,' 
 was his mysterious verdict ; 'and it's not 
 the first time babies have got smothered in 
 Towers o' London ; nor yet young innocents 
 that stood between somebody and broad
 
 LITTLE DON. 41 
 
 lands and gold guineas been put out o' the 
 •way like this, comrades.' 
 
 After this oracular remark, the sleeping 
 child was eyed, especially by the women, 
 with even more of wondering interest and 
 of respectful curiosity than before. But 
 still, no progress was made towards solving 
 the knotty point of his immediate disposal. 
 All this time, Obadiah the captain kept 
 silent, as if taking counsel of his pipe, while 
 the thin blue wreaths of tobacco-smoke 
 ascended spirally amidst the driving rain 
 and hurrying blast. For the rough weather 
 few or none of that rough band seemed to 
 care. They were above high-water mark, 
 and out of reach of the sea ; and as for a 
 summer storm, who of that seasoned com- 
 pany flinched from a mere wet jacket ? At 
 last Obadiah Jedson knocked out the ashes 
 of his pipe, rose to his feet, and stretched
 
 42 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 out his lengthy arm, with much the air and 
 bearing of some grim, preaching corporal 
 of Cromwell's scarlet-coated cuirassiers. 
 
 ' Lads and lasses,' began the captain, 
 ' many's the time and oft that it has been 
 borne in upon me to chide the speaker of 
 idle words concerning the thing that ye, in 
 your simplicity, call luck ; and mainly when, 
 in your goodwill towards your old leader, 
 you linked it with mention of me — of me ! 
 as if a poor, miserable, blinded worm, that 
 is less than the least, had power to heal or 
 to hurt, or could insure good seasons and a 
 well-stocked cupboard. But one thing I 
 do know : that when what you call luck, 
 and what the Romans of old time knew by 
 the grander name of the Diva Fortuna, 
 knocks at the door, it bodes ill for those 
 who linger to lift the latch and fling open 
 the house to the guest. AYe will take this
 
 LITTLE DON. 43 
 
 child with us ; he shall eat of our bread, 
 and drink of our cup; and so, with Heaven's 
 help, shall neVer the meal of meat nor the 
 horn of ale fail us. Here is this young 
 innocent, saved from the dread sea as a 
 strayed lamb in winter-time from snow- 
 wreaths and biting winds on some bleak 
 and barren daleside ; and, while Obadiah 
 Jedson has a crust or a roof-tree, the boy 
 shall be welcome to both. Here's my niece 
 Kezia, that's a widow, as you know, and has 
 had bairns of her own, and knows the ways 
 of children, to care for the lost little one 
 when these hands are busy with pick and 
 shovel; and in the long winter evenings 
 I can teach him a bit of the book-craft that 
 helps a lad far on the up-hill road of life. 
 So now, mates, get ready, and north- 
 ward ho !' 
 
 They set forth on their northward
 
 44 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 march, climbing, in Indian file, the steep 
 and difficult path which ascended the 
 cliff, with the sureness of foot which 
 practice affords, and none the less con- 
 fidently that most of them w^ere laden 
 with burdens more or less heavy. Obadiah, 
 their captain, as was his wont, brought 
 up the rear, needfully carrying the boy 
 in his huge arms, half sheltered from 
 the rain by the loose jacket of coarse 
 blue Guernsey cloth that the jet-hunter 
 wore. Little Don was still slumbering. 
 Once he had awakened from his sleep, 
 but seeing Obadiah looking smilingly 
 down upon him, he had yielded again 
 to lassitude, and was soon trustfully un- 
 conscious whither his new and strange 
 protector was bearing him along the 
 .storm-lashed shore.
 
 45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 
 
 'It sounds like " Help I" Dame Kezia,' 
 exclaimed the young man, whose quick 
 ears had first caught the distant sound, 
 and who now thrust aside his books, and 
 started to his feet. ' Something must 
 have happened down dale.' 
 
 'Let a be! let a be!' grumbled the 
 woman to whom he spoke, looking up 
 from some household task in a remote 
 corner, and turning a wholesome, wrinkled 
 face towards the first speaker. 'Ale in r
 
 46 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 wit out, my deary. It is hay-harvest time 
 now, and so many rambling lads about, 
 besides the Irishry that come from beyond 
 the sea, and ' 
 
 But at this juncture a shadow darkened 
 the door, and into the house-place of the 
 lonely dwelling — one of those houses plain- 
 ly built of dry stone, of which we see so 
 many in the north of England, and in the 
 southern counties few or none — burst a 
 panting runner. 
 
 ' Captain !' cried out the breathless mes- 
 senger of ill. 'Captain — why — Mr. Don 
 — where ver's Captain Jedson and the rest ?' 
 
 'Not back yet from Whitby way,' an- 
 swered the woman who was called Kezia, 
 peering at the new-comer. 'My uncle, 
 Captain Obadiah, sent us word by noon, 
 in a letter, by John Anderson, the Hull 
 carrier. There's none here but me and
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 47 
 
 my nursling, our Don, and won't be till 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 The young man who had been the first 
 to hear the distant cry, and the first to 
 speak, now came forward from where he 
 had been seated beside the long, rough 
 table, littered with books and manuscripts. 
 
 'Anything wrong, Joe?' he asked. 
 
 Joe, who was a lathy lad, splashed with 
 mire and hot with speed, let his jaw drop 
 with an expression of the most profound 
 dismay. 
 
 'None here but thee, Mr. Don!' he 
 said, mournfully; 'then it's all up wi' 
 them, poor souls ! — all the seven. I got 
 free, but they are trapped, like so many 
 mice, to smother and drown ; for who is 
 to draw them out of the Soldiers' Slough, 
 quagged as they are, Mr. Don ? and all 
 along of Rufus Crouch being so venture-
 
 48 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 some. Not that I'd # blame him now, poor 
 chap !' 
 
 1 It was an ill day when the prospecter, 
 that red-haired Rufus Crouch, ever came 
 in among us jet-seekers !' was Kezia's com- 
 ment. 'He'd better have stuck to Aus- 
 tralia and his gold-digging than ' 
 
 1 Hush, dame !' said the young man who 
 had been addressed as Mr. Don, and who was 
 singularly handsome. He was perhaps a 
 couple of years older than the bringer of 
 the news — say, twenty years of age — with 
 dark brown hair that curled naturally 
 round his handsome head, with bold, bright 
 eyes, and a face that in a woman would 
 have been called beautiful. His figure, 
 lithe, strong, and as well-proportioned as 
 that of a Grecian statue, matched well 
 with his fair, fearless face. He was simply 
 clad, but the red shirt and the coarse blue
 
 THE soldiers' slough. 49 
 
 sailor's garb became him well. It was n 
 uncommon among that manly race of 
 dwellers by the \ to find comely and 
 well-grown lads, but it was admitted that 
 from the Tweed to the H umber, and so 
 southwards to the Wash, Don — or ' Mr. 
 Don,' as he was habitually called — was 
 not as other lads, even the best and the 
 bravest ; that he was like a young prince, 
 and that none could vie with him for 
 daring or for grace. 'Hush, dame!' said 
 Don, gently. • Let Joe Nixon tell his 
 tale.' 
 
 Joe Nixon's tale was soon told. He 
 had been one of a party detached from 
 the main band of jet-hunters, and in- 
 fluenced, if not actually commanded, by 
 Eufus Crouch, the ex- Australian gold- 
 digger. They had lit upon -signs.' in 
 the shape of fragments of buried jet, late- 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ly uncovered by the effects of a strong 
 north-wester and a troubled sea, which 
 had made Rufus, always over-sanguine, 
 feel confident that a rich booty was to 
 be won before tide-rise between the Gan- 
 net Rocks and the Soldiers' Slousrh ; so 
 they had all ventured out, with pick and 
 shovel, and had actually found some jet, 
 but had been driven by the incoming 
 sea from the Gannet Rocks, and, finally, 
 had become ' quagged ' in the dangerous 
 quicksand that lay but an arrow-flight 
 away, Joe Nixon alone having the power 
 of escape, and having run as fast as lungs 
 and limbs would allow, to summon help 
 for the unfortunates left behind. But 
 this was one of those cases in which it 
 is easier to call for aid than to bring 
 timely rescue. 
 
 'Soldiers' Slouch: that means a wind-
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 51 
 
 ing-sheet drawn high, but no coffin nor 
 Christian rites,' remarked Dame Kezia, 
 with a shudder. ' If Uncle Obad had 
 been here ' 
 
 ' I wish he were,' interrupted Don. ' But 
 we must do our best, though the chance 
 is a bad one. That terrible quicksand 
 would swallow a regiment after turn of 
 tide. It earned its ill name long ago.' 
 
 ' 'Deed it did !' croaked Kezia : ' when 
 a whole picquet of dragoons, helping the 
 mounted gau^ers to chase the fair-trade 
 folk— smugglers, they called them — got 
 'gulfed there, horse and man, sword and 
 carbine ; and there they lie yet, and will 
 lie, till the Judgment. They weren't the 
 first, bless ye, that came to their death 
 in the Soldiers' Slough, and they won't 
 be the last, though they gave name to 
 the place. Joe, were Anne Shaw and 
 
 e 2 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OIF UUNOIS
 
 52 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 young Tom Brown among the poor crea- 
 tures yonder?' 
 
 ' Yes, they were,' curtly responded Joe ; 
 and then piteously added, 'Mr. Don, can't 
 ye bear a hand to save the mates, though 
 'tis hard, and you and I alone ?' 
 
 'We'll try,' answered the young man, 
 cheerily, as he snatched his cap and caught 
 up a long iron-tipped fen-pole that stood 
 propped against a rafter. ' Come along, 
 Joe !' 
 
 'Don't be hazardous, Don, my dove!' 
 exclaimed the woman, in some alarm. 
 ' It's well to be brave, but there's no use 
 being over-stubborn when things go ill. 
 What should I say to the captain if ' 
 
 ' You dear old Kezia !' rejoined the 
 young man, laughingly. 'Would you 
 make a milksop and a landsman of me of 
 a sudden ? No, no ; a jet-hunter must
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 53 
 
 never call in vain with a mate at hand. 
 I'll come back, never fear me, but not 
 alone. At present there is no time to be 
 lost.' And he sallied forth, with Joe at 
 his heels. 
 
 ' I should break my heart,' sobbed the 
 woman, as she threw herself into a chair, 
 and pressed the apron to her eyes — ' yes, 
 I should, if aught of harm befell my 
 nursling — the bonny bairn ; and for Rufus 
 Crouch and his conceit, though jet-hunters 
 should be true to jet-hunters in the hour 
 of ill, and so I thought myself before the 
 rheumatics made half a cripple of Kezia 
 Gray.' 
 
 The dale into which Don and his follow- 
 ers emerged was one of the stoniest and 
 narrowest of those valleys which cleave 
 the coast of a portion of North Yorkshire. 
 There was a brook, of course, that trickled
 
 54 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 or raced, according to the rainfall, towards 
 the sea. There were sides, more or less 
 precipitous, and above was a table-land 
 which in common parlance was styled the 
 Wold ; but within the dale itself opened 
 out unexpectedly to the explorer fertile 
 dells and lateral valleys, where farm- 
 houses of grey stone stood among apple- 
 trees, and where there were meadows in 
 the deep grass of which the fat kine 
 browsed peaceably. Just then haymaking 
 was in full progress, and in a large "held 
 on Farmer Thorpe's land, some quarter of 
 a mile away, many workers of both sexes 
 were gathered. Most of these knew the 
 young man who had been called Don. 
 They stood, leaning on their rakes and 
 forks, staringly, when Don burst into the 
 midst of them, with Joe Nixon at his 
 heels.
 
 THE, SOLDIEES' SLOUGH. 55 
 
 1 Lads,' exclaimed the young man, eager- 
 ly, ' I want strong arms and true hearts to 
 go along with me on an errand of mercy. 
 Seven poor creatures, jet-seekers like my- 
 self, are in mortal peril hard by, quagged 
 in the Soldiers' Slough — the terror of our 
 shore. Joe here has got free, and brought 
 the news. Bear a hand, Beckdale lads — 
 help us, Yorkshiremen, whose homes are 
 further away — help us too, Irish boys, 
 who have come across St. George's Chan- 
 nel to earn honest bread by working side 
 by side with us in England here. Come, 
 then, and come quickly. Captain Jedson 
 is away at Whitby. There's not a jet- 
 hunter here save Joe and me. Yet help 
 must be given to the poor souls perishing 
 yonder in that cruel quicksand, even if we 
 two have to go alone. For the credit of 
 Yorkshire, for the honour of Beckdale, I
 
 <56 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 hope, lads, you'll not refuse me, when the 
 lives of Christian men and women hang 
 trembling by a thread.' 
 
 Then arose a turmoil of mingled voices 
 in dispute. Farmer Thorpe himself, a 
 notorious curmudgeon, anxious to save 
 his fine crop of hay, as the saying is, with- 
 out a shower, and quite callous to senti- 
 ment, was very much opposed to any 
 wholesale desertion of their work on the 
 part of his hired men. Such a breach of 
 contract, he declared, should be punished, 
 not only by pay withheld, but by magis- 
 terially inflicted pains and penalties. And 
 there were some few of the elder hay- 
 makers who more cared for their own ease 
 than for the safety of those in peril. 
 Luckily, however, a more generous spirit 
 animated the bulk of those present. Forks 
 and rakes were flung aside, and a general
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 57 
 
 move was made towards the beach, the 
 impulsive Irish vying with the native 
 dalesmen in enthusiasm, and loudly de- 
 claring that ' Don the jewel ' was a boy 
 out of a thousand, and that none but 
 heathen hounds would refuse to follow so 
 spirited a leader. 
 
 On their way shorewards, Don called a 
 halt in front of another farm, silent and 
 deserted now, since the hay had been 
 stacked. 
 
 ' Mr. Fletcher,' he said to the stooping, 
 sturdy old yeoman who stood on his worn 
 doorstep, i you have a lot of boards about 
 there beside your barn, and two old rick- 
 cloths ; these, if you would grant us the 
 loan of them in saving the lives of those 
 quagged in the Soldiers' Slough, would be 
 worth much to us. I will be responsible 
 for the value of any we may lose.'
 
 58 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 j 
 
 • And how if you lose yourself, lad, and 
 don't come back with the things or the 
 brass ?' hesitatingly demanded the senior. 
 
 ' In that case, it is to Obadiah, your 
 neighbour, and our captain, that you must 
 look for payment,' replied Don, cheerily. 
 ' May we have them, old friend ?' 
 
 £ Ay, ay!' grumbled the farmer; ' but 
 have a care, have a care, my bairn. 
 There'll be moist eyes in more houses than 
 one if ye come not back.' 
 
 And, without farther remonstrance, he 
 saw planks and rick-cloths seized upon 
 and borne away beachwards. The lower 
 end of the dale once reached, and the 
 sand-hills crossed, there could be seen the 
 black, serrated line of half-sunken Gannet 
 Rocks, around which the wavelets rippled. 
 The tide was coming in, but there was not 
 a breath of wind, and the sea was like a
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 59 
 
 mill-pond. Some arrow-shot or so away 
 was a brown shining something, that 
 looked like an ugly patch on the pure 
 whiteness of the spreading sands, and to- 
 wards the outer edge of which, nearest to 
 the Gannet Rocks, appeared certain dark 
 specks — human beings, clearly, and in sore 
 need, for the Soldiers' Slough had them in 
 its dread clutch, and they were already 
 too deeply involved in the meshes of that 
 fatal net to be able to extricate themselves 
 by any exertions of their own. 
 
 ' On, on !' cried Don, bounding forward ; 
 and at a run his followers cleared the 
 stretch of flat beach which intervened be- 
 tween them and a low sand-bank, seamed 
 with jagged rocks, at the landward edge 
 of the famous quicksand. 
 
 ' There they are, all, as yet !' exclaimed 
 Joe Nixon. 'That's Rufus, nighest to the
 
 60 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ■) 
 
 Gannets, with one hand on the black 
 stone, and those two nearer are Annie 
 Shaw and old Peterson. But we've no 
 time to lose, Mr. Don, for see how the 
 Slouch is alive ; and that means mischief, 
 as you know.' 
 
 And indeed the hideous surface of the 
 slimy quicksand seemed to heave and 
 slowly quiver, as if some sleeping monster 
 were breathing and stirring restlessly be- 
 neath. 
 
 ' Help ! for pity's sake, help !' called out 
 a shrill girlish voice, as Annie Shaw, her 
 face white and pinched with fear, turned 
 towards the rescuers. 
 
 The grey-haired man beside her, cling- 
 ing to a pole now deeply buried in the 
 sand, was the next to speak. 
 
 ' For any sake, be quick !' he said. ' We 
 can feel it draw us away — draw us away, as
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 61 
 
 if we were being sucked into the jaws of 
 the grave. And it's worse, I fear, with 
 some of those poor chaps nearer to the 
 sea, for they're waist-deep in it, and more.' 
 
 The crowd hesitated and murmured, 
 waiting for guidance. Then Don gave 
 orders promptly and cheerfully, and by 
 his directions the boards were laid down 
 one beyond the other, so as to form a sort 
 of floating bridge, and over this trembling 
 pathway he himself cautiously advanced, 
 followed at some little distance by Joe 
 Nixon, a coil of rope in his hand. 
 
 To save Annie Shaw and grey-haired 
 Mark Peterson was a work comparatively 
 easy, because they were so near, and not 
 very deeply engulfed at present. But this 
 task performed, the two first foundlings of 
 the lost flock being brought to land, Don 
 braced himself for the far more arduous
 
 62 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 duty that remained. There were yet five 
 fellow-creatures — five comrades — to he 
 brought in, while the tide was rising, and 
 the heaving and shaking of the quicksand, 
 as if the hidden monster beneath were 
 stirring in his lair, grew momentarily 
 more perceptible. This was indeed a ser- 
 vice of danger ; every plank had to be 
 launched and lashed to the other planks, 
 while alons; this tremulous and shifting 
 causeway the adventurers crept on hands 
 and knees, constantly in contact with the 
 seething slime below. Don, like some gal- 
 lant officer who heads a forlorn hope, led 
 the way, Joe Nixon following his young- 
 leader. Then came, but at some distance, 
 two volunteers, self-chosen from among 
 the haymakers : one English, the other 
 Irish — bold young fellows both, but 
 neither would have cared to face danger
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 63 
 
 in sucli a shape but for Don's presence and 
 example. The rest of the crowd remained 
 at the edge of the firm land, now rein- 
 forced by sundry fishermen, who had 
 taken the alarm, and had hurried down 
 with cordage and spare spars, to be useful 
 in case of need. 
 
 'Have a care, Mr. Don!' — 'Take heed!' 
 were cries that were frequently uttered by 
 those on the beach, to many of whom the 
 young chief of the expedition seemed over- 
 bold. Don, however, his iron-tipped fen- 
 pole in his hand, continued to advance, 
 swiftly but cautiously. It was no trifling 
 task. The trembling planks, often sub- 
 merged, afforded but an insecure causeway 
 that at every instant seemed in danger of 
 being swallowed up in the tenacious mud 
 and wet marl of the slough. The quick- 
 sand heaved and swelled, as if resentful
 
 64 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 of the effort that was being made to rob 
 it of its prey, and time — precious mo- 
 ments — had to be lost in bringing forward 
 and launching fresh pieces of wood. The 
 narrow gangway often seemed on the point 
 of being sucked down into the unknown 
 depths below, but the youthful leader 
 of the party never quailed or hesitated for 
 an instant, but pressed on, testing the 
 quick-sand with his fen-pole as he pro- 
 ceeded. Often it seemed as if the enter- 
 prise was an impossible one, and that a 
 little more perseverance would merely 
 serve to add a grisly legend to the many 
 which made the Soldiers' Slough a name of 
 terror to the dwellers on the coast. 
 
 1 Don has got the first of them by the 
 hand — a woman, that is. How she clings 
 to him, poor thing ! Ellen — Ellen Watson, 
 that's her name, of Thirsk, sister to Ralph
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 65 
 
 Watson, that's away with the jet-hun- 
 ters : very respectably brought up — both,' 
 chimed in a well-informed bystander. 
 
 ' Well done, Mr. Don ! and well done, 
 Joe and Dick, and Larry from Ireland ! ' 
 was the general verdict as Ellen Watson, 
 the first of the five in peril, was pushed, 
 dragged, helped, and hustled along the 
 shaking pathway of reeling planks safe to 
 shore. Then a second victim — a lad this 
 time — was snatched from the tenacious 
 grip of the cruel quicksand. Next it was 
 a married man, with children at home, 
 and whose wife stood weeping on the 
 beach, who was helped to struggle out of 
 the fatal clasp of the quagmire, and to 
 regain dry land. Then another stripling 
 was saved ; and with this last act of sal- 
 vage it seemed as if the 2;ood work must 
 end, for already a thin white line of 
 
 VOL. I. f
 
 66 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 streaky tide-foam had reached the broad 
 shoulders of Rufus Crouch, as he held on 
 with desperate tenacity to the black rock, 
 encrusted with mussel-shells and cockles 
 and sea-weed. 
 
 ' It can't be done !' bawled out. using his 
 outspread hands as a speaking-trumpet, a 
 patriarch of the beach. 'Take an old 
 sailor's advice, Mr. Don, and get back to 
 shore as quick as you can/ 
 
 ' Not alone, neighbour Threpham, not 
 alone !' answered Don, cheerily, but in a 
 voice that rang like a trumpet call ; and, 
 as he spoke, for a moment he turned his 
 noble young face, flushed with excitement, 
 towards the crowd. They set up a cheer ; 
 they could not help it. There was not a 
 man there who did not feel proud of their 
 champion — of the bold, beautiful boy who 
 was forcing his way on, in the teeth of
 
 THE SOLDIEKS' SLOUGH. 67 
 
 danger, to save a man by no means loved 
 or lovable. 
 
 The deed was done. It was ' touch and 
 go,' as the veteran lieutenant of the coast- 
 guard, who had hastened down with his 
 men, to be of use if possible, declared 
 loudly to all who would listen. Had not 
 Don been not merely brave, strong, and 
 ready-witted, but one of those born leaders 
 of men whom others follow with instinctive 
 docility, the thing could never have been 
 achieved; for Joe Nixon and Dick the 
 dalesman, and Irish Larry ran imminent 
 risk from both tide and quicksand in the 
 arduous task of drachms; Rufus Crouch — 
 to whose rashness the whole calamity was 
 due — from the embrace of the Soldiers' 
 Slough. And once, when Rufus had been 
 reached, and his great hand was grasped 
 
 by that well-nerved one of Don's, it seemed 
 
 f2
 
 68 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 doubtful whether the rescuer would not 
 be drawn down to perish with the unlucky 
 jet-seeker. But the deed was done, and 
 the fifth sufferer dragged forth from the 
 jaws of the devouring monster of the sea- 
 shore. 
 
 ' Hurrah for Mr. Don — our Don ! 
 Hurrah, lads !' roared out the old fishing- 
 skipper, Threpham, who was regarded as 
 an oracle of the beach, and who was too 
 large-natured to resent, as some oracles 
 do, the non-fulfilment of his predictment 
 of evil. ' Heart of a lion, ay, and strength 
 of a lion too, young as he is ; to have 
 brought seven of the poor things to shore 
 this clay against all odds ! Tis not often 
 that the Soldiers' Slough has been cheated 
 that way.' 
 
 4 Hurrah for him !' was the universal cry, 
 as Don, last of all, touched the firm land.
 
 THE SOLDIERS' SLOUGH. 69 
 
 Joe, and Dick, and Larry, as minor, but 
 approved, heroes, were already receiving 
 their meed of praise, and hand-shakings, 
 and pattings on the back ; but an odd sort 
 of respect seemed to hedge in Don from 
 such familiarities, for only three of those 
 present ventured to take his hand, and of 
 these one was the red-faced lieutenant of 
 the coastguard, and the other Skipper 
 Threpham, that grey -haired Nestor of the 
 shore. But the third was the wife of the 
 man whom Don had saved, and she took 
 his strong young hand, only to press it to 
 her lips. 
 
 ' My blessing, and the blessing of my 
 little ones, that but for you would be 
 fatherless, be with you always, Mr. Don,' she 
 said, sobbing. ' How shall we ever thank 
 you enough, sir — I, and my man, and Annie, 
 and Mark, and the lads, and Rufus Crouch?'
 
 70 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 Rufus, dripping wet, but sturdily plant- 
 ed on his two large feet, did not look 
 particularly grateful. He was a broad- 
 built man of low stature, left-banded, and. 
 as it were, left-footed too, so awkward and 
 crab-like were his movements. His hair 
 was red, and red too was his bushy beard, 
 which flowed over his breast ; his eyes 
 were small, shifty, and fierce, and his face 
 had been burned to bronze-colour by the 
 hot sun of Australia. 
 
 ' Mates must help mates, dame ; and 
 Christians, Christians,' lightly returned 
 the young man who had been called Don. 
 ' Come, lads, let us give the farmer back 
 his planks, and the blue-jackets their ropes, 
 with thanks for the use of them, and there 
 will be an end of it.' 
 
 Nobody could be less willing than Don 
 to receive public thanks, or the noisy
 
 THE SOLDIEES' SLOUGH. 71 
 
 expression of the popular approval. 
 After what had occurred, the excite- 
 ment was too great to allow of most 
 of the assemblage returning to their 
 regular work in Mr. Thorpe's hayfield or 
 elsewhere. The public-houses were cram- 
 med, unfortunately, and much ale was 
 quaffed in honour of Don's gallantry, and 
 of the signal victory that had been achiev- 
 ed over the man-devouring quicksand. 
 But Don himself was permitted to slip 
 away from the clamorous throng of his 
 admirers, to regain his abode, to say a 
 word or two to old Kezia, to change his 
 clothes, and then to resume his studies as 
 if nothing remarkable had occurred to 
 interrupt them. It was not the first time, 
 young as he was, that his courage and 
 adroitness had availed to preserve the 
 lives of others. And he made light of
 
 72 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY. BART. 
 
 what lie had done, as it is the practice of 
 the brave to do, as if his prowess of that 
 day had been a mere ordinary act of neigh- 
 bourly kindness.
 
 73 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AT WOODBURN PARSONAGE. 
 
 * Glad to see you, Don. I am more than 
 glad, my young friend, not only to hear 
 your praises on all men's lips, but to see 
 my favourite pupil safe and sound after 
 the risk of yesterday.' 
 
 It was not often that the Rector of 
 Wood burn made a speech so complimen- 
 tary, or, indeed, indulged in speech-making 
 at all. He was a kind man, as well as a 
 learned one — a specimen of those old- 
 fashioned clergy who knew Horace at least 
 as well as the Fathers, and to whom
 
 74 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 culture perhaps signified more than zeal. 
 As such, and having leisure enough, he 
 had good-naturedly undertaken to assist 
 young Don, the adopted child of his 
 eccentric neighbour, old Obadiah Jedson. 
 in his studies, and the young man was 
 always welcome to Woodburn Parsonage 
 whenever the roving nature of a jet- 
 hunter's calling permitted him to pass an 
 hour or two in the clergyman's well-stocked 
 library. On this particular morning both 
 Mr. and Mrs. Langton, with their orphan- 
 ed charge, Miss Mowbray, were evidently 
 waiting in the garden — a most unusual 
 occurrence — for Don's arrival, since the 
 open carriage, with its pair of pretty white 
 ponies, stood ready before the ivied porch. 
 ' Indeed, Mr. Don, we are proud of you ; 
 and from all I hear we have reason to be 
 proud,' said kindly, motherly Mrs. Lang-
 
 AT WOODBURN PARSONAGE. 75 
 
 ton, with her beaming smile, while Miss 
 Mowbray, who was perhaps a year younger 
 than himself, and very pretty, timidly held 
 out her little gloved hand to the young 
 visitor, and said, hesitatingly, but with 
 tears in her bright eyes, 
 
 ' We thought of you — so much — yester- 
 day, and of your great courage, and the 
 lives you saved from that terrible danger.' 
 
 Gently, and almost with reverence, Don 
 took the little hand for a moment in his, 
 while his handsome face flushed crimson. 
 
 ' You are too kind to me,' he said, with 
 manly modesty. ' Any one of the fishers, 
 any one of the dalesmen, would have done 
 his best, I am sure, in such a case.' 
 
 Then some other words were said, and 
 Mrs. Langton and her young charge 
 stepped into the carriage, and were borne 
 away at the briskest trot of the white ponies,
 
 76 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and, nodding a kind farewell to Don, 
 vanished from his si^ht. There stood the 
 young man, with his books under his arm, 
 listening, or seeming to listen, to his friend 
 and patron, the incumbent of the parish, 
 but in truth quite unconscious of the drift 
 of the latter's discourse. It was the first 
 time that Violet Mowbray's tiny hand had 
 touched his ; it was the first time that he 
 had seen those lovely eyes of hers dimmed 
 by tears, and those tears called forth by 
 his peril, by his daring, by the lives that 
 he had saved from the jaws of death. Don 
 may be excused if he was for the moment 
 an inattentive listener to the Reverend 
 Samuel Lang ton. 
 
 And now a word or two as to Woodburn 
 Parsonage and its inmates. Truly, the 
 rector's lines had fallen in pleasant places. 
 His parsonage — it was always called a par-
 
 AT WOODBURN PARSONAGE. 77 
 
 sonage — was a roomy old house, long and 
 low, with the trimmest of lawns, the prettiest 
 of gardens, and the reddest of peach-walls, 
 nestling in a wooded cleft and sheltered by 
 protecting hills, flowers all around it, and 
 the bright sea in front. The prospect was 
 quite unlike the bleak one of that stony 
 Beckdale which was shut off by a shoulder 
 of hill, and composed a portion of the parish. 
 Mr. Langton was fairly well-to-do in the 
 world. He was fortunate in his wife and 
 in his healthy, comely children. He had 
 not too much, with the help of a curate, to 
 do, and was tolerably well paid for doing 
 it; while his easy temper and natural kind- 
 liness of disposition had kept him on good 
 terms with his neighbours, both with the 
 few who went to church and the many who 
 went to chapel. Yet Mr. Langton was not 
 content.
 
 78 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 The fact was that Mr. Langton had 
 throughout his young days cherished, not 
 unreasonably, the idea of becoming some- 
 thing more than Mr. Langton. He had 
 started in life with sundry advantages, 
 bearing, as the younger son of a famous 
 scholar and canon, a known name, and being 
 himself one of those rare white swans of 
 the school-room who are industrious as well 
 as clever. For it is a sad truth, but yet a 
 truth, that the best brains seldom come to 
 maturity, seldom produce good marketable 
 results, in those, earlier years by which 
 parents and guardians are so apt to judge. 
 The school prodigy commonly dies of water 
 on the brain, or breaks down under the 
 friction of the world. The pupils regarded 
 as dullards — such as Scott or Gray — wait 
 for manhood to write their names indelibly 
 in the Book of Honour which records the
 
 AT W00DBURN PARSONAGE. 79 
 
 lives of the great. But the Reverend 
 Samuel Langton had thought and toiled, 
 and led a blameless life, and earned the 
 approbation of good authorities and per- 
 sonages highly placed, and had justifiably 
 dreamed of lofty preferment as almost 
 within his grasp. He had taken high 
 honours at the University, was the winner 
 of all sorts of prizes, and had been second 
 master at one of those great public schools 
 that are as national institutions here in 
 England, and where the honest labourer is 
 often deemed worthy of the reward of a 
 mitre. 
 
 In Mr. Langton's case a feeble body, frail 
 lungs, and a lack of robustness spoiled all 
 the fair prospects of his laborious youth. 
 He had never the deep-toned voice, the 
 imposing address, that make up the chief 
 requisites of a popular preacher. And
 
 80 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 presently he became unfit to carry on his 
 school work. His pupils — youths of noble 
 families in many cases, generous English 
 lads in nearly all — who loved him well for 
 his unfailing gentleness of temper and un- 
 tiring deftness in the difficult art of teach- 
 ing, were sorry to part with him, and so 
 was his titular chief, the head master, and 
 the authorities of the school. They were 
 loth to part with him. They had hoped 
 much from him, who taught so well, who 
 could, without being an athlete, make the 
 boys look up to him, and who would be 
 sure to do credit to the promotion that was 
 certain to come. But nobody could do 
 anything for a man whose weak pulmonary 
 organs could not, during our winter, breathe 
 the English air — for a man whom his doc- 
 tors sent to Nice, or to Cannes, or to 
 fashionable Moritz, in the barbarous Swiss
 
 AT WOODBURN PARSONAGE. 81 
 
 desert of the Upper Engadine, or to Algiers, 
 
 in a sudden, imperative way. He fell in 
 
 love, too, and he married, and so lost his 
 
 college fellowship and his prospect of a 
 
 college living, and had to quit the great 
 
 school, and was out of the race of life. It 
 
 was very lucky for poor Mr. Langton that 
 
 a man of rank and influence gave him the 
 
 vacant living of Woodburn-cum-Beckdale, 
 
 with its steady annual income. Everybody 
 
 thought that the ex-schoolmaster would 
 
 die there, since trips to Nice and Algiers 
 
 are out of the reach of your ordinary 
 
 parochial clergyman with a growing family. 
 
 But, somehow, Mr. Langton had lived, as 
 
 people do live, in spite of social predictions 
 
 and proscriptions, had profited, perhaps, 
 
 by the absence of worry and excitement, 
 
 and was rather better in health than on 
 
 the day on which he had taken leave 
 
 VOL. L O
 
 82 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART 
 
 of his affectionate young pupil-friends. 
 
 But the Reverend Samuel Langton was 
 not exactly a happy man. He felt that he 
 was too good for his present position in 
 some respects, not good enough, possibly, 
 in others. A tender-hearted, estimable 
 minister of religion, he could not win the 
 hearts and convince the brains of grown 
 men and women as he had done in the case 
 of his boys, eager and receptive, when he 
 taught and they hearkened. He was 
 reckoned a good man, but a poor preacher. 
 He was liked, but not reverenced. 
 
 What is a clergyman to do who finds 
 himself the incumbent ofalar^e, strao-crlmo- 
 thinly-populated parish, and who has a 
 curate to help him ; a proud, sturdy set of 
 parishioners, with hardly any real poor, 
 any pauperised class, among them : and 
 who is quite incapable, as a Boanerges
 
 AT W00DBURN PARSONAGE. 83 
 
 might have been, of preaching the strayed 
 lambs of his ecclesiastical flock back to 
 church? He may drop into a mere organiser 
 of flower-shows, cricket-matches, or lawn- 
 tennis tournaments. He may give lectures, 
 or ride such hobbies as a big microscope or 
 a big telescope, or drill the clodpoles of his 
 parish into chorus-singers. He may become 
 a confirmed non-resident, and be always 
 dating his letters from London, Paris, or 
 elsewhere. Or he may take to literature, 
 or bee-keeping, or archaeology and the 
 rubbing of brasses, and rifling of barrows 
 on commons where many a heathen hero 
 deemed his burial-mound safe for ever. 
 Mr. Langton had tried to take to literature. 
 But there are two sides to that bargain, 
 and literature would not take to Mr. 
 Langton. The renowned periodicals to 
 which he sent his contributions, with little 
 
 g2
 
 84 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 hope of pecuniary reward, but glad if his 
 name should remind old rivals, friends, 
 and pupils that he yet lived and thought, 
 respectfully declined them. He saw his 
 inferiors, intellectually speaking, promoted 
 to deaneries and bishoprics. There he 
 dwelt, on the quiet Yorkshire coast, and 
 was glad to have so bright a boy to teach 
 as bold, beautiful Don was. 
 
 And now for the brief history of Violet 
 Mowbray. The girl was an orphan, as has 
 been said. Her father, Major Mowbray, 
 had died in India, and within a few months 
 his wife, quite young, had followed him to 
 the crave. Violet — who, like most deli- 
 cate, and indeed European, children, had 
 been sent early to Europe to escape the 
 sultry heats and rainy seasons of the 
 Madras Presidency — had been left father- 
 less and motherless at an early age. She
 
 AT WOODBUEN PARSONAGE. 85 
 
 was eighteen now, and within a month or 
 two of her nineteenth birthday, and of the 
 small income — it was but four hundred a 
 year — that she had become heiress to so 
 sadly soon. A considerable part had been 
 allowed to accumulate, at compound 
 interest ; so that, as her guardian was 
 wont to declare, the girl was, for a young 
 lady, almost rich. 
 
 Violet's guardian was, in his way, a 
 character — a fine example of the old- 
 world second or third-rate sort of British 
 merchant, of whom there were so many in 
 the last century, and are so few in this. 
 Mr. Marsh lived — actually lived, and gloried 
 in living — over his place of business in 
 Dagger Court, City, where he inhabited a 
 set of grand old rooms, with carved wood- 
 work and painted ceilings. He was him- 
 self a gruff, upright, sour-spoken old
 
 8G SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART, 
 
 bachelor, just the sort of man who ought 
 to have worn a brown coat, and a scratch 
 wig, and square-toed shoes, and deserved 
 to be born when Cowper was a school- 
 boy and Mr. John Gilpin a living citizen. 
 Why Major Mowbray selected him as 
 executor of his will and trustee of his 
 daughter's fortune is uncertain. The 
 Mowbrays were what are called well-con- 
 nected people, and there were Lord Georges 
 and Lord Fredericks under whose care the 
 orphan might have been placed. However, 
 the quaint, gruff Ephraim Marsh proved 
 himself well worthy of his trust. He could 
 not take the little girl home to his own 
 queer eighteenth century dwelling, where 
 he was waited on by an austere couple of 
 servitors, a certain Mr. and Mrs. Juniper, 
 butler and housekeeper, of whom he was 
 secretly afraid, and who had been in his
 
 AT W00DBURN PARSONAGE. 87 
 
 father's service before they passed, as of 
 risdit, into his. But he sent her to a ^ood 
 school, and presently contrived to find a 
 temporary home for her under the roof of 
 his niece, Mrs. Langton. 
 
 It would never have done for so fair a 
 flower as Violet Mowbray to have been 
 transplanted from school to such an 
 abiding-place as Dagger Court, E.C., and 
 to have no female companionship but that 
 of severe old Sarah Juniper, never known 
 to smile or to pocket a sixpence not strict- 
 ly belonging to her. As for Mr. Marsh 
 himself, he was one of those who seem to 
 atone for sterling excellence by a disagree- 
 able manner and a forbidding look. He 
 belonged to an angling club, and in 
 summer spent his holiday afternoons in 
 capturing gudgeon, hooking roach, and 
 CTowlins; at the steam-launches that in
 
 88 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 carelessness or malice half capsized his 
 peaceful punt with their wash and splash, 
 somewhere about Thames Ditton. He be- 
 longed to a chess club, and in winter 
 passed his evenings in tough, slow contests 
 with veteran opponents. It was only on 
 Sundays that he dined in Dagger Court. 
 His beautiful, dainty young ward would 
 have pined and died in an atmosphere so 
 uncongenial. Luckily for her, Mr. Marsh 
 had remembered his niece, the wife of the 
 Yorkshire clergyman, and luckily, too, 
 there was room for her in the comfortable 
 parsonage, while the two hundred a year 
 that she brought along with her — half 
 her income — was serviceable in eking 
 out the ways and means of the rector's 
 family. 
 
 It has been said that Violet was very, 
 very pretty. So she was ; but there are
 
 AT WOODBURN PARSONAGE. 89 
 
 styles, as well as degrees, of prettiness. 
 She was not tall. She had a most delicate 
 complexion, in which the colour came and 
 went, almost too sensitively ; a white, oval 
 forehead, sunny hair, and large grey eyes, 
 fringed by dark lashes, so long and full as 
 to touch the peach-like cheek when those 
 beautiful eyes were downcast. There had 
 been doubts at first, as often happens with 
 children Indian-born, as to whether she 
 would survive to womanhood ; but she 
 had gained health and strength during the 
 years she had spent at Woodburn, and was 
 well and active now. 
 
 That Don should have admired her, see- 
 ing her often, as he necessarily did — since 
 he was a frequent and welcome guest at. 
 the parsonage, where Mr. Langton esteem- 
 ed the young jet-seeker as the best and 
 quickest pupil that he had ever helped
 
 90 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 along the rugged road to learning — is 
 perhaps not wonderful. 
 
 See him — Don — now, as he slowly walks 
 away, his books under his arm, down the 
 winding road that leads to the shore, the 
 lesson of the day over. He is thinking- 
 much less of Mr. Langton and his kind- 
 ness — although it is in his nature to be 
 grateful — than of the witchery of those 
 grey eyes that belong to Violet Mowbray, 
 of the touch of that little hand, the very 
 sense of contact with which had sent the 
 blood coursing and thrilling through his 
 veins. These young people had often 
 met, but very slight had been the actual 
 
 1 Jo 
 
 intercourse between them. The inequality 
 of their condition forbade all familiarity, 
 Don, though a bright, gallant lad, beloved 
 by all, was a mere jet-hunter— a foundling 
 — a nobody. Miss Mowbray, though not
 
 AT WOODBURN PARSONAGE. 91 
 
 rich, was a lady born, able to count kin, 
 had her inclinations been genealogical, 
 with more than one noble family, and be- 
 tween her and the waif of the sea-shore 
 there seemed to exist a social gulf, im- 
 passable. Youth is proverbially hope- 
 ful ; but even in Don's eyes the difference 
 of rank seemed one too great to be sur- 
 mounted. 
 
 'I have loved her since I knew what 
 love meant :' such were his muttered 
 words, as he descended the winding road ; 
 'but I know that she is far out of my 
 reach as are the stars that shine down 
 upon me. What am I ? Only a jet-seeker : 
 only the adopted son of a kindly, eccentric 
 old man. Perhaps, if the mystery that 
 hangs over my birth were but cleared up 
 — but no ! I must be patient, and hide 
 my heart's dearest wishes, even from her,
 
 92 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 under a cold bearing. It would be base 
 indeed to presume on Mr. Langton's simple 
 kindness.'
 
 93 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 
 
 Amongst the many grand houses — or i pa- 
 latial mansions,' as the fashionable house- 
 agents in their ornate catalogues love to 
 style them — which have the advantage of 
 overlooking Hyde Park, that of Sir Robert 
 Shirley was by no means the least 
 splendid or spacious. There are baronets 
 and baronets, no doubt. This was a long- 
 descended wearer of such hereditary 
 honours as accrue to the Red Hand of 
 Ulster. Shirley is an ancient name,
 
 94 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and those who bore it had always been 
 estated gentlemen of high degree. It was 
 Sir Harry who, after fighting on the 
 Royalist side at Naseby and Worcester, 
 cut down his oaks, melted down his Tudor 
 plate, and sent five thousand gold broad 
 pieces to His Sacred Majesty at his out-at- 
 elbows court of Bruges, or Breda. The 
 merry monarch, after the Restoration, had 
 never found it convenient to repay the 
 advance ; but he had rewarded his loyal 
 subject by affably winning some more of 
 his money at gleek, or shovelboard, or 
 basset, in Whitehall Palace, and bv 
 creating him a baronet. The two last 
 owners of Shirley Park had, like their 
 successor, borne the name of Sir Robert 
 more often than not clipped into c Bob ' by 
 their intimates on the race-course and in 
 the hunting-field. The present baronet
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 95 
 
 bore the nickname of ' Robert the 
 Third.' 
 
 Sir Robert Shirley was in what was 
 officially known as his study. Now, even 
 as baronets vary, so do studies, especially 
 in a London house, from the cramped little 
 den, choked with books and littered with 
 papers, to the stately library, with its long 
 tables and well-stocked shelves and array 
 of lamps, and probably space and accom - 
 modation for busy secretaries and erudite 
 custodians. But Sir Robert's study could 
 be classed in neither of these two cate- 
 gories. In the first place, it was not 
 furnished as befits a study. One cannot 
 study without books, nor can a man 
 commit his thoughts to paper without 
 the concomitant aids of pen and ink ; 
 whereas, in the Shirley town library there 
 were no books — at least, none worth
 
 96 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 mentioning. As works of reference, there 
 were the Stud Book, the Racing Calendar, 
 and a few volumes, bound in crimson, 
 of a sporting magazine. There was a red 
 velvet divan, well-cushioned, and also 
 lounging-chairs of red velvet, and little 
 tables on which lay cigar-boxes and sport- 
 ing periodicals, and consoles on which stood 
 claintv little statuettes in alabaster or mar- 
 ble, and bronze horses from Milan, with 
 Turkish pipes and jewelled arms of ori- 
 ental make, and all the costly toys with 
 which the rich surround themselves. There 
 were pictures upon the walls, small cabinet 
 paintings gorgeously framed, and which, 
 if authentic, were very valuable. 
 
 Sir Robert was alone. A handsome 
 man enough, so far as form and features 
 went, with no reference to expression ; 
 tall, slender, and of goodly presence. He
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 97 
 
 was neither old or young — thirty-three, 
 perhaps, or some two or three years older 
 — with a pale, resolute face, that was 
 almost waxen in its pallor, hair as black 
 as the raven's wing, very dark eyes, and 
 very white teeth. But perhaps the most 
 prominent feature, if it may be so called, 
 of the baronet's face was the long black 
 moustache, carefully trimmed and trained, 
 gummed and pointed, and the arrange- 
 ment of which often caused the lord of 
 Shirley to be mistaken by strangers for a 
 foreigner. His was indeed a countenance 
 rather Italian than English, eminently 
 aristocratic withal, but one that would well 
 have suited with the character and the 
 deeds of some subtle contemporary of 
 Borgia and Macchiavelli — one of those 
 white-handed patricians who plotted, and 
 lied, and stabbed, and poisoned smilingly. 
 vol. I. h
 
 98 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 It was a fact that nobody ever had 
 really loved, nobody had ever really liked, 
 Sir Robert Shirley. An unpopular boy 
 at Eton, an unpopular officer in the 
 Lancer regiment to which he had formerly 
 belonged, he was now disliked in his club, 
 or clubs, and tolerated only because the 
 outer crust of his worldly respectability, 
 if chipped, had never sustained serious 
 damage. If the old school-fellows and 
 ex-brother-officers of the master of Shir- 
 ley had been cross-examined as to the 
 grounds of their antipathy to one who 
 apparently had much to recommend him, 
 they would probably have been puzzled 
 to allege anything positive. ' A sly, close 
 fellow — still waters that run deep, for no 
 good,' might have been the verdict both of 
 Etonians and cavalry subalterns. It was 
 the same in the bigger world of London.
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 99 
 
 Few of those who habitually met Sir 
 Robert knew precisely why he was little 
 liked, and less trusted by them. It may 
 have been that he was supremely selfish, 
 cynical in manner, and careless of the 
 goodwill of others ; certainly it was not 
 that he had ever done anything which 
 should exclude him from the society of 
 gentlemen, so far as was known. There 
 had been flying rumours, disparaging 
 tattle, to the effect that Shirley was more 
 hawk than pigeon, that he had won cash 
 and acceptances from drunken lads at 
 uncanny hours in the morning, had run 
 his race-horses or scratched their names 
 with a single-minded idea of profit that 
 displeased the august magnates of the 
 Jockey Club ; and that the gilded youths 
 who frequented his society were certain 
 sooner or later to be the poorer for his 
 
 H2
 
 100 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 nientorship. But then, so many ill-natured 
 things are often said concerning a sporting 
 gentleman with narrowed means and a 
 mortgaged estate. 
 
 Sir Robert Shirley could not afford to 
 live at Shirley Park, the majestic old 
 manor at which Queen Bess herself had 
 in her time been a guest. But he had 
 a hunting-box hard by Market Harbor- 
 ough, and a tiny villa near Newmarket, 
 and he kept up the London mansion pretty 
 well. Wa^es mav have been in arrear 
 sometimes, and bills unpaid, but there 
 were liveried servitors, and carriages and 
 horses, and bachelor dinner-parties for all 
 that, while ever and anon there would 
 set in a halcyon period, a sort of finan- 
 cial flood-tide, when ready money would 
 abound, and even long-suffering London 
 tradesmen derive benefit from the tern-
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 101 
 
 porary prosperity of their titled customer. 
 
 1 A person. Sir Robert, wishes very 
 much, if you please, to see you for a 
 minute. From abroad, I believe,' said the 
 discreet butler, who had entered quietly, 
 as a butler should do. 'The man is very 
 pertinacious, and won't go away.' 
 
 'Tell him to write, then,' returned the 
 baronet, arching his eyebrows, as he looked 
 up from behind the newspaper in his hand ; 
 ' or call the police. One can't afford in 
 London to be open to all comers, Binns, 
 as you ought to know.' 
 
 Binns the butler coughed apologetically 
 under his employer's rebuke. It cannot 
 be reckoned among the faults of town- 
 bred servants, especially in grand houses, 
 that they are over-ready to usher in 
 unknown applicants. 
 
 ' I should not have thought of such a
 
 102 SIR EOBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 thing, Sir Robert,' lie said, mildly, ' only 
 that the party insisted that his name was 
 well known — name of Crouch, please, Sir 
 Robert, and ' 
 
 ' I do remember such a name. Show 
 him in,' said the baronet, with a frown. 
 
 The visitor was promptly inducted into 
 the room. A broad, short man, roughly 
 dressed, in spite of the heat of the weather, 
 in a coarse pea-coat, such as North Sea 
 pilots wear, and with heavy boots be- 
 smeared by what was certainly not the 
 mud of London streets — a man with a 
 shaggy red beard that fell upon his breast, 
 with a head of unkempt red hair, and 
 with little restless eyes, like those of a 
 wild boar at bay. Not a nice-looking, 
 frank-spoken, honest-faced sort of man, by 
 any means. A smooth exterior, a polished 
 manner can be dispensed with where there
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 103 
 
 is sterling metal beneath the rugged sur- 
 face ; but this man was . almost ostentati- 
 ously repulsive of aspect. His was a mien 
 easy to associate with the shafts and rub- 
 bish-heaps, the tents and bivouac fires, of 
 a gold-diggers' ' rush ' under the Austral 
 sky. Easier still, perhaps, to link him 
 with a vision of fallen gum-trees, a 
 barricade of logs across the dusty 
 road, and the gleaming gun-barrels and 
 ragged felt hats of bush-rangers, rising 
 from their ambush to plunder the caravan 
 
 ■ 
 
 of successful gold-seekers — not a pleasant- 
 looking man. 
 
 Sir Robert Shirley, leaning against the 
 corner of the massive, marble chimney- 
 piece, his sporting newspaper still in his 
 hand, might have posed for an ideal por- 
 trait of aristocratic disdain as he lounged 
 thus, in a graceful but unstudied attitude,
 
 \ 
 
 104 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 his sleepy, dark eyes but half unclosed, as 
 he languidly turned his handsome white 
 face towards the importunate visitor. 
 
 ' You — wished to speak to me — Mr. ' 
 
 he said, slowly. 
 
 ' Crouch, Rufus Crouch,' coolly returned 
 the new-comer, as, uninvited, he selected 
 an easy-chair, and seated himself. 'No 
 new name to you, Sir R., now, is it? 
 But we may as well make ourselves com- 
 fortable before we begin our chat, mayn't 
 we ?' And, as he spoke, he threw him- 
 self back in the softly-padded chair, and 
 set down his battered hat among the grew- 
 gaws on the pretty little table within 
 reach. ' We were pals once : thick as 
 thieves, as the saying is, hey, Sir R. ?' 
 
 The face of Sir Robert Shirley, as, 
 with haughty surprise, he looked down 
 upon this extraordinary visitor, would
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 105 
 
 have made the fortune of the painter 
 who should have succeeded in transfer- 
 ring it to the canvas. The sleepy eyes 
 were now open, and there was fire in 
 their regard, while the pencilled brows 
 contracted frowningly, and the well-cut 
 lips tightened beneath the shade of the 
 black moustache. So might Cresar Borgia 
 have looked at a vulgar tool of his who 
 presumed to be insolent. But in our 
 prosaic nineteenth century, and in this 
 England of ours, neither the poisoned 
 wine-cup nor the daggers of eager satel- 
 lites lurking within call are immediately 
 available to get rid of inconvenient, in- 
 truders. Wherefore the master of Shir- 
 ley, with considerable self-control, as- 
 sumed a smiling aspect, and, after a 
 moment's hesitation, sat down almost op- 
 posite to Rufus Crouch, who, from the
 
 106 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, EART. 
 
 vantage-ground of his easy-chair, and per- 
 haps divining the drift of his thoughts, 
 eyed him with malicious eyes. 
 
 'Well, Crouch, back again, I see. Why, 
 I thought you fairly settled, under ano- 
 ther name perhaps, in Australia,' said the 
 baronet, assuming a tone of genuine good- 
 nature, and playing his part very well. 
 
 c 'Tain't all of us, Sir R.,' replied the 
 man, provokingly, 'that have the luck 
 to be baronets, or to have the dirty acres 
 entailed upon us, is it now, Sir R. ? I 
 know, and you know, how one chap may 
 get hanged for peeping over the hedge, 
 and another mav steal the horse without 
 a question asked ; hey, Sir R. ?' 
 
 The words were offensive, and the man- 
 ner in which they were uttered was more 
 offensive still. Sir Robert Shirley was 
 a proud man, apt to resent a liberty on
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 107 
 
 the part of his social inferiors ; but he 
 merely laughed now. 
 
 'Always the same sour sort of chap, 
 Rufus, eh?' he said, half-play fully ; 'a 
 crab-apple, as we said in the west country 
 — as when you carried my second gun 
 in the battues at Shirley. How did 
 Australia use you •?' 
 
 'Much as Australia — -and England, too, 
 for that matter — uses them that haven't 
 been born with a silver spoon in their 
 mouths, Sir R.,' rejoined the fellow, with 
 great asperity. ' If I got gold, I spent 
 gold ; and a dog's life, as a digger, I had 
 of it, working, ay, working as navvies 
 never did in a railway cutting ; starve 
 to-day, feast to-morrow. Not but what 
 I learned a thing or two as to the lie 
 of the gold and prospecting.' 
 
 And here the man looked thoughtful,
 
 108 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and there was a dash of vanity in his tone. 
 
 ' Yes,' he added, after a pause ; ' yes, the 
 stuff's nigh everywhere — even here in 
 England, only you trample over it, and 
 are blind to it. But the days are done 
 now for your independent digger t'other 
 side of the world. No more nuggeting ; 
 no more cradle-rocking. Nothing but big 
 companies, machinery, wages, and quartz- 
 crushing, while the beef and the dampers 
 are as dear as ever, and the rum and the 
 brandy as murderous. It's a master's 
 country now, not a poor man's, is Topsy- 
 turvvland.' 
 
 ' And the bush ?' asked the baronet, 
 lightly. 
 
 * What do you mean by the bush ?' 
 growled Rufus, scowling at him as fiercely 
 as a tiger-cat about to spring. 
 
 ' Nothing, nothing ; don't lose your
 
 GOLDEN TIDINGS. 109 
 
 temper,' rejoined Sir Robert, equably. 
 ' And now, Crouch, what can I do for 
 you ? Any recommendations, any interest 
 that I can exert on your behalf, if, as I 
 conjecture, you are in quest of employ- 
 ment here at home, I would willingly con- 
 cede for the sake of old days, and on 
 account of your father, who was bailiff 
 and right-hand man at Shirley, as I can 
 well remember, in my father's time. One 
 thing I warn you of — ready money is as 
 scarce with me as leaves on a birch at 
 Christmas, so that I can be of little use in 
 
 that way ; but ' 
 
 'You may spare your trouble and your 
 smooth words, Sir R.,' said Rufus, very 
 gruffly, but earnestly. ' I could be a quill- 
 driver again, as I was before, I daresay, 
 without asking you to make or meddle. 
 But just now it is Fortune herself, though
 
 110 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 you may not think it to look at me, that 
 knocks at your door, for, Sir Robert 
 Shirley, Baronet, I come here as the 
 messenger of golden tidings.'
 
 Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE TRUST-DEED. 
 
 Sir Robert Shirley, reluctantly seated 
 opposite to his plebeian visitor, himself 
 well-dressed, fastidious, and eyeing the 
 intruder with haughty surprise and dis- 
 gust but thinly veiled, presented a striking- 
 contrast to the ruffian with whom he con- 
 versed. That Sir Robert was not a good 
 man might easily be guessed. But there 
 was something of grace and elegance to 
 environ him ? something thoroughbred 
 about him, villain as he might very
 
 1 1 2 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 possibly be. Whereas Rufus Crouch, on 
 this occasion of set purpose, showing the 
 more salient points of his unamiable 
 character, appeared a scoundrel, unredeem- 
 ed by one touch of gentleness or trait of 
 excellence. Each of these two men, so 
 widely divided by rank and worldly cir- 
 cumstances, had known a great deal about 
 the other; Rufus's reminiscences being, of 
 course, the more ample, since it is better 
 worth the while of a land-bailiff's son to 
 drink in gossip as to the heir to his 
 master's title and estates, than for the 
 future baronet to remember idle tattle as 
 to the shrewd son of a useful subordinate. 
 Probably each thought that he had taken 
 the measure of the other, and probably 
 both were wrong. The baronet was the 
 first to speak. 
 
 ' Golden tidings, Mr. Crouch, 1 said Sir
 
 THE TRUST-DEED. 113 
 
 Robert mildly, 'would of themselves ensure 
 a welcome anywhere. I am not — as I may 
 tell you«in confidence — a wealthy man, and 
 such intelligence would be doubly dear to 
 me. You know that my grandfather left 
 
 • 
 
 the estates in a bothered condition, and my 
 poor father, and I myself, I daresay, have 
 added to the burdens rather than lightened 
 them, I fear. Well, Rufus, let me hear 
 your good news. In what Australian gold- 
 mine, now languishing for lack of capital, 
 ought I to take shares, with the certainty 
 of three hundred per cent, annual profits ? 
 or what buried treasure, in some stony 
 gully beneath the constellation of the 
 Southern Cross, can be had for the expendi- 
 ture of a few cool hundreds ? and ' 
 
 'Now, Sir R.,' broke in Rufus, impatiently, 
 and slapping the table beside him with his 
 heavy hand, after a fashion that made the 
 
 vol. I. I
 
 or 
 
 o 
 
 114 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 dainty objects it supported leap or quiver, 
 ' I didn't come here to be made game of, 
 nor yet mocked. I know your bun term 
 way of old. No ; I'm no tout for a joint- 
 stock concern in a bad way, nor am I one 
 of the drivellers who maunder about horse- 
 loads of the yellow dust and flakes, stowed 
 away in far-off places of the bush, as some 
 do. To my thinking, the old country is the 
 richest. I never saw a rush or a placer to 
 equal some of the snug, quiet ways of 
 money-making of which there are so many 
 
 in England, and ' 
 
 He seemed to pause for breath, and Sir 
 Robert blandly remarked, ' I quite agree 
 with you, Crouch. Colonial enterprise 
 opens out, no doubt, fresh helds for the 
 adventurous, but the home market is per- 
 haps the safest. You learned a good deal, 
 I am sure, while you occupied the honour-
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 115 
 
 able, if humble, position of confidential 
 clerk to the late Mr. Bowman — Lawyer 
 Bowman, as we generally called him in 
 Somersetshire — before your worthy em- 
 ployer had the sad loss of -memory and 
 physical strength which succeeded to the 
 
 paralytic stroke, and before you ' 
 
 ' Cut away with his cash-box,' interjected 
 Rufus, glaring at his entertainer ; ' that's 
 about what your civil chat comes to, Sir 
 R. Shirlev, Baronet. Yes, I bolted. And 
 not only did I carry with me the ready 
 coin and notes — little enough, I promise 
 you, and which melted like snow in the 
 sun — that the miserly old hunks kept by 
 him, but every valuable paper that his big- 
 iron safe contained, some of them dating 
 from before the time that I first was inden- 
 tured to him as his articled clerk. I made 
 a clean sweep. Settlements, wills, mortgage 
 
 i 2
 
 116 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 deeds — all were fish that came to my net 
 just before my start for Topsyturvy land. 
 I landed in Australia with precious little 
 money, but with a heavy heap of parch- 
 ments, I can tell you, Sir R.' 
 
 1 Let me hope, for your sake, that the 
 parchments proved precious too,' said Sir 
 Robert affably, but arching his eyebrows 
 once more. ' Of the morality of the trans- 
 action that preceded your — departure from 
 your native land, I prefer to say nothing. 
 It was irregular, of course. It might 
 have caused inconvenience to yourself, on 
 account of the inveterate prejudices of the 
 public at large, and of the peculiar view of 
 judges, magistrates, and other legal function- 
 aries with respect to the erratic freaks of 
 genius. I give no opinion ; it is no con- 
 cern of mine. I am not the Public Prose- 
 cutor, nor can I be numbered among the
 
 THE TKUST-DEEDS. 117 
 
 law officers of the Crown, and therefore- 
 
 4 Ay; and, Sir R., those that live in glass 
 houses can't afford to fling stones,' coarsely 
 retorted Rufus. ' We don't care to set our 
 neighbour's rick on fire, for fear of our own 
 kindling up, do we, Sir R. ?' 
 
 Sir Robert Shirley's pale face may 
 have become a shade the paler, and he 
 winced a very little, as a daintily-groomed 
 horse winces under a stinging stroke of the 
 whip. Bat he managed to smile as he made 
 answer, 
 
 ' You were always a philosopher, 
 Crouch, in your cynical way. Most men 
 have their foibles, I am afraid, and few of 
 us, in the Palace of Truth, would come off 
 scatheless and unrebuked. What I regret 
 is that you should deem it necessary to 
 assume a hostile tone towards one who has 
 always wished you well. It is not as if our
 
 118 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 interests were at variance ; I don't say that 
 in the least.' 
 
 ' No bones broke and no offence taken, 
 Sir R. Shirley, Baronet,' grumbled out 
 Ruf us, as his restless eyes scanned the white, 
 handsome face of his former acquaintance, 
 'so long as you recollect the job we both 
 had a hand in.' 
 
 1 1 should prefer to say, the service you 
 once rendered me,' chimed in Sir Robert, 
 with genial cordiality. 
 
 'The job of which I have the proofs,' 
 went on the inexorable Rufus. ' I don't 
 want to be always throwing it in your 
 teeth, Sir R. ; only, when one's got a pistol 
 handy, one has got a pistol. Suppose that 
 business brought to light, and sifted in a 
 court of justice, and reported in the papers, 
 and so forth, how tongues would wag at the 
 Pall Mall Clubs, wouldn't they, Sir R. ? It
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 119 
 
 would be, "Who'd have thought it?" from 
 some, and " I always knew he'd been up to 
 games of some such sort," from those that 
 prided themselves on being knowing ones, 
 and a sad disgrace it would be too, wouldn't 
 it, Sir R. ? A rough chap like nryself 
 wouldn't suffer half so much in oakum- 
 picking, or on the crank, or quarrying 
 stone at Portland or Princetown, as a white- 
 fisted gentleman like yourself, Sir R., used 
 to the best of everything.' 
 
 1 Confound you! don't try me too much,' 
 broke out the baronet, passionately, as a 
 faint tinge of angry crimson rose to his 
 brow, and his dark eyes glanced, perhaps 
 mechanically, towards a bijou cabinet, be- 
 hind the locked doors of which, as he well 
 knew, a loaded revolver lay for purposes of 
 self-defence. But in a moment more he 
 laughed with apparent frankness. 'All this
 
 120 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 time you have forgotten to explain to me, 
 Crouch, the nature of your golden tidings,' 
 said the baronet, with no sign of ill- 
 temper. ' I could only gather that they 
 are in some way connected with the docu- 
 ments which you — conveyed, we will call 
 it — to Australia with you. And, if so, I 
 am at a loss to conjecture in what manner 
 their contents could possibly affect me. 
 Old Mr. Bowman had ceased to be my 
 father's country solicitor full two years 
 before your hasty journey to the Antipodes, 
 and I am pretty sure that the Shirley 
 deed-boxes, with their musty freight of 
 mortgage deeds and leases in counterpart, 
 had long before your departure been 
 transferred to lurking-places in another 
 office.' 
 
 'Now, Sir R.,' said the ex-gold-digger, 
 grimly, 'you must take me for a new
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 121 
 
 chum, indeed, as we say in Australia, if 
 you think I would have burdened myself 
 with such rubbish as that. No, no ; I had 
 other fish to fry. Far off in the bush, 
 when others slept, I've sat up, many's the 
 night, in my tent, poring by the flickering 
 light of a stump of candle over the papers 
 and parchments I had with me. Most of 
 them were useless, only fit to be cut into 
 tailors' measures, but some were better 
 worth, and one in particular. You ain't 
 married, Sir R. ?' abruptly, and as if a 
 sudden thought had struck him, demanded 
 the man, and there was something of dis- 
 may in his tone. 
 
 ' I thank you for the kind consideration 
 which, I am sure, prompts your inquiry,' 
 rejoined Sir Robert, gravely. 'No, I have 
 not the happiness to be married.' 
 
 1 That's right !' emphatically exclaimed
 
 122 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 the returned adventurer, with another 
 sounding slap of his heavy hand on the 
 unoffending table. ' For in that case, Sir 
 R., I should have had to go further afield 
 in search of a partner, and that would 
 have been a pity, wouldn't it, since you 
 and I understand each other, don't we? 
 Well, Sir R., since you are single still, 
 you're my man, if you please. And you 
 
 i 
 
 ought to be much obliged to me, too, for 
 it is one word for me and two for yourself: 
 what with the fine fortune, and what with 
 the charming young wife.' 
 
 It was a genuine look of surprise which 
 came into Sir Robert Shirley's face, and 
 for a moment he seemed in doubt as to 
 whether he were not conversing with a 
 lunatic. He shrugged up his shoulders, 
 as a Frenchman would have done.
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 123 
 
 'Excuse my astonishment, Crouch,' he 
 said, incredulously ; i I never contemplated 
 you until this instant in the somewhat 
 novel character of a match-maker. Hither- 
 to I have kept clear of the rose-bowers and 
 raptures of matrimony ; why, I hardly 
 know. Perhaps I was fastidious in my 
 choice. Perhaps there would have been a 
 hitch as to settlements, for Shirley, as you 
 are perhaps aware, my friend, is dipped 
 beyond redemption in the black quagmire 
 of debt.' 
 
 ' I can gQt you out of debt, Sir R., 
 indeed I can,' said the rough visitor, 
 earnestly. c I can set you free from duns, 
 and make your life easy to you — for your 
 life, at least.' 
 
 ' I should be satisfied with that. Your 
 power to aid, friend Crouch, does not, I
 
 124 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 opine, reach beyond the grave,' said Sir 
 Robert, languidly. 'What I want you to 
 do is to come to the point.' 
 
 c I'm coming to it, Sir R., was the man's 
 sullen answer. ' Now, you must know, I 
 get my bread as a jet-hunter on the York- 
 shire coast, Whitby way. A nice business 
 it is ! Why, only last week I was all but 
 drowned, buried alive, along with others 
 of the gang, in a quicksand. I'd not have 
 been here to-day, Sir R., but for a young 
 jackanapes.' 
 
 ' You were very much obliged to the 
 jackanapes, no doubt,' said the baronet, 
 showing his white teeth. 
 
 ' I hate the curly-haired, dandy chap, 
 with his gentleman airs, as I hate poison !' 
 growled Rufus ; 'but that's neither here 
 nor there. I only spoke to say what a 
 calling it is for a man who has seen better
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 125 
 
 days. Well, Sir R., our captain, as we 
 jet-hunters call him, has a house in Beck- 
 clale, parish of Woodburn, near Dane- 
 borough, and that part of the coast, being 
 rich in jet, and as well-known to old 
 Obadiah as his farmyard is to any farmer, 
 has come to be in a sense our head- 
 quarters. Now-^-you see I am open with 
 you, Sir R. — in Wooclburn parish, ay, and 
 in Woodburn Parsonage, lives the young 
 lady whom I should like to see as Lady 
 Shirley.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! may I ask her name ?' demand- 
 ed Sir Robert. 
 
 ' Her name, Sir R.,' returned the man,, 
 grudgingly, but with emphasis, ' is Violet 
 — Violet by name, I should say, and by 
 nature, for she is a timid, pretty young 
 lady, nineteen years of age, and knows no- 
 thing of the world's ways, and just as little
 
 126 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BABT. 
 
 of the fact that she's a great heiress.' 
 ' Upon my word,' said the baronet, 
 coolly, l you have traced a very charming 
 portrait of rural loveliness and simplicity. 
 What is the name of this wood-nymph ? 
 — Nereid, rather, as a dweller on the soli- 
 tary sea-coast — and what the amount of 
 the fortune which she has unconsciously 
 the power to bestow ?' 
 
 ' The fortune,' replied Rufus, slowly, and 
 fixing his small keen eyes upon the white 
 impassive face of his aristocratic host, c was 
 at the first seventy thousand pounds. It 
 must be a goodish bit more by this, roll- 
 ing up as it has been for years. Think, 
 Sir R., what such a heap of ready cash 
 would be to you.' 
 
 There came a flash into Sir Robert's 
 sleepy dark eyes, and his whole counte- 
 nance seemed to brighten.
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 127 
 
 ' Sure of the sum-total, Crouch ?' he 
 asked, eagerly. 
 
 The fellow nodded. 
 
 ' Now for her surname, then T inquired 
 the baronet — 'though if she were Snooks 
 or Snio-o's I could condone it, double-gilded 
 
 OO ' t" 
 
 as it would be by such a dower — if only 
 there's no mistake as to the money.' 
 
 'No, Sir R.,' interrupted the ex-gold- 
 digger, arum v. 'And there's just as little 
 mistake as to the young lady that owns it. 
 Miss Violet Mowbray is her name, and 
 from all I hear the Mowbrays are as good 
 as even the Shirleys, so far as pedigree 
 goes. This young girl is an orphan. Her 
 father was an officer that died in India. 
 Her mother died there too. She has a 
 small income, and her guardian, a tough 
 old City bachelor, arranged for her to re- 
 side with his own niece, our parson's wife,
 
 128 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 Mrs. Langton. She has grown up in that 
 quiet nook, and knows no more of the 
 thumping sum she is entitled to than 
 I do whether it will freeze or thaw next 
 Christmas.' 
 
 4 How do you know of it, Rufus ?' asked 
 the baronet. ' Some will, eh, that formed 
 part of your spoil on leaving your former 
 employers ?' 
 
 ' Not a will,' answered Crouch, with a 
 wink. ' Wills may be revoked and codicils 
 added ; but this is a snugger sort of thing. 
 This is a trust-deed. But that is about all 
 I have to tell gratis, Sir R. Shirley, 
 Baronet.' 
 
 And, indeed, nothing more by the most 
 skilful diplomacy could be extracted from 
 Rufus. He certainly had not brought the 
 valuable document with him, nor would 
 he give any further information as to its
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 129 
 
 contents until a bargain had been struck, 
 and his own recompense or share agreed 
 to. Nor would he, on that occasion, name 
 his price — that was a matter for future 
 consideration. What he desired to know 
 was whether Sir Robert would ' come into 
 it ' heart and soul, and take immediate 
 steps to bring the scheme to a successful 
 conclusion. Sir Robert was ready enough 
 to lend his aid, but he demurred to 
 taking what he called ' a leap in the 
 dark.' 
 
 1 1 don't ask you to marry, Sir R.,' said 
 the former confidential clerk of Lawyer 
 Bowman, at last, ' without better security 
 than my bare word that the bride's little 
 hand is weighted with much gold. But 
 then, suppose she shouldn't fancy you ? 
 Or suppose something should happen? 
 We all know the proverb about the cup 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and the lip. My interest and yours, 
 though, go in the same groove. And what 
 I advise is, come down to Yorkshire and 
 judge for yourself.' 
 
 ' Perhaps it would be better so,' return- 
 ed the baronet, slowly ; ' though to leave 
 London in the full season is a sacrifice, of 
 course. When first you spoke of Dane- 
 borough, Woodburn, and so forth, I recol- 
 lected a dreary old place of my father's in 
 those parts that I haven't seen since I was 
 a boy, and never thought to see again — 
 Helston, they call it. The house has been 
 shut up for years, but it belongs to me 
 after all, and it lies, I remember, just 
 about the upper end of Beckdale, and four 
 miles from the sea. I miffht 20 down 
 there, if this prize of yours be really worth 
 the winning.' 
 
 ' You never did a wiser thing in your
 
 THE TRUST-DEEDS. 131 
 
 life, Sir R., rely on it, than following up 
 the golden clue that I have put into your 
 hands,' said Rufus Crouch, picking up his 
 hat and rising from his seat. ' So good- 
 bye for the present, Sir R. Shirley, Baronet. 
 Our next talk, with your leave, had better 
 be in Yorkshire. No need to write to me. 
 News flies fast in a country-side, and when 
 you come to Helston I'm certain to hear 
 of it. Meanwhile, your humble servant.' 
 
 And, with no more formal leave-taking, 
 the ill-assorted confederates parted. 
 
 k2
 
 32 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 
 
 ' Strike work !' shouted a powerful voice. 
 ' Gold is better than silver, and light than 
 dark, and Gospel truth than vain imagin- 
 ings. Down with shovel and bar and pick ; 
 down with spade and basket, lads and 
 lasses, and give thanks, old and young, 
 for the plenteous harvest of this day. For 
 a harvest it is, full measure and heaped 
 up, and ready to be garnered, that lies 
 ready to your hand.' 
 
 It was Obadiah Jedson who spoke, and
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 133 
 
 a picturesque figure did the aged captain 
 of jet-hunters present, as he suddenly 
 appeared standing on a flat-topped rock, 
 the highest of a rugged reef of storm- 
 beaten stones, at the foot of which some 
 fifteen members of his company were busy 
 at their usual toil on the sea-beach. Years 
 had not bowed the gigantic fi 2*ur<j of 
 Obadiah Jedson. and the long. thin, grey 
 locks that streamed from under his broad- 
 brimmed hat only served to add to the 
 impressiveness of his aspect. There he 
 stood, in his coarse, working garb, tower- 
 ing aloft, and bearing himself with a 
 dignity that was perhaps not wholly un- 
 studied. Beside him stood Don. It was 
 a bright June morning, and the hour so 
 early a one that the glorious summer 
 sunrise was not as yet an accomplished 
 fact, and the golden rays vet flecked and
 
 1U 
 
 SIR HUBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 kissed with tremulous light the dancing 
 azure of the sea. Inland the green corn 
 waved in billowy masses before the gentle 
 breeze, and the lark soared high above the 
 rising downs, straining its little throat as 
 it poured forth its world-old carol of hope 
 and joy. There were streaks of lilac and 
 rose-pink that clung to hazy cloud-threads 
 in the dappled sky. The jet-seekers, some 
 straggling, others collected in a group, 
 with upturned faces, looked towards their 
 captain, as if waiting to hear more. 
 
 Time had confirmed, instead of lessen- 
 ed the influence of Captain Jedson over 
 those who co-operated with him in his 
 strange industry. The average muster- 
 roll of the jet- hunters' company may have 
 been shorter than of old, but that was 
 because new openings and fresh careers 
 allured away the recruits who would once
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 135 
 
 have thrown in their lot with the explorers 
 of the sea-shore. Jet, like other commodi- 
 ties, fluctuates in its market price on 
 account of the caprices of fashion. Some- 
 times, in the years which had followed that 
 memorable day on which the foundling of 
 gentle birth, who was still known as Don, 
 and Don alone, had been met with on the 
 lone sea-beach, the value of jet had sunk 
 so low that few except Captain Obadiah's 
 company, sorely shrunken in numbers^ 
 went on pursuing so unprofitable a trade. 
 Then there came, perhaps from abroad, a 
 sudden and imperative demand that far 
 exceeded all possible sources of supply. 
 Jet was wanted for everything, from a 
 shoe-buckle to a rosary-bead. The dresses 
 of Parisian great ladies were incomplete 
 unless trimmed with sprays and festoons 
 cf jet, while brooches, crosses, fans, and
 
 136 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ? 
 
 bracelets had to be manufactured in hot 
 haste, as fast as English dealers could 
 export the raw material. These, of course, 
 were palmy days for the veterans of the 
 coast. 
 
 It was not merely because Obadiah 
 Jedson knew his trade, nor was it only 
 because he was an upright man, as to 
 whose integrity even Rufus Crouch, one 
 of the newest, and certainly the most 
 cantankerous of the company, would not 
 have dared to cavil, that the gaunt old 
 chieftain was reverenced. There had 
 grown up a legend, which was more or 
 less implicitly believed in by those who 
 followed him, to the effect that Captain 
 Obadiah's long good fortune was due to 
 supernatural aid. It was not merely that 
 he had never been driven, like others, to 
 abandon his career under the sharp pinch
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 137 
 
 of poverty, and was reputed to have actu- 
 ally saved money ; but then, his escapes 
 from mortal peril had been so frequent, 
 and his prudence had availed to save so 
 many times the lives of those under his 
 orders, that the captain was less honoured 
 for the prizes he had won than for the 
 dangers he had eluded. It is a hard 
 business, that of the jet-hunter. 
 
 Perhaps one reason for Obadiah's re- 
 markable personal influence over others 
 was that, often and weightily as he spoke, 
 he was a reticent man, who would brook 
 neither jest nor questioning. That he 
 had once been a teacher in a school, and, 
 subsequently, an engineer in a great 
 silver-mine in South America, was known. 
 He was, therefore, superior in education 
 and experience to those whom he led, 
 but not so superior as to be cut off by
 
 138 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 a gulf of taste rather than knowledge 
 from the untutored beings around him. 
 That he was a religious man, as well as 
 an honest one, none could doubt. He 
 would sit for hours under the lee of a 
 rock, turning the pages of the little Bible 
 that was his constant companion, and 
 sometimes he said a word or two in 
 public that made more impression on the 
 hearers than most sermons did, but he 
 never preached, as some north countiy 
 laymen with deep religious convictions 
 are wont to do. 
 
 ' What is it, captain ?' asked one of the 
 elder men, after a pause. ' Aught of good 
 luck would be welcome here, for not a 
 poor half-crown's worth ' 
 
 4 Peace, Hiram Young !' interrupted the 
 captain, with some sternness, as he lifted 
 his bony hand. ' If there be a heathen
 
 THE JET-HUNTEKS. 139 
 
 word in our English speech, a word I 
 hate, it is that word " luck," which comes 
 ever so readily to your lips, mates. If 
 there be a word to bring with it con- 
 fusion to the boastful user .thereof, it is- 
 that pagan name for a pagan fancy. What 
 is written is written, ay, with pens of 
 flame and ink imperishable, and on a 
 scroll that shall last while time shall en- 
 dure. And what is written is the tiling 
 that shall be, the thing that had been 
 settled before the foundations of the world 
 were laid. Enough. Lads and lasses,, 
 ye remember my dream — the dream that 
 on Thursday last I told you of?' 
 
 'We do!'— 'We do!'— 'Yes, captain !' 
 —'Yes, Obadiah!'— 'Well we mind it!' 
 Such were the eager replies. 
 
 It is very probable that few or none 
 of the hearers, save Don, fully compre-
 
 140 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 hended the drift of their leader's dis- 
 course ; yet they were impressed by it, 
 just as a peasant woman abroad, who 
 cannot understand the Latin of the De 
 Profundis, trembles with reverential awe 
 as she listens to the thunder of the deep- 
 toned chant. But all remembered their 
 captain's dream, and all felt a thrill of 
 superstitious hope, the rather that Oba- 
 diah, like Cromwell, rarely spoke with 
 confidence unless there was something of 
 solid certainty to underlie his words. 
 
 'A black tree, was it not, of which I 
 told you?' demanded Obadiah, looking 
 around him frowningly, as if to challenge 
 a sceptic, ' Ay, black as the Black Rood 
 of Jeddart, beyond Tweed, or as the swart 
 timbers of the Maiden of Halifax, that 
 grim engine of earthly punishment, be- 
 neath the gleaming sword-blade of which
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 141 
 
 many an outlawed head has Mien in our 
 forefathers' time. Yes, a black tree. But 
 fowls roosted in its branches, and bees 
 hummed pleasantly among the flowers, 
 that encircled its trunk, and corn and 
 wine and oil were stacked in plenty at 
 its foot. The black tree was the type of 
 abundance. And lo ! the dream is ful- 
 filled. Last night, two miles from here, 
 in Dutchman's Bay, there was a landslip,, 
 which has laid bare black traces that a 
 boy's inexperienced eye might read as 
 pointing to a mine — a jet-pocket, where 
 lies a buried tree not seen by mortal eye 
 since England was a kingdom. The dream 
 has come true. Quick to gather in the 
 fruits of it.' 
 
 ' Hurrah !' The cheering broke out 
 irrepressibly, the shrill voices of the wo- 
 men and girls blending with the deeper
 
 142 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 shout of the men. And then tools and 
 baskets were picked up in a hurry, and 
 there was a prompt movement in the 
 direction of Dutchman's Bay, which lay 
 somewhat to the south of the lower ex- 
 tremity of Beckdale, just as the Soldiers' 
 Slouch was at a short distance towards 
 the north. But Obadiah was no mere 
 dreamer of dreams, no mere herald of 
 good tidings ; he was a consummate cap- 
 tain, who understood organisation and 
 the value of discipline. 
 
 ' No hurry, there ! no rushing, com- 
 rades !' he calls out, in a voice which 
 all present had learned to obey. 'The 
 traces yon turn cliffwards, and the cliff 
 at Dutchman's Bay, as ye ought to know, 
 is crumbly and bad to work. It's not 
 that ye may dig your own graves that 
 I called you. Six of you— -six that are
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 143 
 
 young and strong — go with Don, here, 
 to fetch the wooden props that are ranged 
 in the outhouse of my little place up 
 dale ; they will be enough for the present. 
 But, unless my old eyes play me false, or 
 fifty years have not taught me my trade, 
 there'll he many a tough young ash-tree 
 to buy and to cut before we get at the 
 heart of the black jet-tree that lies under 
 ten thousand tons of sand-cliff. Say no- 
 thing, if ye meet with idlers on your 
 way. The more sharers, the less to share !' 
 Dutchman's Bay — so called, probably, 
 on account of some eighteenth or seven- 
 teenth century tradition of foreign smug- 
 glers — was a long, narrow gulf, with 
 beetling cliffs, in the soft sandstone of 
 which many sea-fowl made their nests and 
 reared their young. During the night a 
 landslip on an extensive scale had taken
 
 144 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 place, as Obadiali's practised eye had 
 quickly perceived, for the beach was 
 strewn with heaps and mounds of rubbish, 
 while here and there glinted in the sun a 
 fragment of some thin g black and shining 
 like bottle-glass, at sight of which a fresh 
 cheer was set up. Seldom indeed did the 
 opening up of a new vein of the precious 
 fossil promise so well. There was a 
 general rush, and many chips and some 
 lumps of the freshly-exposed jet were 
 picked up, while there was a babble of 
 voices. 
 
 ' It's wonderful !' — ' It's Obadiali's dream, 
 indeed!' — 'We'll all be rich, rich as Jews !' 
 — ' I wouldn't take fifty gold sovereigns 
 for my share, I know !' — ' What a go this 
 is !' — ' Nobody like our captain T 
 
 Such were some of the exclamations of 
 the sanguine and admiring. Obadiah
 
 THE JET-HUNTEKS. 145 
 
 himself was mute. He was a more experi- 
 enced jet-seeker and a more educated man 
 than any there, and he had seen from the 
 first that the lie of the tree, some buried 
 pine of untold ages ago, was towards the 
 cliff. The fragments that peeped from the 
 rubbish- heaps or sparkled on the beach 
 were but broken bits of the fossil conifer, 
 laid to rest in some remote geological 
 epoch beneath the sand and marl of the 
 shifting coast-line. He looked on, then, 
 indulgently as the younger members of 
 his band scrambled excitedly for black 
 flakes and nodules amidst the debris of 
 the landslip, and waited to commence 
 serious operations until Don and the party 
 of volunteers under his orders should 
 arrive with the ashen props, without 
 which it would be suicidal rashness to 
 attack the main fortress of the cliff-wall. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 Presently Don and his party arrived, 
 laden with the short, tough pillars of 
 tenacious wood which Obadiah Jedson's 
 prudence had provided, and the assault on 
 Nature's fortress was commenced with a 
 will. Gradually the rumour spread to 
 cottage, and farmstead, and fisher's hut 
 along the sea-shore that the jet-hunters 
 had hit upon an extraordinary mine, or 
 technically, ' pocket,' of the valuable 
 material for which they passed their lives 
 in searching, and that such a yield was 
 forthcoming as, in the memory of man, 
 the Yorkshire sea-coast had never known. 
 By-and-by, exaggerated rumours were 
 current as to the success of the explorers. 
 They had gleaned five hundred pounds' 
 worth, it was reported, before dinner-time, 
 the early dinner-hour of country-bred 
 toilers. They were picking up jet in
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 147 
 
 lumps like those of Newcastle coal, and at 
 a rate that would cheapen the value of it 
 in Whitby and Scarborough for twenty 
 years to come. They had been offered by 
 a DaneborouP'h tradesman a thousand 
 pounds for their venture, and they had 
 refused it — all of which was eminently 
 fictitious. 
 
 The higher the social rank, the more 
 slowly does gossip permeate towards the 
 possessors of it. Every hind or fisherman 
 in or near Beckdale had heard of the ex- 
 ceedingly good fortune of Obadiah Jedson's 
 roving company hours before the news was 
 conveyed to Woodburn Parsonage. And 
 it was late in the afternoon when the rector 
 himself, his wife, his children, and his 
 beautiful ward, Violet Mowbray, appeared 
 on the hard, firm sea-sand of the upper 
 end of Dutchman's Bay, where a crowd 
 
 l2
 
 148 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 had collected, and where two coast-guards- 
 men were, by their lieutenant's orders, 
 present to enforce order. But though the 
 honest fellows strolled to and fro, their 
 cutlasses clanking at their sidesfc there was 
 really no occasion for their attendance. 
 Nothing could be more orderly than the 
 behaviour of the crowd. Yorkshire dales- 
 men and blue-jackets of any part of the 
 coast have an instinctive, if rude, sense of 
 justice and of the rights of property. The 
 jet-hunters had begun their hunt alone, 
 and alone they had, by the unwritten law 
 of the beach, the right to finish it, unvex- 
 ed by the claim of any interloper. At the 
 first any stray adventurer might have 
 struck in, but now an uninvited intruder 
 would have found popular opinion, and 
 perhaps lynch law, strongly against him. 
 Still more striking was the scene bv
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 149 
 
 torchlight that evening, the red smoky 
 glare of the flambeaux contrasting with 
 the pale silvery nicker of the June moon- 
 light, as the jet-hunters pushed their 
 galleries deeper and deeper into the cliff- 
 front. Still a mob of idlers hung about 
 the spot, like flies round a jar of honey. 
 But there was nothing envious, nothing un- 
 worthy, in the feelings of the lookers-on ; 
 so far as could be judged from their talk. 
 It was the jet-hunters' luck, of course — a 
 rare stroke of luck ; but then it was uni- 
 versally admitted that old Captain Jed- 
 son and his company deserved their luck, 
 and had, in fact, done much, by untiring 
 research, to earn the opportunity by which 
 they were profiting. One thing there was 
 from which the spectators appeared to 
 derive much satisfaction : Rufus Crouch 
 was not one of the busy band of jet-winners
 
 150 SIR EOBEHT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 now engaged in driving their burrows, like 
 so many rabbits in human shape, deep into 
 the cliff. Rufus Crouch was absent. It 
 must be presumed that the return Austra- 
 lian gold-digger had not conciliated the 
 good opinion of the neighbourhood, so 
 hearty was the chuckling and so sincere 
 the delight of the crowd, as the probable 
 disappointment of the travelled jet-hunter 
 was the subject of discussion. 
 
 'Not a penny of it for old Rufus!' — 
 ' Won't Crouch be mad when he hears of 
 it? — a bumptious chap like that, who even 
 argues against Captain Obadiah himself.' 
 — ' He's up in London.' — ' Ha ! ha ! ha !' 
 
 In the course of the evening Mr. Lang- 
 ton, this time alone, came down to the 
 beach, and had an opportunity of seeing 
 and speaking with the old captain of the 
 jet-seekers.
 
 THE JET-HUNTERS. 151 
 
 ' We hope to make a good business of 
 this, sir,' said Obacliah, in a low voice, 
 'though not a tithe, at best, of what 
 chattering tongues proclaim. But what I 
 should do without Don I cannot think. I 
 am getting in years, and stiff, and cannot 
 be everywhere, and that brave boy is like 
 another self to lead the way. But for 
 him, and but for me, these poor silly 
 creatures, in their hurry, would neglect 
 prop and lintel, and get a score of tons of 
 sand down on their wretched heads as the 
 reward of their thoughtlessness. But Don 
 is worth a thousand.' 
 
 Late into the night the torches burned, 
 and the work went on, until at last the 
 wearied jet-hunters desisted from their 
 task, and fell asleep around their fires of 
 wreck- wood.
 
 152 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 
 
 Some ten days, or twelve, had elapsed 
 since Rufus Crouch, ex-gold-digger and 
 present jet-hunter, called so unexpectedly 
 at the Shirley mansion in Hyde Park. 
 The morning was a bright and sunny one, 
 with but a few lazy clouds of fleecy white- 
 ness sailing across the blue sky, as the 
 Rector of Woodburn, with his family, 
 returning after a week-day service from 
 the church hard by, saw, slowly riding out 
 of the parsonage garden, a gentleman,
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 153 
 
 followed by a mounted groom. Visitors 
 in that thinly-peopled district were rare 
 and usually well-known, so that this well- 
 dressed stranger, on his black horse, attract- 
 ed some notice. Mr. Langton stepped 
 forward and bowed. The stranger lifted 
 his hat with a pleasant smile, and instantly 
 dismounted and threw the reins to his 
 groom. 
 
 ' Mr. Langton ?' he said, inquiringly. 
 1 Allow me to be my own introducer. My 
 name is Shirley — Sir Robert Shirley — a 
 neighbour of yours, since I have just 
 arrived at Helston, and I have taken the 
 liberty of coming across to call at the 
 rectory, emboldened by the fact, Mr. Lang- 
 ton, of my father's old friendship with 
 yourself. I have so often heard him speak 
 of you, and always cordially and with ex- 
 pressions of high esteem, so that I trust
 
 154 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 you will pardon my lack of ceremony/ 
 The baronet made his introductory 
 speech very well, with just the proper 
 amount of feeling expressed in his well- 
 modulated voice. 
 
 c Most happy to make your acquaintance,. 
 Sir Robert,' exclaimed Mr. Langton, 
 genuine pleasure in his eyes and tone as 
 he stretched out his hand in greeting. 
 'Yes, I knew your father, the late Sir 
 Robert, and was under no trifling obliga- 
 tions to him, as you are perhaps aware. 
 It was he who, when my health broke 
 down, presented me to the living of Wood- 
 burn here, of which you, of course, are the 
 patron, as he was. Allow me to introduce 
 you to my wife, Mrs. Langton, as the son 
 of a very old and kind friend, who will 
 always be welcome under my poor roof.' 
 So Sir Robert was made known to Mrs.
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 155 
 
 Langton and to pretty Violet Mowbray, 
 and to the olive branches of the Langton 
 family now at home — two girls and a boy, 
 in the hobby dyhoy stage of life. And Sir 
 Robert smiled and bowed, .and spoke very 
 nicely and not too much, and acted his 
 self-imposed part with consummate care and 
 skill. He had, he felt, been relieved from 
 one great danger at the first. When he 
 commenced his seemingly unstudied address 
 he had been unaware as to how much, or 
 how little, the parson of Woodburn had 
 known concerning his former relations with 
 his father. It must be confessed that when 
 the baronet alluded to laudatory expressions 
 on his papa's part concerning the Reverend 
 Samuel Langton, he was drawing boldly on 
 his imagination. The one salient fact of 
 which he was sure was the presentation to 
 the living, and that the giving of it had
 
 156 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 been a gift indeed, and no matter of barter. 
 Sir Robert himself had sold the advowson 
 privately, and could no more appoint a 
 future Rector of Woodburn than he could 
 a Dean of Westminster. But he had no 
 objection to Mr. Langton believing that 
 so much of ecclesiastical patronage yet was 
 his, and he was glad that the clergyman 
 evidently knew nothing of the coldness, the 
 quarrels, the estrangement that had existed 
 between his father and himself during the 
 latter years of his father's life. Sir Robert 
 had not been a pattern son, but he con- 
 gratulated himself that Mr. Langton was 
 unaware of this. 
 
 Then followed a hearty invitation to 
 luncheon at the parsonage. ' You must 
 break bread with us,' the rector insisted, 
 genially ; and Mrs. Langton was able to 
 second her husband's proposition, not only
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 157 
 
 graciously, but with few of those qualms 
 and doubts which are apt to beset a prudent 
 housewife when a guest of superior rank 
 and wealth is suddenly bidden to share the 
 family meal. But they kept a better- 
 supplied table at Wooclburn than is invari- 
 ably to be found in clerical homes, and 
 hence, when Sir Robert, after a faint show 
 of reluctance, allowed himself to be per- 
 suaded, his acceptance did not fill his 
 hostess with dismay. The groom and horses, 
 therefore, were sent down to the village 
 inn, while the baronet, becoming at each 
 instant more and more at home with his 
 kindly entertainers, walked on with them 
 towards the house. 
 
 ' I was almost sinful enough, Mr. Lane;- 
 ton, to covet this charming place of yours,' 
 said Sir Robert, 'when first I caught sight 
 of it. These pretty flower-beds and the
 
 158 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 .smooth lawn and the smooth paths make 
 me ashamed of the tangled wilderness that 
 they call a garden up at Helston. I hope, 
 if Mrs. Lano'ton will <nve me the benefit of 
 her kind advice, to get the grounds there 
 laid into better order soon, but for the 
 moment everything wears the aspect of 
 neglect. I hope to be a good deal in 
 Yorkshire, now.' 
 
 Mrs. Langton was a kind, homely woman, 
 simple — nay, more simple than her husband, 
 whose book-lore was not armour-proof 
 against the wiles of a worldling such as the 
 master of Shirley. She was pleased to 
 have her flowers praised, and lingered to 
 point out the merits of this or that favourite 
 rose-tree and such-and-such a bank of 
 azaleas, and had no idea that the astute 
 town-bred man was only anxious to enlist 
 her as a partisan. Violet Mowbray said
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 159 
 
 never a word. She looked shy, more timid 
 even than was usual with her; nor did Sir 
 Robert's eyes dwell upon her beautiful 
 young face. There were two things against 
 which he was especially on his guard. The 
 first of these was to avoid the character of 
 a London dandy and fine gentleman, such 
 personages being in rustic neighbourhoods 
 reputed cynical, selfish, and, worst of all, 
 satirical. Secondly, the baronet wished to 
 give no inkling that Miss Mowbray's 
 attractions had been the magnet that had 
 drawn him to the humble Parsonage of 
 Woodburn. Wherefore he scarcely turned 
 his glance towards her at all, seeming to 
 regard her, as he did gawky Maud and 
 Julia and their stripling brother John, as 
 a mere adjunct to the more important 
 elders of the household. 
 
 'You seldom visit London, I believe, Mr.
 
 160 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 Langton?' asked Sir Robert, when they 
 were all seated at table. 
 
 'Very seldom indeed; I may more truth- 
 fully say, never,' replied the rector, as a 
 momentary expression of pain passed across 
 his face at the recollection of hopes long 
 since frustrated, and honours, which once 
 seemed almost within his grasp, relinquished. 
 'Nor do I keep up an active correspondence 
 with such of my former, friends as are still 
 in the busy world. My letters would only 
 bore them, and theirs could hardly be of 
 profound interest to me. They are in the 
 arena yet, while I have long ago renounced 
 my chance of a crown, whether of palm or 
 laurel. No, Sir Robert, I am a country 
 clergyman, and my cares are bounded by 
 the narrow limits of my parish.' 
 
 Again the visitor felt a thrill of gratifi- 
 cation. There are still parsons as parson-
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 161 
 
 like and as secluded from metropolitan 
 tittle-tattle as was Goldsmith's ' Vicar of 
 Wakefield.' And there are others who are 
 proud of the clubs they belong to, the fre- 
 quency of their trips to town, and on being 
 well posted up in metropolitan gossip. 
 Now, Sir Robert's name was one that, 
 without being actually infamous, was, at 
 any rate, not in the very best odour. 
 Nothing had been proved against him ; 
 certainly not. But then, that social verdict 
 of ' Not Proven ' is a darkling shadow that 
 dogs a man's steps, and is not to be shaken 
 off. The baronet was very glad to find 
 that his hospitable acquaintance had never 
 heard of his dubious reputation among the 
 denizens of Pall Mall. 
 
 In the meantime, the ripening of the new 
 acquaintance into friendship, or, at any 
 rate, into that vague stage of liking which 
 
 VOL I M
 
 162 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 precedes friendship, went swimmingly on. 
 Sir Robert was, what very few fashionable 
 men of our day are, a conversationalist, a 
 talker who knew how to practise a lost art, 
 and to relieve the monotony of ordinary 
 intercourse by providing a higher species 
 of intellectual entertainment than the mere 
 interchange of short statements as to facts. 
 There never were, at any one time, since 
 the days when the wits tapped their gold 
 snuff-boxes in Wills's Coffee-house, many 
 talkers of the male sex, but their words 
 were usually worth the trouble of listening 
 to, and they had a strange power of riveting 
 their audience. The lord of Shirley was 
 not merely fluent and graphic in his dis- 
 course, but skilled in his choice of topics. 
 He had travelled and had read, and had 
 the knack of using his literary stores so 
 as to eke out his personal reminiscences
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 163 
 
 cleverly enough, but without a dash of 
 pedantry. The rector was pleased with a 
 guest who had the grace to say so little of 
 the London from which he was himself 
 practically excluded, and so much of 
 Damascus, Sicily, Florence, Egypt, the 
 Engadine. It was not Mr. Langton's fault 
 that he had not had time to make acquaint- 
 ance with Pharpar, and Abana, and the 
 Lake of the Meadows, of the glorious city 
 that Khaled and his half-clad Moslems 
 conquered, or with the Golden Shell of 
 orange-bowered Palermo, or with solemn 
 Egypt. Florence, and Milan, and Venice, 
 and Switzerland he had seen, but he knew 
 them better from books than by actual 
 experience. And then Sir Robert talked 
 about all these places in so well-bred a way, 
 with such deference towards Mr. Langton's 
 
 well-known scholarship, and put forward 
 
 M 2
 
 164 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 his own opinions as to Saracenic architecture, 
 Greeks. Turks, and Arabs, in so modest and 
 tentative a fashion, that his clerical enter- 
 tainer never dreamed that he was being 
 ' drawn out,' as the phrase is, and tempted 
 to ride his own hobbies as he listed. 
 
 Mrs. Langton also was much predisposed 
 in the favour of her titled visitor. She had 
 suffered much, as country-folks do suffer 
 much, under the infliction of the company 
 of those who have little to sav for them- 
 selves, and wdiose little is so stale by dint 
 of frequent repetition. The neighbouring 
 clergy, the two or three gentlemen of in- 
 dependent means who lived within hail, 
 the doctor of the union, and the officer of 
 the coastguard, were all excellent persons, 
 but quite the reverse of amusing. Sir 
 \ Robert was a bird of much brighter 
 plumage than any that harboured near
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. J 65 
 
 Woodburn, and, once that he found himself 
 accepted at his own valuation, he did his 
 very best that his singing should please the 
 ears and tickle the imagination of his 
 auditors. Then he talked of Helston, and 
 of his own design to live there, to render 
 the neglected old place trim and orderly, 
 and to cultivate neighbourly relations with 
 those who had formerly been known to 
 himself or his father. 
 
 ' Yorkshire visiting, I believe, Mrs. 
 Langton,' he said/cheerily, 'was once limited 
 only by the number of miles to which our 
 forefathers' carriage-horses could be induced 
 to drag the clumsy old coaches in which 
 our grandmothers were content to jolt 
 along ; and, if we live in less heroic times, 
 at any rate I hope to see something of 
 friends within a moderate compass.' 
 
 And then he said something as to a
 
 166 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 notion that had struck him as to the feasi- 
 bility of a garden party or gipsy picnic in 
 the Helston grounds, which, if ill kept, were 
 rocky and romantic. 'I should like to try 
 it,' he said, ' if only I could get any ladies 
 to accept the awkward hospitalit}' of a 
 blundering bachelor like myself. I thought 
 so directly I saw the place.' 
 
 Luncheon was over. The fernery, the 
 tiny hot-house, the exquisite peeps at the 
 sea which, through overhanging ivy-tangles 
 and festoons of noisette roses, the different 
 windows afforded, had been one and all 
 exhibited and admired. Even the albums 
 of photographs and rare sea- weed on the 
 drawing-room tables had been surveyed. 
 John Langton's toy ship, a model schooner,, 
 four feet long, of the construction and 
 rigging of which the boy was very proud,
 
 SIR ROBERT INTRODUCES HIMSELF. 167 
 
 though frank enough to own how much 
 assistance he had received from ' Mr. Don/ 
 was next shown. 'I should never have 
 got her so taut and smart by myself,' said 
 the youngster ; ' but then, Don is such a 
 fine fellow !' 
 
 'And who is Mr. Don? A Spanish sailor, 
 I presume, or possibly a Neapolitan, since 
 they use the Spanish title there ?' asked Sir 
 Robert, trying not to yawn. 
 
 Mr. Langton took it upon himself to 
 answer. ' It is difficult, ' he said, with a 
 smile, ' to say what Mr. Don is, and what 
 he is not. I never had a pupil to match 
 him. He is the handsomest lad from here 
 to Sunderland, and about the boldest. He 
 is only a jet-hunter, living by a precarious 
 industry peculiar to our sea-coast, but out 
 of a crowd you would at once select him
 
 168 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 as a gentleman, though whence he came or 
 what was the rank of his parents, no one 
 knows. A fine fellow, Don !' 
 
 ' I am sure of it,' returned Sir Robert, 
 with every appearance of interest. Then 
 the baronet's groom and horses came round 
 to the door, and there was a hearty leave- 
 taking, with pledges of future friendship, 
 and the visitor rode oif gracefully towards 
 his lonely home at Helston. More than 
 once during the ride Sir Robert showed 
 his white teeth with a triumphant air. 
 
 'A good beginning,' he muttered. 'I 
 saw the girl's eves glisten more than once 
 
 O J O 
 
 as I spoke of the East and of sunny Italy. 
 If I can touch her youthful fancy and it is 
 all right about the money, why, then !' — 
 and he rode on.
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 
 
 In Dutchman's Bay, the work which had 
 been begun some four or five daj^s before 
 went steadily on, thanks to the authority 
 which Obadiah Jedson was able to exercise 
 over the members of his band. There was 
 no necessity, as in some branches of in- 
 dustry, to stimulate laggards by reproaches 
 or threats. The real difficulty was to in- 
 sure that the labour should not be pressed 
 on without regard to the safety of those 
 who performed it. As it was, men, women,
 
 170 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and boys worked feverishly, almost fierce- 
 ly, overtasking their strength when allow- 
 ed, and reluctantly giving rip the turn of 
 duty to a less weary comrade. The 
 imaginations of the jet-seekers were all 
 aflame, so promising were the signs, and 
 so hopeful appeared to be the enterprise in 
 which they were engaged. ' This should 
 be more than a pocket — this be a mine, 
 sure !' was a not infrequent remark among 
 them as they snatched their hasty meals. 
 Now, a ' pocket,' or deposit of jet, is what 
 the seeker expects, unless singularly un- 
 lucky or raw to the trade, to hit upon in 
 the course of each summer campaign. 
 But a mine of the black fossil is now so 
 rare, so much more seldom found than in 
 the earlier years of the eighteenth century, 
 that it may be truly said to exist only in 
 tradition.
 
 IS THE SQUAEE CHAMBER. 171 
 
 No ; there are in England, the natural 
 home cf jet, no available jet-mines, nothing 
 to match with the amber-mines of 
 Pomerania and other North German pro- 
 vinces ; precious properties, that are by 
 no means open to all comers, but which 
 form the best farms on the estate of some 
 needy, haughty Count or Frei Herr of 
 Prussia, who has to provide the portion of 
 the young baronesses or countesses, his 
 daughters, and the army allowances of the 
 young counts or barons, his sons, out of 
 the yellow yield of his carefully husbanded 
 amber-diggings amid the sand-hills of the 
 sea-shore. But, if there are now in England 
 no actual mines of jet, there are legends 
 of such mines lon£ ago, and of fortunate 
 jet-hunters who became burgesses and 
 aldermen of their towns, and married 
 mayors' daughters, and lived and died and
 
 172 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 were buried anions the worshipful of the 
 snug old unreformed civic corporations, all 
 on account of the heaps of glistening jet 
 which their soades had won. In such 
 stories there was nothing heroic, nothing 
 sublime, but much that suggested promo- 
 tion, comfort, gratified vanity, and social 
 success. And here was, possibly, that El 
 Dorado of the jet-seekers, a real mine of 
 the precious black stuff, just about to be 
 brought to light for the emolument of the 
 finders. 
 
 How they worked, these roving explor- 
 ers of the seashore ! Nothing, with some 
 natures, so braces up the nerves for toil as 
 the notion that the labour, extravagantly 
 hard for the moment though it be, is to do 
 away for ever with the hated necessity of 
 earning daily bread. This it is that makes 
 the diamond-seekers of Kimberley and
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 173 
 
 Dutoit's Pan, under the hot sun of South 
 Africa, work as never men worked before, 
 save under pressure of the slave-driver's 
 cruel lash, outworking even the miners of 
 golden California and auriferous Australia, 
 because each hopes to be the Sinbad who 
 shall win the great prizes in the Valley of 
 Diamonds, and so go home a capitalist, and 
 work no more. In Dutchman's Bay, on 
 a small scale, the same spirit was rife. 
 
 The grim, gaunt captain had need of all 
 the prestige that clung to him, to keep his 
 band from proceedings that would have 
 been little short of sheer suicide. But for 
 him the cliff would already have been 
 pierced by half-a-score of tunnels — narrow, 
 low, and unpropped as to the crumbling 
 roofs — mere graves, into which the eager 
 diners of them would have crowded reck- 
 lessly, careless as to whether the acci-
 
 174 SIR 110BERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 dental removal of a stone might not have 
 brought down the crushing weight of tons 
 of sand to fill the cavity and bury its 
 occupants. As it was, old Obadiah Jedson, 
 aided by Don, had contrived to restrict the 
 excavation to three parallel galleries of 
 reasonable height, and the roofs of which 
 were made comparatively secure by ashen 
 props, and, at intervals, by stout wooden 
 lintels spanning the passages. There was 
 also a square chamber, or central hall, to- 
 wards which the galleries converged, and 
 which was of use as helping to keep up a 
 supply of air, communicating as it. did by 
 a comparatively short corridor with the 
 adit, or outer entrance of the mine. 
 
 Rufus Crouch had returned to Wood- 
 burn, and had readily been received as a 
 partner in the enterprise, as had also six 
 or seven other absent jet-hunters, who
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 175 
 
 had come hurrying back from the north 
 at the first tidings of the good fortune of 
 their comrades. And, after some demur, 
 sundry volunteers, who were not regular or 
 occasional members of the jet-seekers' com- 
 pany, had been permitted to become 
 sharers in the work in hand and in the 
 ultimate profits. Full-grown men of good 
 character, and whose hardened muscles 
 might be counted on to endure the strain, 
 were alone accepted by Captain Jedson, who 
 was inexorable in rejecting the offers of the 
 eager-eyed striplings and girls who had 
 hastened to the mouth of the mine. ' No, 
 no,' the old man would say kindly, but in 
 a tone that brooked no remonstrance ; 
 i this is a job for the strong to win through. 
 Bovs and lasses are best out of it.' And, 
 indeed, the younger and feebler of the jet- 
 seekers were often seen to crawl, gasping,
 
 176 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and with white faces and haggard eyes, out 
 into the free air, utterly overcome by the 
 heat, the vitiated atmosphere, and the toil 
 in a contracted space, where to stand up- 
 right was impossible. 
 
 In the evening of the fifth day since the 
 commencement of the mining operations, 
 the rector and his family strolled along the 
 beach to the Dutchman's Bay, accompanied 
 by Sir Robert Shirley. The accomplished 
 baronet had by this time succeeded in es- 
 tablishing something like intimacy between 
 himself and the inmates of Woodburn 
 Parsonage. Mr. Langton had been prompt 
 in returning the visit of the son of his 
 former patron, and Sir Robert had willing- 
 ly accepted his invitation to partake of 
 tea and strawberries on that balmy sum- 
 mer's evening which witnessed the expedi- 
 tion to the jet-mine.
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 177 
 
 ' I clon't feel in the least alarmed,' the 
 baronet had said laughingly, as they ram- 
 bled along the shore towards Dutchman's 
 Bay, in answer to Mrs. Langton's mention 
 of the excessive heat of the cave. c It is 
 difficult to believe that anything can more 
 accurately reproduce the Black Hole of 
 Calcutta than some London drawing-rooms 
 in the height of the season ; and as for a 
 possible avalanche of earth and stones — 
 well, the very suddenness of such a cata- 
 strophe would leave no time for fear. And 
 I really am much interested in these re- 
 markable parishioners of yours, Mr. Lang- 
 ton. I know nothing about jet, except 
 that I have seen brooches and shirt-studs 
 of it in jewellers' windows, so that the 
 whole thing is delightfully new to me.' 
 
 ' I can scarcely claim the jet-hunters' 
 company as members of my flock,' an- 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY. BART. 
 
 swered Mr. Langton. i Their captain, old 
 Obadiah Jedson, with whom I have the 
 privilege of being acquainted, and who 
 has a house at the lower end of Beckdale, 
 is indeed a sort of parishioner of mine, al- 
 though he goes to church and chapel quite 
 impartially, and holds, as I fancy, wild and 
 mystical ideas on matters of religion. Yes, 
 Obadiah is a very worthy man ; nor do I 
 know any harm, but rather good, of those 
 who compose his gang. His young 
 lieutenant, Don — whose name, Sir Robert, 
 I think I have mentioned to you before — 
 is an especial favourite with me and with 
 all of us. I wonder, if you see him to- 
 night, how he will impress you.' 
 
 ' Favourably I feel convinced,' smoothly 
 returned Sir Robert. ' I never did see a 
 village genius myself, but I can imagine 
 that this swan of yours is a genuine cygnet,
 
 IN THE SQUAEE CHAMBER. 179 
 
 and no bird of meaner plumage. But we 
 have arrived, I conclude, for yonder is the 
 hole in the cliff, with rubbish-mounds all 
 around it, and people swarming near like 
 ants about an ant-hill. Very, ant-like, too, 
 are these basket-bearers whom I see com- 
 ing out, each with his load. And what is 
 that which twinkles and glows through the 
 darkness, like a red star?' 
 
 It was Violet Mowbray to whom the 
 question was addressed, and she made 
 answer shyly. 
 
 'It's a torch, I think, which is kept 
 always burning in the square chamber, 
 as they call it, of the mine. We saw it 
 yesterday.' 
 
 At the very mouth of the mine the party 
 of visitors encountered a miner coming out, 
 who shaded his eyes with his broad hand, 
 and peered out into the twilight. A red- 
 
 n 2
 
 1 80 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 bearded man this, brawny of limb and 
 awkward of gait, and whose hairy face was 
 dark with heat and toil. 'Where are 
 those ash plants ? Not come, eh ? The 
 lazy hound that sold them promised to 
 cart them here before sundown ; and if I 
 
 were captain ' Here his restless eyes 
 
 lit on Sir Robert Shirley's impassive face, 
 and, with a growl like that of a bear dis- 
 turbed in his lair, he made a half-sheepish, 
 half-sullen attempt at a salute, and sham- 
 bledaway. Nothingin the baronet's attitude 
 or demeanour would have told that he had 
 ever seen Rufus Crouch before. 
 
 The square chamber once reached, Sir 
 Robert was compelled to admit that even 
 the atmosphere of the most crowded 
 London assembly was less trying than that 
 of this, the central hall, without which the 
 narrow passages could not have been ten
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 181 
 
 able for more than a few minutes at a 
 time. Here, by the gleam of the blazing 
 torches, they were shown the jet that had 
 been already won — how few and poor did 
 the few han df uls of black lumps and chips, 
 lying at the bottom of a small box of 
 common deal, appear in comparison with 
 the almost frantic toil that was going on ! 
 Obadiah Jeclson, his lofty head almost 
 touching the irregular roof of the cavern, 
 and grimly picturesque of garb and mien, 
 received his visitors with solemn politeness 
 as he stood there, torch in hand. 
 
 ' You are right, sir,' he said, in answer to 
 Mr. Langton ; 'it is as hot even here as I have 
 ever known it in Brazil. But this is cool, 
 to the galleries. Yet they bear it with 
 wonderful courage and endurance, our 
 mates, and never leave their labour, as you 
 see, till they are absolutely compelled to
 
 182 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 breathe the purer air.' And at this 
 moment, from the middle passage, there 
 emerged the figure of a young miner, 
 feebly dragging himself along on hands 
 and knees, and who sank fainting on the 
 floor the instant that the more spacious 
 chamber was reached. 
 
 ' It's young Joe Nixon !' exclaimed old 
 Captain Obadiah, as he strode across the 
 vaulted chamber, and lifted the tall stripling 
 in his mighty arms, as a grown man might 
 lift a child. ' Poor Joe ! he's about the last 
 of our young ones to stand the murdering 
 heat of the galleries. First the boys broke 
 down, then the girls, smothered with the 
 foul air. . Joe alone held out. It's srown 
 and seasoned men, not lathy lads, should 
 face yonder heavy heat and killing air.' 
 
 ' Poor fellow !' — ' Poor boy !' exclaimed 
 Mrs. Langton and Violet Mowbray anxious-
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 183 
 
 ly, as they saw the tall young jet-seeker, 
 with his death-like pallor, and dim half-open 
 eyes, laid upon the floor, and propped 
 against the wall, while Obadiah, kneeling 
 beside him, supported his heavy head. 
 The rector, too, looked anxious, while Sir 
 Robert Shirley contemplated the unfortun- 
 ate digger as he might have done a big- 
 fish just drawn to land. There was a 
 bottle at hand, and a gulp or two of the 
 cordial it contained enabled Joe to stam- 
 mer out, ' I'm right, thank ye, captain ; 
 I feel better now. But Irish Larry is 
 pretty nigh gone, and Mr. Don and old 
 Master Peterson are getting him along.' 
 And, a minute later, the grey-haired 
 veteran, Mark Peterson, appeared, stagger- 
 ing under his share of the weight of his 
 helpless burden. Very ghastly, inert, and 
 unconscious did the stalwart young Irish-
 
 184 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 man seem as he was thus borne forth, utterly 
 overcome by the vitiated air of the mine. 
 
 4 Dr. Conkling is outside,' said somebody ; 
 i better let the doctor look to the poor chap 
 at once.' And strong arms were not lack- 
 ing to relieve those of his present bearers, 
 and to carry forth the insensible form of 
 Irish Larry to the free air of heaven and 
 the presence of the doctor. 
 
 c This is my young friend Don — Mr. Don 
 they style him, usually,' explained the 
 rector, coming forward — 'of whom, Sir 
 Robert, you have heard me speak. This 
 gentleman, Don, is Sir Robert Shirley, a 
 neighbour of ours now.' Don, flushed and 
 breathlesss, took off the sailor's cap that 
 rested on his silken curls, and somehow 
 Sir Robert Shirley felt himself constrained 
 to lift his own hat with as much of grave 
 politeness as if he had just been intro-
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 185 
 
 duced on the Pall Mall pavement to a 
 social equal. 
 
 c How came the cub to be a gentleman ?' 
 muttered the worldly baronet, behind his 
 dark moustache. A strange contrast, as 
 seen by the ruddy light of the glaring 
 torch, those two presented : the hackneyed 
 man of the world, with his darkling eyes 
 and pallid face, handsome, specious, sneer- 
 ing when it was not to his advantage to 
 keep up a character for good nature — and 
 that noble youth, so full of fire and energy 
 frankness, who now confronted him. 
 There was not a tinge of awkwardness in 
 Don's bearing, and yet nothing could be 
 more simple or more modest than his air 
 as he turned to acknowledge the greeting 
 of Mrs. Langton and her ward, and the 
 more hearty recognition of the young folks 
 from the parsonage.
 
 186 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ' I have heard a great deal of you, Mr. 
 Don, since I have been in these parts/ 
 smilingly remarked the baronet. 
 
 1 More, I fear, than I merit, Sir Robert, 
 if your information comes from my kind 
 
 ■ 
 
 friend Mr. Langton here,' answered the 
 young man ; and there was something in 
 the ring of his deep rich voice that made 
 the master of Shirley feel, for the second 
 time, as if he were face to face with his 
 equal. Sir Robert, as usual, was fashion- 
 ably attired, while Don wore the red serge 
 shirt and coarse clothes of a jet-hunter, 
 yet, somehow, the London dandy forgot 
 that the handsome lad before him was not 
 as carefully dressed as himself. Not much 
 more was said, and, indeed, the heat would 
 of itself have been reason enough for cur- 
 tailing the visitors' stay in the square 
 chamber of the mine. After a good-
 
 IN THE SQUARE CHAMBER. 187 
 
 natured word or. two from the rector and 
 his wife, they went ; but long afterwards 
 the torches continued to blaze, and the 
 work went on, relays of fresh toilers re- 
 placing those who reeled away exhausted, 
 until at last, deep in the night, there was 
 an end of labour, and the smouldering 
 bivouac fire of wreck-wood burned itself 
 out to the last ember, and all was darkness 
 and sleep.
 
 188 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 AT THORSDALE PARK. 
 
 '- But, Algernon ' 
 
 ' I will have it so ; or else I shall have to 
 obey the commonest rules of prudence : to 
 think exclusively of my own health, and 
 to act accordingly. Of course you can 
 forward my wishes, or thwart them, as you 
 please. I have not lived so long in the 
 world without being keenly alive to the 
 amount — the sickening amount — of heart- 
 less selfishness that prevails. I have no 
 right, of course, also, to expect to find
 
 AT THORSDALE PARK. 189 
 
 an exception in your ladyship's case. 
 
 But ' 
 
 c Algernon, dear Algernon ' 
 
 'But I have the right, and shall enforce 
 it, to demand consideration not merely for 
 the wishes, but for the welfare, of an ail- 
 ing and suffering — perhaps dying — hus- 
 band. I had made arrangements for a 
 protracted stay at Davos or at St. Moritz, 
 unless you choose to exert yourself, as 
 duty dictates. My health has brought me 
 to Yorkshire, as, before long, it may pro- 
 bably take me to the Upper Engadine or 
 elsewhere — I hear good reports of the 
 Rocky Mountains, and of wonderful cures 
 effected among log-cabins high up in 
 Colorado — but, if I consent to stay here, I 
 must protest against being moped to 
 death.' 
 
 This last speech, emphatically enunciat-
 
 190 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ed from amidst the downy pillows and 
 wadded wraps of his gouty chair by the 
 Right Honourable the Earl of Thorsdale, 
 did strike his perturbed countess as being 
 supremely unjust and vexatiously provok- 
 ing. Lady Thorsdale, however, could not 
 
 afford to be provoked. Her lord was in 
 very truth a lord to her. He was a 
 
 masterful invalid — a malacle miaginaire, 
 
 some said — but at any rate he believed in 
 
 himself, and in the ailments of which he 
 
 complained so querulously. 
 
 Lord Thorsdale was in many respects a 
 
 remarkable man. He was among clever 
 
 men a great noble, and among great nobles 
 
 a clever man. Once he had sat in the 
 
 House of Commons, and it was his custom 
 
 to deplore that he had come to his earldom 
 
 so early as to cut himself off from the power 
 
 and popularity that accrue only to states-
 
 AT THORSDALE PARK. 191 
 
 men who have won their spurs in the 
 stormy arena of the lower branch of the 
 Legislature. As a peer, he had found no 
 scope for his fretful activity. He had 
 made speeches which the contemptuous 
 newspapers only deigned to report in a 
 compressed form. He had moved resolu- 
 tions which came to nothing, and resisted 
 compromises which had to be carried into 
 effect. When his party came into power, 
 his party did nothing for him that he 
 considered adequate to his merits. He 
 had been Lord President of the Hanapers, 
 and he had been Chancellor of the Green 
 Wax. But the eye of the nation does not 
 rest continuously on the doings of these 
 exalted but not prominent officials, and 
 Lord Thorsdale had thrown over his 
 administrative functions in disgust. Then 
 he had quarrelled with his party, and had
 
 192 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 written pamphlets and magazine articles 
 that were skimmed over because the writer 
 was an earl, but which amused more than 
 they annoyed. 
 
 Then Lord Thorsdale tried to be a cele- 
 brity as a racing-yacht owner, famous for 
 the challenge cups he won, and an enter- 
 tainer renowned among the few London 
 dispensers of bachelor hospitality. But 
 his temper was too irritable, and his 
 insight into the minds and motives of 
 others too intuitive and too feminine to 
 permit him to attain eminence in any of 
 these paths to Fame's temple. His 
 matches yielded only average results, his 
 yacht was seldom too far astern of a win- 
 ner, and the men who hunted with his 
 hounds were as manageable as most men. 
 Yet the earl quarrelled with the boat- 
 builder and his yacht's crew, discarded the
 
 AT THORSDALE PARK. 193 
 
 skipper, and left off inviting the friends 
 who accepted his expensive hospitality. 
 Then he married, then he travelled, then 
 he became scientific, eclectic, almost revo- 
 lutionary, and ended by becoming a vehe- 
 ment valetudinarian. 
 
 Lord Thorsdale rode his present hobby 
 very hard. His wife, Constance, had been 
 a daughter of the late Sir Robert Shirley, 
 and was a sister of the reigning Sir Robert. 
 She had a hard time of it. She was hand- 
 some — most of the Shirleys had been hand- 
 some — and frivolous, and had still some 
 pretensions to take rank as a professional 
 beauty in London drawing-rooms. Nor 
 was she unfit to hold her own, had she 
 but had an ordinary husband to deal with. 
 But she was quite incompetent to resist 
 the energetic will of her earl, who carried 
 all before him by dint of a fluent discourse, 
 
 vol. i. o
 
 194 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 a resolute selfishness, and the magician's 
 wand that ready money supplies. Only 
 last June he had hurried his wife off to 
 the Engadine for two months' residence 
 among the snow-showers, cow-sheds, and 
 general discomforts of that enchanting 
 region, leaving little Lord Thirsk and little 
 Lady Flora at home. The year before 
 he had chosen to waft the entire family 
 in his steam-yacht the Hecla, first to Ice- 
 land, and later to the glacial coast of 
 Greenland itself: and what the countess 
 had endured from midges, the glare of the 
 Arctic summer sun, solitude, and the 
 terror of the Arctic icebergs and ice-floes, 
 even her lady correspondents only partially 
 knew. Now, at the end of June, this im- 
 petuous earl had abruptly rushed down to 
 Thorsdale, declaring that no place was 
 worse than London for his tormenting
 
 AT THORSDALE PARK. 195 
 
 gout ; and, once in Yorkshire, had pro- 
 claimed that it was designed to kill him by 
 mental depression and physical isolation, 
 because the big, lonely mansion did not 
 swarm with visitors. 
 
 ' But if you loill leave London so early, 
 you can't — in deed you can't — bring London 
 along with you,' pleaded the countess, half 
 crying as she spoke. 
 
 ' I don't know that!' snapped the earl 
 from among his cushions. 'There are 
 people to be had always who are sick of 
 the worry and racket of that precious 
 season which to you seems like Mecca to 
 the Moslem. And there are people, and 
 sometimes the pleasantest, who are only 
 too glad not to live at their own expense. 
 But I do not care to argue. In my state 
 of health I must consider myself, shame- 
 fully neglected as I am. Either this place 
 
 o2
 
 196 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 i 
 
 must be enlivened — and you used to like- 
 that sort of thins; — or else the sooner I 
 send for Schiiltz the courier, and pack up 
 for the Engadine, the better.' 
 
 ' But, dear Algernon, you know Sir 
 Joseph said — ' began her ladyship, attempt- 
 ing; to turn the flank of her overbearing 
 opponent. But the earl interrupted 
 her. 
 
 ' Don't, I beg of you, quote old Double- 
 fee and his utterances. I have no doubt 
 that Sir Joseph said — anything that an 
 oily-tongued old humbug, who began by 
 feeling King George's pulse, I believe, and 
 has netted more guineas than would pave 
 Regent Street, found it expedient to say. 
 I think I made a mistake about York- 
 shire. Thorsdale used to agree with me, 
 but now I am almost as ill as in Belgrave 
 Square. Perhaps I had better get Sharp
 
 AT THORSDALE PARK. 197 
 
 to write for Schultz the courier at once.' 
 Now, if the countess did hate and dread 
 one human being more than another, it 
 was Schultz the courier. To summon that 
 Teutonic sprite of travel, the idea of whom 
 was inseparably mixed up with wearisome 
 journeys, crowded hotels, and the cramped 
 accommodation of mountain health-resorts, 
 was almost too terrible. So Lady Thors- 
 dale promised to do her best to gratify her 
 earl, and to surround him in Yorkshire 
 with the society from which he had fled 
 when he abandoned London. Something, 
 no doubt, must be done. 
 
 But, although it was clear that some- 
 thing must be done, Lady Thorsdale, when 
 she retreated to the feminine stronghold of 
 her own special morning-room — 'My Lady's 
 Blue-room ' it was called by the starched 
 housekeeper and prize housemaids at
 
 198 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART, 
 
 Thorsdale — was puzzled. She was, as 
 most women of the world are, a deft and 
 untiring correspondent, a sort of constant 
 letter-writer, and she instinctively seated 
 herself before her bijou writing-table, with 
 its load of elegant stationery. Then she 
 began to think. It was high season in 
 mighty, roaring London, and it is, or was, 
 high treason against Her Imperious 
 Majesty Queen Fashion to be absent from 
 the mass of metropolitan worshippers who 
 crowd around the central shine. But 
 then, these are restless days, and people, 
 even of bluest blood and of fortune 
 stupendous, do such odd things — even 
 running out of town for weeks and fort- 
 nights, and making society irregular and 
 uncertain. And then, so very many other 
 people, with or without the blue blood, 
 but unquestionably without the st upend-
 
 AT THORSDALE PARK. 199 
 
 ous fortune, found it desperately difficult 
 to make both ends meet at the end of the 
 year. She got out a little book, carefully 
 tabulated, and bes;an to look over the 
 names that it contained, There were neat 
 compartments in each page, wherein, as in 
 the black-book of some foreign prefect of 
 police, were set down briefly the antece- 
 dents of the persons mentioned. Some of 
 the countess's friends would have felt un- 
 comfortable or indignant had they been 
 able to peep over her shoulder, as she read 
 the annotations in their particular case. 
 
 4 Ah, well ! I think I can manage it,' said 
 Lady Thorsdale to herself; and then she 
 began to write. Her pen flew fast across 
 the perfumed and coroneted paper. Her 
 ready invention and her practised skill 
 stood her in good stead, and so did her 
 retentive memory, though, to be sure, she
 
 200 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 refreshed the latter by sundry consultations 
 of the little ledger before her. ' "I hear 
 your darling Georgy " — Gertrude — what is 
 the brat's name? — "has grown even 
 handsomer than when I saw her at 
 Cowes." 
 
 '"How proud you must have been at the 
 success of your son, that clever Mr. 
 Edward, in the final examination !" Yes, 
 the insupportable young wretch is Edward, 
 though I read it Edmund at the first.' 
 
 These, and similar soliloquies, as she 
 addressed her ' Dear Floras ' and ' Dearest 
 Mrs. Somebodies,' may be thought to indi- 
 cate that the countess was slightly in- 
 sincere. So she was, to some extent, but 
 not more hollow in her pretences of affec- 
 tionate interest than are many other 
 women of the world — her world. She 
 chose her hunting-grounds well, selecting
 
 AT THOESDALE PARK. 201 
 
 needy people, eccentric people, people 
 who had, as she well knew, sustained some 
 social defeat, and would be glad of a 
 decent excuse for hiding their discomfiture 
 by a decorous retreat ; and, lastly, people 
 who had not this year ventured on the 
 expense of a London pilgrimage at all, but 
 were vegetating in the country, or in some 
 half-empty watering-place. And to each 
 and all she was clever enough to offer some 
 attraction. She was expecting, so she said, 
 very brilliant guests, and very diverting 
 guests, and guests whose rank was ex- 
 alted, all of whose names she mentioned, 
 but with such artless art that she did not 
 stand committed to any assertion that 
 could not easily be explained away. And 
 she generally contrived to insinuate that 
 the distinguished persons who were com- 
 ing were ' dying to know ' the probably less
 
 202 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 distinguished persons whom she was now 
 desirous of sweeping into her net, and of 
 tempting to Thorsclale Park. Altogether, 
 it must be owned that she baited her 
 mouse-trap very well. 
 
 Presently, when the pretty, perfumed 
 notes lay strewed in heaps upon the ivory 
 table, the countess conceived a bright 
 idea. She had heard, through the tattle 
 of servants — for there was little of frater- 
 nal intercourse kept up between herself 
 and the baronet — that Sir Robert Shirley 
 was at Helston, hard by, and that he 
 seemed disposed to stay there. Now, Lady 
 Thorsdale was not on very intimate terms 
 with her brother. There had been some 
 unpleasantness in their father's lifetime 
 about the marriage-portion of the countess 
 expectant. Robert's signature was re- 
 quired for the raising of the necessary
 
 AT THOESDALE PARK. 203 
 
 sum, and Robert would sism nothino- 
 without being handsomely paid for it. 
 And then his dubious repute, and the 
 queer things that were whispered concern- 
 ing him and his associates, had caused a 
 coldness to exist between the present 
 master of Shirley and his sister ennobled. 
 Now, however, she bethought her of her 
 brother, of his tact, of his social resources, 
 and of what she had seen him do when 
 he chose to make himself agreeable. So 
 she penned him the sweetest of little 
 sisterly notes, congratulating herself on 
 having him as a neighbour, warmly invit- 
 ing him to Thorsdale, and entreating him 
 to be charitable enough to do his best to 
 brighten up the old house, and aid to 
 enliven poor dear Algernon in the blues. 
 And she signed herself his ' ever affec- 
 tion ate sister, Constance Thorsdale,' and
 
 204 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 sent off the letter by a mounted groom. 
 
 Sir Robert Shirk}', when he read his 
 sister's charming little epistle, smiled as 
 Mephistopheles or Talleyrand might have 
 done. 
 
 ' Conny wants something !' he remarked ; 
 'so do I. This will help me with the 
 Woodburn Parsonage people better than 
 she dreams of.'
 
 205 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A LONELY RIDE 
 
 ' It was a pity, too !' said the rector, 
 genuine sympathy in his voice. ' A pity, 
 Don, my poor fellow ! All your work, all 
 your peril, for nothing ! I never arraign 
 the Fates, but it does seem to me as if, in 
 your case, destiny had been a little over- 
 hard with you jet-hunters.' 
 
 'That, dear Mr. Langton,' replied Don, 
 cheerfully, ' is too classical, too pagan a 
 standpoint, as my foster-father, Captain 
 Jedson, would say, from which to regard
 
 206 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 our late mishap. I, for one, find no fault 
 with fickle fortune because our grand jet- 
 mine at Dutchman's Bay has collapsed. 
 Brittle, friable sandstone will break up, 
 and props give way, and a gradual land- 
 slip demolish what a sudden landslip first 
 suggested. Anyhow, we have come out of 
 it, if not much enriched, at any rate with- 
 out serious accident to life or limb.' 
 
 'And that, Mr. Don, is chiefly due to 
 your courage, and your unselfish readi- 
 ness to face any risk and undertake any 
 labour for your comrades' sake,' interposed 
 Mrs. Langton, warmly. 'But for you, 
 there would have been fresh-duo; graves in 
 Woodburn churchyard, and widows and 
 orphans weeping for the loss of the bread- 
 winner. I hear that Captain Obadiah 
 Jedson gives the whole praise to you, and 
 old Lieutenant Firebrace, of the coast-
 
 A LONELY RIDE. 207 
 
 guard, says you are the sort of stuff of 
 which Nelson's officers were made ; and 
 that from him, who fought, as you know, 
 at Navarino, and despises modern men and 
 ways, is no light compliment.' 
 
 ' Yes, Mr. Don, we heard of what you 
 did, and trembled for you, I am sure, 
 before you had . got clear of that under- 
 ground place, with the two poor fellows 
 who were trapped there when the roof 
 gave way,' exclaimed Violet Mowbray, 
 with a sort of shy enthusiasm that brought 
 tears to her eyes, and caused the mantling 
 blood to rise to her soft cheek. ' And we 
 were all so glad to hear that no harm came 
 of it.' 
 
 'Harm seldom comes, Miss Mowbray, I 
 believe, from merely doing one's duty,' 
 answered Don, gravely. He was always 
 serious, and almost bashful in manner,
 
 208 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 when he spoke to Violet, although his- 
 heart throbbed wildly as his ear drank in 
 the welcome words of praise that fell from 
 her lips. 4 At any rate,' he added, ' there 
 is an end of jet-hunting for the moment; 
 so, Mr. Langton, I have ventured up here, 
 with my books, to crave a lesson, if you 
 can kindly spare me the time for one, and 
 are at leisure.' 
 
 ' Of leisure, Don, my boy, I have only 
 too much,' replied the clergyman, genially ; 
 ' and it is a pleasure to me to resume my 
 old task of tuition with a pupil whom not 
 even hero-worship can spoil. So, if you 
 like, we will adjourn to my study.' 
 
 It is strange by what invisible links our 
 fortunes are bound to those of another. At 
 first sight, it might have appeared as if no 
 proceedings on the part of Sir Robert 
 Shirley, of Shirley Park, could conceivably
 
 A LOXELY RIDE. 209 
 
 influence the future weal or woe of so 
 comparatively humble a person as Oba- 
 cliah's adopted son, and the rector's favour- 
 ite pupil. So, at all events, it would have 
 seemed to the baronet himself, as, on his 
 black horse, but unattended by a groom, 
 he rode slowly along, deep in thought, 
 while, amidst the well-stored book-shelves 
 at Woodburn Parsonage, Don and Mr. 
 Langton were busy with the lore of a 
 bygone day. Sir Robert, it has been 
 mentioned, was absorbed in thought, as, 
 with slackened reins and downcast eyes, 
 he rode on, so that when a carriage, com- 
 ing along at a brisk pace between the high 
 banks that lined the road, suddenly over- 
 took him, he did not hear or heed the 
 sound of wheels, and was only apprised of 
 their approach when his horse violently 
 started and swerved, in a manner that 
 vol. i. v
 
 210 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 would have unseated many a careless 
 rider. Sir Robert, however, was too prac- 
 tised a horseman to be easily discomposed, 
 so that he merely gathered up his loosened 
 reins, and, recognising the occupants of the 
 barouche, took off his hat with a smile of 
 amiable insincerity. 
 
 ' So glad !' he said, riding close up to the 
 open carriage, the liveried driver of which 
 had now pulled up his horses at a word from 
 his noble mistress. The equipage, indeed, 
 was that of the Countess of Thorsdale, and 
 beside her ladyship lounged, wrapped in 
 plaids and shawls, the listess form of the 
 earl himself. ' I did not hear vour wheels, 
 Constance, until you overtook me,' explained 
 the baronet ; i our Yorkshire roads are 
 solitary here-abouts. Well, Thorsdale, this 
 fine day has tempted you out early, I 
 
 sec.'
 
 A LONELY KIDE. 211 
 
 'The more fool I!' peevishly retorted 
 Sir Robert's noble brother-in-law. 'This 
 treacherous climate is worse, absolutely 
 worse, than that of the Riviera itself, with 
 its dust and its marrow-piercing mistral. I 
 feel there is rain coining on — humidity in 
 the atmosphere — and it racks my gout and 
 unstrings my nerves. What my health 
 requires is an equable temperature. I have 
 told Sharpe, my secretary, to write for 
 details as to two places, one in the Carpa- 
 thians, the other in the Rocky Mountains, 
 of which I have heard good accounts.' 
 
 The countess made haste to express her 
 wifely hopes that her ailing lord might yet 
 be reconciled to Yorkshire and England, 
 and to paint a rose-coloured picture of the 
 forthcoming gaieties at Thorsdale Park. 
 
 ' You, Robert, have hitherto been a sad 
 truant,' she said, playfully shaking a gloved 
 
 p2
 
 212 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 forefinger at her brother. ' We have been 
 here a week in our exile, and have seen 
 you but once at Thorsdale. I must insist 
 now that you come home with us, and stay 
 to luncheon.' 
 
 ' I'm sure it would be a charity on your 
 part,' chimed in his lordship, more gracious- 
 ly than usual. 
 
 Lord Thorsdale's very graciousness was 
 somewhat graceless, as that of a profoundly 
 selfish man is apt to be. He did not care 
 a straw for Sir Robert Shirley, and despised 
 his character, but he would have been glad, 
 in his self-seeking way, to have the man 
 over to Thorsdale to amuse him ; and he 
 hardly cared that in expressing a desire 
 for his brother-in-law's company he was 
 proclaiming his indifference for the society 
 of his wife. 
 
 ' So you see, my dear Robert, that you
 
 A LONELY RIDE. 213 
 
 Lave fallen into our hands, and that we 
 will take no denial,' said the countess, with 
 her prettiest manner, and with her falsest 
 smile. 
 
 ' Awfully kind of both of you ; |but, un- 
 fortunately, I have an appointment with a 
 friend,' rejoined Sir Robert, almost drily. 
 ' Before long, depend upon it, I shall look 
 up at Thorsdale, and so often that you 
 will vote me a bore. But to-day my time 
 is not my own.' There was a brief leave- 
 taking, and the carriage rolled off. 
 
 1 How very odd Robert was to-day !' ex- 
 claimed the countess, feminine vexation at 
 being baulked of a wish predominating over 
 her habitual desire to make, ostensibly, 
 the best of her brother. 'And where 
 could he be ^oin^ to in this desolate 
 region ? He really did seem as if he were 
 ashamed of himself
 
 214 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ■ 
 
 ' You are always talking nonsense, my clear, 
 and making mountains out of molehills P 
 growled the earl, as he shifted uneasily 
 among his downy cushions. Meanwhile, 
 Sir Robert, turning his head to ascertain 
 by ocular evidence that the barouche, with 
 its liveried servants and high-stepping 
 srevs, was out of sis;ht, wheeled his own 
 horse, rode back for a short distance, and 
 then struck into a cart-track that branched 
 off from the macadamised road, and led 
 into the wild and lonely moorland. 
 
 ' Let me see,' he murmured, pulling out of 
 the breast-pocket of his coat a scratch-map, 
 roughly pencilled, such as hunting men 
 often carry. 'Yes, this mus-t be the way; 
 and presently some shepherd will be at hand 
 to direct me.' 
 
 A ride, even on a fine day, into the 
 
 bleak North Yorkshire moorland is not
 
 A LONELY RIDE. 215 
 
 over-tempting to a London Sybarite, such 
 as was Sir Robert Shirley. Not even in 
 Scotland are the wastes more bare, the 
 bogs more treacherous, the tall heather 
 ranker, or the bridle-paths more stony. 
 The district into which the baronet had 
 now plunged was one of those stern and 
 savage fells where break-neck ravines alter- 
 ii ate Avith rugged stretches of red-brown 
 table-land, watered here and there by tiny 
 runlets of trickling water, and seamed by 
 emerald green patches of alluring turf, the 
 shallowest of which is a quagmire, in which 
 a horse would sink to saddle-flaps. Sir 
 Robert, when a boy, may have crossed 
 such moors in pursuit of grouse or hares, 
 but it is one thing to trudge hopefully for- 
 ward on the untiring feet of youth, and 
 under the guidance of a veteran game- 
 keeper, and another to pick out the diffi-
 
 216 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 cult path for one's self by the aid of a 
 hastily scrawled scratch-map, and such 
 scraps of information as could be elicited 
 from herd-lads and from the white-coated 
 shepherds whose flocks were passed at rare 
 intervals among the fallows, or where a 
 stretch of pasture-land lay like an oasis in 
 the desert. The friend with whom, as the 
 veracious baronet had informed his titled 
 sister, he had an appointment certainly 
 did live in a dreary and inaccessible part 
 of the country, and it was not for a con- 
 siderable time that Sir Robert could con- 
 gratulate himself on drawing near to his 
 destination. 
 
 ' Robinson Crusoe's house, ye mean, 
 measter. Yes, yes — red-headed jet-hunter 
 chap — we calls him Robinson !' bawled a 
 lad behind a loose stone wall, as he leaned 
 upon his spade.
 
 A LONELY RIDE. 217 
 
 1 You call him Robinson, my boy, I 
 suppose, because he lives all alone ?' sug- 
 gested the baronet, reining in his horse. 
 
 ' Yes ; and a main queer customer he is, 
 from foreign parts,' replied the boy. ' Any- 
 how, yon he lives, down in hollow there. 
 You're sure to hear the barking of bis 
 dogs, once they nose ye !' 
 
 For a moment the baronet lingered. 
 The stony hill-sides looked singularly 
 barren and grim ; the hollow between pre- 
 cipitous banks, towards which the lad had 
 pointed with a grimy finger, anything 
 but a cheerful resort. Nor was what he 
 heard respecting the recluse for whom he 
 was inquiring of a remarkably reassuring 
 nature. But the boy, uninquisitive as be- 
 comes a rustic, had returned to his digging 
 amongst the potato-beds, and was whistling 
 shrilly as he delved, so that Sir Robert was
 
 218 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ashamed to question him further. He. 
 therefore, rode on. The bridle-traek which 
 led down into the darkling hollow was a 
 steep one, while here and there a bank of 
 yellow-flowered bloom, or some great stone 
 that had slipped down from the hillside, 
 seemed to bar the path. Above, the hawks 
 wheeled, soaring, and now and again there 
 was a rustling amidst the tall bracken 
 fern, as if a startled hare had brushed by. 
 but of human habitation there was for some 
 time no sign. A wilder or more desolate 
 spot than that secluded hollow could not 
 readily be found, and Sir Robert, as he 
 carefully descended the steep and rugged 
 path, began to doubt whether his latest in- 
 formant had not wilfully deceived him, 
 when at last the deep, hoarse barking of a 
 dog reached his ears. Almost instant- 
 ly the warning note was taken up by
 
 A LONELY EIDE. 219 
 
 another canine voice, and yet another, as 
 
 though Cerberus, with his triple head 
 
 and savage bay, were aroused to guard the 
 
 shadowy frontiers of Pluto's sable realm. 
 
 Guided partly by the fierce barking of the 
 
 dogs, Sir Robert pressed on, and came in 
 
 sight of a mean hovel, compared with 
 which the wigwam of a Pawnee or the 
 
 kraal of a Zulu are types of symmetrical 
 architecture. Low, long, and irregularly 
 built, this hideous structure was roofed 
 with boards, bushes, and turf, and the 
 walls consisted chiefly of unhewn boulders 
 of stone, between which the interstices 
 were coarsely plastered, here with clay, 
 there with mud ; while the glassless win- 
 dows were extremely small, and the 
 apology for a chimney, of ill-executed 
 brick-work, rose but some eighteen inches 
 above the rough roof, overgrown with
 
 220 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 moss and house-leek. There had been 
 some attempt at enclosing and laying-out 
 a garden, but the idea had been apparently 
 given up, for the fence was broken and the 
 wicket-gate ajar, so that the few discon- 
 solate vegetables which occupied the ne- 
 glected beds were at the mercy of stray 
 cattle or of the moorland hares. 
 
 Chained to the walls of the hut, and 
 sheltered either by a fragment of shattered 
 wood-work or by some mat or morsel of 
 frowsy tarpaulin, propped by a rickety 
 pole, were no less than four lean, fierce 
 dogs, all barking furiously in chorus, and 
 striving to get free, as if to tear the 
 intruder on their domain. A wreath or 
 two of blue wood-smoke rising above the 
 low chimney seemed to give token that the 
 proprietor of this delectable villa residence 
 was to be found at home. For awhile Sir
 
 A LONELY RIDS. 221 
 
 Robert hesitated, but then, rallying his 
 courage, he rode nearer to the hut, and, 
 dismounting, passed his horse's bridle over 
 the blackened stump of a sturdy old 
 willow-tree that stood hard by. As he 
 approached the door, the two dogs that 
 were tethered nearest sprang savagely 
 towards him, straining their chains, and 
 half choking themselves in the effort to 
 reach him with their glistening fangs. 
 With the butt end of his riding- whip he 
 knocked at the door.
 
 222 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IN THE HUT. 
 
 No immediate answer came to the knock- 
 ing at the crazy door, itself as remarkable 
 a specimen of amateur carpentery, green- 
 painted planks alternating with blue, as 
 could readily be found within the compass 
 of broad Britain. The only immediate effect 
 of the tapping with the butt end of the 
 baronet's gold-mounted whip was to add a 
 stimulus to the savage barking of the four 
 excited dogs, the two nearest of which, 
 dancing on their hind-legs as they tugged
 
 IN THE HUT. 223 
 
 at collar and chain, gnashed their teeth in 
 
 impotent fury. But after a time the 
 
 heavy footfall of a man was heard from 
 
 inside the barrier, and a rough, deep voice 
 
 exclaimed, 
 
 ' Jet-hunter's jark, # my chap ?' 
 
 Sir Robert, perplexed and impatient, 
 
 returned no verbal answer, but tapped 
 
 again with his whip. 
 
 ' If vou haven't °'ot the iark, then, I 
 
 don't care to listen to your patter, so sheer 
 
 off if you value a whole skin, my man — 
 
 tramp, yokel, or pedlar, whatever you be 
 
 — for if you bother me more I'll loose the 
 
 dogs upon ye. If they leave flesh on your 
 
 bones, you're luckier than most.' 
 
 'Why, Crouch!' exclaimed the bewilder- 
 ed baronet. 
 
 Apparently the ferocious inmate of the 
 
 * Pass-word.
 
 224 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY", BART. 
 
 hovel recognized the voice of his visitor, 
 for the grating sound of rusty bolts was 
 heard, and then the rasping of the reluc- 
 tant hinges, as the ill-made door was 
 partially opened, and the uncouth figure 
 of Rufus Crouch, with his shaggy red 
 beard and scowling face, appeared in the 
 doorway. 
 
 ' So it's you, is it, Sir R. Shirley, 
 Baronet?' gruffly demanded the hermit 
 of this singular hermitage, eyeing his guest 
 
 with a sullen stare. 
 
 ' And a queer reception, to say the least 
 of it, I have met with,' replied Sir Robert, 
 trying to laugh and to look unconcerned. 
 1 Do you set your dogs upon everybody 
 who comes your way, I wonder ?' 
 
 1 They'd soon have the life out of a 
 Christian, they would,' responded Crouch, 
 licking his lips the while, as if he had him-
 
 IN THE HUT. 22.5 
 
 self been one of the savage mastiffs that 
 snarled and bayed around. fc Nothing, to 
 make a dog really a tearer, like keeping 
 him always on the chain, with short 
 commons, except when horseflesh is cheap, 
 and then spice him well with that. But 
 you didn't come here, Sir R., to have a 
 chat about my dogs, did you?' 
 
 1 Why, no,' answered the baronet. 
 ' What I did want was a few minutes' 
 conversation on business. I had trouble 
 enough to find you. Your present place 
 of residence lies hidden from the world, 
 friend Rufus, like the abodes of those old 
 anchorites who ' 
 
 ' I don't know anything about anchorites, 
 nor yet anchor-smiths,' rudely responded 
 Rufus, whose bulky form still blocked up 
 the doorway, and who did not seem to be 
 entirely sober. ' A man lives where a man 
 
 VOL. i. Q
 
 226 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 can get to live. In this rotten old coun- 
 try, it seems even a scrap of the worst soil 
 ever a £oat starved on belongs to some- 
 body or other. I've got a landlord, it 
 seems. I chose the spot partly because I 
 thought it was a No-man's land that might 
 be had for the taking, and partly because 
 it reminded me of Eaglehawk Rush, a 
 digging out in Gippsland there. Lord 
 Thorsdale's bailiff wanted me to pay rent, 
 or else clear out — called me a trespasser 
 and a poaching vagabond — and the thing 
 ended in a fi^ht, and he swore he'd have 
 the law of me. But Master Bailiff, it 
 seems, was a bruiser, and vain of his repu- 
 tation in these parts, and he was that 
 much ashamed of the broken head and 
 black eyes I gave him, that he never 
 made his complaint to the magistrates in
 
 IN THE HUT. 227 
 
 Petty Sessions, never set the police on me, 
 nor even earwigged the land-steward, but 
 just let me be, after his licking. And 
 now, what brings you to my poor place, 
 Sir R. ?' 
 
 The fellow, in his boastfulness, had 
 actually talked himself into something like 
 a good temper, and when Sir Robert, who 
 was quick to note and profit by the change 
 in his mood, cheerily made answer, 
 
 'Only to have a talk, old companion, 
 about the business which brought you to 
 visit me in London, and myself to York- 
 shire ' 
 
 Rufus in his turn rejoined, 
 
 ' All right and tight — hold your noise, 
 you brutes ! leave off that noise, I say !' 
 And there was something of menace in his 
 voice that made the fierce ban-do^s without 
 
 Q2
 
 228 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, EART. 
 
 cower and shrink, as their hoarse bark 
 sank into a muttering growl. 'Walk in, 
 Sir R., you are free of the hut/ 
 
 As he spoke, Rufus withdrew his burl} 
 form a little, so as to permit the new- 
 comer to pass in. With some slight hesi- 
 tation the baronet stepped across that 
 ill-omened threshold. Then Rufus Crouch, 
 first firing off a volley of oaths at the 
 dons, who had re-commenced their barking 
 as they observed the stranger s advance, 
 re-closed the door and bolted it. The 
 grating of the rusty bolts sounded any- 
 thing but agreeable in the baronet's ears. 
 However, he was now within the ogre's 
 castle, and had to make the best of it. He 
 glanced about him, and, by the dim light 
 that filtered through the small windows, 
 he beheld such a scene of squalid con- 
 fusion as hitherto he had never dreamed
 
 IN THE HUT. 229 
 
 of. A hut need not be an untidy or even 
 comfortless abode. Sailors and soldiers 
 have often to live in huts, and find that 
 orderly habits and a little ingenuity make 
 their narrow dwellings fairly endurable. 
 Robinson Crusoe's habitation on his deso- 
 late island has been the envy and admira- 
 tion of adventurous-minded schoolboys 
 from Defoe's days to our own. But here 
 was no order, here was no neatness. All 
 sorts of objects — kegs, boxes, jars, tools, 
 clothes — were littered about. A tin can 
 of petroleum stood beside a basket of 
 potatoes, and in the curling wood-smoke 
 of the smouldering fire dangled by hook 
 and chain a side of bacon, while from the 
 rough rafters swung onions, salted herrings, 
 and cabbages in unsavoury proximity. 
 There were shelves and there were lockers, 
 but the latter were half open, and the
 
 
 230 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 former were lumbered with incongruous 
 articles. Above the rude fireplace bung a 
 gun and an axe. The rugged and broken 
 table bore, amongst other things, a loaf of 
 bread, a knife and fork, a greasy plate, 
 some scraps of pork, a huge stoneware 
 bottle, and a glass, still half full of spirits 
 and water. In a darkling corner of the 
 den was to be distinguished a sort of bed, 
 with straw mattress and patchwork quilt. 
 The fastidious lord of Shirley could scarce- 
 ly repress a shudder at what he saw. 
 
 'Nice little crib — tidy little box, eh, 
 Sir R. ?' asked the ruffianly master of the 
 hovel, jealously eyeing his visitor, as if to 
 note the signs of disgust that his more 
 refined associate found it so hard to 
 repress. 'Not quite up to the mark of 
 your swell house in Hyde Park, though, 
 and not good enough for a watcher or a
 
 IN THE HUT. 231 
 
 pig-feeder on your Shirley property. Yet 
 it's what IVe come to. No one knows 
 what he may come to, Sir R. Shirley, 
 Baronet — does he now? Who can tell 
 what might happen to yourself? The 
 cells at Millbank and Portland are trim 
 and kept well white-washed, to be sure, 
 and the beds are of good cocoa-nut fibre, 
 and the gruel, and the soup, and the 
 bread, and the eight ounces of meat free 
 from bone — but you look quite pale, 
 Sir R. Not ill, I hope ?' 
 
 There was a malignity in the man's 
 manner that was intentionally offensive. 
 Sir Robert, ghastly pale, and conscious of 
 his pallor, answered by a hollow laugh, as 
 he tapped his polished boots with the lash 
 of his riding- whip. 
 
 1 1 do wish, Crouch, that your vivid 
 imagination expended itself upon pleasant-
 
 232 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 ? 
 
 er themes,' he said ; ' and, after all, why 
 not? Here I am in Yorkshire, after a 
 fashion by your invitation, and, as I 
 hoped, for our mutual benefit. I have 
 ridden over here to-day to ' 
 
 c No groom with you, eh, Sir R. ?' asked 
 Croueh, sharply. 
 
 c Certainly not,' replied the baronet, with 
 commendable steadiness. ' I should not 
 wish our interview, old friend, to be com- 
 mented upon by the prating tongues of 
 servants. Let us talk things over, then, 
 and try to arrive at a comfortable con- 
 clusion/ 
 
 ' I'm your man, Sir R.,' rejoined Crouch, 
 as he pushed an empty barrel, set on end, 
 towards his visitor. ( Pray be seated. As 
 for me, this turf-creel, as I know, will ^cnr 
 my weight. We don't go in for luxuries
 
 IN THE HUT. 233 
 
 here. But we may as well sit down, I 
 suppose.' 
 
 The two confederates, so ill-matched in 
 all respects save that of unscrupulousness, 
 sat down accordingly, confronting one 
 
 / 
 
 another. The dogs without kept up a 
 subdued chorus of growling. Sir Robert 
 Shirley was the first to speak. 
 
 'Rufus, old friend,' he said, softly, 'I 
 have not known you so long without per- 
 ceiving that something has vexed you. I 
 suspect it is the failure of your jet-hunting 
 affair at Dutchman's Bay.' 
 
 ' Would you, Sir R., I'd like to know,' 
 demanded Crouch, very austerely, 'have 
 liked to have had seven days' such work as 
 never your white hands did in your life, 
 and then, because the beast of a cliff caved 
 in, to be cheated of your gains, and hear a
 
 234 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 whipper-snapper of a boy like that young 
 Don, that all the dunces here combine to 
 worship, praised and flattered because he 
 saved a life or two at the end of the job?' 
 
 ' Some lives, I am sure, are not worth 
 the saving, 1 answered the baronet, cor- 
 dially. 
 
 ' I suppose you mean mine, Sir E., r 
 resentfully retorted the ruffian opposite. 
 4 Because the young beggar — gentleman 
 foundling, or whatever he is — that Mr. 
 Don they go on about — dragged me out of 
 the Soldiers' Slough : and I wish he were 
 at the bottom of the quicksand, for a con- 
 ceited slip as he is.' 
 
 There was something so hideous about 
 the savagery of the wretch, something so 
 cynical in his coarse ingratitude, that Sir 
 Robert, who was a gentlemanly scoundrel, 
 felt inclined to arise in disgust, and dissolve
 
 IN THE HUT. 235 
 
 the unholy partnership into which he had 
 somehow drifted. But then he was in 
 Crouch's power, doubly so just then, for 
 the Australian gold-digger was by far the 
 stronger man of the two, and the bolder. 
 The baronet was unarmed ; and Rufus had 
 evidently been drinking, and had his sullen 
 temper inflamed, and his shrewd brains dis- 
 turbed by the liquor he had swallowed. 
 Clearly, as the hyena could not be shut 
 up or shot, the best plan was to conciliate 
 the hyena. 
 
 1 I, for one, think that Mr. Don an over- 
 rated young fellow,' said the baronet, with 
 feigned sincerity. 
 
 ' So do I ! So do I !' shouted Crouch, 
 vehemently, as he seized the big stoneware 
 bottle and poured some of the fiery Hol- 
 lands it contained into his half-emptied 
 glass, and drained it at a draught. l Con-
 
 236 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 fusion to Don ! If I could cut that young 
 cock's proud crest, I 'd die happy. And 
 now, SirR., I'd like to know how you speed 
 in your wooing. Is little Miss Violet 
 willing yet to be my lady?' 
 
 ' Have I anything to get beyond a pretty 
 face by what you are pleased to designate 
 as my wooing, Rufus ?' replied the baronet, 
 with admirable patience. ' I can't afford, 
 as you know, to marry a portionless wife, 
 and I should like to have a peep at that 
 trust deed before I positively commit my- 
 self by a proposal, even were I sure of its 
 acceptance.' 
 
 ' Now, Sir R., do you take me for a 
 green hand or a gone gony ? I'd be thank- 
 ful to know,' retorted Crouch, with a sort of 
 savage jocularity. ' Do you really think 
 I keep a sort of Doctors' Commons regis- 
 try, where wills can be inspected by the
 
 IN THE HUT. 237 
 
 public at large for the small fee of one 
 shilling? I know what I have got to sell, 
 and what you have got to buy, and the 
 value of it. Heiresses, especially when 
 they are pretty and young, with seven- 
 ty thousand pounds, don't often go 
 a-begging, I somewhat think. Set your 
 mind at rest, Sir R., as to there being a 
 real trust, a real sum, and heavy back 
 dividends which represent a pretty penny. 
 Ah ! you may look about you. The 
 document } r ou are thinking of is not in 
 yonder locker, nor on that shelf, nor yet in 
 the chest in the corner. I didn't keep 
 company with American hunters without 
 learning what a cache means, or how to 
 stow away what is best kept from prying 
 eyes. But the question is, Sir R., whether 
 you please the girl's fancy, or believe you 
 do, enough to count on a " Yes" if you asked
 
 238 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 for it. You're an old hand, and should 
 have wheedling ways at command. And 
 you are a man of title. Would little Miss 
 Violet take you, if you pressed your suit ? 
 Because, if she wouldn't, it's labour lost. 1 
 couldn't marry her, a rough, ill-favoured 
 chap like me,' added the digger, resentful- 
 ly ; 'but you are one of the smooth sort.' 
 
 ' I cannot tell,' replied Sir Robert, with 
 apparent frankness. ' These young, inex- 
 perienced girls know so little about their 
 own hearts that an outsider may well be 
 at fault. As a friendly acquaintance, if 
 not as a friend, I believe Miss Mowbray 
 does regard me. I have been able to in- 
 terest her often with conversation or anec- 
 dotes about other lands and people unlike 
 those with whom she has been brought, in 
 contact. And as my sister, Lady Thors- 
 dale, is going to assemble a lot of fine com-
 
 IN THE HUT. 239 
 
 pany — or what does duty for such — at the 
 Park, my plan was to introduce the Lang- 
 tons and their beautiful ward, and in the 
 stir and excitement of a life new to Violet 
 
 to ' 
 
 1 Pop the question, eh, Sir R. ?' interrupt- 
 ed Rufus. ' Ay, and see, too, that no girl- 
 ish whim prevents its being answered in 
 the affirmative. Mind also that you don't 
 try the dangerous game of playing fast and 
 loose with me. I'm almost sick, I tell you, 
 of this worn-out old country. As for jet- 
 hunting, the Chinese curs that shift the 
 refuse of our gold-heaps make a better 
 living than we clo. I dream every night of 
 the cabbage-palms, and the blue gum-trees, 
 and the cradle-rocking, and the claims 
 marked out along the quartz reef. Noth- 
 ing keeps me here except that seventy 
 thousand pounds, and the heavy sum of
 
 240 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, RART. 
 
 dividends unclaimed. You must go in and 
 win, Sir R. Better marry than go to gaol, 
 and that's just the choice you've got before 
 you. They wouldn't hurt me, bless you ! 
 I'm Queen's Evidence. But you, Sir R., 
 would be made an example of, and if you 
 didn't die in prison — I've known gentle- 
 man forgers and such-like pine and die so 
 — a nice time you'd have of it when your 
 term of penal servitude was over, and you 
 were in town again, not daring to go 
 
 O " CO 
 
 up the steps of your club, and Why, 
 
 Sir R., you look as white as a turnip — 
 you'll faint, I think. Try this.' 
 
 As Crouch spoke, he rose, snatched a wine- 
 glass from the cumbered shelf near him, 
 tilled it to the brim with fiery liquor from 
 the stoneware bottle, and handed it to the 
 baronet, who accepted it with some hesi- 
 tation, but swallowed its contents. ' I
 
 IN THE HUT. 241 
 
 think I'll go now,' said Sir Robert, rising 
 from his seat. Nor did Rufus, who was 
 probably satisfied with the terror his 
 threats had inspired, care to detain his 
 guest. He also rose from the turf-creel on 
 which he had hitherto been seated, unbolt- 
 ed the clumsily constructed door, and 
 silenced by a volley of curses and a well- 
 aimed stone or two the frenzied barking 
 with which the clo^s saluted the stranger. 
 ' Make your hay while the sun shines, if 
 you're wise, Sir R.,' said the fellow, as he 
 watched the baronet unhitch the bridle of 
 his horse from the willow-stump, and 
 mount, and even then there was a ring of 
 menace in his tone. 
 
 ' I shan't forget your counsel, Rufus,' re- 
 plied the baronet, mildly. ' Now, good-bye,' 
 and he rode off. Rufus Crouch, shading his 
 restless eyes with his broad hand, watched 
 
 vol. I. R
 
 242 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 i 
 
 the figure of the retreating horseman till it 
 was lost to sight, and then, with a chuck- 
 ling laugh, as if of triumph, retired to his 
 den.
 
 243 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 
 
 Company at Thorsdale Park flowed in — 
 perhaps, at first, it might be more acccurate 
 to say that it trickled in, so few were the 
 earliest arrivals, but afterwards the supply 
 became, numerically speaking, about equal 
 to the demand. After all, the hospitality 
 of an earl and a countess so rich and so 
 well-considered is pretty sure to be accept- 
 ed by a considerable number of persons. 
 Lady Piminy had come, and had brought 
 her three pretty daughters, giving up her 
 
 r 2
 
 244 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 lodgings in Half-Moon Street, somewhat 
 to the dismay of those disappointed 
 damsels, who felt as though their prospects 
 in life had been ruthlessly blighted by the 
 curtailment of their trip to glorious Lon- 
 don. But Lady Piininy had sons as well 
 as marriageable daughters, and it was on 
 behalf of dear, stalwart, stupid Edward 
 and of florid Augustus, down in Warwick- 
 shire, that she had made haste to comply 
 with the summons of her far-away cousin 
 and potential patron, the Earl of Thors- 
 dale. These two healthy young men were 
 the despair of crammers, and could be 
 coached and hustled through no sort of 
 open examination ; but there are yet such 
 things as direct appointments in some 
 branches of Britannia's service, and Lord 
 Thorsclale's solicitations, if he could only 
 be induced to solicit, might effect more
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 245 
 
 than could be done by the persistent 
 begging of poor Sir Nym, on whom Min- 
 isters had looked coldly ever since he had 
 lost his seat for Freeman ton. 
 
 There were others besides Lady Piminy 
 who probably had some ends of their own 
 to serve in accepting the invitation to 
 Thorsdale. It was said of Lord David 
 Toclhunter that he and Lady David would 
 go anywhere for free quarters, and lived 
 for full nine months of every year at the 
 •expense of their various hosts. It was not 
 Lord David's fault, of course, if his meagre 
 income were quickly gobbled up, and if 
 his brother, the Duke of Pentland — who, 
 for a duke, was anything but rich — had 
 positively refused to increase it by a single 
 sixpence. Then there were several other 
 cadets and distant relatives of families in 
 the great world, and sundry personages
 
 246 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 by far better endowed with worldly goods, 
 but who were related to nobody in particu- 
 lar, and who came because in their own 
 neighbourhoods they would derive con- 
 sequence from having been the guests of 
 an earl. And there were bachelors, whom 
 some motive of caprice, of gratitude, or of 
 self-seeking had induced to swell the 
 muster-roll at Thorsdale Park. 
 
 It is one thing, of course, to collect an 
 array of visitors in a country-house, and 
 another thing to be successful in pleasing 
 and amusing them, so as to keep the whole 
 cageful of birds, so to speak, in song and 
 in feather. Young men, in especial, are 
 difficult to content, and they have an awk- 
 ward knack of being called away on urgent 
 private affairs, if allowed to mope through 
 the dulness of an unoccupied day. And 
 without young men there can be no liveli-
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 247 
 
 ness, no flirtation, no by-play of match- 
 making — nothing to lend real interest to 
 the country life. Lady Thorsdale had an 
 additional difficulty to contend with in the 
 fact that the real object of her undertak- 
 ing was to divert her exacting lord from 
 over-much brooding over his own health, 
 and the best . method of restoring it. At 
 any moment, as she was well aware, the 
 wind of travel might set in with resistless 
 strength, either towards the Engadine or 
 that yet more dreaded bourne of the Rocky 
 Mountains, and Schultz the courier might 
 be telegraphed for, and the noble vale- 
 tudinarian be preparing for his dreary 
 pilgrimage to the distant shrine of the 
 eminently uncomfortable Hygeia that only 
 dwells in desert places. 
 
 The countess, stimulated by her natural 
 fear of Denver, Davos, St. Moritz, and
 
 248 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 similar places of exile, did her best ; and 
 it is wonderful how much a woman of the 
 world can, under these circumstances, 
 accomplish. Even in the country, even in 
 Yorkshire, there are all sorts of things to 
 be done when money and position go hand 
 in hand. There were military displays. 
 Lady Thorsdale remembered that her earl 
 was major of the yeomanry, and colonel — 
 honorary colonel — of the coast volunteers. 
 Wherefore the farmers were cajoled into 
 donning their glittering helmets and trim 
 blue uniforms, and assembling in well- 
 mounted squadrons for six days' drill and 
 parade, a subsidy from Thorsdale Park 
 taking the place of the usual Government 
 allowance. Also the volunteers drummed 
 and marched and saluted, and went 
 through a sham fight, and burned powder, 
 and blazed at targets, and played at en-
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 249 
 
 camping, and were regaled with feasts and 
 flattery, and smartly criticised by various 
 ex-officers of the regular profession staying 
 at Thorsdale, and who felt the martial 
 instinct revive in them at the sight of 
 warlike gear and glancing arms. The earl 
 was actually induced to mount his horse 
 and exhibit himself in uniform, and for 
 the moment seemed a sound man, though 
 a couple of hours afterwards he w as wrap- 
 ped in flannels in an easy-chair in his own 
 apartments, groaning and descanting on 
 the virulence of his gout and the intensity 
 of the symptoms. Nobody, not even ex- 
 perienced old Sir Joseph Doublefee, up in 
 London, certainly not Doctor Thompson 
 of Daneborough, or Mr. Smiles, M.R.C.S., 
 who monopolised the local practice of 
 Woodburn and the parts adjacent, could 
 be quite certain as to whether Lord Thors-
 
 250 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 J 
 
 dale had the gout at all, or whether, like 
 many another vehement invalid, he was 
 simply the self-tormenting victim of a 
 vivid imagination, and a nervous system 
 disordered by constant dwelling on imag- 
 inary ills. 
 
 Lady Thorsdale did her best. And, 
 indeed, much as foreigners deplore and 
 disdain the dulness of England, no other 
 country can furnish so many recreations 
 of one kind or another. There were 
 flower-shows that were really pretty. 
 There was an archery meeting, and there 
 was a lawn-tennis tournament, that were 
 almost prettier, the fair girls outshining 
 the brilliance of the summer flowers. 
 There was a picnic at the ruined abbey of 
 Stonecross. Another at the ruined castle 
 of Thrapford was projected. Then there 
 was the Daneborough regatta, and the
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 251 
 
 yacht-race at Scoresby, and the Steepleton 
 and Tarhara athletic sports, to all of which 
 a contingent of carriages went from 
 Thorsclale. 
 
 There were garden-parties almost every 
 week. Dinner-parties were frequent ; 
 concert singers of renown appeared, like 
 highly-paid human nightingales, to warble 
 in those evenings which might other- 
 wise have appeared tedious ; tents were 
 pitched, and cricket played on Thorsdale 
 Moor by enthusiastic local elevens, while 
 the gamekeepers brought in the most 
 roseate reports as to the broods of young 
 grouse, and the prospects of the superb 
 shooting to be expected in August over 
 the wilder portions of Lord Thorsdale's 
 great estates. 
 
 In all these efforts to please her guests, 
 and, through them, to soothe the fickle
 
 252 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 J 
 
 temper and pacify the irritable nerves of 
 her self-tormented husband, Lady Thors- 
 clale had two allies. The first of these was 
 the earl's secretary, Mr. Sharpe, a clever 
 man, whose best praise was that he knew the 
 length of his noble employer's foot even 
 better than his wife could do, and never 
 gave offence. Mr. Sharpe, who perhaps 
 did not wish, personally, to be exiled 
 to Colorado or the Engadine, and who 
 knew that Lord Thorsdale never £rud fired 
 the cheques he drew, proved himself a first- 
 rate purveyor of everything, from job- 
 horses to hothouse flowers, and Covent 
 Garden pine-apples. 
 
 Without Mr. Sharpe's assistance, there 
 were times when even the countess would 
 have been at fault. She wanted more 
 servants, more carriages, more saddle- 
 horses, more everything, and the secretary
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 253 
 
 provided these so smoothly, so unostenta- 
 tiously, and with so little of friction or of 
 delay, that the establishment at Thorsdale 
 was strengthened almost without anyone, 
 except the supernumeraries and their pay- 
 master, being the wiser for it. He corre- 
 sponded with the stewards of the athletic 
 meetings and with the regatta committees, 
 and got the earl to give a cup to one and 
 a vase to the other : established good rela- 
 tions with the reporters and editors of the 
 county newspapers ; impressed Avander- 
 iii£ singers and roving; bands into the 
 service. 
 
 Bat Mr. Sharpe, though an invaluable 
 auxiliary, was one of those useful function- 
 aries whose work is performed in the 
 background, and who, like some great 
 generals, are unfit for service in the field. 
 Astute as he was, he was not what ladies
 
 254 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 call presentable, being a lame little man, 
 who coughed when addressed by a social 
 superior, and had never been on speaking 
 terms with the letter H. Whereas Sir 
 Robert Shirley, of whom his now reconcil- 
 ed sister habitually spoke as ' dear Robert,' 
 was emphatically of the showy order. He 
 was very often indeed at Thorsdale — so 
 often that a room had been allotted to him, 
 and he slept there or in his own house 
 at Helston as he listed, coming and <roin£ 
 as he pleased. But he had thrown himself 
 heart and soul into the task of enlivening 
 the old mansion, and had more than 
 answered the expectations of its noble 
 master and mistress. 
 
 Both the earl and the countess were 
 pleased with Sir Robert. Never had the 
 latter known him to be so good-natured, 
 and apparently disinterested, before. He
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 255 
 
 kept the discordant elements of which the 
 company was composed in almost chronic 
 good-humour. It was due to him that 
 there seemed to be some reasonable pros- 
 pect of the tableaux, for which Mr. Moss 
 of London could only provide the accesso- 
 ries, coming off at last. He set the right 
 people at the right moment to play duets 
 on the piano, so as to promote conversation 
 or screen the whispering talk of lovers. 
 He found out everyone's foible, trotted out 
 old Sir Fotheringay Pipeclay on the hobby 
 of his Indian campaigns, devised a special 
 tableau to show off the Piminy girls, who 
 were handsome, but mute and unimagin- 
 ative, and divided the honours of the 
 billiard-room with Captain Crasher. 
 
 Sir Robert, it has been mentioned, was a 
 man of sundry accomplishments. He was 
 a skilled musician and had a fine voice,
 
 256 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 but he knew his social value too well to 
 permit himself to be classed as a mere 
 amateur performer. Once or twice he 
 allowed himself to be persuaded to sing, 
 just as, for a few moments, he let his 
 supple fingers draw forth melody from the 
 ivory keys of the piano. That he was 
 adroit with the cue, the fencing-foil, the 
 gun, and the pistol was soon patent to all, 
 while there was a quiet dexterity in his 
 way of handling cards which proved him 
 to have had much experience in the 
 manipulation of the painted paste-board. 
 Charley Fitzgerald admitted that Shirlcy 
 could ride, and Sir Harker listened with 
 respect to his brother-baronet's opinion 
 about horses. 
 
 The sporting men who had been asked 
 down to Thorsdale were not in the first 
 flight of sporting men, and they all of
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 257 
 
 them more or less deferred to one who had 
 in his day been a turf celebrity, with race- 
 horses of his own, and winning colours to 
 flash past the judge's chair, and none of 
 them accurately knew the origin or the 
 justice of the evil reputation that now 
 clung to the master of Shirley. Besides, 
 such rumours surely could not be true, or 
 Sir Robert would not have been counten- 
 anced by such exalted relatives as the 
 Earl and Countess of Thorsdale. Where- 
 fore the white-handed confederate ofRufus 
 Crouch came to be accepted as an oracle bv 
 the motley society now collected at Thors- 
 dale Park. 
 
 There are men, as there are women, 
 whose guiding star is vanity, and who think 
 no trouble too great, no sacrifice of ease 
 and comfort too much, to achieve notoriety, 
 and to strut the boards of even the tiniest 
 
 vol. i. s
 
 258 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 stage. Sir Robert Shirley was of another 
 stamp of character. He found himself 
 regarded as a lion of the true breed, and 
 his roarings, as it were, hearkened to with 
 admiring belief. But he would not have 
 cared to roar merely to be rewarded by 
 the good opinion, the ephemeral good 
 opinion, of the incongruous set of visitors 
 whom his sister, for a purpose, had gather- 
 ed together at Thorsdale, and whom he, 
 also for a purpose, condescended to con- 
 ciliate. He had a more solid goal to reach 
 than empty applause. 
 
 Day and night there danced before the 
 eyes of the needy baronet, like a glittering 
 prize that lured him on, the vision of 
 Violet Mowbray's fortune, that severity 
 thousand pounds — the amount of which 
 was doubtless swollen to still more tempt- 
 ing proportions by the aggregate of
 
 THE GUESTS ARRIVE. 259 
 
 dividends unclaimed. So large a sum 
 seemed to the embarrassed master of 
 Shirley what the fabled El Dorado did to 
 the early Spanish conquerors of the New 
 World as. shoeless and starving, scorched 
 by the sun of Peru and chilled by the 
 bitter blasts from the Andes, they struggled 
 on towards the land of boundless wealth. 
 Real ready money, real hard cash, would, 
 Sir Robert felt assured, prove in his hands 
 an enchanter's wand, by the aid of which 
 he could effect wonders. 
 
 But two things perplexed him. In the 
 first place, the behaviour of Rufus Crouch 
 was very puzzling. He had to take the 
 fellow's word for the verv existence of 
 this great sum, of which Miss Mowbray 
 was the unsuspecting heiress. And Crouch 
 had hitherto declined to name the price 
 which he expected for his services. Also 
 
 s2
 
 260 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 Sir Robert, though he flattered himself, as 
 such men do, that he knew women well, 
 was not by any means certain that he had 
 pleased Violet sufficiently to warrant his 
 proposing himself as her husband with the 
 quasi-certainty that the proposal would be 
 accepted. These thoughts combined to 
 occasion many an uneasy moment to the 
 wily master of Shirley.
 
 261 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PROMOTION. 
 
 4 GooD-morning, Mr. Bartlett.' 
 ' Good-morning, Mr. Langton.' 
 Not intellectual or highly original re- 
 marks were these, no doubt, and yet the 
 utterers of them were intelligent English- 
 men enough, and each was a fair type of 
 the class to which he belonged. What 
 the Rector of Woodburn was we know, 
 but Mr. Bartlett was of a different and 
 more robust genus. He was land-agent to 
 Lord Thorsdale, and a rich peer's model
 
 262 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 •> 
 
 land-agent ought, it seems, to combine 
 two characters : he should be a bit of a 
 lawyer and a bit of an agriculturalist. 
 Mr. Bartlett, whose father had filled the 
 post before him, did combine the two 
 characters. He was a solicitor — nominally, 
 at least, since his only client ' was the 
 Right Honourable Algernon, Earl of 
 Thorsdale. And he was an authority on 
 farming, though he only rented a poor 
 sixty acres of land, and was proud when 
 he won a medal for a prize pig at the 
 County Show, or obtained honourable 
 mention of his wife's fancy poultry or his 
 wife's Jersey cows. But, if he had not a 
 practical acquaintance with farming, he 
 had at least a practical knowledge of 
 farmers, knew which tenant was exhaust- 
 ing the land, and which doing his duty
 
 PROMOTION. 263 
 
 honestly by the acres he held, and had a 
 shrewd insight into the motives and con- 
 duct of those with whom he did business. 
 
 Such a man as Lord Thorsdale, or, for 
 that matter, as any great landowner, has 
 need of his Mr. Bartlett, and the net 
 amount of his rent-roll depends very much 
 on the sense and integrity of his land- 
 steward. The earl, who grumbled at most 
 people, knew Mr. Bartlett's value. He 
 was expensive, but he was efficient. He 
 lived near Daneborough, but there was an 
 old steward's house touching the park 
 where he had his land-office, and where he 
 had rooms in which, when requisite, he 
 could dine and sleep. Those were his real 
 head-quarters. There he managed the 
 bailiffs, gave interviews to the tenantry, 
 and transacted the multifarious business
 
 264 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 that appertains to the ownership of land. 
 Just then Mr. Bartlett, as he encountered 
 the rector, was in sore tribulation. 
 
 1 1 have lost my best clerk, ' he said. 
 ' Young Carder, who was one out of fifty, 
 has gone off suddenly to be a partner with 
 his father and his uncle out in Ohio, in 
 some rock-oil business, and I am left with 
 old Screedle, who is good at accounts, but 
 can't ride, and gets blinder every day, and 
 a raw lad at whom the farmers, and still 
 more their wives, laugh when I send him 
 on a message. You can't manage a big 
 estate without smart underlings to help 
 you ; nor can I be everywhere. A general 
 wants his gallopers, and I am helpless 
 without my aides-de-camp, and harvest 
 coming on too. Yesterday I drove forty 
 miles ; and I shan't sleep at home even 
 to-morrow night. What I want is a
 
 PROMOTION. 265 
 
 "bright, brisk young fellow, who can ride a 
 horse and drive a gig, and keep his books 
 square, and speak up when he visits the 
 most whimsical and proudest set of tenants 
 that ever demanded a new barn or took 
 offence at the idea of an alteration in their 
 boundaries. And where am I to find him, 
 I wonder, Mr. Langton ?' 
 
 ' I think I know,' replied the rector, 
 after a moment's meditation, ' precisely the 
 candidate that would suit you. Only the 
 worst of it is,' he added, after a pause, 
 ' that I was mistaken in calling him a 
 candidate, and that I am by no means 
 sure that the lad — all that I could wish 
 my own son to be — would desert his 
 present ill-paid occupation, to which cus- 
 tom has probably endeared him, for the 
 no doubt better-remunerated employment 
 of which you speak. I have no hesitation
 
 266 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 J 
 
 in recommending him, not in the least ; 
 but I am far from certain that, if you 
 deemed him suitable for the post you 
 have to fill, he would be willing to accept 
 it.' 
 
 ' Carder's salary was a hundred and 
 fifty pounds a year,' rejoined the land- 
 agent, promptly, ' to be raised, had he 
 remained with us six months more, to a 
 hundred and eighty. Screedle has two- 
 fifty. And, if Screedle's eyes go on getting 
 worse, the second clerk may hope to step 
 into his shoes before we see a brace of 
 Christmases. But then the second clerk 
 ousrht to be worth his salt.' 
 
 ' I think you will find my young friend 
 and favourite pupil worth his salt,' re- 
 turned the rector, smiling. ' You have 
 heard his name, probably. It is young- 
 Don — Mr. Don, as they call him here-
 
 PROMOTION. 267 
 
 abouts — the jet-hunter, old Captain Oba- 
 cliah's foster-son.' 
 
 'Ay, ay!' muttered Mr. Bartlett, doubt- 
 fully, as he rattled his watch-chain. ' Yes, 
 yes — I have heard of him— the gentleman 
 jet-hunter — a brave lad, I am sure, and a 
 good one, Mr. Langton, or you would not 
 speak as you do. That young Don ! No, 
 I never saw him, but I always fancied him 
 a vain, nighty sort of youngster, lording 
 it over the fisher-folk because they take 
 him for something grander than they are 
 — bold enough, but conceited and wilful.' 
 
 ' You have been much misinformed, Mr. 
 Bartlett,' said the rector, seriously. ' Don 
 — our Don — is the soul of modesty, as 
 your true knight should be, with a kind 
 word for all, and no one thinks so little of 
 the risks he has run or the lives he has 
 saved as does the noble boy himself. That
 
 268 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 he is a gentleman born all believe, but he 
 never presumes on the supposed superi- 
 ority of his birth, and is to this hour the 
 same frank, true-hearted boy that I have 
 always found him. If you want an assist- 
 ant up at Thorsdale, and Don suits you, 
 all I could do, Mr. Bartlett, would be to 
 congratulate both employer and em- 
 ployed.' 
 
 The earl's land-agent stroked his long, 
 smooth-shaven chin. He was a shrewd, 
 hard-headed man of business, and he took 
 a hard-headed, and possibly hard-hearted, 
 view of his fellow-creatures and of things 
 in general. As a plain, sensible person, 
 he was sceptical with regard to prodigies 
 and people of genius. He, like others on 
 that coast, had heard of Don and his 
 daring, and his gentle bearing and good
 
 PROMOTION. 269 
 
 brains, and was rather prejudiced against 
 him than otherwise, because he, being so 
 young, had earned so much of popularity 
 and local renown. But he was staggered 
 in his prejudice when he heard the parson 
 speak with such unwonted warmth in 
 praise of his young pupil. Mr. Langton, 
 he knew, but for feeble lungs and a weak- 
 ly frame, might have filled a bishop's 
 throne with credit, and have ranked as 
 more than an ordinary member of the 
 episcopate in debates in the House of 
 Lords. And Mr. Langton believed in his 
 village hero. 
 
 1 1 should like to have five minutes' talk 
 with the young man,' said Mr. Bartlett, 
 after a moment's reflection. 
 
 ' Nothing easier,' cheerily responded the 
 rector, ' since it is the time at which Don
 
 270 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 usually comes to read with me ; and there 
 lie comes, with old Captain Jedson for 
 once by his side.' 
 
 And indeed at that instant Don's lithe 
 figure, accompanied by the gaunt, gigantic 
 form of old Obadiah, came in sight. Then 
 followed the usual greetings. The captain 
 of jet-hunters was known to Mr. Bartlett, 
 and indeed to almost every resident in 
 that part of the country, and had won the 
 respect that seldom fails to be gained by 
 those who respect themselves, and walk 
 with steadfast feet along the narrow path 
 of honest rectitude. That the man was a 
 mystic, and had wild, earnest religious 
 beliefs, Mr. Bartlett had heard, and could 
 fully credit. Obadiah's very aspect sug- 
 gested that he had been born a couple of 
 centuries too late, and should have worn 
 helmet and breast-plate of steel, and
 
 PKOMOTION. 271 
 
 doublet of red, and charged at Dunbar, 
 and stormed the breach at Drogheda, 
 and trampled down Royalist fugitives at 
 Worcester and Naseby, always with the 
 same serene conviction that to smite Ama- 
 lek and Moab was to do a good day's 
 work in that harvest-field wherein he was 
 a diligent husbandman. As it so fell out, 
 Captain Jedson's battles had all been 
 peaceful ones against wave and quicksand, 
 and he who had in him the stout heart of 
 a soldier was known also to possess a 
 strange gentleness of temper and a rare 
 unselfishness. 
 
 ' I am glad to see you at last, Mr. Don 
 — people talk of you so much,' said the 
 earl's right-hand man, when the prelimin- 
 ary introduction had taken place. 
 
 ' I cannot tell, sir, why they should talk 
 of me,' replied Don, with his bright smile
 
 272 SIR EGBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 and steadfast simplicity of manner; and 
 the land-steward eyed the young man, and 
 assured himself that the rector was right, 
 and Don a recruit worth enlistment. 
 
 He had never before then met with a 
 clever lad who was not pert as well as 
 clever, excepting Carder the regretted, 
 now rattling along; towards Ohio and the 
 
 O CD 
 
 paternal oil-wells. But Carder, though an 
 excellent and hard-working youth, would 
 have presented but a mean appearance if 
 set beside Don, with his dark, manly 
 beauty, and graceful, vigorous form. 
 
 Mr. Langton was the first to come to 
 the point. 
 
 ' My friend Mr. Bartlett here ' he 
 said, 'who is land-agent of Lord Thors- 
 dale's estate, was just telling me of a 
 vacancy in the land-office. He has lost a 
 good clerk, and, although I should lose a
 
 PROMOTION. 27 O 
 
 good pupil, I have ventured, Don, my boy, 
 to suggest that the appointment might suit 
 you, and that you might like the vacant 
 post.' 
 
 4 Dear Mr. Langton,' said Don, turning 
 his noble young face towards the clergy- 
 man, 'you are always kind — too kind — to 
 me. But I am afraid I should make an 
 indifferent sort of clerk, even if this gentle- 
 man were willing to take me in that- 
 capacity. I like books, but all my life has 
 been spent in the free air and in exercise. 
 We jet-hunters would be out of place at a 
 desk.' 
 
 1 Ours isn't exactly desk-work,' replied 
 Mr. Bartlett, who began to see his way. 
 'Too many acres within my lord's ring- 
 fence for that ! Why, yesterday I drove 
 forty miles, as I was telling Mr. Langton 
 here. There are outlying portions of the 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 property that must be looked up every 
 now and then. I take it for granted, 
 Mr. Don, that you write a legible hand, 
 iind are up in the rules of arithmetic. Can 
 you ride?' 
 
 ' Yes, a little, sir,' answered Don, 
 modestly. 
 
 ' Like a centaur, rather,' put in the 
 rector. ' Who was it, my young friend, 
 who broke in Farmer Barton's chestnut 
 colt, a vicious brute, that broke two collar- 
 bones of my parishioners, and ignominious- 
 ly unseated Joe Gripham, the Daneborough 
 horse-breaker ? I pitied poor Mr. Gripham 
 the more because I never, personally, 
 could keep in the saddle of any animal less 
 patient than a Ramsgate or Scarborough 
 donkey. An arm-chair generally suits 
 the scholar best. But Don is a horse- 
 man.'
 
 PROMOTION. 275 
 
 ' And if Mr. Don likes to come to us at 
 Thorsdale, with a salary of a hundred and 
 eighty pounds and a room, I shall be 
 glad to take him,' said the land-agent, cor- 
 dially. Don flushed crimson, and for a 
 moment there was a sparkle in his dark 
 eyes, but then he shook his head. 
 
 1 You are very kind, sir, and Mr. Lang- 
 ton is more than kind,' he answered ; ' but 
 I am a jet-hunter, and must live and die 
 with those who cared for me when I was a 
 little child.' 
 
 ' Surely, a salary of a hundred and 
 eighty to begin, and if old Mr. Screedle 
 the head-clerk's eyes get worse, and he 
 is pensioned off by his lordship, the 
 prospect of promotion !' expostulated the 
 astonished manager of the Thorsdale pro- 
 perty. 
 
 'Don, my boy, such a rise in life for 
 
 t 2
 
 276 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 you, in whose career I have always taken 
 an interest !' pleaded the clergyman. But 
 Don remained unconvinced, until his two 
 well-wishers found an unexpected ally in 
 grim old Obadiah, who suddenly out- 
 stretched the gaunt length of his bony 
 arm. . 
 
 'Don, my foster-son, and my own 
 lad,' exclaimed the old captain of jet- 
 hunters, 'to my voice you should hearken, 
 when it speaks, as it has ever done for your 
 good. But yesterday, thinking of you, my 
 bairn, I tried a fall of the holy pages, as 
 did wise men of old, and where did the 
 Book open ? — where, but with the story 
 of how Joseph rose to be steward unto 
 Pharaoh, far off in wondrous Egypt ! A 
 jet-hunter need not always be a jet- 
 hunter. You were always, my boy, too 
 good to stick to the beach. And it is
 
 PROMOTION. 277 
 
 borne in upon me that this offer should be 
 
 closed with.' 
 
 It was agreed then that Don was to be 
 
 temporarily engaged in the land-office at 
 Thorsdale Park, in Mr. Carder's place, but 
 that he was still to be understood to form 
 one of the band of jet-hunters under 
 Obadiah Jedson's command.
 
 278 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 
 
 It was early, very early, according to con- 
 ventional notions, on a bright, breezy 
 morning in July, and the gold-green 
 leaves of the old oaks of Thorsdale were 
 glibly drinking in the welcome sunbeams, 
 and the rabbits capered and whisked 
 among the fern of the high, sloping banks, 
 and the dewy grass glittered as if every 
 tremulous blade were heavy with liquid 
 gems, when Violet Mowbray, a book in her
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 279 
 
 hand, left the house, and walked out into 
 the park. 
 
 To explain her presence there it is 
 necessary to say that the countess, at her 
 brother's wish, had been particularly 
 gracious to the inmates of the parsonage 
 at Woodburn, had called on the Langtons, 
 had asked them over to the Park more 
 frequently than it suited the rector to 
 accept her profuse hospitality, and had 
 invited Miss Mowbray to spend a few days 
 at Thorsdale. There was nothing remark- 
 able in that. For an English girl to spend 
 a considerable part of her time in paying 
 visits is as usual as it would be unusual for 
 a French damsel to do so. And then it 
 came out that Violet was a remote cousin, 
 somehow, of Lord Thorsdale, thanks to the 
 ramifications of the noble families with 
 which both were connected, so that the
 
 280 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 hospitality of Thorsdale Park could be, in 
 her case, more graciously and grace- 
 fully given and taken than if Mr. Lang- 
 ton's ward had belonged to the same 
 class as did Mr. and Mrs. Langton them- 
 selves. 
 
 Miss Mowbray was an early riser, and it 
 was to her a pleasure to be up and abroad 
 in the fresh glory of the midsummer 
 morning, at an hour when there were few 
 to be encountered save some stray wood- 
 cutter or keeper on his way to a distant 
 plantation or spinny, and before the guests 
 in the great mansion were astir. Then, to 
 Violet's mind, the grand old place seemed 
 at its best, as the huge oaks rustled their 
 wealth of leaves, and the deer trooped in 
 antlered squadrons along the terraced 
 uplands of the far-stretching demesne, and 
 the pheasants showed their gorgeous plum-
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 281 
 
 age on the dark skirts of the fir-wood that 
 was their home, and all things looked as 
 bright and beautiful and peaceful as if 
 there were no sin, no care, no death, no 
 sorrow, in this lower world of ours. 
 
 One solitary spot of peculiar prettiness 
 there was towards which Miss Mowbray 
 never failed to wend her way. It was 
 ■called locally the Black Pool, perhaps from 
 the depth and the pellucid darkness of the 
 water that filled the bottom of the hollow, 
 over which aged hawthorns, that had seen 
 more than one dynasty on our English 
 throne, bent their gnarled branches, 
 and exhibited, according to the season, 
 the milk-white blossoms of hope or the 
 ruby-red berries of maturity. A pretty 
 place, where the fern arched high and the 
 wild flowers nestling among the pro- 
 jecting roots of the hoary hawthorn-
 
 282 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 5 
 
 trees seemed brighter and of richer tints 
 than wild flowers elsewhere. There was 
 a deer-path down to the hollow, trodden 
 by the cloven, delicate hoofs of countless 
 generations of the horned, half-wild race 
 that dwelt within the park-pale — no 
 dappled fallow deer, but the tall stags and 
 hinds that Norman William protected by- 
 laws so cruel, and the safety of which had 
 cost many a life and many a sentence of 
 outlawry in the hard and selfish days of 
 mediaeval legislation. 
 
 From the Black Pool, or rather from the 
 rising ground which formed the rim on the 
 natural cup, hollowed out like a volcanic 
 crater, at the bottom of which the still 
 water lay, a fine view could be obtained 
 both of the park and the house. 'The 
 latter, which was usually styled the Hall, 
 had been rebuilt in Queen Anne's reign,
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 283 
 
 and was a great mass of crimson brick and 
 white stone, with the mullioned windows- 
 and the portico and massive balustrades of 
 the period. But the architect who had 
 reared it had spared a portion of the 
 original structure, and two- Norman towers 
 and a gateway, and the exquisite ruins of 
 a roofless chapel, overgrown with long 
 grass and bindweed and ivy, remained to 
 remind the gazer that there had existed 
 something before the red brick epoch. 
 There the old towers stood, grey and stern, 
 in their warlike majesty and strength, with 
 their narrow windows, through which the 
 arrows of the besieged had of yore been 
 wont to whistle, and the regular masonry 
 of cut stone and hard mortar, which, when 
 cannon were unknown, mocked the im- 
 potent rage of foes without. And there 
 was the delicate tracery of the ruined
 
 284 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 chapel of a later date, chancel and side 
 shrines, and the oriel window, ivy-draped 
 and mellowed by age. 
 
 Very few of the visitors at Thorsdale, 
 with the exception of Violet, cared for the 
 Black Pool, or for the view of the Hall and 
 the Norman ruins to be had from thence, 
 or, indeed, for anything more aBsthetic than 
 present amusement or ultimate profit, 
 personal or vicarious. Lady Piminy had 
 been shown the place, and had turned away 
 with a shudder that was almost unaffected, 
 remarking that the deep dark pond looked 
 fit to drown oneself in. But Violet Mow- 
 bray had felt the enchantment of the spot, 
 and she was fond of repairing there early on 
 a fine morning, and before the fashionable 
 company under the earl's roof were astir. 
 
 It has been mentioned that the deer 
 within Lord Thorsdale's immemorial park
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 285 
 
 were no plump, lazy, fallow deer, but of 
 the true old pre-historic breed that roamed 
 this island before Roman galley or British 
 coracle stemmed the narrow seas that cut 
 us off from Gaul. And the pool was a 
 favourite resort of the tall red deer. 
 Violet knew this well, and had more than 
 once looked with admiration at the line of 
 graceful creatures as they filed down from 
 the uplands to slake their thirst. But 
 what she did not know was that stags, 
 elegant and picturesque adjuncts to a 
 pleasaunce as they may be, are in summer 
 prone to fits of capricious ill-humour, and 
 resent intrusion on their haunts. 
 
 So when a fine solitary stag, with wide- 
 branching antlers, came slowly marching 
 down the deep and narrow path that led 
 to the Black Pool, waving his proud head 
 from side to side, she was so far from
 
 286 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 anticipating any possible clanger that it 
 merely seemed to her as if another element 
 of beauty had been added to the prospect 
 before her. She had seated herself, book 
 in hand, on a mossy seat, formed by the 
 contorted roots of one of the venerable 
 hawthorn-trees that bordered the pool, 
 and watched the stag's approach without 
 the slightest suspicion that the creature 
 regarded her as an enemy, and her presence 
 as an affront. 
 
 On came the stag. That there was mis- 
 chief in his rolling eye, mischief in his tossing 
 head, an experienced park-keeper or verd- 
 erer could have read at a glance. Violet, 
 however, noted only the grace of each 
 successive attitude, until a low, fierce, 
 bellowing sound betrayed the hostile inten- 
 tions of the animal, which now began to 
 gore the turf with its many-tined horns,
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 287 
 
 and to snort, and foam, and pause in its 
 slow march to paw the ground impatiently 
 with its sharp-hoofed forefeet — all signs 
 of hostility which denoted that a charge 
 was to be expected. 
 
 Our ancestors had an almost superstitious 
 dread of the deadly results of a wound dealt 
 bv a hart's horn, which the rude surgeons of 
 a bygone age declared to be more difficult 
 to heal than the hurt from a wild boar's tusk. 
 It is unlikely that Violet Mowbray had ever 
 heard of traditions such as these, but she 
 began to grow alarmed as the stag, red- 
 eyed, foaming, and tossing into the air 
 grass and leaves at every stroke of its horn, 
 drew nearer, repeating its menacing bellow. 
 The girl had risen from her seat and let 
 fall her book, but she was too frightened to 
 fly, and besides, how could her speed 
 avail her against that of so agile an enemy.
 
 288 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 Fascinated, like a bird that nutters close 
 to the glaring eyes of a snake, she stood 
 still. A man's quick tread, a man's cheer- 
 ing voice — yes, that meant rescue. A 
 film seemed to come before Violet's eyes, 
 and she sank fainting on the bank, and 
 
 <_J 7 
 
 only recovered her consciousness to find 
 Don supporting her. 
 
 ' You are not hurt, Miss Mowbray ? 
 No. Then all is well. There is not, I 
 assure you, the least danger now,' said Don, 
 earnestly, but softly. l Yonder, towards 
 the hills, you can just catch a glimpse of 
 your late enemy.' And indeed far off 
 might be seen the now distant form of the 
 defeated stag sullenly trotting along to re- 
 join the herd. 
 
 Violet never quite knew the circum- 
 stances of her rescue. Don, as was his habit, 
 made light of his own prowess.
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 289 
 
 ' It was very easy,' he said, smiling, ' with 
 this stout stick for a conjuring wand in my 
 hand, to exorcise the troublesome appari- 
 tion. But stags are often ill-tempered, as I 
 am told ; and it might be more prudent, 
 Miss Mowbray, to avoid lonely places in 
 the park, unless you are escorted. As it 
 is, it was fortunate that I happened to be 
 near.' 
 
 ' A kind Providence sent you to my help, 
 I think,' said Violet, simply. ' I was very 
 frightened, and gave myself up for lost. 
 But when I heard your voice, Mr. Don, 
 then I felt that I was safe ; and so — I was 
 very foolish.' And she tried to smile, 
 while tears swam in her beautiful eyes. ' I 
 thankyou somuch,' she added, afterapause, 
 and then she put out her little hand to her 
 deliverer. Don took it, and for a moment 
 could hardly resist the wild impulse that 
 
 vol. I. u
 
 290 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART 
 
 prompted him to press it to his lips. He 
 released it, however, and cheerfully re- 
 plied, 
 
 1 You owe me no thanks, Miss Mowbray, 
 for the little I was lucky enough to effect. 
 Anyone else would have done as much. 
 I happened to be crossing the park on my 
 way to look after some woodmen who are 
 engaged in felling trees — for I am in the 
 earl's employment for a time, you may 
 perhaps remember.' 
 
 ' Yes, I recollect — I knew that,' said 
 Violet, glancing shyly at Don. He was 
 differently dressed from his wont, wearing, 
 in fact, what might be called the attire of 
 one occupying a much higher station in 
 life than a mere toiler on the sea-shore. 
 But Don had looked as thoroughly a 
 gentleman in his rough jet-hunter's garb 
 as in his present habiliments. He explain-
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 291 
 
 -ed to Violet that the old steward's house, 
 in which a room, or rather rooms, had 
 been assigned to him, was close to the 
 park, and had a side gate by which its 
 occupants could enter the enclosure at any 
 time on an errand of duty. 
 
 ' I am bound now. at Mr. Bartlett's wish, 
 for the High Beeches, three miles off,' he 
 said; 'but I shall be happy, Miss Violet, if 
 you are now sufficiently recovered to walk, 
 to see you safely as far, at least, as the 
 ornamental grounds, where no deer are to 
 be met with.' 
 
 Violet was trembling yet, but she 
 looked at her watch, and saw that, under 
 penalty of being late for breakfast, and 
 thus attracting notice unwelcome to a 
 timid girl among strangers, it behoved her 
 to return to the Hall. Her first steps were 
 
 weak and unsteady. Don offered her the 
 
 u2
 
 292 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 support of his strong arm, and side by side 
 they traversed the winding path that led 
 past bosky dell and fern-crested bank, 
 under leafy elms and beneath spreading 
 beeches, towards the house. They were 
 not silent, but nothing was said as to the 
 recent adventure. Something was said of 
 Woodburn Parsonage, but more of Thors- 
 dale, its grand trees, its stretching lawns, 
 and of the Norman towers and the ruined 
 chapel. 
 
 ' I am never tired of looking at them — 
 when I have time, for I must not eat the 
 bread of idleness,' observed Don. ' To me 
 they are as so much history turned into 
 stone ; and since I have seen them I feel 
 for the first time as if I understood 
 Froissart — and " Ivanhoe," ' he added, with 
 a laugh. ' I hope you don't think it 
 absurd in me to say so, Miss Mowbray ?'
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 293 
 
 Presently they drew so near to the 
 ornamental grounds, full of rare shrubs 
 and flowers of lower growth than the 
 indigenous giants of the park, that Don 
 deemed it best to leave Violet to pursue 
 the rest of the short walk by herself, lest 
 her presence should be noticed and com- 
 mented on. They parted then, Don 
 striking into a path that led towards the 
 distant uplands, while Violet threaded her 
 way amidst the flower-beds and clumps of 
 gay-leafed shrubs, and entered the Hall, 
 reaching her chamber just in time to 
 escape observation, to make some alter- 
 ation in her toilet, and descend the stairs 
 and join the company gathering for break- 
 fast. No one questioned her, and she 
 said nothing as to her recent peril or con- 
 cerning her rescuer. That would, indeed, 
 have been difficult for one so retiring as
 
 294 SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, BART. 
 
 herself, seeing that letters were being 
 read, newspapers consulted, and fragment- 
 ary gossip selected from their contents re- 
 tailed aloud for the benefit of all who chose 
 to listen. 
 
 c Jack Havant is to marry Miss Million. 
 Xo mistake about it now.' 
 
 ' Don't believe a word of it. He's been 
 dangling after her these three years, and 
 old Million, who is a domestic autocrat, 
 insists that no suitor without a coronet 
 need apply.' 
 
 'Yes, but that's it. Didn't I tell you 
 old Lord Gosport was dead, that Jack's 
 father, the colonel, steps into the earldom, 
 and Jack himself is Lord Havant now, so 
 he's eligible for the heiress ?' 
 
 ' Here's the last story about the Mande- 
 vllle House set !' 
 
 In the midst of this Babel of tongues,
 
 VIOLET AND DON. 295 
 
 silent little Violet found her mind far 
 
 away from the chatter and confusion 
 
 around her. 
 
 ' Strange,' she thought, ' that each time 
 
 I meet with this young man — this Mr. 
 
 Don — my memory dwells Upon every word 
 
 he said, and treasures up every look he 
 gave. I wonder why it is so?' 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD BLENHEIM HOUSE.