John Heuring 
 
 AWest ofEngiandF^mance.
 
 J, POLLARD, 
 
 «oohecllcr, 
 TRURO & FALMOUTH. 
 
 ^^^2j1 

 
 Vv 
 
 '^ 
 
 i: 
 
 L I G, R_A PLY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVtR^SITY 
 
 Of ILLl NOIS 
 
 8Z3 
 E)238i
 
 JOHN HEEEING 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 JOHN HE1.EEING 
 
 A WEST OF ENGLAND ROMANCE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'MEHALAH" 
 
 IN THREE V L U :\I E S 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1883 
 
 (All rig/its reserved]
 
 Il
 
 /- 
 
 •^ 
 
 ,1 
 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 {ADDRESSED TO THOSE WHO ARE NOT OF 
 THE WEST COUNTRY.) 
 
 IN a tale of the West of England in which 
 are introduced some of the lowest types of 
 rustic humanity to be found there, it is im- 
 possible to avoid the use of the local dialect. 
 I- This dialect has, however, been modified, as 
 much as possible to render it intelligible with- 
 out transforming it into the language of the 
 ^ schools. The vulgar dialect is regardless of 
 o^ender and reckless in the use of cases. A cow 
 ^ is he, and a tom-cat wags her tail. At a trial 
 ^ in Exeter, at the Assizes, a man was charged 
 iN with the murder of his wife, a woman with 
 ^ an aggravating tongue. The jury found a
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 verdict of ^ Not Guilty ' against the clearest 
 evidence, and, when the Judge expressed his 
 surprise, ' Ah, your lordship,' said the fore- 
 man in explanation, ' us ain't a-going to 
 hang he for the likes of she/ It is perhaps 
 necessary to explain that ' the Cobbledicks ' 
 are no creation of the imagination — the clan 
 has only been dispersed of recent years ; the 
 old man who lived in a cyder-cask is dead, 
 but he was alive ten years ago. The clan 
 was Uterally one of half-naked savages.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE FIRST VOLU.AIE 
 
 CHAPTEK 
 
 I. The Corbledtcks 
 
 PAGK 
 1 
 
 II. 
 
 What the Case did 
 
 ]8 
 
 III. 
 
 West Wyxe 
 
 34 
 
 IV. 
 
 MlPvELLE 
 
 49 
 
 V. 
 
 The Owl's Nest 
 
 6« 
 
 VI. 
 
 That Old Tramplaea .... 
 
 79 
 
 VII. 
 
 That Yoting Tra:hplaea 
 
 92 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Cicely 
 
 108 
 
 IX. 
 
 DOLEEARE 
 
 118 
 
 X. 
 
 A Musical WALKI^-G- stick 
 
 1.33 
 
 XL 
 
 The Giant's Table .... 
 
 145 
 
 XII. 
 
 Ophir 
 
 161 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Captain Teecarrel .... 
 
 173 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Under the Hearth 
 
 189 
 
 XV. 
 
 Ehee, Btjbones ! 
 
 205 
 
 XVI. 
 
 TRrsiEE not Executor .... 
 
 217 
 
 XVII. 
 
 In the Summer-house .... 
 
 227 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Salting a Mine 
 
 246 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Two Strings to one Bow . 
 
 262 
 
 XX. 
 
 Grinding Gold 
 
 . 277
 
 JOHN HEEEING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE COBBLE DICKS. 
 
 * Log ! ' said tlie voice of Cobbledick the Old 
 from a cyder cask. 
 
 ' I be a logging like the blue blazes,' an- 
 swered Cobbledick the younger. 
 
 Then a dry and dirty hand emerged from 
 the cask, and with a gorse bush struck at the 
 girl — that is, at Cobbledick the younger. She 
 evaded the blow. 
 
 ' Be quiet, vaither, or I won't log no^ 
 more ! ' 
 
 ' You won't? ' with a horrible curse ; ' then 
 I'll make you, if I whacks and whacks till you 
 be all over blood and prickles. There, I will, 
 I swear. Glory rallaluley ! ' 
 
 On a sj)ur of Dartmoor that struck out 
 into the proximity of cultivated land, stood a 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 5 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 cromlech or dolmen — a rude monument of a 
 lost race, reared of granite slabs. This spur 
 of moor was a continuation or buttress of 
 Gosdon Beacon, which, next to Yestor, is the 
 highest point attained by Dartmoor, and is in- 
 deed the second highest mountain in the south 
 of England. 
 
 The dolmen was composed of four great 
 slabs of granite set on edge, two parallel to 
 the other two, with a fifth stone closing one 
 end. The whole ^-^^ supported an enormous 
 quoit or block, plain on the nether surface, 
 but un shaped above. Local antiquaries, pre- 
 tending to knowledge, but actually ignorant, 
 called this erection a Druid altar, and pointed 
 to a sort of basin on the top formed by the 
 weather, with a channel from it to the edge, 
 and this they asserted was a receptacle for the 
 blood of human victims, and a means of lustra- 
 tion for those who stood below. Other anti- 
 quaries, knowing a great deal, and not ashamed 
 to confess ignorance where knowledge ended 
 and guesswork began, said simply that the 
 monument belonged to prehistoric times, and 
 that they neither knew who had built it, nor 
 for what purpose it was raised. The country 
 folk called it the ' Giant's Table.' 
 
 On the lee side of this cromlech was a 
 cyder cask, tethered to the cromlech by a
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. 3 
 
 piece of cord passed throngh the bung-hole, 
 and attached to a stout stick within the monu- 
 ment, entering between the interstices of the 
 blocks. 
 
 In this cask Hved an old man, named 
 Grizzly Cobbledick by his neighbours. He 
 had lived in the cask many years. 
 
 Some miles away, to the north, in another 
 parish, that of Nymet, lived the parent stock 
 from which he sprung, in an old tumble-down 
 cottage, sans windows, sans doors, sans chim- 
 ney, sans floors, sans everything save the 
 ' cob ' — that is, mud walls — and the ragged 
 roof of thatch. 
 
 This hovel was what the Germans would 
 call the ' Stamm-burg ' of the Cobbledicks. 
 That is to say, it was the ancestral cradle of 
 the race; it was also the hive in which they 
 continued to dwell. They lived there, apart 
 from their fellows, with whom they held no 
 communication, never entering a village nor 
 dealing at any shop, never seen at market or 
 merry-making, least of all at church. 
 
 Their unsociable habits went further. They 
 allowed no one to invade their hovel and pry 
 into their mode of living. If any of them saw 
 a person stand still near the house to ob- 
 serve it, or to watch a Cobbledick at his 
 work or his play, a yelp called the whole clan
 
 4 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 together, and with howls and curses they set on 
 the inquisitive visitor, pelting him with stones, 
 and flinging sticks at his head, so that he was 
 glad to beat a retreat. 
 
 The Cobbledicks were half-naked savages. 
 They wore, for warmth not for decency, some 
 wretched rags. When the scanty supply of 
 garments failed entirely, then the whole crew 
 dispersed over the country, hunting by moon- 
 hght for a fresh supply ; they stole whatever 
 oame in their way that could be converted 
 into covering to clothe their nakedness. 
 Anything served — a potato-sack or a flour- 
 bag. One or other would change into coat 
 or gown by making in it slits for head and 
 arms. 
 
 Once a farmer lost an oilcloth stack-cover- 
 ing. It was deliberately taken off his stack 
 one rainy night before he had thatched his 
 wheat. He recognised it torn up and utilised 
 as curtains to the open holes that served as 
 windows to Cobbledick Castle. The farmer 
 prosecuted, but first a rick and then a stack 
 was burned, and he was glad to stay proceed- 
 ings and sufl*er the savages to keep his oil- 
 cloth, fearing for the thatch of his farmhouse, 
 and himself, his wife and babes beneath it. 
 
 When the neighbourhood was aware that 
 the Cobbledicks ran short of raiment, old
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. 5 
 
 worn garments were purposely left out at 
 nio^ht on hedo-es for their use. 
 
 The migration of Grizzly Cobbledick to 
 the parish of South Tawton took place in this 
 wise. It marked an epoch in the history of 
 the race. The Cobbledicks had not arrived 
 at that stage of civilisation in which property 
 becomes personal. Their views as to property 
 Avere undeveloped. The world belonged in 
 part to the Cobbledicks, and the rest did not. 
 What belong;ed to the Cobbledicks belono-ed 
 to the family, not to any individual in the 
 family. They owned land, reclaimed from the 
 waste long ago, clay land overgrown with 
 rushes, partly bog ; but this land was not the 
 property of this Cobbledick or that, male or 
 female, old or young, it belonged to all, on 
 the principle of the Russian mir, Not only 
 so, but the utensils of the house and of the 
 farm were common, so also were the garments. 
 Tlie pipkin cooked for the whole family, and 
 the hoe raised the potatoes for all to eat. The 
 pipkin was not private property when Poll 
 stirred it, the hoe was not private property 
 when Dick worked with it, and the potato- 
 sack was not owned by him or by her who 
 wore it. If, by any chance, it were taken off, 
 it thereby fell back into the common store. 
 The Cobbledicks never had been civilised.
 
 6 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 They were autochthones. The oldest inhabit- 
 ant of Nymet remembered them. They did 
 not increase much, but they did not die out. 
 Their congeners, named the Gubbins, lived in 
 the Lydford glens in Charles the First's reign, 
 when a poet thus described them : — 
 
 And near hereto's the Gubbins' cave, 
 A people tliat no knowledge have 
 
 Of law of God or men \ 
 Whom Ccesar never yet subdued, 
 Who've lawless lived, of manners rude, 
 
 All savage in their den. 
 
 By whom, if any pass that way, 
 He dares not the least time to stay, 
 
 Eor presently they howl ; 
 Upon which signal they do muster 
 Their naked forces in a cluster. 
 
 Led forth by Roger Rowle. 
 
 One night a star fell from heaven and 
 •descended into the hovel of the Cobbledicks 
 throuo'h the hole in the roof which allowed 
 the smoke of the communal fire to ascend ; 
 and this spark sank into the heart of Old 
 Grizzly — he was not Old Grizzly then. What 
 his name was then in the clan never trans- 
 pired. 
 
 That divine spark conveyed to this parti- 
 cular Cobbledick the idea of personal property. 
 This idea, once conceived, becomes to the
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. 7 
 
 social body what a backbone is to tlie pliysical 
 oro-anism. There is all the difference in social 
 conditions between those who have accepted 
 personal property and those who have not 
 arrived at it, that exists between vertebrate 
 animals and invertebrate polypi. 
 
 Cobbledick rose from his lair by the fire 
 where he had been snoring, caught up a female 
 for whom he had long been sighing, stuffed a 
 wisp of hay into her mouth to prevent her 
 from alarming the sleepers, threw her over his 
 shoulder, and strode out of the Cobbledick 
 hovel. 
 
 The dispersion at Babel was caused by the 
 discovery of the possessive pronouns. 
 
 After having carried his burden beyond 
 earshot, Cobbledick set her down, pulled the 
 plug out of her mouth, and said, ' If you 
 holler, I'll smash your head. So hold thee 
 gab and come along of L' 
 
 The female was overawed into submission, 
 and she paddled along at his side. 
 
 When day broke they found themselves on 
 a shoulder of down in close proximity to Cos- 
 don. Rambling over the moor, the woman 
 hopping and squealing as she touched the 
 gorse with her bare legs, they lighted on the 
 grey cromlech, and the male, curling his 
 tongue in his mouth, produced a loud cluck.
 
 g JOHN HERRING. 
 
 The female, as an imitative animal, clucked 
 responsive. * Bags ! ' said Cobbledick male, 
 and by tliis simple formula be bad claimed 
 the cromlech as personal property to himself, 
 his heirs and assigns. 
 
 The idea of property had swelled to large 
 dimensions in his heart since he had first 
 admitted it. The tract of moor was at that 
 time — we are speaking of seventy years ago — 
 wholly uninclosed. Since that date many 
 encroachments have been made, and much of 
 the furzy waste placed under cultivation. 
 
 Xenophon opens his ' Anabasis ' with the 
 w^ords, ' The Greeks began it.' In the record 
 of the conquest and reclamation of the moor 
 it stands written, ' The Cobbledicks began it.' 
 
 First they filled up the interstices between 
 the blocks of granite of the dolmen wdth turf 
 and moss, then they strewed the floor with 
 bracken, and made bed and seat of heather. 
 Then they marked out a portion of the 
 moor, collected stones from off the surface 
 with infinite labour, and fenced it round with 
 these stones set as a dry w^all. This they 
 tilled, and, their appetite for property growing, 
 they inclosed more. The tillage was rude, 
 but then it w^as the beginning of tillage to 
 the whole Cobbledick race. It took that race 
 six thousand years to arrive at a crooked stick
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. 9 
 
 with Mrs. Grizzly dragging it, and Mr. Grizzly 
 driving with a switch, and his weight resting 
 on the tail of the simple plough. When he 
 took his weight off, to quicken the motions of 
 Mrs. Grizzly with the switch, the plough levered 
 out of the ground, she fell, and he also was 
 thrown forward on his nose. When Grizzly 
 left the ancestral seat, he carried with him, 
 in addition to a woman, two ferrets in a bag, 
 and a sharp flhitstone. With the ferrets he 
 caught rabbits, and with the stone he flayed 
 them. Grizzly was a neolithic man. 
 
 On their first taking possession of the 
 cromlech, Grizzly fought his wife for the sack 
 she wore. He wanted to utilise it as a screen 
 for the entrance. The door was to the south, 
 but the south wind is a rainy wind and must 
 be shut out. 
 
 Mrs. Grizzly resisted, for the same heavenly 
 spark that had brought to him the idea of 
 appropriating one woman as wife, had carried 
 to her also the idea of keeping as her own, her 
 very own, the one potato-sack in which she 
 walked and worked and slept. 
 
 This resistance on her part stimulated in- 
 vention on his. He devised a screen of wattles 
 and heather for the door, and this proved a 
 better shelter than any sack could have made. 
 Thus we see how the sense of property quickens
 
 lo JOHN HERRING. 
 
 invention. The heavenly spark never expired 
 in the breasts of the Cobbledicks ; they felt no 
 desire, like the Apostles of old and reformers 
 of the present day, to revert to the conditions 
 from which they had escaped. The spark 
 burned brighter, it demanded fuel. They 
 proceeded to obtain a cow. How they pro- 
 cured it nobody knew, though all suspected. 
 The Cobbledicks disappeared from Tawton 
 parish for several days. When they reappeared 
 they were driving a cow before them down 
 the flanks of Cosdon. Had they fished her 
 out of the swamps round Cranmere pool? 
 or had they gone far, far beyond, and acquired 
 ber in the South Hams, and driven her across 
 the moor, leaving no traces in the spongy soil 
 and on the blooming heather whereby they 
 might be traced, in the event of those from 
 whom she had been acquired disputing their 
 right to make off with her ? 
 
 But if this latter were the case, what labour 
 and perseverance it must have cost them to 
 convey a cow across brawling torrents, over 
 granite-strewn mountains, and through trea- 
 cherous bogs ! 
 
 This was the way of the Cobbledicks. 
 When they wanted anything, they went 
 after it over the moor. Beyond Avas El Do- 
 rado, between the pathless waste, a barrier
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. ii 
 
 forbidding pursuit. They never robbed their 
 neighbours of anything beyond turnips and 
 field potatoes. They had made sufficient 
 advance along the path of social culture to 
 recognise a sort of fellowship with their neigh- 
 bours, and to respect the property of near 
 neighbours. But this sense of fellowship did 
 not extend beyond the moor. On the other 
 side was a sea full of fish, into which whoever 
 would might dip his net. 
 
 One day the female Cobbledick became 
 a mother, and Grizzly a father. 
 
 Soon after this the wife died. Grizzly dug 
 a hole in the floor of the cromlech, just under 
 where the fire burned, and laid her there. 
 
 She was pleased, when alive, to sit over 
 the red ashes, spreading out her toes, and 
 laughing at the yellow flames. Under the 
 hearthstone she should lie, with her face to 
 the ashes, and her toes turned to the blaze. 
 The Cobbledick ideas were growing. The 
 first dawn of that sentiment which in another 
 generation might flower into poetry had ap- 
 peared in Grizzly's mind. 
 
 But the experiment was not happy. At 
 night, as Grizzly slept, he thought he saw 
 the old woman working her way up out of 
 the ground, throwing the earth forth like a 
 mole, and then peering at him from a corner.
 
 12 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 After that she dived again and disappeared. 
 Presently he felt her heave the earth under 
 him where he lay, and roll him over, so that 
 he could not sleep. He was very angry, and 
 he got a great piece of granite and beat the 
 floor hard with it. But this was of no avail. 
 Next night the old woman was heard scratch- 
 ing with her nails at tlie bases of the granite 
 slabs. Once she had been given a hunch of 
 saffron cake by a farmer's wife, and she had 
 picked all the currants out and eaten them, 
 before attacking the substance. She was now 
 at work on the granite, picking out the horn- 
 blend, mistaking the black grains for currants. 
 ' Her'll do with these great stones as her did 
 with the cake,' said Grizzly ; ^ her got that 
 all crumbled with hunting the currants, and 
 her'll treat the stones same way, and bring 
 the table down on our heads.' 
 
 After that he disappeared for three days, 
 and when he returned he was rolling a cyder 
 cask before him down Cosdon. This cask he 
 brought alongside of the cromlech, and at- 
 tached it to the old house in the manner 
 described. He lined it with fern, and retired 
 into it, along with the child, at night. He 
 would no longer sleep in the stone mansion 
 that was being undermined by the dead wife. 
 He did not object to occupy it by day; and
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. 13 
 
 when he ate, he always threw some crumbs or 
 bits of meat into the fire, to satisfy the crav- 
 ings of the old woman. He supposed that she 
 picked at the stones because she was hungry. 
 
 The child slept with him in the cyder- cask 
 till she grew too big, and made it uncom- 
 fortable for her father. One night he had 
 cramp in his leg, and kicked out, and kicked 
 her forth, head over heels ; then he bade her 
 go for the future to the old house, and sleep 
 there and be darned, glory rallaluley. Occa- 
 sionally, in spring, when all is w^axing and 
 wanton, the Methodists held revival meetings 
 on the down, and Old Grizzly was accustomed 
 then to prowl about the outskirts of the assem- 
 bly, listening to the preachers, and to the hymns 
 and rhapsodical outcries of the converted. 
 These camp meetings reminded him in some 
 particulars of the ways of the primitive Cobble- 
 dicks. The new feature, unfamiliar to him, was 
 •the association of relio;ion with these orofies. 
 
 From such meetings Grizzly had picked 
 up a few cant expressions which he used for 
 rounding his sentences without in the least 
 understanding their import. If he began a 
 sentence with a curse, he finished it with a 
 hallelujah, much as a grocer, having put an 
 iron weight into one scale, heaps the other 
 with sugar till the balance is complete.
 
 14 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Cobbledick father and daughter were not 
 in the unseemly condition of nudity affected 
 by their relatives at K'ymet. These latter so 
 far resembled Adam and Eve in the period of 
 man's innocency that they were naked and were 
 not asliamed, but with the sense of personal 
 property came the sense also of self-respect. 
 The land on which Grizzly and his wife 
 squatted belonged to the manor of West Wyke, 
 of Yv'hich the Battishills were lords, and the 
 Squire took care that his tenants should not go 
 unprovided with old clothes. The Battishills 
 were very poor, and wore their garments till 
 the last moment consonant with respectability ; 
 then they passed them on to the squatters, 
 whom they made, if not respectable, at least 
 decent. 
 
 ' Log ! ' screamed the old man from the 
 cask. 
 
 ' I be a logging ^ like the blue blazes,' an- 
 swered the girl, and she spoke the truth. 
 
 She was seated with her back to one of the 
 great stones of the ' Giant's Table,' with a bare 
 foot resting on the cask on each side of the 
 restraining rope. She worked her feet alter- 
 nately, so as to produce a vibratory motion 
 in the barrel from left to right. The old man 
 
 ^ To ' log ' is to rock. Thus a logan stone is a rocking- stone, 
 and a woman logs lier l^aby in its cradle.
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. 15 
 
 liked being rocked to sleep; lie exacted the 
 task of his daughter : and only when he began 
 to snore and ceased to swear, dare Joyce Cob- 
 bledick desist from logging and retire to her 
 own lair. 
 
 The evening had fallen. The sun was set, 
 but a haze of light hung like a warm hoar frost 
 over the head of Cosdon, though darkness had 
 settled down in the valleys, and the village of 
 Zeal began to twinkle out of all its windows. 
 
 The air was still. The rush of the stream 
 over the granite masses that choked its course 
 was the only sound audible, save the fretting 
 of the cask on the turf in its oscillations. 
 
 The girl was tired, and one of her feet 
 was bleeding. She had cut it with a sharp 
 stone that day. 
 
 Joyce Cobbledick was aged eighteen. She 
 v/as a tall, well-built girl, with bright colour, 
 a low forehead, and dark eyes. Her hair was 
 as uncombed and uncared for as the mane of 
 a moorland pony. It was dark brown. Her 
 jaws were heavy and her cheek-bones high, 
 like those of her ancestry. There was some 
 beauty about her — the beauty of a fine animal ; 
 she was perfectly supple in every limb, ad- 
 mirably proportioned, easy and even graceful 
 in her movements, unrestrained by shoes and 
 cumbrous clothiug. Her face was even fine,
 
 i6 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 but there was nothing like intelligence illu- 
 mining her dark eyes. 
 
 She wore a thin print gown, and that 
 was in tatters from her knees by scrambhng 
 through hedges to steal turnips, and brushing 
 through gorse brakes after rabbits. 
 
 Presently the girl intermitted her tramp- 
 ling movement, believing the old man to be 
 asleep. 
 
 The stars were coming out. The one street 
 of Zeal, lying between rich meadows and 
 wood, was like a necklace of diamonds em- 
 bedded in black velvet. 
 
 Joyce leaned forwards to listen if her 
 father were snoring. All was still in the 
 cask, preternaturally still. 
 
 She bent her head lower. Then, suddenly, 
 with a roar, ' Darn your eyes, glory ralla- 
 luley ! ' an old grey, frowzy head and face 
 shot out of the barrel, and with it a long arm. 
 A heavy blow of the furze bush fell across 
 the girl's head and cheek, making her cry out 
 with pain. 
 
 She recovered her position in a moment, 
 and dashed her feet together savagely at the 
 cask. The violence of the action was more 
 than the cord could endure, already fretted 
 against the rugged edges of the granite blocks. 
 It snapped, and in a moment the cask was
 
 THE COBBLEDICKS. ly 
 
 driven forward by the impetus of Joyce's 
 angry kick. It rolled over and over, ran 
 down a bank, then along an incline of smooth 
 turf, dashed against a stone which somewhat 
 diverted its course, bounded into the high 
 road, where it shot forth its tenant, and con- 
 tinued its course in rapid revolutions down 
 the road that here ascended from the valley. 
 Joyce uttered a cry, sprang to her feet, and 
 ran after the rolling barrel towards the high- 
 way, and there saw her father lying stretched 
 across the road, stunned and speechless. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 1 8 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 
 
 As Joyce stood on the bank about to leap 
 down into the road to her father's assistance, 
 she was arrested by a sight calculated to fill 
 her with dismay. A chaise drawn by a pair 
 of horses was approaching from the direction 
 of Okehampton at a brisk pace. The cask 
 was in full career down the road, gaining ve- 
 locity as it rolled. A curve hid it from the 
 postillion, and Joyce stood breathless, power- 
 less to warn the post-boy or arrest the cask, 
 watching for the result. 
 
 The boy was in spirits ; he cracked his 
 whip, and stimulated the horses — fresh from 
 the stable at Okehampton — to take the hill in 
 style. The cask was whirling on. Then it 
 reached the sweep in the road, and it went 
 direct against the bank, danced light-heartedly 
 up it, reeled back, swung itself round and shot 
 straight down the road at the horses. In 
 another moment it was on them, leaping
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 19 
 
 at them like a tiger at the throat of his 
 prey. 
 
 What followed was so sudden, and the 
 light was so imperfect, that Joyce could not 
 quite make out what she saw. She heard a 
 loud cry from the post-boy, who w^as thrown. 
 Whether one of the horses went down and 
 floundered to his feet again she was not sure ; 
 she believed it was so. Xext moment the 
 chaise was off the road, the two frightened 
 animals tearing away with it over the com- 
 mon. Forgetful of her father in the excite- 
 ment of the spectacle and in dread of the final 
 catastrophe, Joyce ran after the carriage, which 
 she saw bounding over heaps of peat that had 
 been cut and laid to dry, lurchmg into hol- 
 lows, jolting over tufts of gorse, and jarring 
 against stones. 
 
 Then she saw against the light of the 
 horizon the fio;ure of a man emer2:ino: from 
 the window of the chaise, trying to open the 
 door. Almost simultaneously the w^heel of 
 the carriage struck a huge block of granite, 
 and in an instant the chaise was thrown on 
 one side, the horses were kicking furiously, 
 and the whole converted into a wreck of living 
 beasts and struggling men and splintered 
 frao;ments of carriasre. 
 
 ' Ho, heigh ! stay them osses,' yelled the 
 c 2
 
 20 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 post-boy, who had picked himself up and was 
 running over the down. ^ Sit on their necks; 
 kip 'em down.' 
 
 Joyce ran also, and reached the spot soon 
 after him. 
 
 The postillion went straight at the horses^ 
 regardless of everything else, and cut their 
 traces ; whereupon they ran off, and he ca- 
 reered in full pursuit after them. 
 
 ' Leave the beasts alone, boy,' shouted a 
 young man who had disengaged himself from 
 the shattered carriage, and was helping out a 
 young lady. ' Leave the beasts and come 
 here.' 
 
 ' No, no, sir ! The osses fust. Them's 
 my concern.' And away went the boy. 
 
 ' Here, girl,' said the same young man to 
 Joyce, as she came up; ' help me.' He signed 
 to her what to do, to raise a man who was 
 lying motionless among the fragments of the 
 carriage, to carry him a little distance, and 
 lay him on the turf at full length. 
 
 * Stay by him whilst I go for the young 
 lady.' 
 
 Joyce nodded. 
 
 The young lady was seated on the rock 
 that had upset the carriage. 
 
 'What frightened the horses?' she asked. 
 
 ' I do not know. Are you hurt? '
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 21 
 
 ^ My foot is sprained. I cannot walk; but 
 no bones are broken, of that I have satisfied 
 myself. How goes my father? ' 
 
 ' He is seriously injured.' 
 
 ' He did wrong to try and open the door. 
 The carriage must have fallen over on him.' 
 
 ' Will you remain here whilst I go back to 
 him?' 
 
 ' Certainly. The moss is soft as a cushion 
 on this stone.' 
 
 ' Your father, I fear, is seriously hurt. As 
 you say, he was leaning out of the window 
 when the coach turned over, and it went down 
 on the side where he was.' 
 
 ' Bring me my cloak from the chaise. It 
 is chilly, and the spot is desolate. 1\ me 
 donne les frissons.' She spoke with wonder- 
 ful composure. She might have been on a 
 picnic, and the dish with the chicken pie 
 broken ; yet she had narrowly escaped death 
 herself, and her father was lying dead a few 
 feet from her. The young man looked at her 
 face, a little surprised at her perfect coolness. 
 The face was wax -like, of transparent white- 
 ness ; there was no colour in it. But then 
 she was cold and possibly frightened, though 
 betraying no fear in her manner. Her fea- 
 tures were regular and of extraordinary beauty. 
 Her eyes were large and the lashes long ; her
 
 22 JOHN HERRIXG. 
 
 hair abundant and black. Of emotion in her 
 face there was none. 
 
 'I remember my father said he had suf- 
 fered from the rheumatism. Pray take him 
 from off the grass.' The young man thought to 
 himself, ' HeVill never suffer from that more ; ' 
 but he made no answer. He went back to the 
 man lying on the turf, knelt over him, and 
 examined him. Joyce stood by with arms 
 folded. 
 
 ' Is there any house near to which this 
 gentleman could be reuioved? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Vrest Wyke,' answered Joyce. 
 
 MYhereis that?' 
 
 She made a motion with her chin, indi- 
 cating the direction. 
 
 ^ And is there a gate to be had on which I 
 can lay him ? ' 
 
 She jerked her chin again. 
 
 * Xow, sir,* said the post-boy, coming up, 
 ' I've got the osses cjuiet, what can I do for 
 you?''' 
 
 '- This gentleman must be removed at once 
 on a hurdle or gate. Run and bring me one.' 
 
 ' Be he hurted cruel bad? ' asked the boy» 
 
 ' He is dead.' 
 
 ' Deary me ! ' exclaimed the post-boy, 
 * What a mussy it weren't one of the osses. 
 Make us truly thankful. I'll get you a gate.'
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 
 
 23 
 
 * I'll help you/ said Joyce. ' You don't 
 look a sort to carry a gate. Do you call 
 yourself a man or a rat ? ' 
 
 Presently the two returned with a hurdle ; 
 that is to say, Joyce was carrying one on her 
 head, casting occasionally a contemptuous 
 glance at the dapper little fellow at her side. 
 
 ' Is my father able to speak yet ? ' asked 
 the lady. 
 
 ' Xo,' answered the young man. ' Do not 
 be alarmed. We must carry him to a house, 
 where he can be put to bed, and then we will 
 return for you. Do you mind being left 
 alone, or can you walk as far as to the house ? ' 
 
 'I have already told you that I cannot 
 walk. You are forgetful, monsieur.' 
 
 ' Then this girl will remain with you till 
 we return.' 
 
 ' Very well. If she likes to remain she 
 may remain. It is her affair.' 
 
 The young lady spoke with a foreign — a 
 French accent, which was pretty. Indeed, 
 there was a foreign grace in her attitudes, and 
 taste in her dress, which showed that, if an 
 Englishwoman, she must have lived a great 
 deal in France. 
 
 The gentleman returned to Joyce ; he was 
 a tall and fine young man, with dark hair and 
 moustache and frank blue eyes.
 
 24 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Will you reiT.ain here with the lady while 
 we go on to the house ? ' 
 
 Joyce nodded and went over to the rock 
 on which the young lady w^as seated. She 
 planted herself before her. 
 
 ' The 'ouse to which we must carry the 
 gent be yonder,' said the post-boy. ' I seed 
 him as I wT.nt for the gate.' 
 
 ' Do not be alarmed if we carry your 
 father.' 
 
 ^ 1 shall not be alarmed.' 
 
 Then the post-boy going before and the 
 young gentleman following, they proceeded 
 very gently to carry the motionless form in 
 the direction of West Wyke. 
 
 Joyce remained wdth the young lady; she 
 studied her with great attention from head to 
 foot. The sky was clear, and there was still 
 much light entangled in the upper atmosphere. 
 The whole of the north was full of silvery 
 twilight. 
 
 ' I niver seed a born leddy afore so close,' 
 said Joyce. 
 
 'I am a born lady,' replied the other, 
 haughtily. 
 
 'Did I say you -wasn't? Have you any 
 other rags on but what I sees?' 
 
 ' Rags ! ' indignantly. ' What do you 
 mean, girl ? '
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 25 
 
 ' Look here,' said Joyce, ' I hasn't. Fust 
 comes the gown, and then comes I. Down in 
 the good land to Zeal and Tawton, where the 
 lanes be cut deep, I seed there be nethermost 
 hard rock, then over that comes shellat, then 
 a sort of gravelly trade (stuff), then a top o' 
 that meat airth ; and over all, like the gown, 
 the waving green grass. Up here on the 
 moor t'ain't so. There's the granite and then 
 the moss, and if you scrats through the moss 
 you comes right on and on to the stone. That 
 be like us as lives up here, vaither and I, but 
 wi' the quality it be different, as lives in lew 
 (sheltered) places; they has more coverings 
 nor us, night and day, I reckon.' 
 
 '• You have no more clothes on you than 
 that thin gown ? ' 
 
 ' Xo, us be like moor rock, fust the moss, 
 then the stone.' 
 
 ' Are you begging? ' 
 
 ' I never axes for naught ; what I wants I 
 takes.' 
 
 The lady shivered and drew back on her 
 seat. She was disgusted with the appearance, 
 and offended at the rudeness of the girl. 
 
 * Why don't clothes grow on our backs, 
 thick and warm as the wool on sheep, the fur on 
 rabbits, and the moss on moorstones ? 'T would 
 come handier,' observed Joyce Cobbledick.
 
 26 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 The lady made no reply. 
 
 * Wot's that man, that young man as spoke 
 to you and I?' asked Joyce. 
 
 ' I do not know his name.' 
 
 ' He don't belong to you ? ' 
 
 ' Most certainly not/ with a contemptuous 
 shrug. 
 
 ' Where did you get mun? ' 
 
 'He is travelling with us — that is all. 
 He joined my father in taking a chaise from 
 Launceston.' 
 
 'Why didn't y' travel by the mail-coach? 
 Her goes by ivery day.' 
 
 'The coach had left Launceston when 
 we arrived there from Falmouth, so we 
 engaged a chaise. My father was in haste to 
 reach Exeter, and that person joined us. I 
 do not know his name, neither do I care. 
 My father satisfied himself, I presume, of his 
 respectability. That is all.' 
 
 ' Where do'y come from^ mistress ? Over 
 t'other side of the moor I reckon.' 
 ' 1 come from France.' 
 Joyce was puzzled. Her geographical 
 knowledge was too limited for her to know of 
 France. 
 
 ' I reckon that be a long way off, t'other 
 side o' Prince's Town and the prisons, surely. 
 Be there savages in them parts ? '
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 27 
 
 ' Savages ! certainly not/ 
 
 ^ There be here. I be one. I be a Cob- 
 bledick, and the Cobbledicks be all savages. 
 But vaither and I be better nor the rest out 
 N'ymet. They be savages and no mistake.' 
 
 ' I have no doubt of it.' 
 
 ' I say, young lady, is that man as they 
 carried on the gate to West ^Vyke your 
 vaither ? ' 
 
 ^ He is my father.' 
 
 ' Did he bang you about much ? Did he 
 whack you often wi' a bunch of vuzz? Not 
 but you'd mind over much wi' all them pack 
 o' clothes to your back.' 
 
 ' Certainly not.' 
 
 ' Did you have to rock him to sleep o' 
 nights in a barril ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Mebbe you niver had much dodging out 
 of the way of the stones he throwed at your 
 head.' 
 
 ' Of course not.' 
 
 ' My old vaither doth all these to me. 
 He whacks me wi' brimmles and vuzz, and 
 he throws turves and stones at me, and I has 
 to rock mun every night or he wouldn't sleep 
 a wink. Of all the proper blaggards in the 
 world there ain't an ekal to vaither. But I 
 reckon vaithers is vaithers all the world over.
 
 28 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 They be all like oaksticks, some crookedcr 
 nor others, but none straight. You don't 
 mind over much what has happened to yours ? ' 
 
 The young lady only imperfectly under- 
 stood the girl, owing to the rudeness of her 
 speech and her strong provincial brogue. 
 
 * There be my old vaither rolled out of 
 his barril right across the high road, and I 
 don't know if he've a broke his neck or no ; 
 and I don't kear hover much, no more nor 
 you does because your vaither ha' gone and 
 done the same.' 
 
 ' What do you mean, girl? ' 
 
 ^ I mean wdiat I sez. I know wdiat broke 
 necks mean. I ha' broke the necks o' rabbits 
 scores and scores o' time".. Him's just the 
 same, ivery bit and croome.' 
 
 The young lady shuddered. She did not 
 cry, but her breath caught in her throat. 
 
 ' Mon Dieu I Ce n'est pas vrai ! Comme 
 cette fille me fait peur ! ' 
 
 ^ What be that jabber about ? You oughtn't 
 to mind.' 
 
 ' For the love of God, girl, do not frighten 
 me. It is wicked — it is cruel. It is not 
 true.' 
 
 ' Not true ! ' echoed Joyce ; ' I knows it 
 be. I knows a broke neck in a man as in a 
 rabbit.'
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 29 
 
 ^ Be quiet. If you want money, en voila, 
 take and leave me tranquil.' 
 
 Joyce struck her hand aside. 
 
 ' What'll you do wi' he now ? Mother 
 be poked under the hearthstone, where the 
 fire can warm her. But when Old Grizzly 
 goes, I shan't put he along o' mother. He 
 can't sleep under the table now, and her '11 
 lead'n a life of it, if he be put under the 
 hearthstone along of she. Her niver worrits 
 me, but her don't leave old vaither alone not 
 one rainnit of nights. Her does it because he 
 knacked her, and beat her scores and scores o' 
 times when her were alive. Now her thinks 
 her turn be come. But her's got no vice in 
 her. It be all play, only vaither be that 
 crabbed he don't put up wi' it. When Old 
 Grizzly goes, I'll up wi' his heels and send 
 him into a bog once for all- He'll be wet 
 and cold there I reckon, and the moss grows 
 so thick over them quaking bogs, that once in 
 there be no getting out, no more than when 
 you're gone under the ice on Rayborouoh 
 Pool. Then he'll leave me in peace I reckon.' 
 
 ' You will do that, you long cripple 
 (viper), you!' screamed the old man, who 
 had overheard the arrangements planned for 
 his interment, and disapproved of them. 
 ' You will do that ! ' He rushed on Joyce
 
 30 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 from behind, raining furious blows on her 
 with his fists. ' You will stog me in a bog, 
 willV? I'll put you in fust, curs'd ever- 
 lasting rallaluley if I don't.' The old man 
 yelled with fury. He stepped backwards and 
 leaped at Joyce, and beat and swore. 
 
 The young lady was frightened, and cried 
 out for help. The horrible old man seemed 
 to her to be some superhuman apparition 
 rising out of the moor soil — a vampyre, a 
 ghoul from a cairn, come to destroy the 
 wretched girl before her. 
 
 ' You chuck down thicky (that) stone, 
 vaither?' cried Joyce, as he stooped and took 
 up a piece of granite in both hands. 
 
 ' I won't, I won't. I'll mash you first, 
 you unnat'ral varmint! You nigh upon 
 killed me by rolling me over and over in the 
 cask, and shan't I nigh upon do the same by 
 you ? Glory rallaluley, blast me blue ! ' 
 
 Joyce was unquestionably stronger than 
 old Cobbledick, and might have disarmed 
 him, but the divine spark had been com- 
 municated to her; it flickered faintly in her 
 dim soul, and a dumb instinct forbade her 
 raising her hand against her father. She had 
 borne his brutality for many a year, and had 
 not resented it. She was his child, for him 
 to deal with as he thought best. The sense
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 31 
 
 of property had become strongly rooted in 
 the minds of this branch of the Cobbledicks, 
 and as forces are correlated, and heat, and 
 light, and electricity, and sound are but the 
 same force acting in different ways, so was it 
 with the sense of possession. In the breast 
 of Joyce it had transformed itself into a con- 
 sciousness of filial duty. 
 
 Joyce put up her hand to ward off the 
 blow. 
 
 Then the young man who had carried the 
 injured gentleman away arrived, running up, 
 summoned by the cries, and with one stroke 
 of the stick he held in his hand, he made the 
 old man drop the stone. 
 
 * In another moment he would have beaten 
 out your brains,' said he, panting. 
 
 ' I reckon he would,' observed Joyce. 
 
 The old man howled with pain, dancing 
 about holding his arm where struck. 
 
 ' Who are you ? What are you doing 
 here?' asked the gentleman. 
 
 ' Never you heed he,' said Joyce. ' Hers 
 old vaither.' 
 
 * Help me away from this horrible place,' 
 entreated the lady : ' I have fallen among 
 savages in a dreadful wilderness. Am I in 
 England, in Europe — or is this the wilds of 
 Noi'thern Canada? '
 
 32 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' She is lame,' said the young man to 
 Joyce. ' Assist me in conveying her to the 
 house yonder.' 
 
 Joyce put herself submissively on one side. 
 
 *How is my father?' asked the young 
 lady. 
 
 'No better,' he replied. 
 
 ' This strange girl tells me he has broken 
 his neck.' 
 
 He was silent. He could not tell her the 
 truth. It must be broken gently to her. 
 
 ' I should wish to know if it be so.' 
 
 ' Let us hope for the best. I have sent 
 the post-boy to Okehampton for a doctor. 
 He will know better than I what is the matter, 
 and what must be done.' 
 
 ' But you can surely tell me whether he 
 be alive or dead.' 
 
 ' He is still unconscious.' 
 
 ' I know he be dead,' said Joyce roughly. 
 ' What's a broke is a broke, and his neck be 
 broke as sure as a bit o' cloam. I told her so.' 
 
 ' Is he dead ? ' again asked the young 
 lady. 
 
 She was now being carried to the house. 
 There was no tremor in the arms that rested 
 on the shoulders of her bearers. 
 
 ' I asked you a simple question. It is un- 
 m.annerly to refuse an answer.'
 
 WHAT THE CASK DID. 33 
 
 ' I believe he is dead/ said he with an 
 effort. 
 
 ' I am very sorry/ was her calm reply. 
 
 The young man stopped; the girl Joyce 
 stopped also. The twilight from the north- 
 west was full on the white lovely face; there 
 was no expression of distress on it, none of 
 grief — not a trace of a tear in her large dark 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Why do you not go on? I said I am very 
 sorry, naturally. He was my father. What 
 else should I say ? ' 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WEST WYKE. 
 
 The young man and Joyce conveyed the lady 
 between tliem under a low embattled gate- 
 way into a small yard or garden — it was too 
 dark to distinguish which — and halted in the 
 porch of a house. 
 
 Joyce said : ' Stay, I go no vurder. I niver 
 ha' been inside a house and under hellens 
 (slates) afore, and I bain't a going now/ 
 
 The door opened, and a blaze of ruddy 
 light fell on them. A young lady had opened 
 to admit them. 
 
 'There be Miss Cicely Battishill,' said 
 Joyce. ' Sure her will take my place once 
 for all.' 
 
 ' Another step more, girl,' said the young 
 man to Joyce, ' and our burden is in a chair.' 
 
 ' Why do'y call me a gurl ? ' asked Joyce. 
 ' I hain't a gurl, I be a maiden. There be 
 maidens in these parts and no gurls. I dun- 
 now, but the leddy I been a helping may
 
 WEST WYKE. 35 
 
 be a girl; hers different froDi I, I be a 
 maiden.' 
 
 ' Never mind distinctions/ said the young 
 man, impatiently. ' Go on another step.' 
 
 'No, I'll put my head under no hellens. 
 I be a savage,' said Joyce, obstinately. ' You 
 go on yourself, and get Miss Cicely to help.' 
 
 ' I will take your place, Joyce,' said the 
 young lady at the door ; and she assisted the 
 strange pale girl to come in. 
 
 The young man looked back over his 
 shoulder, and said, ' Thanks for your help as 
 far as it went, maiden.' 
 
 Joyce stood without, the red light on her, 
 with the dark garden, the moor, and the 
 night sky behind, her strange face appearing 
 even handsome in the glow, and the flicker 
 reflected in her dull eyes. 
 
 The figure struck the young man with an 
 evanescent sense of pity. She seemed an 
 outcast — desolate, friendless. 
 
 Then the door closed, and the light was 
 cut off. But Joyce did not leave. She stood 
 in the porch with her arms folded looking 
 over the black garden wall at the wild, blacker 
 moor beyond, over which the wind was sough- 
 ing. She was lost in a day-dream unintelli- 
 gible to herself. 
 
 The light from the window streaked the 
 
 D 2
 
 36 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 garden and fell on an orange lily that stood 
 out luminous and fiery against the inky back- 
 ofround of folia^^e and wall. The stars were 
 coming out in the sky. Joyce remained mo- 
 tionless, with her eyes on the fiery flower. 
 
 In the meantime the pale young lady was 
 conveyed to a seat by the fire. The porch 
 door opened immediately into the hall or 
 parlour. This was a small low room, irregu- 
 larly built, with a bay in which was the 
 window. It was so small that with twenty 
 people within it would be crowded incon- 
 veniently ; it was so low that a tall man could 
 touch the ceiling. 
 
 The hall was panelled throughout, very 
 unpretentiously, with plain black oak; there 
 was no carving except over the great fireplace, 
 where was a coat of arms, once heraldically 
 emblazoned, but now obscured by smoke. 
 The coat was curious. Azure, a cross crosslet 
 in saltire, between four owls argent, beaked 
 and legged or. 
 
 On the walls were hung a few old portraits 
 in tarnished oval frames. The paint was 
 cracked and peeling off. 
 
 The ceiling was crossed by moulded oak 
 beams of great size, black with age and smoke. 
 
 A tall, very thin gentleman, Mr. Battishill, 
 the owner of the house, and squire of West
 
 WEST WYKE. 
 
 37 
 
 Wyke and lord of the manor, had been seated 
 in a high-backed leather-covered chair beside 
 the fire. He started up and offered it to the 
 young lady with many rather uncouth bows. 
 This gentleman was old ; he still wore his hair 
 tied back by a black riband, though the 
 fashion had gone out. His suit was rusty, 
 his boots were split in the upperleather, and 
 the elbows of his long coat were patched. 
 His face was peculiar. The nose was pointed 
 and aquiline, and, as forehead and chin re- 
 ceded, it gave his head the appearance of that 
 of a bird. The eyes were very wide open, 
 prominent, and of the palest grey. His hair 
 was frosted with age. 
 
 The expression of his eyes was one of 
 eager inquiry. His mouth was weak, and 
 the lips were incessantly quivering. There 
 w^as a kindly look about the feeble mouth 
 which assured those who studied the face that 
 a kind heart was lodged within, and showed 
 them that the qualities of this organ were 
 superior to those of the head. 
 
 Mr. Battishill's daughter Cicely was a fine 
 girl, about the same age as Joyce — eighteen. 
 She was somewhat stoutly built, with hair of 
 a glowing auburn, almost red, but not harshly 
 red, rather of the richest, sunniest chestnut. 
 Her complexion was of that quality, seen
 
 38 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 nowliere but in Devon ; transparent, delicate, 
 white, with the brightest, healthiest, purest 
 colour conceivable ; a face in which the 
 mounting of a blush had all the beauty and 
 splendour of a sunrise. Her eyes were hazel, 
 dancing with life and intelligence. There 
 was buoyant good nature in every line of her 
 face. At the present moment her expression 
 was that of distressed sympathy with the 
 lovely girl just introduced into her father's 
 house. 
 
 The contrast between the two was striking. 
 The new comer was absolutely colourless. 
 Her hair was dark, almost if not wholly 
 black. She was very slenderly built, her 
 hands were long, and the fingers fine and 
 tapering. The hands indicate culture and 
 purity of race ; those at which Cicely now 
 looked were hands belonging to a lady of high 
 nervous sensibility and perfect breeding. Her 
 features were regular, and singularly delicately 
 and beautifully cut. The eyes, when raised, 
 sent a tremor to the heart of him on whom 
 they rested ; they were deep, full, and myste- 
 rious. A soul lay in those unfathomed pools, 
 but of what sort none might guess. There 
 was nothing in the expression of the face to 
 assist in the inquiry. And yet the face was 
 not a blank page and therefore uninviting.
 
 WEST IVYKE. 
 
 39 
 
 The expression that sat on it was one of re- 
 serve, and therefore as provoking as those 
 wonderful eyes. 
 
 Cicely was frank and impulsive ; her heart 
 was visible to all the world, she had no re- 
 serve whatever, what she thought she said; 
 and her heart spoke through her eyes, a genial, 
 affectionate heart, fresh and simple. 
 
 The pale young lady was evidently re- 
 lieved by being placed in a chair by the fire. 
 Her foot had pained her ; it was now rested 
 on a footstool. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' said Mr. Battishill, 
 ' I did not catch the name. It is such a plea- 
 sure to me to know to whom I am able to 
 offer hospitality. It places persons on a foot- 
 ing of friendship at once when they are able 
 to address each other by name.' 
 
 ' My name is Mirelle,' said the young lady, 
 without raising her eyes from the fire or 
 moving a muscle of her face. ' My mother 
 was the Countess Garcia. She married my 
 father, a Mr. Strange. It is not necessary in 
 Spain to take the paternal name ; I prefer to 
 be called Mirelle Garcia de Cantalejo. Canta- 
 lejo is territorial.' 
 
 Mr. Battishill listened with open mouth 
 and staring eyes, and drew himself up. A 
 distinguished guest this.
 
 40 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' And Canta ' 
 
 ' Cantalejo,' interrupted Mirelle, ' is in 
 Segovia — in Old Castile of course. We 
 belong to the purest of the ancient Castilian 
 nobility. Cantalejo belonged to tlie family 
 from the earliest period ; it is even said 
 that when Saint Jacques came to Spain he 
 was the guest of my ancestor, and that 
 is why we bear an escallop on our coat. 
 Cantalejo belonged to us till the sixteenth 
 century/ 
 
 ^ And now ? ' 
 
 ' It has ceased to belong to us for three 
 hundred years. But before that we exercised 
 sovereign powers in the country, we coined 
 our own money, and hung malefactors on our 
 own gallows.' 
 
 ' Your poor father,' began Mr. Battishill, 
 his nervous mouth working and his eager 
 eyes staring, ' that is, Mr. Strange — I think 
 you said Strange — ' 
 
 Mirelle bowed an affirmative. 
 
 ' Your poor father, Mr. Strange, lies, I 
 fear, in a very sad and precarious state. He 
 has been placed in the spare bedroom upstairs, 
 and the doctor has been sent for, but cannot 
 well be here for an hour.' 
 
 ' I am told that my lather is dead,' said 
 the young lady composedly. ' I am very
 
 IVES7' WYKE. 41 
 
 sorry. And what increases my desolation is 
 that he was a heretic/ 
 
 ' You love him,' whispered Cicely, looking 
 pained and puzzled. 
 
 ' I have always prayed for him, and I will 
 pray for him still,' said Mirelle. ' He did not 
 know the truth, so his invincible ignorance 
 may save him.' 
 
 ' You would hardly like to see him now,' 
 suggested Cicely. 
 
 ' No, perhaps to-morrow.' 
 
 ' You love him,' persisted Cicely. 
 
 ' Of course,' answered Mirelle. ' It is my 
 duty. But you must understand that 1 have 
 not known him except by name till last fort- 
 night. I had not seen him at all till a fort- 
 night ago, when he came to Paris to take me 
 away from the Sacre Coeur.' 
 
 The young man had been watching her 
 face intently. He had seemed more pained 
 than Cicely at her want of feeling. Now he 
 drew a long breath, a sigh of relief; these 
 Avords of Mirelle explained her coldness. 
 
 ' I am sorry that he is dead,' she went on, 
 * but he ought not to have married my mother.' 
 
 • We cannot regret that,' said Mr. Battis- 
 hill with awkward gallantry, ' since to that 
 we are indebted for the pleasure of making 
 your acquaintance.'
 
 42 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Mirelle considered for a moment, then she 
 said simply, ' You mean that I should not 
 have existed. True ; I did not think of this/ 
 
 Mr. Battishill and the young man were 
 unable to repress a smile. She was a curious 
 mixture of simplicity, reserve, and frankness. 
 The reserve was exercised over her feelings, but 
 she was perfectly frank about her thoughts. 
 
 ^ Have you ever been to Cantal ? I 
 
 have not quite caught the name.^ 
 
 ' I have never been in Spain at all,' an- 
 swered Mirelle. 
 
 ' Where, then, have you lived? ' 
 
 ' In Paris. Where else should I live ? 
 One lives in Paris, one exists elsewhere.' 
 
 ' But your father ? ' 
 
 ' Mr. Strange was a Brazilian diamond 
 merchant. I mean a merchant of diamonds 
 living in Brazil. My mother married him 
 there. It was very good of my mother, but 
 she was an angel. He was rich — comme qa^ 
 mais bourgeois. When I was born, my mother 
 came to Paris to have me properly educated, 
 and I lived there till the good God took her. 
 I have been at school with the English sisters 
 of the Sacre Cceur. W^hen my father came 
 to Paris he took me away, to bring me to his 
 home in England.' 
 , ' Where is his home?'
 
 WEST WYKE. 43 
 
 'He lias none; he would make one. He 
 has retired from his business.' 
 
 ' What relations has he? They should be 
 communicated with.' 
 
 ' I do not know that he has any. My 
 mother never spoke of my father's relations. 
 She knew nothing of them; she did not 
 want to know them. In this world every- 
 thing is on shelves, and the things on each 
 shelf are kept to themselves. Where they 
 get mixed there is inextricable confusion. 
 Above, angels; then kings, nobles, bourgeois, 
 peasants, monkeys, and so down to the lowest 
 form of life — those laid on the floor. My 
 father's relatives were not noble.' Then sud- 
 denly, ' Are you noble, sir ? ' 
 
 Mr. Battishill threw up his head proudly. 
 ' My family is gentle, and of ancient degree,' 
 he said. ' We appeared in the Heralds' Visita- 
 tion of 1620 in four descents, but I have 
 title-deeds that show we were lords of the 
 manor of West Wyke from the time of Edward 
 the Third.' 
 
 ^ Those are your arms?' asked Mirelle, 
 looking at the chimney-piece. 'What birds 
 are those?' 
 
 ' Owls,' answered Mr. Battishill, proudly ; 
 ' owls argent, beaked and clawed or.' 
 
 Mirelle contemplated the owls, then looked
 
 44 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 at the gentleman, with his blank eyes, beak- 
 like nose, and grey hair. Her lips twitched 
 slightly, but she was too well bred to smile. 
 
 '- The bird is dedicated to Minerva. It is 
 the symbol of wisdom,' she said. 
 
 ' The Battishills were ever owls,' said he, 
 proudly. Then he asked, glancing at the 
 young man, ' Is this gentleman your brother?' 
 
 Mirelle looked up full for the first time 
 into the young stranger's face. 
 
 ' He is no relative of mine. I do not even 
 know his name.' 
 
 * My name,' said he, stepping forward, ' is 
 John Herring.' He was interrupted by a 
 laugh from Mirelle. 
 
 ' Herring!' she exclaimed, ' Quel drole de 
 nom ! That is a fish they split and pickle, 
 and pack in barrels, is it not?' The young 
 man coloured. 
 
 ' The name is bourgeois — Herring ! ' 
 
 The young gentleman drew back, wounded. 
 He said nothing more about himself, but 
 asked Mr. Battishill in a low voice for a 
 lantern. 
 
 ' The trunks and portmanteaus are lying 
 with the broken chaise, and I must see to 
 their being placed under shelter and in se- 
 curity. Are there men about the premises 
 who can assist me?'
 
 IVEST WYKE. 45 
 
 ' There will be some difficulty about find- 
 ing a man,' answered Mr. Battishill. ' We 
 do not keep one in the house, and the cot- 
 tages are at a distance. You will not find 
 your way to them by night. Do not trouble 
 about the trunks; leave them till morning. 
 No one will touch them.' 
 
 ' I prefer removing them. When the post- 
 boy returns from Okehampton with the doctor, 
 I will secure his assistance.' 
 
 Cicely had lighted a lantern whilst her 
 father was speaking. She ofi*ered it to John 
 Herring. ' I will go for you to the cottages,' 
 she said ; ' I will send some men to help you.' 
 She accompanied him to the door. 'It is 
 quite right that the things should not be left 
 out all night on the moor. There are tramps 
 on the Exeter road, and the Cobbledicks are 
 close by.' She opened the door, and the light 
 fell on Joyce. 
 
 'Why, Joyce, you here still? I thought 
 you had gone back to the Giant's Table.' 
 
 ' If I were to go back to vaither, he'd kill 
 me. I ha' lost he his old barril, and him 
 won't sleep under the table a'cos mother be 
 there wi' her playful ways, tormenting of 
 he.' 
 
 'What do you mean, Joyce?' 
 
 ' I means this, miss. His barril be rolled
 
 46 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 away down bill, and I dunnow where her be 
 rolled to. Where be vaither to sleep?' 
 
 ' Under the Giant's Table.' 
 
 * That won't do, 'cos o' mother. Her be 
 lively o' nights when vaither be there. 'Tain't 
 wickedness, it be her playful ways. Her 
 leaves me alone right enough. But vaither 
 won't go there. Now if he might sleep i' 
 one o' your linnies,^ he'd be right vast enough 
 as a nail in a door.' 
 
 ' By all means let him sleep there, Joyce, 
 at least for a while, till you can recover the 
 cask.' 
 
 ^ Then I can go back to he. If I hadn't 
 that to say, he'd ha' killed me. Now he'll go 
 snuo-o-le into the straw like a heckamall' in a 
 rick. That's beautiful!' 
 
 ' Joyce,' said Cicely, ' this gentleman is 
 going to the broken carriage. Perhaps you 
 can assist him to remove some of the trunks. 
 They must not be left out where they are.' 
 
 'There be some scatt right abroad,'^ an- 
 swered Joyce ; ' I seed mun, and the things 
 be coming out like.' 
 
 ' More the reason why they should be col- 
 lected and brought under cover.' 
 
 ^ Lean-to sheds. 
 
 ^ A heckamall or heckanoddy is a tomtit, 
 
 ^ Broken to pieces.
 
 . WEST WYKE, 47 
 
 Til go right on end/ said Joyce. 'And 
 vaither may sleep in the linney?' 
 
 ' Yes, he may.' 
 
 ' Oh, rallaluley, he'll be glad!' 
 
 So Joyce led the way, followed by Her- 
 ring, and Miss Cicely Battishill went in quest 
 of assistance. 
 
 When Herring and Joyce reached the 
 scene of the accident, they discovered Old 
 Grizzly hopping about amidst the wreck, 
 pulling the pieces of the broken carriage apart. 
 He had made some clearance in the confusion, 
 but not from disinterested motives. Every- 
 thing in Xh.Q shape of cushion and cloak had 
 disappeared, and the old wrecker was engaged 
 in collecting chips of the broken wood for 
 firing. 
 
 John Herring did not notice particularly 
 what he was about ; it was too dark to dis- 
 tinguish much. He went directly to the 
 boxes. 
 
 Of his own goods there was little to take 
 care of save one valise, and that was safe. 
 The rest of the trunks and portmanteaus be- 
 longed to Mr. Strange and his daughter. The 
 trunks lay, some still corded, on the top of 
 the chaise; others thrown off, one with its 
 lock sprung. This box had either been very 
 much shaken by the fall, or Grizzly's arm had
 
 '48 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 been turning it over, for the lid would no 
 longer close over the confused and over- 
 flowing contents. 
 
 Grizzly Cobbledick decamped when he saw 
 the lantern brought to bear on the wreck. 
 Joyce called after hira, but he made no reply. 
 Then she went in pursuit to announce to him 
 the glad news that he was to sleep in the 
 straw of the calves' linney at West Wyke. 
 
 ' I wonder/ mused John Herring, * whether 
 that old rascal can have stolen anything of 
 value. If he has, there is no one to bring 
 him to book. The owner is dead, and the 
 daughter probably knows nothing of the 
 contents of the boxes.' 
 
 If he had known !
 
 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MIRELLE. 
 
 It is aggravating to the reader to be asked to 
 move backwards when he has been well started 
 in a story. He resents it, as he resents the 
 backing of a train when he has left the station 
 where he took his ticket, and is impatient 
 to reach his destination. 
 
 The author is aware that he is trying the 
 patience of the reader when he asks him to 
 turn into a side alley which bends in the same 
 direction as his starting point. He would 
 avoid asking him to turn if it were possible to 
 do so. But it is not always possible. To a 
 drama, to the farce of half an hour, is prefixed 
 the list of characters. In taking up one of 
 Lacy's acting copies, the reader learns at a 
 glance that Box is a journeyman printer, 
 and Cox a journeyman hatter, and that Mrs. 
 Bouncer is a lodging-house keeper. He learns 
 a great deal about them before he comes to a 
 word of dialogue. He is informed that Box 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 wears ' small swallow-tailed black coat, short 
 buff waistcoat, ligbt drab trousers (short, 
 turned up at the bottom), black stockings, 
 white canvas boots with black tips, cotton 
 neckloth, and shabby black hat ; ' further, 
 that Cox is apparelled in ' brown Newmarket 
 coat, long white waistcoat, black plaid trousers, 
 boots, white hat, black stock ; ' that Mrs. 
 Bouncer is costumed in 'coloured cotton 
 gown, apron, cap, &c.' He feels at once that 
 he knows all about these characters. He 
 reads their past in their costume, they wear 
 their souls on their limbs. Note that ' turned 
 up at the bottom' — the words illumine the 
 abysses of the character of Box, and make 
 them clear to us. 
 
 But the novelist is debarred what is al- 
 lowed the dramatist. He must haul up his 
 curtain on a situation without an introduc- 
 tory word, and then, when the reader is 
 puzzled as to the characters, antecedents, and 
 purposes of the dramatis personce^ he is obliged 
 to step forward, stick in hand, as in a wax- 
 work, point out the several personages and 
 describe them. This is the way of novelists. 
 It is a bad way, it is inartistic, but it is 
 exacted by the reader. 
 
 Now, in describing the characters of a 
 novel it is not sufficient to give minute ac-
 
 MIRELLE. 51 
 
 counts of the costume — in the case of the 
 Cobbledicks this is done in a word ; the author 
 is required to give his readers a key to the 
 inner mechanism of his puppets, to show 
 why they walk or pirouette, and what may be 
 expected to be the limits of their powers. 
 He can rarely do this without retrogression. 
 
 That Mirelle may be understood and not 
 be judged with undue severity, we must step 
 back to a period before her birth ; but we 
 shall be as rapid in our survey as we can, and 
 shall resume the thread of our story after a 
 very short divagation. 
 
 The Countess Garcia de Cantalejo was a 
 poor Spanish lady sent out to Brazil by her 
 relatives, who were by no means near, to be 
 got rid of by marriage, malaria, or mosquitoes, 
 as might be, but anyhow to be got rid of. 
 
 She was handsome, but, like the milkmaid 
 in the ballad, ' her face was her fortune.' 
 Now in Spain pretty women abound, and 
 ugly women are exceptional. Marriageable 
 men look out more for money, which is scarce, 
 than for beauty, which is a drug. Money, 
 moreover, they know, in prudent hands will 
 wax ; beauty they know, however well con- 
 served, will wane. 
 
 In Brazil she was seen and admired by 
 Mr. Strange, a diamond merchant, and she con- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 sented to give him her cold hand, intending at 
 the earliest opportunity to supplement it with 
 the cold shoulder. She married him because 
 no one else would have her, and because he 
 was well off. She was proud of her family, 
 and it was a condescension on her part — like 
 that of the sun which stoops to kiss the 
 puddle — for her to link the proud name of 
 Garcia with that of Strange, and Cantalejo — 
 which was territorial, with a blank, for the 
 Stranges had never owned any more ground 
 than the six foot allotted them as graves, 
 and that only till they had mouldered. They 
 had made,but not coined, their money,certainly 
 never had hung men on their own gallows. 
 
 Mr. Strange and the Countess Garcia de 
 Cantalejo lived together for a few years like 
 oil and water. At length the Countess be- 
 came the mother of a daughter, who was 
 baptized Mirelle at the font in the Cathedral 
 of Bahia, by the Cardinal Archbishop himself. 
 After this Donna Garcia informed her husband 
 that their separation was inevitable. The 
 child could not be decently suckled, weaned, 
 and educated in a colony, certainly not in a 
 city so mean as Bahia. The child, the heiress 
 of the coronet and of the name with its terri- 
 torial tail, must go to Europe. 
 
 The Countess did not purpose returning to
 
 MIRELLE. 53 
 
 Spain ; there were circumstances attending 
 her departure from her native country which 
 had embittered her against her relatives 
 there. No ! she would go to Paris, the centre 
 of the civilised world. 
 
 Mr. Strange raised no objections. He 
 was weary of association with a woman full 
 of caprice, of fading charms, and of intolerable 
 pride. He was a reserved and a disappointed 
 man. To every bird comes its time of song ; 
 to the swan only at death, to the nightingale 
 in balmy spring while mating ; it is only the 
 chatterers that chatter ever. The sono: time, 
 the flowering time, the moment when the 
 dullest life breaks into poetry, is the moment 
 of love. Mr. Strange had gone through this 
 and had been disenchanted, and thenceforth 
 his life became dull, prosaic, without melody 
 and colom% unimpassioned. His heart had 
 flamed, and his wife had extinguished its fires 
 with ice. 
 
 Mr. Strange had no love for babies. 
 Babies are to men objects as ofi'ensive as 
 naked infant rabbits. A doe eats her young 
 rather than expose them to the strange eye 
 before then' fur is grown. If women were as 
 wise as does they would never exhibit the 
 contents of their nursery till the children 
 could talk and run about.
 
 54 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Mr. Strange heard a squalling in the 
 house ; the object his wife had produced was 
 thrust under his eyes and nose with indecent 
 haste. It dribbled when teething, erupted 
 with the thrush, and had a difficulty in 
 keeping down its milk. Consequently, when 
 the Countess proposed to remove the babe to 
 Paris, Mr. Strange gave a cheerful consent, 
 and this consent was made doubly cheerful 
 by the certainty that the mother would ac- 
 company her child. 
 
 If Mr. Strange acted in a somewhat callous 
 manner in granting this separation between 
 himself and his wife and child, he was in 
 other particulars generous. He made the 
 Countess an allowance which, for his circum- 
 stances, was handsome, and as the child grew, 
 and greater demands were made on his purse, 
 he met these demands without remonstrance. 
 
 Arrived in Paris, the Countess Garcia had 
 not long to swim before her feet touched 
 ground. She had a perfectly legitimate right 
 to her title, her pedigree was unassailable, 
 her manners were polished. She appeared at 
 the balls of the Spanish ambassador, and asso- 
 ciated with the best French and Spanish 
 families belonging to the old noblesse. It 
 was well known that she had married a 
 moneyed Englishman, of no birth, nor station,
 
 MIRELLE. 55 
 
 nor religion. It was known that she had 
 married for money. No one spoke of Mr. 
 Strange. The great people among whom she 
 moved would as soon have inquired about a 
 boil that troubled her as about the husband 
 whom ' for her sins ' she had saddled on her. 
 No persons of breeding invite their friends to 
 introduce them to the family skeleton. 
 
 Mirelle was brought up by the Countess 
 to think of her father as a man who had taken 
 a mean advantage of her mother's poverty. 
 He was her father by sufferance ; de facto ^ 
 alas, not de jure. She had inherited her 
 mother's complexion, eyes, and hair ; the blood 
 in her veins was her mother's, Spanish and 
 aristocratic ; her sentiments were her mother's, 
 as also her prejudices and her faith. It was 
 hard to say what she derived from her father 
 except her living and schooling for which he 
 paid. For that she owed him nothing. He 
 was fulfilling his duty, and a privilege he 
 ought to value. What was he, to be the 
 husband of a Garcia and the father of a 
 Garcia ? He was English, he was a heretic, 
 worst of all he was bourgeois. 
 
 The Countess bought herself silks with 
 Mr. Strange's money, wore the diamonds he 
 sent her, hired good rooms in an aristocratic 
 quarter, and paid for them from his remit-
 
 56 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 tances. She had nothing whatever of her 
 own. She owed him everythmg, to her hand- 
 kerchiefs and her shoestrings. She knew 
 this perfectly, and writhed under the know- 
 ledge. The greater the debt she owed him, 
 the deeper ih^ detestation with which she 
 regarded him. Each present he sent her 
 was repaid by instilling a drop of bitterness 
 into the heart of his child towards him. 
 
 One stipulation with regard to his 
 daughter's education Mr. Strange had made. 
 He insisted that she sliould have an English 
 nurse, and that when she grew older she 
 should have English playmates and English 
 governesses. When old enough to go to 
 school her mother sent her to English nuns, 
 because Mr. Strange refused to allow her to 
 go to any other convent than one of English 
 sisters. Thus it was that Mirelle grew up 
 to speak English fluently and well, and to 
 thoroughly understand the tongue. But of 
 English ways of thinking and of feeling she 
 had not the faintest conception. Proud, cold, 
 selfish, and bigoted her motiier had been, and 
 the ambition of Mirelle was to model herself 
 on her mother. Thus she, too, became proud, 
 cold, selfish, and bigoted. It was not her 
 fault — the fault lay in her training. 
 
 The Countess was a Avoman of the world,
 
 MIRELLE. 57 
 
 who combined religious zeal with worldly- 
 self-seeking. She was a vain woman, and 
 though she did her utmost to conserve her 
 beauty it withered, and the child blooming 
 into lovely maidenhood at her side made the 
 contrast distressing, because noticeable. This 
 was the reason Avhy she placed Mirelle in a 
 convent in her fourteenth year. She saw the 
 girl often, but never, if she could help it, was 
 seen in her company. 
 
 This separation from her mother was of 
 advantage to Mirelle. It preserved her sim- 
 plicity. There was no craft in her ; she was 
 absolutely guileless, distressingly frank, and 
 innocent of the trickery as well as of the 
 wickedness of the social world. She was cold, 
 because the spring had not yet come to her 
 frozen heart. She loved her mother, but 
 without passion, for her mother was too selfish 
 to awaken passionate love. Her nurses and 
 governesses had changed so often that slie 
 could not count them. Among the cold 
 sisters, lilies of virtue, the exhibition of emo- 
 tion was, if not sinful, yet smacking of imper- 
 fection. Natural affections were weaknesses 
 of the moral spine, to be conquered by wearing 
 a perpetual back-board. 
 
 Suddenly the Countess died — died in her 
 chair before the looking-glass, reciting the
 
 58 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Litany of Lore to, whilst her face was being 
 enamelled. The beautifier entreated Madame 
 la Comtesse not to draw her mouth down on 
 one side, it was cracking the enamel before it 
 was dry — -just when she had arrived at the 
 ' tower of ivory/ Then Madame la Comtesse 
 gave a gasp and the enamel came off, washed 
 away from her brow by the sweat of death, 
 and running in a milky river down her nose 
 and cheeks, and dripping on the peignoir under 
 her chin. The beautifier rang the bell, and 
 said, ^ Sacre mille diables ! To whom shall I 
 send in the bill ? Madame is no more in con- 
 dition to pay.' 
 
 When Mr. Strange heard of his wife's 
 death, he settled his affairs in Brazil. He was 
 a strictly conscientious man, and he felt that 
 now it was his duty to look after the child. 
 He had no idea that the child had sprung up 
 into maidenhood, and was a tall, lovely girl, 
 lovelier than her mother had ever been. His 
 wife had not taken the trouble to send him a 
 miniature of his daughter. Miniatures are 
 expensive, and the Countess wanted all the 
 money she received for herself. She did, 
 indeed, once send him a bit of her hair, tied 
 with blue silk ; but then, that cost nothing. 
 Mr. Strange thought of his child as a limp 
 piece of mortality in a long white garment,
 
 MIRELLE. 59 
 
 with a frill round the red head like that put 
 round a ham-bone — a thing of squeals, that in 
 its squealing showed a pair of toothless gums, 
 a quivering red tongue, and a crinkled white 
 palate. He could hardly believe his eyes 
 when introduced to his daughter. She re- 
 ceived him with perfect self-possession, with- 
 out raising her eyes from the ground to look 
 at him, for the sisters had taught her the 
 custody of the eyes. According to S. Paul, 
 there is but one Man of Sin, and he is in 
 the future ; to the religious all men are men 
 of sin, and in the present. 
 
 Mirelle curtsied gracefully. She spoke 
 the best copy-book sentiments of filial respect, 
 and assured him (out of the Catechism) of 
 the obligation to filial duty under which she 
 lay. 
 
 Then he took her away from the nuns of 
 the Sacred Heart, and carried her about Paris, 
 sight-seeing, in the hope of making her un- 
 bend. 
 
 The decorator sent in a bill for two 
 thousand francs, his charge for beautifying 
 madame, hoping to get fifty, and ready to 
 accept five. Mr. Strange tore the bill, and lit 
 his cigar with it. 
 
 An old woman who had laid madame out 
 asked five francs for her pains. Then timidly
 
 6o JOHN HERRING. 
 
 produced a lock of hair she had cut off madame's 
 head as she laid her in the coffin. The hair 
 was beautiful still ! and, oh ! madam e had 
 looked so sweet, so peaceful, like a holy angel, 
 actually young again. Then Mr. Strange 
 took the lock reverently, turned his face 
 away, and did not speak. Something in his 
 throat troubled him. He thought of twenty 
 years ago — of the time when his heart bounded, 
 of the singing of the nightingale, of the flower- 
 ing of the wheat, of the short dream of poetry. 
 Then he recovered himself, and put something 
 in the old woman's hand. The old woman 
 went chuckling away. When she reached the 
 street she said, ' That was a brave invention. 
 Madame's complexion was that of a toad's 
 belly. She was hideous as a monkey. I 
 could not pick the paint off her skin. Some 
 adhered, the rest flaked away. That lock of 
 hair was part of her false front. Mon Dieu ! 
 how soft men's hearts are ! ' Mr. Strange 
 speedily discovered that he and his daughter 
 had about as many subjects in common as an 
 Esquimaux has with a native of equatorial 
 Africa. She was above all things a Catholic, 
 he a Protestant. She was religious, and, be- 
 cause religious, somewhat conscientious. He 
 conscientious, and, because conscientious, some- 
 what religious. His religion was to his life
 
 MIRELLE. 6i 
 
 what stockings are to a traveller's port- 
 manteau, something to fill corners with where 
 nothing else will go. With Mirelle religion 
 was the chief packing of her life, and this was 
 a condition incomprehensible to her father. 
 She had artistic instincts ; she loved pictures 
 and music. Xow, pictures and music happen 
 to be two things not to be got in Brazil, ex- 
 cept in such an execrable state of degrada- 
 tion as to be unendurable. But he liked the 
 theatre, and to attend the theatre Mirelle con- 
 sidered wicked. Mirelle had learned history 
 from the sisters of the Sacre Coeur — that is, 
 she had learned that every modern political 
 idea is positively evil, that absolutism is ideal 
 perfection, that the medieval times were the 
 only times in which it was worth living, for 
 then the popes gave and withdrew crowns, 
 kings kissed their feet, and emperors held 
 their stirrups. She had been taught geo- 
 graphy out of French manuals, and had learned 
 that France is to the rest of the European 
 powers as the sun to the planets ; from it 
 they derive their light, and about it they 
 rotate. 
 
 Mirelle had her acquaintances, the Princess 
 L'Amoureuse, Prince Punchkin, Countesses, 
 Baronesses by the score, the mothers and 
 aunts of her schoolfellows and friends of her
 
 62 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 mother. Not one of these was known to Mr. 
 Strange even by name, and when she spoke of 
 them she might have been, for aught he cared, 
 reciting the list of European lepidoptera. 
 
 Even in their eating their tastes were 
 opposed. Mr. Strange was fond of pickles, 
 Mirelle loved sweets. Chillies tickled his 
 palate, chocolate soothed hers ; crystallised 
 angelica carried her into heaven, and plunged 
 him into purgatory, for he had a hollow tooth. 
 Mr. Strange endeavoured to talk to Mirelle of 
 her mother. Now that the Countess was dead 
 some of the old romance that had surrounded 
 his wooing reappeared, and his heart softened 
 to the memory of the woman. Mirelle was 
 ready enough to speak of her, but she had 
 nothing to say that vibrated a chord in his 
 heart. She spoke of her mother as a fashion- 
 able lady, living in society, dressing for balls, 
 driving in the Bois de Boulogne, or holding a 
 plate at the door of the Madeleine — not of her 
 as a woman feeling, loving, suffering. 
 
 This condition of affairs was becoming 
 intolerable. How was Mr. Strange to live 
 with a young lady with whom he was utterly 
 out of sympathy, whose head was where his 
 feet stood, and her feet at his head ? They 
 saw different worlds, they breatiied different 
 air.
 
 MIRELLE, 63 
 
 The first thing to be done was to get her 
 away from France. That was a plain neces- 
 sity. On English soil common interests might 
 spring up. 
 
 Mr. Strange had a friend of former times 
 living at Avranches, a friend of whom he had 
 lost sight for many years. He knew his ad- 
 dress, and he knew also that he was married 
 to a French lady. 
 
 Mr. Strange's nearest relative, a cousin, 
 had lived formerly at Falmouth, and, he sup- 
 posed, lived there still. Mr. Strange resolved 
 to visit his old friend at Avranches, and go 
 on in the packet from St. Malo to Falmouth. 
 He would consult both on what was to be 
 done with Mirelle. He had other reasons, 
 which will appear in the sequel. 
 
 So he hurried away from Paris, and went 
 to Avranches. His old friend was delighted 
 to see him, shook hands — both hands, with 
 the utmost cordiality, asked half a dozen times 
 after his wife and children, and forgot as fre- 
 quently when told that his wife was dead, 
 and that there was but one child, a dauofhter. 
 He insisted on carrying his dear friend 
 Strange with him to the cafe, and on his 
 drinking with him a glass of eau sucree 
 flavoured with syrup of orange, and eating 
 with him sponge biscuits. Would he further,
 
 64 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 in recollection of old times, favour him witli a 
 game of dominoes? The Frenchified Eng- 
 lishman did not introduce Mr. Strange to his 
 wife, or ask him to bring Mirelle from the 
 hotel to his house, and finally, looking at his 
 watch, remembered he was due to take his 
 wife a drive, shook hands with his dear old 
 friend with effusion, and begged, if he were 
 again passing through Avranches on his way 
 to or from Brazil, not to omit to call and 
 drink again with him sugar and water and 
 eat a sponge cake. 
 
 Mr, Strange departed, his grave face look- 
 ing graver. After a rough passage, in which 
 Mirelle suffered extremely, and her father 
 smoked and looked at the waves uncon- 
 cernedly, they arrived at Falmouth. Cato, 
 when at sea, jumped overboard, ' saying he 
 would rather die than endure another half- 
 hour of sickness. Cato was a stoic philo- 
 sopher, Mirelle was neither a philosopher 
 nor a stoic. She was profoundly wretched, 
 and looked ghastly when she landed in a 
 drizzle at Falmouth. Thus her first arrival 
 in England was not encouraging. Mr. Strange 
 inquired for his cousin, and learned that he 
 was no longer at Falmouth; he had removed 
 to Launceston. Mr. Strange heard such an 
 unsatisfactory account of his cousin that he
 
 MIRELLE. 65 
 
 was greatly disconcerted. His cousin's name 
 was Trampleasure. He found a universal 
 consensus of opinion at Falmouth that Mr. 
 Trampleasure was a man unprincipled and 
 unscrupulous, and that he had moved to 
 Launceston only because he had made Fal- 
 mouth too hot for him. 
 
 Mr. Strange remained a couple of nights 
 at Falmouth, and then took coach to Launce- 
 ston. There he neither called on his cousin 
 nor stayed. He found at the inn a young 
 gentleman equally anxious with himself to 
 push on to Exeter, and he offered him a seat 
 in the chaise he had hired. Thus it was that 
 Mr. John Herring was with him and his 
 daughter when the accident occurred. Before 
 leaving Brazil Mr. Strange had made his will, 
 bequeathing everything he possessed to his 
 cousin, Mr. Sampson Trampleasure, and to 
 his Avranches friend, in trust for his daughter, 
 and had constituted them her guardians. 
 This will was in his desk. He did not un- 
 pack his desk at Falmouth and cancel his 
 will; there was time enough to do that on 
 his arrival at Exeter. Man proposes: God 
 disposes. 
 
 VOL. 1.
 
 66 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE owls' nest. 
 
 West Wyke is a perfect specimen of a small 
 country gentlem^an's house of the sixteenth 
 century. Two or three hundred years ago 
 every parish in the West of England con- 
 tained several gentle families, not acred up 
 to their lips, but with moderate possessions. 
 These small squires farmed a large part of 
 their own estates themselves, gave moderate 
 portions to their daughters, who were not 
 ashamed to marry yeomen and even trades- 
 men, and their younger sons went to sea, 
 or were apprenticed to merchants in the 
 towns.^ 
 
 When the heralds came round to hold 
 their courts and examine into the claims of 
 gentility and right to bear arms, these squires 
 
 ^ Thus, in the Visitation of Devon of 1620, a Cholmoudeley 
 enters his brothers as ' silkman on London Bridge,' and ' prentice 
 in London,' and a Wolston registers his sisters as married re- 
 spectively to a labourer' and a 'clothier'; a daughter of 
 Glanville married a blacksmith of Tavistock.
 
 THE OWLS' NEST. 67 
 
 rode to court with their title-deeds in their 
 saddle-bags and their signet rings on their 
 hands, and showed convincingly that they 
 had held their acres for many generations 
 and had borne coat armour. Hard drinking, 
 gambling, an extravagant style of living, Iiave 
 destroyed these little gentry, and the same 
 causes have effected the extermination of the 
 yeomanry. 
 
 In the parish of South Tawton two hun- 
 dred years ago there were seven families of 
 gentle blood — the Weekes of North Wyke, 
 the Burgoynes of Zeal, the Northmores of 
 Will, the Oxenhams of Oxenham, the Battis- 
 hills of West Wyke, the Mylfords, and the 
 Fursdons. All have gone; their place is only 
 known by the old houses they have left be- 
 hind, and a few tombstones with their heraldic 
 bearings on them in the church. The grand 
 old mansion of the Weekes is now parted in 
 twain, one half a farmhouse, the other a la- 
 bourer's cottage. The park is cut down, the 
 ceilings are falling, the panelling is decaying. 
 The house of the Burgoynes is now a village 
 tavern; Will, a cottage, its grand old gateway 
 levelled with the dust; West Wyke is a farm- 
 house. 
 
 If we would know how our gentle an- 
 
 F 2
 
 68 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 cestors lived, let us look closely at West Wyke 
 — it deserves a visit and a description. 
 
 The house stands on the moor, in the midst 
 of a little patch of reclaimed land. The situ- 
 ation is too lofty and exposed to allow of trees 
 to flourish. A few ash stems attempt to 
 live there, and they are twisted from the 
 south-west. A few feet below the surface 
 the roots reach the rock, and when the tap- 
 root touches stone the doom of the tree is 
 sealed. 
 
 West Wyke House was built in 1583 — the 
 date is on it — by William Battishill. It is a 
 bouse which a substantial farmer nowadays 
 would scorn to inhabit. It consists, on the 
 basement, of one hall, a ladies' bower, a 
 kitchen, and a large dairy — that is all. And 
 that is the basement plan of many hundreds 
 of similar mansions in the West, once tenanted 
 by proud squires and their ladies, well born, 
 well bred, and well attired. Look at their 
 portraits — they were gentlemen of breed and 
 honour, they carry it in their faces ; they 
 were ladies of pure and noble souls, refined 
 in mind, simple in life. It is written on their 
 brows. 
 
 In 1656 Koger Battishill, the reigning 
 lord of the manor, walled in a garden in front 
 of the house, and at the side built an em-
 
 THE OWLS' NEST. 69 
 
 battled gateway, only twelve feet high to the 
 crown of the battlements ; a gateway of shaped 
 granite blocks and carved granite mouldings ; 
 and over the centre, proudly also sculptured 
 in granite, the arms of Battishill, the cross 
 crosslet in sal tire between four great owls. 
 He planted the garden with lilies, white and 
 orange, with honesty, golden-rod, and white 
 rocket. These flourished here, sheltered from 
 the winds by the inclosing walls; and a 
 monthly rose ran up the side of the house, 
 about the hall window, and bloomed up to 
 New Year's day. 
 
 No road led to the embattled gateway. 
 No carriages were used in those days, and for 
 the horses' hoofs there was the spongy turf. 
 When a rough track had been trampled 
 through the moor grass, and made black with 
 oozing peat water, the riders rode afield and 
 made another way till the first had grassed 
 itself over again. 
 
 Observe the date on the embattled gate- 
 way. Charles I. was executed in 1649, Crom- 
 well had issued his edict in 1655 for exacting 
 the tenth penny from the Cavaliers, in order, 
 as he pretended, to make them pay the ex- 
 penses to which their mutinous disposition 
 exposed the nation. To raise this impost, 
 which passed by the name of the decimation,
 
 70 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 the Protector appointed major-generals, and 
 divided the kingdom into military jurisdictions 
 under them. These men had power to sub- 
 ject whom they would to decimation, and to 
 imprison any person who should be exposed 
 to their jealousy or suspicion. Now Roger 
 Battishill had been a Royalist, but his twin 
 brother Richard had been a Roundhead. There 
 were two other brothers, Robert and Ralph. 
 JSTow, when the commissioner came to Oke- 
 hampton to levy decimation, he summoned 
 Squire Battishill before him ; whereupon the 
 four brothers, all habited in grey, with very 
 erect hair, protruding ears, and staring eyes, 
 and a general puzzle-headed expression in 
 their faces, appeared before him, and so be- 
 wildered the commissioner with their Roger 
 and Richard, and Robert and Ralph, and 
 their extraordinary likeness to each other, 
 and their profound puzzle-headedness, which 
 made it impossible for Roger to speak without 
 involving Richard and Robert and Ralph, and 
 so through the rest — that he dismissed them 
 undecimated, fully impressed that the Royalist 
 was Ralph, who, being only just of age, could 
 not have been in the past a dangerous re- 
 cusant. Thereupon the four brothers rode 
 home to West Wyke, hooting with joy, and 
 in commemoration of this achievement set up
 
 THE OWLS' NEST. 71 
 
 the embattled gateway, to shut themselves in 
 and the world and politics out for ever. Over 
 the gateway they carved the four owls, their 
 arms, said Koger and Kichard, and Robert 
 and Ralph — their own portraits said the 
 malicious world of South Tawton. 
 
 Some account of the hall has been already 
 given. In our day the oak panelling has dis- 
 appeared as fuel for the great hearth, but in the 
 granite mullioned window is still preserved in 
 stained glass the cognizance of the Battishills, 
 the four owls impaled with, azure, three towers 
 argent, on which are squatted three white 
 birds. 
 
 A gentleman of the present day, if not 
 exacting, might possibly accommodate him- 
 self in the lower part of the house, but 
 would hardly acquiesce in the upstairs ar- 
 raugements, for there all the bedrooms were 
 en suite. In the centre slept the squire and 
 his lady, when he had one ; on the right, 
 were rooms for the men ; in the furthest 
 slept the apprentices, in the nearest the 
 sons and brothers of the family. Oil the 
 left were three rooms all in communication. 
 The first was the state guest room, the next 
 that allotted to the young ladies ; beyond 
 that, over the cow-shed, the room for the 
 servant maids.
 
 72 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 We have a great deal to learn from our 
 ancestors, and we are learning mucli. We 
 copy their architecture, we reproduce their 
 dyes, we aflPect their costume, but we do not 
 go back to their sleeping arrangements. 
 
 Some days passed. Mirelle remained at 
 West Wyke ; John Herring was lodged in 
 the inn at Zeal, not far distant in the valley. 
 He devoted himself to the affairs of Mirelle. 
 Mr. Battishill was most kind, but quite un- 
 able to be of real use. He was prepared to 
 discuss with Herring what must be done, and 
 he would undertake to do what he thought 
 desirable, but he never did anything. The 
 dead man might have lain a month, three 
 months, a year upstairs, before Mr. Battishill 
 took steps for his interment. He had a the- 
 ory of his own relative to the disposal of the 
 dead. He believed that elm was an unsuit- 
 able wood for the making of coffins. Alder 
 was the proper timber, because alder grew in 
 swamps, and was presumably damp-resisting. 
 It was in vain that Herring explained to him 
 that alders did not attain a sufficient size to 
 be sawn into planks. That was because alders 
 were not suffered to grow ; they were treated 
 as weeds and cut down. ^ Grow them,' said 
 Mr. Battishill; 'give them time and see for 
 yourself.' He would have allowed the dead
 
 THE OWLS' NEST. 73 
 
 man to occupy the spare room till the alders 
 were grown. 
 
 Then, again, he had a theory that coffins 
 ought to be filled with that powerful anti- 
 septic, brown Norwegian pitch, pitch from the 
 pine, none of your villainous coal tar, but 
 brown pitch like old treacle. And so on, 
 from coffins to alders, and to Norway tar, and 
 the dead man waiting for the alders to grow 
 and the pitch to be extracted. John Herring 
 was obliged to see to everything, to arrange 
 with the undertaker, and to ^^ the funeral. 
 Then, again, Mirelle might have remained on 
 till she married or died for all that Mr. Bat- 
 tishill would have done to discover her rela- 
 tions ; perhaps it would have been better had 
 it been so. We take infinite pains to do what 
 is just and kind, and find afterwards that 
 everything would have been better had we 
 put our hands in our pockets. We give in 
 charity and pauperise ; we efi^ect reforms 
 which bring in a state of affairs worse than 
 existed before. There is more mischief 
 wrought by doing good than by doing nothing. 
 
 Before the funeral, Herring discovered that 
 the deceased had an account with an Exeter 
 bank. He found this through a letter in the 
 pocket-book of the deceased addressed to 
 him in Paris from Exeter, acknowledging the
 
 74 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 receipt of several thousand pounds, transferred 
 by a Brazilian bank, and notifying the open- 
 ing of an account in Mr. Strange' s name. 
 
 Herring communicated with this bank, 
 stated what had taken place, and the banker 
 allowed him to draw a limited sum for funeral 
 expenses. The young man requested, even 
 insisted, on Mr. Battishill being present when 
 he examined the dead man's pocket-book and 
 purse, and he required him to sign a state- 
 ment of the amount of money found on him. 
 
 Mirelle remained perfectly passive ; she 
 took her residence with the Battishills as a 
 matter of course. The accident had happened 
 near their house, on their land ; it was only 
 proper that they should shelter her. If she 
 gave the matter a thought, this is the result of 
 her cogitation, but actually it did not trouble 
 her. She had always been provided for, and 
 had never had to consider how she was to be 
 provided for. She did not excuse herself for 
 taking advantage of the hospitality of stran- 
 gers, for it did not occur to her that such an 
 excuse was necessary. Herring was obliged 
 to take on himself what Mirelle omitted. He 
 apologised for her. A strange chance had 
 constituted him her guardian, at least for a 
 while. She allowed him to arrange every- 
 thing. If he asked her to advise him as to
 
 THE OWLS' NEST. 75 
 
 her wishes, she replied that she was without 
 any ; he must act as he thought proper. She 
 knew nothing of the ways of England ; he 
 must do whatever was conventional. 
 
 It did not enter her head that his journey 
 was interrupted on her account, and that he 
 was put to very serious inconvenience by his 
 difficulty in leaving her without a protector. 
 To trust Mr. Battishill to do what was requi- 
 site was to trust a piece of bread and butter 
 not to fall butter downwards. 
 
 Mu-elle took it for granted that Herring 
 was doing his duty or following his pleasure. 
 She accepted his services as she accepted those 
 of the girl who blacked her boots. Each ful- 
 filled a function for which they were called 
 into existence. She neither thanked him nor 
 rewarded him with a look. What he was like 
 she did not know, neither did she care. He 
 wore very big and shapeless boots, but that was 
 proper ; boots like these became a bumpkin. 
 
 At the funeral he wore black, and gave 
 her his arm. He and she were the sole 
 mourners. She did not wish to attend. She 
 supposed that only men attended the funerals 
 of males ; but when it was explained to her 
 that this was not the custom in England, she 
 submitted. 
 
 Mr. Battishill did not follow the coffin.
 
 76 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 There was a difficulty with him about black 
 clothes. He had one best suit, but that was 
 dark blue with brass buttons. He was not 
 provided with ready money, and a new suit 
 of clothes would cripple him for some years, 
 as it would have to be paid for in instalments, 
 a leg and an arm at intervals of a quarter ; 
 the coat-tails at equal and similar intervals. 
 Mr. Battishill did not like to admit this, so he 
 was prostrated with a convenient attack of the 
 gout the day before the funeral, and sat in his 
 chair with the lame foot swaddled on a stool 
 before him. We laugh at the shifts of the 
 gentle poor, and label them meannesses, 
 whereas they are necessities. Cicel}^ re- 
 mained at home. There was but one servant 
 kept at West Wyke, a cook, housemaid, par- 
 lour maid, kitchen maid, laundress, condensed 
 into one, and Cicely had sufficient to do to 
 keep the house in order. A funeral, moreover, 
 entails extra work — eating, drinking, and dole- 
 ful making merry. 
 
 Herring gave her some money from Mr. 
 Strange 's purse, telling her that it was to be 
 spent on things necessary, and would be ac- 
 counted for to the executors. It was not 
 right nor reasonable, it was not in the least 
 necessary, that the Battishills should be put 
 to expense by reason of the funeral of a man
 
 THE OWLS' NEST. 77 
 
 who was an entire stranger. The deceased 
 was well off, and the small expenses of his 
 funeral would be nothins^ deducted from the 
 six thousand pounds which they knew was at 
 the bank, and would go to his daughter. 
 
 Cicely frankly accepted the money, and 
 made greater preparations than she could 
 otherwise have made. She put more saffron 
 and currants in the cakes, and with these 
 necessary condiments the luxury of candied 
 peel. Instead of providing cyder she put 
 sherry on the table, and gave the bearers and 
 undertaker cold round of beef instead of squab 
 pie. 
 
 As Herring and Mirelle left the church- 
 yard after the funeral, she took her hand off 
 his arm, and in their walk back to "West Wyke 
 she was interested in the ferns and mosses of 
 the banks. Herring spoke to her occasion- 
 ally, trying to begin a conversation ; but she 
 answered shortly, and either dropped behind 
 to examine a fern or was arrested by the view 
 through a gate, plainly showing him that she 
 declined to converse. 
 
 AVhen they were on the moor, John Her- 
 ring suddenly stopped and picked a tuft of 
 white heath. He offered it to Mirelle, and 
 she accepted it indifferently. 
 
 * Although this be a day of sadness,
 
 yZ JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Countess, yet here is an omen that some 
 brightness is in store for you. It is said in 
 the West that the white heath brings good 
 luck to the person that secures it/ 
 
 * You found it, monsieur, not I.' 
 
 ' But I pass on my kick to you. Keep it ; 
 I hope it may always spring up in your path 
 as it has this day.' 
 
 She made no reply, but gathered a sprig of 
 pink heath. 
 
 On reaching the gate of West Wyke Cicely 
 met them ; she had been looking out for their 
 return. 
 
 'Yoyez!' said Mirelle, 'I have picked a 
 lovely bouquet of ferns and moss and wild 
 flowers on my way. We have no ferns in 
 France, at least I have never seen such. In 
 this one particular you surpass us.' 
 
 She showed her bunch. The white heath 
 was not there. 
 
 ' Oh ! ' exclaimed Herring, incautiously, 
 * the best flower of all has fallen — the white 
 heath.' 
 
 ' So it is,' said Mirelle. ' I am sorry; my 
 hand was full.' 
 
 'Shall I go back for it?' 
 
 ' No, it has fallen in the mire, and is 
 trodden under foot. I shall doubtless find 
 my own good luck some day myself.'
 
 79 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THAT OLD TRAMPLARA, 
 
 As they entered the garden, Mirelle was 
 about to take Cicely's arm, and walk round 
 it with her, looking at the flowers, when John 
 Herring stayed her — 
 
 ' Excuse me, Countess, I must trouble you 
 one moment. I think it time that we should 
 make an attempt to find out your father's 
 relatives or connections in England.' 
 
 ^ I do not suppose that he had any.' 
 
 ^ Why not?' 
 
 ' He did not speak to me of any. Besides, 
 these people do not hang together like persons 
 who have pedigrees.' 
 
 ' But something must be done. Whither 
 are you to go ? What is to become of you ? ' 
 
 ' Comme le bon Dieu veut ! ' 
 
 ' You cannot remain here till some one 
 turns up to claim you.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 Mr. Herring was staggered. He could
 
 8o JOHN HERRING. 
 
 not reply, and say that she was trespassing 
 on the hospitality of entire strangers. She 
 turned to continue her walk. 
 
 * That is a fine orange lily,' she said to 
 Cicely. 
 
 ' You must really allow me to detain you,^ 
 pursued Herring. ' All I ask now is, may 
 Mr. Battishill and I look through your father's 
 desk that is in his trunk ? His bunch of keys 
 has been given to you. Will you open the 
 desk, or shall we do it with your sanction?' 
 
 ' Do what you like, Mr. Fish.' 
 
 Cicely looked reprovingly at Mirelle, and 
 ventured on a correction. ' Mr. Herring, you 
 mean.' 
 
 Mirelle's cheek tinged faintly. 
 
 * I beg your pardon, sir. Your name had 
 escaped me. I am not yet familiar with 
 English names, which seem to me harsh or 
 grotesque. I remembered that you belonged 
 to the fishes, but to which particular family 
 of fish I did not recall.' 
 
 Herring bit his lip, then said quietly, 
 ^ Would you prefer opening your father's desk 
 yourself, Countess?' 
 
 ^ Mon Dieu, non ! ' 
 
 * Then will you give me the key, and 
 allow us to examine the contents of the desk ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly. But I do not know which is
 
 THAT OLD TRAMPLARA. 8i 
 
 the key. Here, take the bunch, and do as 
 you will.' Then she turned impatiently 
 round, and walked away. 
 
 When Herring had entered the house, 
 Cicely said gently, ' I think, Mirelle, you are 
 bound to try and remember poor Mr. Herring's 
 name.' 
 
 * Why should I ? It in no way concerns 
 me.' 
 
 ^ But you hurt'his feelings. I saw he was 
 pained.' 
 
 ' Oh, but no ! that is not possible. He 
 cannot care about such a droll name. Her- 
 ring ! — red herring — pickled herring ! — the 
 thing is ridiculous. When the name is his- 
 torical, then — c'est bien autre chose. But 
 when it is ignoble, and, in addition, is ridi- 
 culous, what is there to be proud of? If 
 there be no pride, there can be no wound. 
 These people, moreover, have not the feelings 
 that we have — I mean about their names. 
 I should resent it were I called anything but 
 what I am. But then the Garcias fought the 
 Moors. Don Luis de Garcia with one blow 
 cleft a Saracen through his turban, 'twixt his 
 eyes, to the very saddle, and the saddle itself 
 was cloven. We had the saddle and the 
 sword in our armoury three hundred years 
 ago. We held the county of Cantalejo, we 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 coined our own money, and hung on our own 
 gallows. But the Herrings ! they swim in 
 the vast sea along with the sprats and the 
 congers, the common plaice and the little 
 dabs. They have no history. They spawn 
 ten thousand at a time ; they are the bread 
 of the nobler fish. No — a Herring has no 
 cause to be offended if his name be forgotten. 
 There,' Mirelle laughed, ^ I have said my 
 say.' 
 
 'He is a gentleman,' said Cicely, with 
 some warmth; ' I know nothing of his family, 
 but I judge by his manners and appearance.' 
 
 ' I have noticed neither. I do not con- 
 sider those who in no way concern me. I 
 cannot describe to you the colour of the eyes 
 and hair of the postillion who upset us, and I 
 know and care as little about the nobody who 
 had the bad fortune to be upset with us. 11 
 m'ennuie, c'est tout dire.' 
 
 'He has been very considerate towards 
 you. He has done a great deal for you de- 
 serving of gratitude.' 
 
 ' For what else did the good God create 
 men but to be useful — to assist the ladies ? 
 He made the dog the servant of man, and 
 man the dog of the woman. The man does 
 not thank or consider the dog that fetches 
 him a stick out of the water, and the woman
 
 THAT OLD TRAMPLARA. 83 
 
 has no occasion to pat and praise the man 
 who executes foolish trifles for her. If the 
 dog shakes himself near his master, when 
 emerging from the water, then the stick he 
 brought is applied to his sides, and when the 
 man makes himself over officious, woman 
 turns her back on him/ 
 
 ^ You have an odd idea of the reason why 
 men are placed in the world.' 
 
 ^I have a perfectly just idea. At the 
 convent of the Sacre Coeur the good sisters 
 kept several tame men. There was old Jean 
 who sawed the firewood for them, and ancient 
 Jacques who gardened. There was even a 
 devout sweep who cleaned their chimneys, 
 and though his face was black, his soul was 
 white. There was a venerable chaplain who 
 heard confessions, and there was a domesti- 
 cated notary who did their legal business. 
 The sisters worried these men a great deal, 
 especially the notary and the confessor ; the 
 latter made a good end in a lunatic asylum. 
 They all took it in good part. Their backs 
 were made to bear their burden.' 
 
 * You will not forget his name again ? ' 
 
 ' Whose name ? What ! ce bon Poisson ! 
 I will remember for your sake.' 
 
 John Herring brought down the dead 
 man's desk into the hall, that Mr. Battishill
 
 84 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 and he might examine its contents together. 
 Mr. Battishill hastily put his leg up as Herring 
 entered. 
 
 ^ Sorry that I could not attend the funeral/ 
 said the old gentleman, ' but the sins of the 
 fathers are visited on their children. I endure 
 the gout because my father and grandfather 
 tippled port. Sit down, Herring, and I will tell 
 you a good story. In the grand old days when 
 there were many squires about here, and the 
 Knapmans were at Wansdon, and the Whid- 
 dons at Whiddon, the old Squire Knapman 
 was getting into a bad way financially, like 
 me. He was invited to dinner at Whiddon, 
 and drove there in his great coach. After 
 dinner, Squire Whiddon saw him into his 
 overcoat in the hall, and was about to accom- 
 pany him to the door when old Knapman 
 said, '' No, no ! you will catch cold ; keep in, 
 man." But the squire was too hospitable for 
 that, and he attended Knapman to the coach. 
 '' Don't come out, for heaven's sake, you will 
 get your death of cold," said Knapman. 
 " Why ! " exclaimed Whiddon, " what is the 
 meaning of this, Knapman ? Going to ride 
 on the box instead of inside, a night like this ?" 
 " I prefer it," answered Squire Knapman, pro- 
 ceedhig to ascend to \}i\^ box. But Whiddon 
 would not allow it ; he went to the coach-door
 
 THAT OLD TRAMPLARA. 85 
 
 and opened it — when, lo ! he found it full of 
 hay/ 
 
 ' How came that ? ' asked Herring. 
 
 ' Why, do you not see ? Old Knapman was 
 badly off for hay for his horse, and when he 
 went out anywhere to dinner he told his 
 coachman to fill the carriage with hay from 
 his host's rick, and himself went home on the 
 box.' 
 
 ' A good story, sir ; but I think we had 
 better examine the contents of this desk be- 
 fore we tell any more.' 
 
 ' Sit down, sit down, man. Do not drive 
 the willing horse, and let an old man give you 
 a piece of advice. Let well alone, and do not 
 precipitate yourself, as Orlando says, " from 
 the smoke into the smother." ' 
 
 ' But you forget, sir, this that you advise 
 me to leave alone is not well at all. The 
 young lady is an orphan, and we know no- 
 thing of her relatives.' 
 
 ' Go on, then ! How full of briars is this 
 working-day world ! What do you propose 
 to do with the lady ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot tell till I have ascertained 
 whether she has relatives in England.' 
 
 ^ If she has not, she must be made a ward 
 in Chancery, or you must marry her, and so 
 take her affairs into your own hands.'
 
 86 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Mr. Battishill ! ' John Herring flushed 
 to his temples and looked down. 
 
 ' I am putting an alternative case. Now, 
 to make her a ward in Chancery is to put a 
 fly into a cobweb. Her few thousand pounds 
 will be bled away. By-the-by, talking of 
 thousands, do you know any one inclined to 
 speculate in silver lead ? I have a rare lode 
 on my property, but I have not the means to 
 work it. I have set three men on the shode, 
 and they have been engaged there for several 
 days. There is no mistaking that grey-blue 
 stufi* that comes up. But I cannot go on my- 
 self. If I could, the property would be cleared 
 in no time. As it is, I am crushed by that 
 damned old Tramplara. Do you remember 
 how Sinbad had to carry the Old Man of the 
 Sea on his shoulders who picked all the apples 
 and ate them himself, whilst Sinbad perished 
 of hunger ? Do what he would, Sinbad was 
 powerless to dislodge the horrible creature 
 astride on his back.' 
 
 ' Yes, I remember.' 
 
 ' Well, I am in the same predicament ; I 
 have got that old Tramplara on my back.' 
 
 ' Who is Tramplara, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Tramplara ! Not know Tramplara ? I 
 thought every one knew and had felt him. He 
 is a Cornish lawyer, who lived at Falmouth, till
 
 THAT OLD TRAMPLARA. Zi 
 
 Falmouth passed him on to Launceston, having 
 had enough of him. He has lent me money. 
 He knew that I wanted to improve my pro- 
 perty ; I was hot on draining at one time, 
 and thought if I drained my marshes I should 
 fill my purse. But, Herring, draining does 
 not pay in all lands. It don't pay in clay at 
 all. The only thing I drained effectually was 
 my pocket. Then I was drawn on to speculate 
 in Cornish mines that old Tramplara whispered 
 great things of to me. As a particular favour 
 he put me up to splendid investments before 
 they were opened to the public. By all the 
 saints in Cornwall — and they are more numer- 
 ous than those in Paradise — that mining did 
 for me completely.' The old man stamped 
 his gouty foot on the ground. ' It was a 
 swindle. And now I am entangled in the 
 toils of old Tramplara, and cannot get out. 
 Ah ! Herring, if I could but work the lead 
 mine myself, I should clear myself of Tram- 
 plara. But I cannot do it ; the cursed rascal 
 robs me of all my rents, and I am unable to 
 nurse the mine until it can run on its own 
 legs. I must call in strangers to form a com- 
 pany, and that means they are to swallow the 
 cup and give me the dregs. Moreover, I am 
 afraid of Tramplara finding it out. If he 
 does ; if he suspects what a lode there is at
 
 S8 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Upaver, lie will foreclose, take tlie property, 
 and work the mine himself.' 
 
 'I have no capital at my disposal,' said 
 Herring. 
 
 ' I do not suppose you have. But only 
 think ! Supposing that Mr. Strange had come 
 here alone, to recover of his fall, and that I 
 could have induced him to sink some of his 
 thousands here ! Come along with me ; I will 
 take you to Upaver and you shall judge for 
 yourself.' The old man jumped up, and 
 walked across the hall to his hat. 
 
 ' Your gout, sir ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, that is all right now. A walk will 
 do it good.' 
 
 ' Another time, Mr. Battishill. Just at 
 present we must examine the desk, and see if 
 we can find any clue to the family of Mr. 
 Strange.' 
 
 ' To be sure, to be sure,' said Mr. Battis- 
 hill, returning to his chair. ' You drew me 
 off our business. Open the box and get the 
 matter over.' 
 
 Herring was trying the keys. Before 
 he had found the right key, Mr. Battishill 
 put his hand on the bunch and said, 'By 
 the way, before we go on with our inquiry, 
 tell me, do you belong to the Herrings of 
 Codrington ? '
 
 THAT OLD TRAMPLARA, 89 
 
 ' I did not know there were Herrino:s 
 there.' 
 
 ' No ; I do not mean now. In 1620 Hugh 
 Manning, of Newton Bushell, married Eliza- 
 beth, daughter of John Herring, of Codrington, 
 in Devon ; so it stands in the Visitation, under 
 the Manning pedigree. I do not think much 
 of your family not appearing in that Visitation, 
 as some good Devon families just emerging 
 from the yeoman class, or not caring to appear 
 at the court of the heralds, are left unregistered. 
 It was so in this parish. Neither the Oxen- 
 hams nor the Northmores appeared, and yet 
 they held lands here from time immemorial.' 
 
 ' Had we not better seek out the Strano;e 
 family, instead of exploring the past of the 
 Herrings? The latter will keep.' 
 
 ' You are right, quite right, my young 
 friend. Good Lord, what pertinacity you have. 
 It is like that of a ferret hanging on to a rat. 
 Open the desk.' 
 
 The desk contained a considerable number 
 of papers, almost all connected with busi- 
 ness, and in a foreign language — Portuguese 
 — which Herring could not read. 
 
 Mr. Battishill leaned back in his chair and 
 looked before him out of the hall window, lost 
 in his meditations. He muttered something 
 impatiently.
 
 90 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon/ said Herring, looking 
 up. ' Did you address me ? ' 
 
 ' I? — no,' answered Mr. Battisliill. * I 
 merely said, Damn old Tramplara ! ' 
 
 Herring resumed his examination. 
 
 ' The scoundrel has his claws in my neck, 
 and the mischief is he is dragging more than 
 myself down. There is poor Cicely as well.' 
 
 ' Can you decipher these letters ? ' asked 
 Herring, holding out a couple of papers to the 
 old gentleman ; ' they are written either in 
 Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese.' 
 
 ' I cannot say. My knowledge is limited. 
 " Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge 
 the wing whereby we fly to heaven." I once 
 read Latin, but that was long ago. I may re- 
 member a few words of French. " Dieu et 
 mon droit," that means '' God and my right." 
 '' Koni soit qui mal y pense," that means 
 something about the Duchess of Gloucester's 
 garter. No, this is Chinese to me. " There 
 is no darkness but ignorance." ' 
 
 ' Hold ! ' exclaimed Herring ; ^ here is his 
 will. Shall we look at it? ' 
 
 ' By all means. No other document is so 
 likely to help you to what you want to dis- 
 cover. Give it to me.' 
 
 The will was very short. Mr. Strange had 
 drawn it up himself before sailing for Europe.
 
 THAT OLD TRAMPLARA. 91 
 
 The substance has been already given. Mr. 
 Strange left everything he possessed to Mr. 
 Eustace Smith, of Avranches, gentleman, and 
 Mr. Sampson Trampleasure, of Falmouth, soli- 
 citor, in trust for his daughter, Mirelle, till 
 she attained the age of twenty-three, and em- 
 powering them to expend from it such moneys 
 as were needed for her entertainment and 
 education. They were constituted sole guar- 
 dians, trustees, and executors. 
 
 Mr. Battishill uttered a groan. 
 
 ' That scoundrel again ! ' 
 
 ' But, sir, this is Trampleasure, not Tram- 
 plara.' 
 
 ' It is the same. He writes himself Tram- 
 pleasure, but nobody dreams of calling him 
 anything but Tramplara.' 
 
 ' He is constituted her guardian.* 
 
 ' Yes ; but associated, fortunately, with 
 another, Mr. Eustace Smith.' 
 
 ' But should he renounce ? ' 
 
 ' Then good-bye to Mirelle's six thousand 
 pounds. It will go down Wheal Polpluggan.' 
 
 ^ Wheal what?' 
 
 ' Wheal Polpluggan, that engulfed my 
 money, and me.'
 
 92 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THAT YOUNG TRAMPLARA. 
 
 * What is to be clone ? ' asked Herring. There 
 was a small black square ruler on the table, 
 belonging to Mr. Strange' s desk. He took it 
 up and played with it, now balancing it across 
 his finger, then standing it up on the table, 
 with the end in his palm. 
 
 ^ Let things take their course,' answered 
 Mr. Battishill. * I advise with Gloucester, 
 '' Thy greatest help is quiet." ' 
 
 ' I will write to Mr. Eustace Smith at 
 once.' 
 
 ^ Do so. If he renounces, mark my words, 
 Polpluggan swallows the young lady's fortune. 
 Friend Herring, I have the eyes of my heraldic 
 cognizance, and can see in the dark. A won- 
 derful mine, Polpluggan. The amount of capital 
 sunk in it must have constituted a silver lode 
 somewhere.' 
 
 ' When I have heard from Mr. Eustace 
 Smith I will communicate with Mr. Tram-
 
 THAT YOUNG TRAMPLARA. 93 
 
 pleasure — not before. I suppose I am justified 
 in doing this ? ' 
 
 ' Justified ! Certainly. I have never seen 
 Polpluggan myself. It is situated in the Scilly 
 Isles. Of these there be forty ; but I have 
 been unable myself to make out in which Pol- 
 pluggan lies, whether in Fresher, or Bryher, 
 or Annette, or Tean, or Great Gannilly, or 
 Little Gannilly, or Gweal, or Withial, or Gan- 
 niornich, or ' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon. May I borrow some 
 notepaper ? ' 
 
 * By all means. There is some. The beauty, 
 or the mischief of the matter is, that the lode 
 of tin is in the granite and under the sea. 
 Mining in granite is costly, and the proximitv 
 to the sea dangerous, entailing extraordinary 
 precautions. The water gets in. Now when 
 this takes place there follows a call on the 
 shareholders for pumping it out. Every great 
 storm drowns the mine and fills the share- 
 holders with despair ; the pump goes down 
 into their pockets. Then the tin vein does 
 not yield as at first. Once there were bunches 
 like those of Eshcol, the dividends were seven, 
 seven-and-a-half, eight, eight-and-a-quarter, 
 going, going, going up, and then, slow but 
 sure, as the miners sank their shaft so did the 
 shares sink, and the dividends with them, till
 
 94 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 they reached zero. After that, a rapidly 
 swellmg minus quantity.' 
 
 ' I have written the letter. Have you seal- 
 ing-wax? ^ 
 
 ' There it is. Now the beauty, or the mis- 
 chief is — beauty from the Tramplara, mischief 
 from the Battishill point of view — that old 
 rascal so fired my imagination, and was so ac- 
 commodating, that I borrowed the money of 
 him to sink in Polpluggan. If I had specu- 
 lated with my own little savings — but no ! I 
 had no savings — that would have been bad 
 enough, but to speculate on borrowed capital 
 is ruinous. That rascally old Tramplara led 
 me on till he led me into his trap, and then 
 snap, the door shut behind me, and I am fast. 
 Pool- West Wyke ! Poor Cicely ! Poor — ' 
 he looked at the stained coat in the window, 
 ' poor ancestral owls ! ' 
 
 A shadow fell across the table from some 
 one passing the window. 
 
 ' Good God ! ' exclaimed Mr. Bactishill ; 
 ' here comes that young Tramplara.' 
 
 A rap with the handle of a riding- whip 
 on the hall door, and, without waiting for a 
 response, Tramplara entered. He was a young 
 man, good looking, with dark hair and eyes, 
 and a dark moustache. His cheeks were florid. 
 He had been drinking, and that gave a gloss
 
 THAT YOUNG TRAMPLARA. 95 
 
 to his face and an uncertainty to his eye. He 
 came in with his hat on. He wore a short 
 coat, knee breeches, and tall boots. 
 
 'I say,' he began roughly, 'what is the 
 meaning of this? There have been those — 
 with an oath — Cobbledicks inclosing a fresh 
 piece of the down. I won't have it. They 
 will establish rights, and it will be hard to 
 displace them. Their fences must be tore 
 down.' His pronunciation was West country, 
 his grammar occasionally so. 
 
 ' Have you observed that Mr. Battishill is 
 in the room?' asked Herring, quietly. He 
 had just sealed the Avranches letter. 
 
 ^ I see him right enough. I was address- 
 ing him, not you.' 
 
 Herring looked at the old gentleman ; he 
 had become limp. His jaw had fallen, and 
 his hands trembled as he laid them on the 
 arms of his chair. 
 
 ' Then perhaps you will remove your hat, 
 Mr. Tramplara.' 
 
 ' I object to be so called,' answered the 
 young man sharply. ' My name, sir, is Tram- 
 pleasure, and only those who can't spell call 
 me otherwise.' 
 
 ' Very well, Mr. Trampleasure ; will you 
 remove your hat ? ' 
 
 ' Who are you? I don't know you. Kever
 
 96 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 had the pleasure of seeing your face that I am 
 aware of. What may your d — d name be, 
 
 Hey?' 
 
 ' Sir/ said Herring, rising, ' I will stand 
 no insolence. When you ask my name pro- 
 perly, you shall have it.' 
 
 ' Lord ! who cares a brass button what 
 you be called? Keep your name to yourself 
 if you like.' 
 
 Herring walked straight up to him, com- 
 posedly and firmly, looked him full in the 
 eyes, and said, ' You have been drinking. 
 Remove your hat, or I will knock it off.' 
 
 Tramplara took off his beaver and put it 
 testily on the table. 
 
 ^ I am not a bad fellow,' he said, ' when 
 asked a civil question, but I object to be 
 bullied.' 
 
 Then he seated himself near the table, 
 looking sulky. 
 
 ' I am Mr. Sampson Trampleasure, junior, 
 gentleman,' he said. ' Now perhaps you will 
 tell me your name.' 
 
 Herring gave him in return his sur and 
 Christian names. 
 
 ' Never heard of you,' said Tramplara. 
 * What are you doing here? ' 
 
 Herring made no reply to his impertinence. 
 
 ' I say,' began the young man again, in a
 
 THAT YOUXG TRAMPLARA. 97 
 
 loud tone, ' I won't liave those Cobbledicks 
 encroaching. I saw that old Bufflehead, 
 Grizzly, but could not make him understand, 
 or leastways he wouldn't understand.' 
 
 Mr. Battishill bridled up feebly. 'You 
 are premature, Mr. Sampson ; West Wyke is 
 my property, and I have the right to settle on 
 it whom I choose.' 
 
 ' Oh, ah! that's good,' said young Tram- 
 plara. ' Yours on sufferance. You know 
 well enough that my governor has his foot 
 luider your chair, and can kick you over any 
 day he has a mind to.' 
 
 ' AVhen he does that he can deal with the 
 Cobbledicks as well. Xaked came we into 
 the world, and naked we shall go out, Battis- 
 hills and Cobbledicks together.' 
 
 ' That'll soon take place unless you shell 
 out. You know Avhat I have come about.' 
 
 Mr. Battishill's brief indignation and as- 
 sumption of dignity expired. He put his 
 hand into his pocket, and drew forth his 
 handkerchief, and wiped his lips. 
 
 ' You have come on an unfortunate day, 
 Mr. Sampson. We have had a death in the 
 house.' 
 
 ' I don't care whetiier there be a death or 
 a birth,' answered the young man rudely. ' I 
 know one thing, if I do not go back with the 
 
 VOL. r. II
 
 98 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 interest due last Lady in my pocket, there'll 
 be pretty summary dealings in a place and 
 with persons not the other side of London , 
 
 nor in China, nor New Zealand, nor Bra 1 
 
 Why ! how in the name of Ginger came this 
 into your hands ? ' 
 
 His eye was resting on the will that lay 
 open as John Herring had left it when ex- 
 tracting from it the address of Mr. Eustace 
 Smith. He put out the crook of his whip 
 and drew it over to him. ' Ten thousand 
 crocodiles I There is my name in it. Samp- 
 son Trampleasure, of Falmouth, Solicitor. 
 No ! that is my father. Last will and testa- 
 ment of James Strange, of Bahia, Brazil! 
 Why, that's a kinsman of ours. My grand- 
 mother was a Strange. How the devil came 
 this into your hands ? ' 
 
 Mr. Battishill looked at Herrino;. Herrino; 
 was disconcerted. The surprise and indigna- 
 tion caused by the intrusion and insolence 
 of the young man had prevented him from 
 recollecting to fold up and put away the 
 document. 
 
 ' Writing to one trustee,' said young Tram- 
 plara, taking up the letter, ' and in duty bound 
 about to write to the other when interrupted 
 by me. I will save you the trouble. But how 
 came this into your hands ? Will you answer 
 me that ? '
 
 THAT YOUNG TRAMPLARA. 99 
 
 ' I have already told you, Mr. Sampson, 
 that there has been a death in the house. An 
 unfortunate and melancholy accident took 
 place last Friday, a carriage was upset near 
 this house, and a strange gentleman killed. 
 He was brought here, and has been buried 
 to-day.' 
 
 ' That was Mr. James Strange?' 
 
 ' It was. He was a gentleman who, ac- 
 cording to his daughter's account, liad lived 
 many years in Brazil as a diamond merchant.' 
 
 ' I know that. He was my father's first 
 cousin; consequently he was — blowed if I 
 know — but cousin of some sort, and about 
 the only relative on that side I had. What 
 did he die worth ? ' 
 
 ' That will be for your father to ascertain/ 
 said Herring. 
 
 ' It seems to me a most extraordinary 
 thing to find a will of one not even remotely 
 belonging to you lying on your table where 
 it might be torn to light pipes with.' 
 
 ' The reason is very simple,' said Herring. 
 ' Mr. Battishiil and I knew nothing about Mr. 
 Strange, and his daughter seemed to be equally 
 in the dark about his relatives.' 
 
 ' What, is that pretty girl in the garden 
 along of Miss Cicely his daughter?' 
 
 ' That young lady is his daughter. Mr. 
 
 H 2
 
 loo JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Battishill and I examined the papers of the 
 deceased. Most were m Portuguese, which 
 we were unable to read. From the will we 
 gathered who were the trustees and guardians 
 of the lady. That was what we sought, and 
 that was what we have ascertained.' 
 
 ' Well, tliis is a rise,' said young Tram- 
 plara. ' This is like going out after a partridge 
 and starting a pheasant. But never mind. I 
 keep my game in my eye. You will have to 
 unburthen your pockets, Battishill, old boy ! ' 
 
 * Has the sea broken in on Polpluggan?' 
 asked Mr. Battishill dolefully. He knew well 
 enough that the visit did not relate to Pol- 
 pluggan, but he tried to put off the worst. 
 
 ' Polpluggan,' said the young man, with a 
 touch of melancholy in his voice ; ' Polplug- 
 gan is swamped outright. The mighty At- 
 lantic has got on top of him, and is pouring 
 himself down his throat. There ain't no more 
 pumping to be done there, more's the pity.' 
 
 ' No more calls, then, on the shareholders ?' 
 
 ' No.' 
 
 ' Nor dividends either ? ' 
 
 ' Oh dear no. What's lost is lost. Pol- 
 pluggan was a very pretty thing ; but there — 
 his day is over, more's the pity.' He sighed. 
 ' He was as fine a fellow in the way of tin as 
 you might wish to look on. But with the
 
 THAT YOUNG TRAMPLARA. loi 
 
 best intentions you can't go after a lode into 
 the bowels of the stormy deep. The public 
 don't like it; and when you call on them 
 every month to pump out the ocean, they 
 turn unpleasant, and apply live coals to your 
 tail and make you squeak. No — Polpluggan 
 is no more.' Then with a boisterous laugh 
 and a slap on the table, ' Never mind the 
 death of Polpluggan, old chap. We aren't 
 seen the end of Cornish mining yet. There are 
 many more, bigger nor Polpluggan, looming in 
 the future. But that's neither here nor there. 
 What I've come about is the interest that 
 ought to have been paid last Lady.' 
 
 ' It has been a bad time, Mr. Sampson. 
 Tiie sheep have been cawed, and I have done 
 all I could to save them. It w^as the rain last 
 fall and all the winter that did it. I kept 
 them off the clay land, and I tried every 
 remedy I could think of. The last, and that 
 w^iich promised best, was bruised box leaves. 
 We cut off all our box borders in the garden, 
 used every green sprout and leaf, but it was 
 not sufficient. The poor beasts picked up a 
 little on it, but no lasting cure w^as effected, 
 and they just rotted away.' 
 
 ' Oh, blow the sheep ! ' said young Tram- 
 plara, coarsely. ' It ain't them I want, but 
 the money.'
 
 102 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ^ But I have not got the money,' sighed 
 Mr. Battishill. ' If I could have sold my 
 sheep I could have paid. But not only so. 
 The farmer at Upaver has lost his sheep as 
 well, and several bullocks to boot, so that he 
 has fallen behind with his rent. It is a very 
 extraordinary thing that my sheep should get 
 cawed, for I have never known such a thing 
 happen before in this high land. Down in 
 the valley on the clay is another matter. 
 But you never saw any of that blue grass on 
 my upland, which is the signal Nature throws 
 out that no sheep are to draw nigh. It has 
 always been said that peat ' 
 
 ' Faith ! it is ouly a matter of time. A 
 year or two don't matter particularly,' said 
 Sampson Tramplara, ' sooner or later scatt 
 you go. If you chose to speculate you must 
 look out for the consequences. You ought to 
 know what mining means at your age. You 
 don't think to walk over a bog, and not get 
 stogged.' 
 
 ' Your own father urged me on. But for 
 him I would have had nothing to do with 
 Polpluggan.' 
 
 ' Nor with draining either ? ' 
 
 ^ That was my blunder. Polpluggan was 
 the pit down which I fell hopelessly, and your 
 father led me to the brink and pushed me over.'.
 
 THAT YOUAG TRAMPLARA. 103 
 
 ^ There [are plenty to keep you company, 
 if that be a consolation,' said young Sampson. 
 ' Xow it has^ just, come to this. You don't 
 suppose my father hasn't lost also in Pol- 
 pluggan, do y'. I can tell you he has — a 
 brave bit of money too. He wants his money 
 as much as you do ; and he will have it too/ 
 
 ' You must have patience ; all seasons are 
 not bad.' 
 
 ' But if you nip your fingers you squeak. 
 My father is nipped pretty tight, all along of 
 Polpluggan. You see he has another mine 
 in view, and it wants capital to get that 
 floated.' 
 
 ' Look here,^ said Mr. Battishill, despe- 
 rately. ' If it comes to that, and he wants 
 another mine to start upon, let him come to 
 me. I will put him upon a lode, a real lode, 
 and I stake my life there is silver lead, and 
 plenty of it, at Upaver.' 
 
 ' That won't do,' said Tramplara. ^ It 
 isn't what comes out of a mine that makes 
 it pay, but what is put into it. You don't 
 understand these things, or you would never 
 have gone head over heels down Polpluggan. 
 There is nothing to be had from you, so I 
 don't mind saying it. And you are an old 
 friend, and are sucked dry, and about to be 
 turned inside out.'
 
 104 JOHX HERRI XG. 
 
 • There is no water that can drown my^ 
 mine.' 
 
 ' More is the pity. It is just the water 
 that makes it pay. But come I It is too late 
 for vou to learn the alphabet of mining.' 
 
 The bottle of sherry thnt had been pur- 
 chased for the funeral was on the table, along 
 with some oflasses. Without invitation the 
 youm? man poured out and drank. 
 
 ' There's sixty pounds goes home in my 
 pocket, or it don't. And if it don't, worse 
 luck for you.' He put his hand to the bottle. 
 Herring drew the decanter from his reach. 
 
 • What do you mean ? ' asked Tramplara. 
 ' Give me the sherry this moment.* 
 
 ' You have been drinking before coming 
 here.' said Herring, ' and you shall not further 
 insnlt Mr. Battishill by becomincr drunk in 
 his presence.' 
 
 ' What is that ?' shouted young Sampson. 
 ' Hev ! what a moral man we have here. All 
 for total abstinence, I presume.' 
 
 He jumped up. whip in hand, and switched 
 the whip two or three times before him ; then, 
 looking Herring full in the face, with an in- 
 solent smirk on his lips, clapped his hat on one 
 side of his head, and planted himself before 
 him with legs astride, his left hand on his hip, 
 and the right hand brandishing the whip.
 
 THAT YOUNG TRAMPLARA. 105 
 
 Instantly Herring twisted the whip out of 
 Ms hand, and knocked his hat off his head 
 with it, across the hall. Then he handed him 
 the whip again, coolly, in a manner that 
 meant, ^ Touch me with it, if you dare.' 
 
 Tramplara's face became mottled. 
 
 '- Thank vou, Mr. Herrine, thank you,' 
 said Cicely, -who entered at that moment with 
 Mirelle. Her cheeks were prettily dimpled, 
 the briofhtest colour oflowed in her face, and 
 her eyes danced with delight. 
 
 Tramplara drew back, grasping the whip 
 by the middle, clenching his teeth, and looking 
 quickly from one to another in the group. 
 
 • Come into the Uttle drawing-room,' said 
 Mirelle, composedly, ' I dislike being present 
 at vulgar brawls. These two young men 
 have forgotten themselves ; perhaps next they 
 will proceed to lx)x, which is a disgusting 
 sight.' 
 
 ' Stay one moment,* said young Sampson. 
 ' Ladies, you must hear the truth at once. 
 Miss Strange is my cousin. My father is her 
 guai'dian. She shall not remain in this house 
 any longer. I will take her away with me to 
 Launceston, where my mother and sister will 
 receive her. I have just read her father's 
 will. It is all right, ain't it, Mr. Battishill ? 
 Besides, this house is not likely to be able to
 
 io6 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 afford her hospitality and shelter any more. 
 Is it not so, Mr. Battishill ? So pack u^^ your 
 duds, missie, and be ready to start to-morrow. 
 I will bring a chaise out of Okehampton.' 
 
 ' I am not going with you,' answered 
 Mirelle, coldly, and without looking at him. 
 
 ' Oh, ain't you, though ? I am your 
 cousin. Miss Strange, and am come to fetch 
 you away.' 
 
 ' I know nothing about you,' said Mirelle 
 with perfect composure. ' You are not my 
 cousin. I am not Miss Strange. I am the 
 Countess Mirelle Garcia de Cantalejo.' 
 
 ' You have had your answer,' said Herring 
 to the young man. Then, turning to the 
 ladies, ' Now, Countess, and you. Miss Battis- 
 hill, I must ask to withdraw. I want a word 
 myself with this — person.' 
 
 Cicely smiled at him, and drew Mirelle 
 away. 
 
 Herring watched them depart, but his 
 eyes were upon Mirelle, not Cicely. 
 
 Then, going to the table, he drew a cheque 
 book from his pocket, and wrote on it an order 
 for sixty pounds, payable to Mr. Battishill. 
 
 ' Will you kindly endorse this, sir ? ' he 
 asked of the old gentleman. 
 
 Mr. Battishill, hardly comprehending his 
 purpose, complied.
 
 THAT YOUNG TRAMPLARA. 107 
 
 ' Xow,' siiicl Herring to young Sampson 
 Tramplara, ' take this, and write out at once a 
 receipt to Mr. Battishill.' 
 
 ' I refuse it,' said Sampson, sullenly. 
 ' How am I to know that you have so much 
 money in the bank, and how do I know that 
 your cheque will not be dishonoured ? ' 
 
 Herring pointed to the little black ruler. 
 
 'You will sign the receipt at once, or I 
 will break this ruler across your head.' 
 
 Tramplara made no further remonstrance. 
 With a hand that shook partly with anger 
 and partly with fear, he complied. 
 
 * Very well,' said Herring, ' now go. Pick 
 up your hat, it is in the corner, and take your- 
 self off.' 
 
 Tramplara sulkily obeyed. When he 
 reached the door he turned, his face white, 
 his hands quivering with passion. 
 
 ' The time will come, Mr. Herring, when 
 it will be in my power to repay you this, and 
 then, by God, I swear ' 
 
 ' What do you swear ? ' Herring held up 
 the black ruler. 
 
 Tramplara shut the door, and was gone.
 
 io8 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 CICELY. 
 
 When John Herring turned to look at Mr. 
 Battisliill, he found the old gentleman fallen 
 back in his cliair, his face distorted, and 
 scarcely conscious. He saw at once what had 
 happened. The excitement had brought on a 
 stroke. 
 
 Herring went into the kitchen and called 
 the maid. 
 
 ' Make no noise ; help me.' She assisted 
 him to remove the master upstairs. He sent 
 her for the doctor, and then tapped at the 
 door of the parlour that he might break the 
 news to Cicely. 
 
 Two days later, Mr. Battishill was sitting 
 up in his own room, decidedly on the mend. 
 The attack had been slight, nevertheless it 
 v/as a seizure, a first — and such are warnings 
 of others in store. Cicely came down into 
 the hall to meet Herring, who had walked 
 up to West Wyke from Zeal, where he was
 
 CICEL Y 
 
 109 
 
 staying. She went up to him, and he noticed 
 that there were tears in her eves. 
 
 ' Mr. Herring,' she said, ' my father is 
 better. I am glad to have a moment in which 
 I can leave him and speak with you alone.' 
 
 ' I am entirely at your service,' he said. 
 
 She looked into his eyes with her frank, 
 bright smile — a luminous smile that flickered 
 through a veil of tears. 
 
 ' I know that perfectly, Mr. Herring, and 
 have no scruple in making use of you. Here 
 you have remained in our neighbourhood, 
 instead of going on your way about your own 
 concerns; you have spent the greater part of 
 every day with us, instead of seeking to 
 amuse yourself — all because you knew that 
 your assistance was needed. That is not the 
 way with many young men. Another in your 
 place would have taken his valise and gone 
 by the next coach after the accident, and left 
 Mirelle to shift for herself. You have been 
 everything that is kind and considerate to 
 Mirelle — I beg her pardon — the Countess 
 Garcia.' A smile twinkled in her pleasant 
 face. ' And this emboldens me to appeal to 
 you in my trouble.' 
 
 Herring was about to protest his own 
 readiness, but she put up her hand to stop 
 him, and went on: —
 
 no JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' You have been foolishly generous, Mr. 
 Herring. You have advanced sixty pounds 
 to my father, to stave off the ruin that is im- 
 pending. It is of no use. Do not venture 
 to do this again. You ought not to have 
 done it even once. However, let me clear 
 off the debt in part immediately. I have 
 butter money — not the entire sum, not even 
 a half 
 
 ' Dear Miss Battisliill, I will not take it.' 
 ' Let us understand each other,' she said ; 
 ^ do not interrupt me. I have had a little 
 battle with myself upstairs before I could 
 nerve myself to meet you. I do not know 
 why it is that gentlefolks shrink from speak- 
 ing of money matters one with another. !N"ow 
 I am wound up, and can go on ticking, but if 
 you say a word, it is like putting a feather 
 among the wheels, it arrests the movements, 
 and the clock ceases. What I have to say 
 must be said. Mr. Herring, it will not do to 
 lend us money, we are hopelessly involved to 
 the Trampleasures. Nothing that you can 
 do will save us, without involving you in our 
 disasters. My dear father has relied on the 
 hereditary wisdom of the Battishills,' she 
 looked up at the stained glass in the window, 
 and the pretty dimple came in her rosy cheek. 
 ^ Those heraldic owls have done us harm.
 
 CICELY. Ill 
 
 They have bred in our hearts the belief that 
 Wisdom went with the cognizances, and had 
 set up her temple at West Wyke. My dear 
 father always supposed that he was about to 
 make his fortune by the application of the 
 hereditary wisdom to the development of the 
 resources of the property, or else in specu- 
 lations in mines. Alas ! an owl can see in the 
 dark, but not even one of our owls in the 
 darkness that envelops Cornish minin<^. My 
 father was led on by Mr. Trampleasure, who 
 flattered him by appealing to his judgment 
 in various matters, and now we are dipped 
 past recovery. The Tramplaras will take 
 from us everything — the dear old house, our 
 moors, our little farms. I have foreseen this 
 for some time, and I have known that it is 
 inevitable. Sooner or later the crash must 
 come, and it is better that it should come 
 now, rather than later when my father will be 
 less able to bear it.' 
 
 Herring made another effort to interrupt. 
 
 ' No,' she said again, with a faint smile, 
 ' let me 2^0 on tickins^. You have advanced 
 my father sixty pounds. Next Michaelmas 
 he will have to meet another demand for a 
 larger amount. There are thousands of pounds 
 owing to Mr. Trampleasure, of which this is 
 the interest. He may call in that debt at
 
 112 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 any time, and then — how are we to meet it? 
 All the money my f:^ther borrowed is gone 
 without having been of the smallest advantage 
 to us — gone in unfortunate ventures which 
 have engulfed everything. The dear old man 
 would do the same thing to-morrow if he 
 were able. He is now full of the notion that 
 he has discovered a silver lead mine at Up- 
 aver, and he may try to persuade you to 
 em^bark in it. Do not be persuaded. Do not 
 listen to him. Nothing that my father touches 
 ever succeeds. As long as I can remember 
 he has been on the point of making a for- 
 tune, but has invariabl}^ missed the point, and 
 fallen after each venture into deeper disaster.' 
 
 ' I have been to Upaver. I walked there 
 yesterday, and saw what had been brought 
 up. There is silver lead there, of that I am 
 certain.' 
 
 '- Have nothing to do with it,' said Cicely. 
 ^ Fortune's wheel has been on the turn for 
 the Battishills for some time, and always 
 downwards. Promise me to banish Upaver 
 from your mind. Promise me not to put 
 your money into it.' 
 
 ' I have no money to put in.' 
 
 ' And never, never again lend my father 
 money — or me, however earnestly I may beg 
 for it. It is of no good ; we must go down,
 
 CICELY. 113 
 
 down, down. Most of us small Devon gentry 
 are like buoys moored to a sandbank. Every 
 wave goes over our heads, We are never 
 wholly above Avater. After a w^hile the canker 
 gets into our hearts ; we break away from our 
 sandbank, and drift away — away mto the vast 
 unknown. We Battishills are about to drift ; 
 decay has set in. Nothing but a miracle can 
 save us, and the age of miracles is over. 
 There, take my butter-money, it consists of 
 eighteen pounds, no more ; I shall, however, 
 be able to pay you two pounds in a fortnight, 
 and you shall have the rest, if I can possibly 
 manage it, next year. I cannot promise an 
 earlier payment. Take it.' 
 
 Herring drew back his hand. 
 
 ' Take it,' said Cicely. ' It is stocking 
 money. An old stocking is the siu'est of 
 banks ; it never breaks.' 
 
 ' No,' said Herring, ' you want the money. 
 I am not a rich man, by any means, but I am 
 not so hard pinched that I cannot lend a 
 trifle. You will hurt me if you refuse rhe 
 loan.' 
 
 ' I said to myself when I came down that 
 we should fight,' said Cicely ; ' but I. will not 
 suffer you to conquer me. Do you not under- 
 stand that I have pride, and that it is the 
 part of a gallant gentleman to humour it ? ' 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Give me the money,' said Herring. * One 
 thing, however, I will not promise. You 
 asked me never to listen to you again if you 
 begged a loan. This money and more will 
 always be at your service on an emergency.' 
 
 ' That is settled,' said Cicely with a sigh 
 of relief. 
 
 ' Now we come to a second matter ; again 
 I appeal to your good nature. Look at this 
 letter. My father has received it from Mr. 
 Trampleasure, requesting him immediately to 
 bring his ward — Miss Strange as he calls her — 
 to Launceston, along with her boxes and her 
 father's papers. The will must be proved and 
 an inventory of goods taken for probate. Mr. 
 Trampleasure does not offer to come for Mirelle 
 himself, he expects my father to conduct her 
 to Launceston ; he knows that the demands 
 he makes on my father must be complied with. 
 Now it is out of the question that the dear old 
 man should take this journey in his present 
 €ondition of health, and I dare not leave him. 
 There is no one we can trust except yourself. 
 It is true I might write and say that my father 
 is ill and unable to travel; then Mr. Tram- 
 pleasure would be forced to come himself, but 
 I dread an interview between my father and 
 the man who has ruined him. In his present 
 weak state and partial convalescence, it would
 
 CICELY. 115 
 
 not be wise. The doctor says he must be kept 
 from everythmg liable to excite him. So I 
 fall back on you. I told you that I knew you 
 were ready to do whatever is kind, and because 
 I know this, I make no scruple in using you. 
 Was I not right ? ' 
 
 * I will do what you wish — gladly.' 
 ' And,' said Cicely, hesitating and colouring, 
 ^ as you return on your way to Exeter, you 
 will call on us again ? You cheer my father, 
 who quite counts on your visits, and, I am not 
 ashamed to confess it, I want advice. There 
 is no one in this neighbourhood I can speak 
 with on these matters. Accident or Providence 
 — I believe the latter — ^has brought you here, 
 and made you a welcome guest, and has con- 
 stituted you almost the confessor and adviser 
 of the house.' 
 
 ' I will certainly see you again.' 
 ^ By the time you return an answer will 
 have arrived from Avranches, and we shall 
 then know whether Mirelle will have another 
 protector, or must be left to the uncontrolled 
 disposal of the Tramplaras.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Herring impetuously, ' if only 
 for that I must return. It is too dreadful to 
 think that she who has been accustomed to the 
 purest and most refined surroundings should 
 be thrust into association with persons like Mr. 
 
 1 2
 
 ii6 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Tramplara and his son, and that her property 
 should be intrusted to a man who plays ducks 
 and drakes with all the money that he gets a 
 chance of fingering.' 
 
 ' I am glad you feel warmly in this matter/ 
 said Cicely, laying a slight touch of sarcasm 
 on the Avords ' feel Avarmly.' ' Mirelle will 
 apparently need protector, confessor, and ad- 
 viser as much as we, if not more so.' 
 
 ' She is so helpless, so solitary,' explained 
 Herring. 
 
 ' By the way, chivalrous defender of un- 
 protected maidens,' said Cicely, brightening 
 up, ' you come to us like the mysterious 
 knight in a romance, we know not whence, 
 nor whither you go. It shows how utterly 
 selfish we have been, how centred in our own 
 troubles, that no one has cared to inquire 
 whether you too have troubles, and whether 
 you are alone in the world.' 
 
 Herring smiled. ' There is no mystery 
 about me ; I am plain John Herring, nothing 
 more. I eat, I grow, I sleep, I talk. Troubles! 
 — no, I have none. Alone! — well, yes, that 
 I am. You and the Countess I find acting 
 in tragedies, but my part hitherto has been in 
 a farce?' 
 
 ' And you so little regard your good luck 
 that you offer it to the first girl you meet.'
 
 CICELY. 117 
 
 ' What do vou mean ? ' 
 
 ' Only the sprig of white heath,' said Cicely, 
 laughing. 
 
 Next day Mirelle left West Wyke in com- 
 pany with John Herring in an open caleche. 
 Cicely parted with her in a friendly manner, 
 but without great cordiality. The coldness and 
 pride of Mirelle repelled her, and she did not 
 like her contemptuous treatment of Herring. 
 Yet — strange mystery that the female heart 
 is — she would have liked it quite as little had 
 Mirelle gratefully accepted his services. 
 
 She resented also her want of tenderness 
 towards her father. Cicely could not under- 
 stand it. But then she had been brought up 
 with her father, knew him, respected even his 
 weaknesses, and loved his many virtues. She 
 was unable to understand that a like great love 
 could not grow out of the acquaintanceship of 
 ten days, passed in coaches, steam-packet, and 
 hotels. She judged Mirelle more harshly than 
 justly. That is, she judged her as one woman 
 judges another. As Mirelle was driven away 
 Cicely turned back towards the house, saying, 
 * She is an icicle ; she freezes my blood.' 
 
 Herring turned to Mirelle and said, ' How 
 
 kind, and Q;ood, and simple Miss Battisliill is.' 
 
 ' I have never before seen such red cheeks,^ 
 
 answered Mirelle. ' Do you think she paints ? '
 
 ii8 JOHh HERRI XG, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DOLBEARE. 
 
 A BRIGHT day, with a few fleecy clouds drift- 
 ing before a west wind. A sky bri,o;lit as that 
 which overarches a young heart. The pros- 
 pect as smiling as that which opens before 
 youth. Barriers bathed in sunlight and indis- 
 tinct in haze. Clouds without threat of rain 
 casting cobalt-blue shadows. 
 
 The wild range of Dartmoor rose into 
 peaks, with gullies seaming their sides, down 
 which the Taw and the Ockments rushed 
 foaming from their cradles. A glorious scene 
 inviting exploration, an enchanted land calling 
 the traveller to enter its seclusion and dispel 
 its mysteries. Bathed in sunlight, enveloped 
 in that finest haze that pervades the air on 
 the brightest day in the West Country, who 
 would suppose that all he saw was barrenness 
 and naked desolation ? 
 
 ' Do you see that castle rising out of the 
 woods ? ' asked Herring, pointing to some
 
 DOLBEARE. 119 
 
 ruins of a keep on a hill to the left of the road, 
 after they had passed Okehampton. ' That 
 castle belonged to the Courtney s. There is 
 a story of a certain Lady Howard who lived 
 there in the reign of James L' 
 
 ^ I have not heard of him. Was he an 
 English king ? ' 
 
 * He was king of England. He was the 
 father of the ill-fated Charles I.' 
 
 * I have heard of him. He married a 
 Erench princess, so he comes into history.' 
 
 ' Lady Howard was married four times ; 
 she had one daughter by her first husband, 
 whom she hated.' 
 
 ^ Perhaps she only despised him because 
 he T\as not noble, and had taken advantaofe of 
 her poverty to marry her.' 
 
 ' On the contrary, she was rich, an heir- 
 ess, and her first husband was a son of the 
 Earl of Northumberland.' 
 
 ' Then I understand nothing about it,' said 
 Mirelle, leaning back in the carriage as if the- 
 story had ceased to interest her. 
 
 ' When she was married to her second hus- 
 band she refused to see her daughter. The 
 poor girl came here to Okehampton ; some re- 
 lations sought to efi'ect a reconciliation. She 
 was introduced to her mother under a feigned 
 name — here, in this castle, and Lady Howard
 
 120 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 did not know her. But when tbe daughter 
 fell on her knees to her motlier and entreated 
 recognition, Lady Howard started to her feet 
 with an exclamation of aversion, and at- 
 tempted to leave the room. The girl chmg 
 to her, entreating her love, as the im natural 
 mother was escaping through the door. But 
 Lady Howard flung together the oak valves 
 as she escaped, and they caught the daughter s 
 arm between them and broke it.' 
 
 ' She was a bad woman ; but she is expi- 
 ating her crime in purgatory.' 
 
 ' Her purgatory is a strange one,' said 
 Herring. 'Every night she drives along this 
 road from Okehampton Castle to Launceston 
 Castle in her great coach drawn by four head- 
 less horses, with a skeleton driver on the box, 
 and her favourite bloodhound runs beside the 
 coach. When they arrive at Launceston the 
 dog plucks a blade of grass from the mound 
 on which the keep stands, and then they re- 
 turn in the same way to Okehampton, which 
 they reach before break of day. And she is 
 condemned to do this nightly, till every blade 
 of grass has been plucked off Launceston Castle 
 hill ; and that will not be till the end of the 
 world, for the grass grows faster than the 
 hound can pluck it.'
 
 DOLBEARE. 121 
 
 ' Have you ever seen the carriage with the 
 lady in it?' 
 
 ' Xo. During the war French prisoners 
 have been confined in the dismantled castle, 
 parts of which have been converted into prisons 
 for them, and several who have died in con- 
 finement are buried in Okehampton church- 
 yard.' 
 
 Mirelle shivered. 
 
 ' I would not, I could not lie here. I 
 should be wet under this dripping sky. Poor 
 men ! Why did you not tell me this before, 
 and I would have visited their graves and 
 prayed over them in their native tongue? It 
 contracts my heart to think of them, lying 
 here, away from la belle France, and the gol- 
 den sun, and the vineyards, and the waving 
 corn, and the scent of incense, and the shadow 
 of the cross.' 
 
 ' The sun shines here. It is shining now.' 
 
 ^ /if,' said Mirelle. ' You are right when 
 you say it^ not he. In France he shines, he 
 laughs, he illumines, he warms and even burns. 
 He is always in the sky. Here you have a 
 phantasm of the sun, without power and blaze 
 and fire. I do not call that the sun ; it is a 
 make-believe, a constitutional monarch allowed 
 to peep out between the clouds now and then,
 
 122 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 not reigning by right divine, dispelling the 
 clouds.' 
 
 Herring looked round at the girl in as- 
 tonishment. She was echoino- sentiments she 
 had heard in the convent and among her 
 mother's aristocratic acquaintance. ' And/ 
 she went on, ^ your church is the same — a 
 phantasm, a mock sun. When the servants 
 of Saul came to seek David, Michal, his wife, 
 took a log of wood and put on it a bit of goat's 
 skin, and threw over it the bedclothes. Then 
 the servants said. It is David asleep. And 
 that was what your Eeformation consisted of. 
 You substituted a log for the living body. 
 But why should I speak to you of all this? 
 You and I use the same names for expressing 
 different ideas. You have never eaten grapes 
 off a vine, nor figs warm with the kiss of the 
 sun on their cheeks ; and by grapes you mean 
 raisins brown and dried, and by figs withered 
 fruit packed in wooden boxes. When I speak 
 of the sun, I mean som.ething indescribably 
 glorious ; you, a round tuft of cotton wool up 
 in the clouds, that you can see sometimes 
 when supremely lucky. So in other things ; 
 what you mean by a king and a church are 
 altogether difi'erent ; pale ghosts of what I 
 mean by the same words.' 
 
 Herring was amused, and not a little per-
 
 DOLBEARE. 123 
 
 plexed. She put liim down with an air of 
 superiority, as a schoolmistress would put 
 down a boy in her class who had made a 
 stupid blunder, which merited a Avhipping, 
 but was let oiF with degradation. 
 
 After some pause in the conversation he 
 ventured to remark, ' You wall not deny that 
 this scenery is lovely.' 
 
 ' It is beautiful in feature, but wanting in 
 colour. 1 could cry out for my paint-box, 
 and spill the colours over the scene to make it 
 perfect. My master taught me, when I learned 
 to paint, that shadows were to be made of car- 
 mine and ultramarine. There are no such 
 colours here. Shadows must be put in with 
 Indian ink. I could copy all the tints with a 
 child's fifty-sous box of paints, warranted free 
 from poisonous matter, as also from all real 
 colour. Besides,' she added, ' Yenus when 
 she rose from the sea must have been intoler- 
 able till dried. Your land is fair, but ever- 
 lastingly dripping.' 
 
 She spoke without a smile. Herring 
 turned his head aside to laug-h. 
 
 So they went on ; he telling her traditions 
 to while away the journey, she setting him 
 down. 
 
 At length they arrived at Launceston. 
 
 The town is curious, perched on a height,
 
 124 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 rising precipitously out of the valley of the 
 Ivensey, and culminating in a rock that has 
 been shaped by the hands of men, and crowned 
 by a circular keep of concentric rings of 
 masonry. 
 
 The main street of Launceston is entered 
 under an ancient gateway. Scarcely another 
 English town has such a picturesque and con- 
 tinental appearance. 
 
 On the steep slope of the hill, clinging to 
 its side, was the quaintest conceivable house 
 ■ — a lono^ narrow rano'e of o-ables, roof and 
 walls encased in small slate-like mail armour. 
 In front of the house is a narrow terrace, 
 with, at one end, a sort of summer-house, 
 furnished with fireplace and chimney. Be- 
 low this terrace the rock falls abruptly to the 
 valley. The foundations of the houses in the 
 street above are higher than the tops of the 
 chimneys of ' Dolbeare,' as this picturesque 
 old house was called. 
 
 In Dolbeare lived the Trampleasures, as 
 they called themselves ; Tramplaras, as the 
 world called them. Herring knew little of 
 Launceston, and he had some difficulty in 
 finding the house. 
 
 The door opened to them, and they were 
 introduced into a hall, with stairs branching 
 ofi' on either side. Then a stout red-faced
 
 DOLBEARE. 125 
 
 man, with perfectly white hair, burst out of 
 the adjoining room, with a noisy shout of ' Oh, 
 here you are at last ! Come to my arms, 
 Cousin Strange.' 
 
 Mirelle drew back before the coarse man. 
 
 ' I say,' pursued he Avith effusion, ' what's 
 your pet name, darling? Let's be cosy and 
 familiar at starting. What are you ? Mirrie ? 
 Rellie?' 
 
 Mirelle turned to ice. ' You have mis- 
 taken the person,' she said. ' I am no cousin. 
 I have no other name than that of Countess 
 Mirelle Garcia de Cantalejo. I have come here 
 till my affairs are settled, and then I shall go 
 elsewhere. I pray let this be understood from 
 the outset. I am not a Strange, and we are 
 not relations.' 
 
 The old man stood open-eyed and open- 
 mouthed without speaking, and then burst 
 into a roar of laughter, which made his face 
 blaze a fierce red, horrible against the snow of 
 his hair and whiskers. His eyes were black, 
 with a cunning twinkle in them. His hands 
 were large, the fingers short and fat, the palms 
 very wide. Altogether a repulsive old man. 
 to whom the hoar head was no crown of glory, 
 but he a dishonour to hoar hairs. 
 
 Mirelle contemplated him with undisguised 
 aversion. Then she turned to Herring and
 
 126 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 said, ' I cannot lodge with this person. Take 
 me back to the Battishills.' 
 
 Herrins: did not know what answer to 
 make. 
 
 ' Pray, who are yon? ' asked the old man. 
 ' Brother or lover of the lady? Perhaps a 
 cousin whom she does condescend to recog- 
 nise ; a Parley- vous Mossou, hey?' 
 
 ' My name is Herring,' said the young 
 man, gravely. ' Mr. Battishill is ill, and Miss 
 Battishill cannot leave her father. Conse- 
 quently they asked me to escort the Countess 
 to Launceston.' 
 
 '- The Countess ! ' exclaimed Mr. Tram- 
 phn a. ' Oh, Ginger ! a live Countess in the 
 house. Lord ! the little rooms won't contam 
 her. We must throw out bow windows. 
 Come here, Orange, come here, Polly, and see 
 a live Countess.' 
 
 As he called, a feeble old woman, in a big 
 cap with lilac ribands and a pink bow under 
 her chin, appeared at a side door, and with 
 her the daughter whom he called Orange. 
 The latter entered the hall. 
 
 ' Father,' said Miss Orange Trampleasure, 
 reproachfully, 'you are too boisterous with 
 the young lady. Do you not see? She is 
 tired with her journey, and your noise 
 fri^rhtens her.'
 
 DO LB E ARE. 127 
 
 • Frightens me ! ' repeated Mirelle, with, 
 perfect composure. ' Non, il ne me fait pas 
 peur — il me revolte.' 
 
 ' Come with me, cousin,' said Orange. 
 ' Let me take oiF your things, and show you 
 your room.' 
 
 Mirelle hesitated. 
 
 ' My clear,' Orauge went on, ^ there is no 
 help for it. Whether you like it or not, here 
 you must stay ; you cannot go back to the 
 Battishills. It is unreasonable to expect them 
 to take charge of you. Besides, your father 
 committed you to us.' 
 
 ' My father has left a gentleman in France 
 my guardian equally with this person here.' 
 
 ' Then you must stay with us till he 
 has been communicated with,' said Orange. 
 ' Come with me.' 
 
 Mirelle allowed herself to be conducted 
 upstairs. 
 
 Old Tramplara went into a muffled con- 
 vulsion of laughter. He winked at Herring 
 and said, ' She's a queer piece of flesh, ain't 
 she — full of French hoity-toity? We must 
 take all that out of her, and make good Eng- 
 lish homespun take the place of mouslin-de- 
 laine, parley- vous, bong-soir, mossou ! ' Then 
 the old man curtsied and grimaced, and went 
 into attitudes, ' So,' said he, ' you be the gent
 
 128 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 that has escorted my Lady High and Mighty 
 here ! My son said something about you. 
 You gave him a rap over the knuckles, liey ? 
 Serve the beggar right. He had been drink- 
 in sf, I'll swear. He said he had come across 
 a temperance fellow who had insulted him. 
 And you also, I suppose, are the party that 
 have been paying sixty pounds for old Battis- 
 hill; lending him the money — making him a 
 present of it, I should rather say — for he who 
 lends to him don't hear the chink of his coin 
 again. I suppose you have plenty of brass to 
 throw away. Well, there be better invest- 
 ments than West Wyke, I can teil'y. I wish 
 I had been by to have tipped you a hint. 
 Herring is your name ! I wonder whether 
 you are any relation to old Jago Herrhig, of 
 Welltown?"' 
 
 The young man did not enlighten him. 
 
 ' Look here,' said Mr. Trampleasure. ' Stay 
 and pick a bone of mutton with us at supper. 
 Don't be shy about meeting Sampson. He 
 ain't here, now at least — and what's more, he's 
 not the fellow to bear malice. Lord bless 
 you ! if he w^ere a bit rampageous, it was be- 
 cause he had been drinking ; and as Moses 
 who was the meekest of men said, w^hen the 
 liquor is in the manners is out. But the 
 contrary is also true — and I Sampson Tram-
 
 DOLBEARE. 129 
 
 pleasure say it — when tlie liquor is out the 
 manuers return. And, though I ain't a Moses, 
 and a prophet, and all that sort of thing, yet 
 I've a pretty shrewd head of my own, and what 
 I say is worth attending to. Come along, 
 Herring, and have a bite with us all, and see 
 the young lady nestle into the bosom of the 
 family. By Grogs ! I've lost my manners 
 though. Here's Mrs. Trampleasure, and I've 
 never introduced you to her. Mr, Plerring, 
 Mrs. Tram, the flame of my youth, the solace 
 of my age — eh, old woman ? ' 
 
 ' Have done wi' your funning. Tram,' said 
 the old lady, giggling feebly. ' Will you step 
 in, sir? It gets chilly of an evening, and a 
 fire is agreeable, sir, especially when one is 
 troubled with a cold in the head.' 
 
 ' Look here, Herring,' said Trampleasure, 
 familiarl}'. ' You are not returning to West 
 AVyke to-night. That is impossible. You are 
 going to sleep at the White Hart or the King's 
 Arms, that is certain. Well, it ain't always 
 lively of an evening at an inn. You can plead 
 no engagement, and therefore I will take no 
 excuse. You stay with us and save 3'our 
 pocket the cost of supper. If you are fond 
 of music, we'll give you some. " Music hath 
 charms to soothe the savage breast," you re- 
 member the text — in Malachi I believe, and 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 he was the last of the prophets. If that was the 
 last thino^ he ever said it was the truest. Is her 
 Serene Highness at all in the tum-tum way ? ' 
 
 ^ I really cannot say.' 
 
 ' Because, if she is, she's where her talent 
 will be drawn out. I play the bass violin, 
 Sampson is a Boanerges on the flute, and 
 Orange can do pretty well on the harpsichord. 
 But there she comes herself, all along of her 
 Ladyship. Come in. Herring, this is Liberty 
 Hall, with no more forms and ceremonies in 
 it than in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.' 
 
 He drew the young man into the sitting- 
 room. ' There's another musician in the house,' 
 he said, ' but of him, mum. He don't let 
 himself be heard often, thanks be.' 
 
 Herring reluctantly submitted. He was 
 repelled by the old man, but he was concerned 
 for Mirelle. Could she endure this associa- 
 tion ? Was the daughter, Orange, better than 
 her father, or was she equally vulgar ? The 
 mother was feeble and commonplace, not 
 obtrusively offensive. He would like to be 
 satisfied that in Orange poor Mirelle w^ould 
 find a refuge and a support against the coarse 
 father and from the brutal son. 
 
 He could learn this only by staying, and 
 he therefore accepted the invitation, though 
 not with the best grace. 
 
 The table in the little dining-room was
 
 DOLBEARE. 131 
 
 laid with a white cloth, and there Avas a dish 
 Avith a cold leg of boiled mutton on it at the 
 head. Cheese, butter, and bread were dispersed, 
 not arranged, on the surface of the table. In 
 the centre stood a plated cruet-stand with old 
 mustard turned brown in a pot, and a bottle 
 of sauce down whose sides the sauce had 
 trickled and caked. 
 
 Mirelle entered with Orange, pale, her 
 long dark lashes drooping on her cheek. She 
 was ashamed, perhaps afraid, to look up. 
 Herring thought he saw something on the 
 lash. A tear ? — hardly a whole tear. A 
 brilliant, not a diamond. 
 
 Tiie room was comfortable. It was pa- 
 nelled with painted wood of Queen iVnne's 
 period, the mouldings heavy and the panels 
 laro;e. The room was low. A fire burnt in 
 the grate. 
 
 Orange Tramplara came up to Herring. 
 
 ' You have had a long journey — tedious 
 also,' she said. 
 
 ' Not tedious by any means. That was 
 impossible in such company.' 
 
 ' AVell, long. I wish we had known for 
 certain that my cousin would be here to-night, 
 then we would have had a warm supper ready.' 
 
 ' Don't bother with excuses,' burst in old 
 Tramplara. ' Men do not heed what they eat,
 
 132 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 but what they drink. Cold mutton is a very 
 good thing, especially with a glass of hot grog 
 on the top.' 
 
 Herring looked steadily at Orange. She 
 was a tall, stoutly built, handsome girl, with 
 black hair, florid complexion, and very beau- 
 tiful dark eyes. Her lips were crimson, ripe 
 and sensuous. She had a fine throat and a 
 swelling bust. Herring could make out nothing 
 more. Men cannot read women's character 
 from their faces. It is v/ell that they are 
 denied this faculty, or the race would become 
 extinct. Marriages, says a proverb, are made 
 in heaven. No — marriages are made in Para- 
 dise — the paradise of fools. 
 
 Whilst Herring; studied Orano-e inefFectu- 
 ally, she was making her own comments on 
 him. She read more of his character than he 
 had been able to decipher of hers. But he 
 had deciphered nothing. She saw that he 
 was good-looking, honest, and amiable, and 
 that he did not lack ability. She read good- 
 nature in every curve, and turned contemptu- 
 ously away. Good -nature is weakness. 
 
 ' Come along.' said Mr. Tramplara, ' the 
 travellers want to peck. Sit you all down. 
 '' For what we are going to receive." Under- 
 done, missie? or tasting of the butcher's 
 fingers, eh ? '
 
 i33 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A MUSICAL WALKING-STICK. 
 
 As Herring sat at tabic, he noticed opposite 
 him, hung against the wall, a large pastille 
 portrait of a gentleman in a red coat, with 
 powdered hair. The face was refined. 
 
 By way of conversation, Herring asked 
 Orange, who sat next him, whether this were 
 a family picture. 
 
 ' What — this, this? ' said Tramplara, taking 
 the answer out of his daughter's mouth. ' No- 
 body knows who the red man is.' 
 
 ' An ancestor, however, I presume,' said 
 Herring. 
 
 ' Lord bless you ! no ; he don't look like 
 an ancestor of our family. No flesh and blood 
 and muscle and go-ahead there ; all thinness 
 and fine bone and whimsy, very well for show, 
 but no use for work. Though I do not know 
 who the party was, yet I do know something 
 queer about the picture. This house don't 
 belong to me, I rent it ; and in the lease that
 
 134 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 picture goes with the house, and so does a 
 bundle of old walking-sticks that we keep in 
 the attic. Now ain't that curious? I reckon 
 the sticks belonged to that old fellow in the 
 red coat, but I can't say. He and the house 
 and the sticks go together. You can't rent 
 the house without the sticks and the picture. 
 The sticks are not worth much ; they would 
 not fetch half a crown, the whole lot of them^ 
 at a sale. There is one with a head I thought 
 was silver gilt, but it is no such thing, it is 
 gilded copper ; there is a second, mottled with 
 things like trees on it ; and there is one, and 
 that the queerest of all, has an ivory handle 
 with holes in it, like a flute, but with tongues 
 to them like those in an accordion, so that 
 any one up to that sort of thing might play a 
 tune on it. Sampson could do it if he tried, 
 but there is a reason why he don't try. It is 
 all cursed superstition, but still it won't do to 
 tempt Providence ; that's my doctrine, and I 
 challenge Scripture to make better. What — 
 no appetite?' he asked, when Mirelle declined 
 a slab of cold mutton placed before her. ' Come, 
 come, we must get hearty to our meat in Old 
 England, and have no pecking of crumbs and 
 nibbling of salads here, like birds and rabbits.' 
 He ate himself and said, ' Missie ! you don't 
 get mutton like this in France. I've been in
 
 A MUSICAL WALKING-STICK. 135 
 
 Paris, and I ought to know. I dined in the 
 Palley-royal, and I said to the garcon — gar- 
 qon ! By the way, missie ! what is the name 
 you call yourself by? Garcon, gargon?' 
 
 ' Garcia,' answered Mirelle, haughtily. 
 
 ' Garcia, is it. Well, garqon means waiter, 
 so I take it Garcia means bar-maid, eh? Why, 
 there are the boys. I hear them in the hall. 
 Excuse me a moment, I want a word with 
 Sampson.' Down went his knife and fork, 
 and the great fellow dashed noisily out of the 
 room. 
 
 The situation for Herring was not plea- 
 sant, but young Tramplara relieved him of 
 his embarrassment the moment he entered by 
 going directly to him with extended hand: 
 * Very sorry I wasn't polite t'other day ; but 
 there, forgive and forget, as the foot-pad said 
 to the traveller when he relieved him of his 
 purse.' 
 
 ' N^o, no, Sampy,' put in his father ; ' you 
 are out there, my boy. Verify your quota- 
 tions, say I. That same sentiment proceeds 
 from Shakespeare — one of the writers of the 
 Apocrypha,' he added, in explanation to 
 Mirelle ; ' not quite a prophet, but tinged 
 with the prophetic fire.' 
 
 Herring frankly accepted the apology. 
 Young Tramplara was followed into the room
 
 136 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 by a gentleman, tall, with light hair and very 
 light moustache, a military air, and a hand- 
 some face and f]2:ure. 
 
 ^ Miss Strange,' said old Tramplara, ' let 
 me introduce my friend. Captain Trecarrel. 
 Captain Trecarrel, ^liss Strange, alias the 
 Countess Garcia de Somethino:-or-other-un- 
 pronounceable. Same, Mr. Herriug. Take a 
 chair, Trecarrel, and try your teeth on the 
 mutton. Miss Strange is the daughter of my 
 first cousin, Jimmy Strange. '' Though lost to 
 sight, to memory dear," as the sacred penman 
 has it. The young lady don't fancy her name 
 somehow, it isn't high -flavoured enough for 
 her foreign ideas ; however, she is a Strange, 
 so sure as lamb is young mutton.' 
 
 Captain Trecarrel declined. 
 
 ' What — no meat ! Oh, a Friday. You 
 Catholics ' 
 
 ' Yous etes Catholique, monsieur?' asked 
 Mirelle, suddenly waking into interest. 
 
 ' Si, mademoiselle.' 
 
 ' Et vous parlez Fran9ais? ' 
 
 ' Assez bien.' 
 
 ' Tenez. Quand on salt penser en Fran- 
 qais, on n'est plus bete, et quand on est Catho- 
 lique, voila Fame qui vit.' 
 
 Herring noticed the look of surprised 
 admiration with which Captain Trecarrel con-
 
 A MUSICAL WALKING-STICK. 137 
 
 templated the wax -like face before him. He 
 saw also the smile that leaped into her eyes 
 when the Captain confessed his religion and 
 spoke in French. She had accorded Jdm no 
 smile. Orange also noticed the admiration 
 awakened in the Captain, and the encourage- 
 ment given him by Mirelle. Her cheek dark- 
 ened and she bit her lip. 
 
 ' No parley-vous here, please ! ' said old 
 Trampleasure. ' No one any more mutton ? 
 AVell, a merciful man is merciful to his beast, 
 says Holy Writ, and so say I. Bella, take out 
 the meat for your own supper.' When the 
 red-haired servant, who walked from her 
 shoulders, had cleared the table, and had put 
 another log on the fire, and impregnated the 
 atmosphere of the room with a scent of yellow 
 soap, Tramplara said : ' Noav for some music. 
 Do you tum-tum, missie ? ' 
 
 Mirelle did not notice the question. 
 
 ' Beg pardon. Countess Garcia de Candel- 
 stickio. If you don't play yourself, perhaps 
 you will enjoy good music when you hear it ? 
 Now then. Orange, sit you down. Sampson, 
 get out your flute, and here is my bass viol, 
 big and burly, and sound in the wind as jolly 
 old Trampleasure himself.' 
 
 ' Do you play at all. Countess ? ' asked 
 Herring.
 
 138 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Occasionally ; according to where I am. 
 I am not Orpbee. I do not pretend to tame 
 the beasts.' 
 
 ' Come along, Captain, you must not absent 
 yourself froi;n the concerto. Can you manage 
 any other music than blowing your own 
 trumpet ? ' 
 
 ' If Miss Orange will supply me with a 
 comb and some silver paper, I can give you a 
 rude imitation of the pan-pipes.' 
 
 Oranofe became OTave at once. ' Do not 
 jest on that subject, Captain Trecarrel.' 
 
 ' No, no,' threw in Trampleasure, ' it is all 
 cursed superstition, but still, " Let sleeping 
 dogs lay," as Chalker observes in the " Canter- 
 bury Tales." ' 
 
 ' AVhat do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' You have heard of the old gentleman in 
 red who is said to walk here,' answered 
 Orange, in a subdued tone. ' The tenants 
 who had Dolbeare before us let the walking- 
 sticks lie at the agent's, and they were fairly 
 routed out of the house by the noises.' 
 
 ^ It was rats,' said Trampleasure; 'women 
 are cowards about noises.' 
 
 ' What has this to do with my im- 
 promptu musical instrument?' asked Captain 
 Trecarrel. 
 
 ' This,' answered Orange ; ^ whenever there
 
 A MUSICAL WALKING-STICK. 139 
 
 is any great misfortune about to befall tliose 
 in tbe house, a sound is heard going through 
 it such as that you j)i'oposed to make. What 
 is singular is that one of the walking-sticks 
 that goes with the house has some such a 
 musical instrument in the handle/ 
 
 ' Who is supposed to walk and pipe woe to 
 the house ? ' asked the Captain. 
 
 ' That red man han^ino: on the wall behind 
 you.' 
 
 Every one turned to look at the picture. 
 
 ^ He appears harmless enough,' said Tre- 
 carrel. 
 
 * Has any one heard his music ? ' 
 
 ' Xone of us have,' answered Orange ; ' but 
 it has been heard by others before we came 
 here.' 
 
 ^ It is a strange story,' said Trecarrel. ' It 
 reminds me of the tenure of Tresmarro, not 
 far from here. There the house is let with a 
 human skull. The farmer there, not liking 
 the object, buried it ; but noises of all sorts, 
 voices, knockings, tramplings, heard at night, 
 made the place unbearable, so he dug up the 
 skull and restored it to its niche in the apple 
 chamber, where it stands now, and then the 
 disturbance ceased.' 
 
 ' Come, never mind about the ghosts,' 
 shouted old Tramplara, ' we want music ; ' and
 
 I40 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 he drew his bow across the bass viol, making 
 the room resound. 
 
 Captain Trecarrel drew his chair beside 
 Mirelle. Orange saw this, and said, ' Captain, 
 to your post of duty. I want you to turn 
 over the leaves whilst I play.' 
 
 A look of annoyance came over his face ; 
 he rose, and took his place by the piano. 
 
 The concert began. The flute was out of 
 tune, the bass viol roared and drowned the 
 piano. Mirelle shuddered, and drew back 
 against the wall. 
 
 ^ Are you fond of music ? ' asked HerriDg, 
 during a pause. 
 
 ' Of music, yes. Of noise, no.' 
 
 'Countess,' said he in an undertone, 'be- 
 fore I leave allow me to ask of you a favour. 
 I go to-morrow, and perhaps shall not see you 
 again.' 
 
 ' Most probably not.' 
 
 ' It pains me to see you thus left with un- 
 congenial surroundings. Your position here 
 may become unendurable. Should you, at any 
 time, need help, and you think I can give you 
 assistance, do not fail to summon me.' 
 
 ' You are very good to make me the offer, 
 but I am hardly likely to make use of it. I 
 shall not remain in this house a moment longer 
 than I am obliged. I have another guardian
 
 A MUSICAL WALKING-STICK. 141 
 
 living at Avranches. As we passed through 
 the place, on our way to England, my father 
 called on hira. When he is ready to receive 
 me I will go to bim. and leave England for 
 ever.' 
 
 ' But suppose he declines to act.' 
 
 ' He cannot decline. My father saw him 
 at Avranches.' 
 
 ' We will hope for the best. But on the 
 chance of your desiring independent advice, 
 will you take and keep my card? My address 
 is on it — that is, the address from which 
 letters will be forwarded to me.' 
 
 ' I thank you. I will preserve it,' said 
 Mirelle, stiffly. ' For myself it will be need- 
 Jess, but I will recommend your firm to 
 my acquaintances, and I hope obtain some 
 orders.' 
 
 Herring looked puzzled. Mirelle took the 
 card and twirled it in her fingers without 
 glancing at it. She was annoyed with what 
 she regarded as an impertinence. 
 
 With a crash on the piano, a shriek from 
 the flute, and a bellow from the bass viol, the 
 symphony concluded. 
 
 John Herring rose to depart. The musi- 
 cians were engaged on their instruments. 
 Captain Trecarrel was leaning over the piano, 
 talking to Orange. As Herring rose, Mirelle
 
 142 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 rose also. She knew he was going to depart, 
 and that, perhaps, for ever. 
 
 She w^as relieved to think so. 
 
 He ventured to hold out his hand. Pur- 
 posely she avoided seeing it, but, raising her 
 eyes, she looked him in the face. Wondrous, 
 mysterious eyes they were. They dazzled 
 Herring. This was the second time only that 
 he had met her look. 
 
 ' I am very anxious about your future, 
 Countess.' 
 
 ' I pray you give it no thought. My 
 future is in my own hands alone ; it cannot 
 concern you.' She slightly curtseyed. 
 
 Then there came a faint musical strain as 
 on some reedy instrument stealing through 
 the house. It w^as heard outside the door, in 
 the hall, then it passed round the room and 
 went on into Mr. Trampleasure's office beyond; 
 a strange music, distant yet near, so distant 
 that the ear was sensible of an effort to hear 
 it, yet so near that the vibration could be 
 felt. The air played was familiar ; a solemn, 
 quaint old melody, associated with these 
 words : — 
 
 Since first I saw your face, I resolv'd 
 
 To honour and renown you ; 
 If now I be disdain'd, I wish 
 
 My heart had n.ever known you.
 
 A MUSICAL WALKING-STICK. 143 
 
 Orange turned pale. Old Tramplara was 
 startled. Mirelle and Herring did not at first 
 realise that this was the music that had been 
 alluded to at table. Some moments elapsed 
 before those in the room had recovered from 
 their surprise sufficiently to speak, and then 
 only Orange had the courage to refer to it. 
 She turned sharply, almost fiercely, on Mirelle, 
 and said, ' It is you — you ! who have brought 
 this on us.' 
 
 'Brought whiat?' 
 
 Orange was too agitated to explain. ' I 
 have told you what this means,' she said. 
 
 * What have we here on the floor?' asked 
 Tramplara, in a shaking voice. 
 
 ' A card,' answered Mirelle. ' Mr. Her- 
 ring's address.' She raised it and read : — 
 ' Lieut. Herring, 25th Reg. 
 
 Welltown, 
 N. Cornwall.' 
 'Why!' she exclaimed, supremely shocked, 
 ' he is an officer in the army, and I thought 
 he was a commis voyageur for some grocery 
 or drapery business. Where is he?' 
 
 John Herring was gone. She had not 
 even thanked him for what he had done for 
 her, and he had done for her, and would 
 do for her, far more than she knew. How- 
 ever proudly she may have resolved to hold
 
 144 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 her future in her own hands, that future Tvas 
 in his. 
 
 ' Herring ! — Welltown ! ' echoed Mr. Tram- 
 pleasure : ' why, he is the son of old Jago 
 Herring after all.' 
 
 ' Twenty-fifth!' echoed Captain Trccarrel: 
 ' why, he must have been at Waterloo.' 
 
 ' Waterloo, by all the rules of military 
 science, ought to have been a victory to the 
 Emperor,' said Mirelle. ^ Indeed, it was a 
 victory, but the arrival of the Prussians, and 
 thereby the preponderating numerical power 
 brought to bear against our troops when ex- 
 hausted, compelled them to retreat.' 
 
 ' Sampy,' said Trampleasure, in an under- 
 tone to his son, ' I had a peck or two at old 
 Jao-o, and there must be flesh on the bones of 
 the son. The old fool has sent his son into 
 the army to make a gentleman of him. Quick ! 
 run after him, my lad, and beg him, when- 
 ever he passes through Launceston, to give 
 us a call, and see how the Countess Candel- 
 stickio is picking up her crumbs.'
 
 145 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE giant's table. 
 
 Herrixg drove back next day to AVest Wyke. 
 He was not in good spirits ; he had not slept 
 much the night before. The thouo-hts of 
 Mirelle, of her isolation in the midst of coarse 
 sordid natures, of her exposure to the imper- 
 tinence of Sampson, junior, and the vulgarity 
 of the elder Tramplara, had kept him awake. 
 His sole hope lay in Orange, that she mio-ht 
 prove a refuge and protection for Mirelle. 
 The Countess had repelled him. She had not 
 even thanked him for what he had done for 
 her. She had treated him as a traveliino- bao-- 
 man, had absolutely declined his proffers of 
 friendship. AYas it likely that they would 
 meet again — that he should again look into 
 tliose dark, inscrutable eyes? She filled all 
 his thoughts. He could give attention to 
 nothing else. Poor Mirelle ! Unsuited utterly 
 by her bringing up for battling with the 
 realities of life. Reared in purest cloudland 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 she was translated to grossest proseland. 
 JSiUrsed in a convent, she fonnd herself sud- 
 denly at its spiritual and moral antipodes. 
 She had spent her life hitherto secluded from 
 the rush and roar of life. Now she was 
 plunged in the swirl of the current, and knew 
 uot how to swim. Poor Mirelle! Herring 
 sio-hed. He was thinkino; of her when he 
 reached West Wyke, and Cicely's cheerful 
 voice roused him from abstraction. 
 
 She met him in her frank and genial 
 manner, and showed how pleased she was to 
 see him. What a contrast between his re- 
 ception to-day and his dismissal over night ! 
 Then a frost had fallen on his heart, now a 
 sunbeam thawed it. And yet he could not 
 avoid contrasting Cicely unfavourably with 
 Mirelle. Cicely was eminently sober, sensible, 
 and practical ; perfectly natural, entirely with- 
 out disguise. Mirelle was dreamy, unreason- 
 able, unpractical; her nature altered by her 
 education, her character a riddle. Cicely had 
 her congeners everywhere. Herring had met 
 a thousand equally fresh and charming girls ; 
 hers was the type found in every manor house 
 and parsonage of Old England. These girls 
 are sweet, wholesome, but not piquant. Every 
 one knows what they are ; the sounding line 
 goes to the bottom of their souls at once, and
 
 THE GIANT'S TABLE. 147 
 
 all the way tlirough fresh and crystal waters. 
 But Mirelle was mysterious. Herrmg had 
 never met with one like her. He could not 
 fathom her ; he dare not even cast the plumb. 
 That she had a shrewd spirit he saw ; that 
 she had depth of character he suspected; that 
 she was good as an angel of God he was so 
 convinced that he would have died for his 
 faith. He liked Cicely, he loved Mirelle. He 
 could imagine nothing about Cicely; he knew 
 all. He knew nothing about Mirelle; his 
 imagination could soar in contemplation of 
 lier, and see her still above him. 
 
 Mr. Battishill- was delio-hted to see Her- 
 ring. He took the young man's hand in his. 
 He would not let it go, but kept shaking it, 
 and repeating how pleased he was. to see him. 
 Herring was touched. There was something 
 in this reception like a coming home. Then 
 they got to talking about Mirelle. A letter 
 had come from Mr. Eustace Smith, a peppery, 
 indignant letter, refusing to have anything to 
 do with executorship to the deceased's will, 
 trusteeship of his property, and guardianship 
 of his child. Consequently Mirelle was left 
 wholly at the mercy of Tramplara. Nothing 
 further could be done by Mr. Battishill or by 
 John Herring. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ^ Do you understand Mirelle ? ' asked 
 Cicely of the young man. 
 
 ' What do you mean by understand ? I 
 cannot answer you without a definition of 
 terms.' 
 
 ' I mean What is your opinion of 
 
 her?' 
 
 ' I should like to know yours first, Miss 
 Battishill.' 
 
 ' That is not fair. However, you shall 
 have it. I think Mirelle has no heart. She 
 has been brought up by a selfish mother, and 
 by sisters wdio, in their religious way, are 
 selfish also. She is one of those persons 
 whom it is impossible to love, for there is no- 
 thing lovable in her. But it is quite possible 
 to pity her, and pity her I do from the bottom 
 of my heart. Her character is as cold and 
 colourless as her exterior.' 
 
 ' You misread her,' said Herring, ' or I am 
 vastly mistaken. She has a heart, a very 
 warm and tender heart, but it sleeps like a 
 flower-bed under the snow^ It is a heart full 
 of promise ' 
 
 ' How can you say that ? Have you dug 
 through the snow^ to explore it ? ' 
 
 ' I should say, full of possibilities. She is 
 not really selfish — I mean, she is not naturally 
 selfish, but she has not been placed in a posi-
 
 THE GIANT'S TABLE. 149 
 
 tion where she can attach herself to any 
 person. She has been reared to love ideas, 
 not individuals — the Church and la belle 
 France, and to these ideas she has attached 
 herself Avarmly. With us the object of educa- 
 tion is to enlarge the sympathies ; with those 
 who have trained her it has been the object to 
 narrow them. Each system has its advantages, 
 and each its defects. If we enlarge the sym- 
 pathies they run shallow, if they be narrowed 
 they become intense ; and the men and women 
 who make their mark, who influence the 
 destinies of their fellow-men, are those of one 
 idea and fiery prejudice. Mirelle is self- 
 restrained without being reserved. She is 
 frank as to her thoughts and impenetrable as 
 to her feelings. What she believes to be true 
 she speaks with crudeness, because she is un- 
 aware that the world will only accept the 
 truth cooked and sauced. She is wholly 
 ignorant of life, more so than a child with us 
 of fourteen, because an English child lives in 
 its home, with brothers and sisters, and its 
 associates are of every sort and degree. 
 Mirelle has had no home, all her associates 
 have been of one type, of one class, and of her 
 own sex. She has never been brought into 
 contact with the poor, and has never associated 
 with men. The defects you notice are super-
 
 ISO JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ficial, and Avill fade as she grows older and 
 gains experience.' 
 
 ' You judge hf^i' more kindly than I,' said 
 Cicely. ' ]3ut that is like you. You are ahvays 
 generous. Men see the good side of women, 
 and women only the worst side of their sisters. 
 Woman is to man like the moon, always show- 
 ins: one face, and that serene and luminous. 
 That there is another, systematically turned 
 from him, passes his philosophy.' 
 
 ^ I grant the likeness,' said Herring, vehe- 
 mently. ' But why should that other side be 
 dark and unsightly ? No ; Paradise is on the 
 unseen face.' 
 
 ' Omne ignotum pro magnihco,' said Mr. 
 Battishill ; ' I remember so much Latin.' 
 
 • You would like. Miss Battishill, to drag 
 the moon down out of the sky and turn her 
 round and show me a desert of lava.' 
 
 ' I should like to see exactly what the 
 moon is made of. I see volcanoes and 
 chasms on this face, I cannot suppose green 
 hills and flowery plains on the other. She 
 naturally shows us the only decent face she 
 has.' 
 
 ' There we differ as the poles,' said Her- 
 ring, warmly. ' I prefer to see her far, far 
 above me, and I do not wish to bring her 
 down to my level. I idealise her hidden side,
 
 THE GIANT'S TABLE. 151 
 
 and believe I do not see it because of my own 
 un worthiness.' 
 
 ' Let us change the topic,' said Cicely, ' or 
 we shall quarrel, and I cannot afford that.' 
 
 ' By all means,' answered Herring, ' and 
 so, tell me, has anything been seen of that 
 strange girl who helped me to carry the 
 Countess to your door ? ' 
 
 ' What ! Joyce ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, I think that was the name you gave 
 her; 
 
 ' No, I have been too occupied with my 
 father to think of her. She is more than half 
 a savage, and lives with her old father in a 
 Druidical monument called the Giant's Table, 
 not far from here.' 
 
 ' If I had not come to the rescue in 
 time, the wretched old man would have 
 killed her. I am not altogether easy in my 
 mind. The father was beside himself with 
 rage, though what had angered him did not 
 transpire.' 
 
 After he had eaten — for Cicely insisted he 
 should not go out till he had been given a 
 meal — Herring went in search of Joyce. His 
 purpose was to give her a crown for her assist- 
 ance ; he judged from her appearance that she 
 was wretchedly poor. Moreover he was de- 
 sirous to see that the girl had not been ill-
 
 152 JOHN HERRL\G 
 
 treated by her father after his protection was 
 withdrawn. 
 
 The moor was ablaze with the gorse in 
 full flower. The air that is Avafted from the 
 Spice Islands cannot be more fragrant than 
 that which played over these masses of grow- 
 ing gold. 
 
 Herring had no difficulty in finding the 
 Giant's Table. The little clearing effected by 
 tlie Cobbledicks lay as an island in the moor. 
 Their rude stone fences walled out the gorse 
 gold and the rosy heather. Adjoining this 
 inclosure was the grey mass of granite stones 
 set on edge, capped by an enormous . block ; 
 the interstices were filled in with moss. 
 Herring looked round. Xot a human being 
 was visible ; no one worked in the clearing. 
 A faint sweet smoke hung about the mysterious 
 old monument, showing that a peat fire 
 burned Avithin. 
 
 The young man walked round the crom- 
 lech and discovered the entrance. AVithin it 
 was. dark. His eyes were dazzled with the 
 o-orse bloom. He saw the smoulderino^ embers 
 of a turf fire, and the smoke crept out at the 
 doorAvay, v/hich served equally the purposes 
 of chinmey, window, and door. Then he 
 stooped and entered. 
 
 ' Is any one here ? '
 
 THE GIANT'S TABLE. 153 
 
 ^ Here be I,' answered a voice from the 
 further end. 
 
 'Who? Joyce?' 
 
 ' Yes, sure.' 
 
 ' Why, Joyce, what are you doing here ? 
 What ! lying down ? Are you ill ? ' 
 
 ' I be broked all to pieces,' she answered ; 
 ' I be going to die.' Her voice was hoarse. 
 
 * Good heavens, Joyce ! how has this oc- 
 curred ? ' 
 
 He went to the upper end of the cromlech, 
 and knelt by her. Now he was able to see. 
 The girl lay on the cushions of the chaise, and 
 some of tlie rugs were thrown over her. 
 
 ' How has this come about. Jovce ? ' 
 
 ' I won't tell'y, unless you swears not to 
 let the constable know. I don't want no hurt 
 to come to vaither of this. Yaither were here 
 a minute agone, but I reckon he seed you 
 acoming, and so he sloked away. Hers 
 afeared the constable'll be after'n all alono; o' 
 doinof this.' 
 
 ' But what has he done to you, child ? ' 
 
 'He's a'most scatted me to. bits,' she said. 
 ' Look'y here ? ' She held out her arms. 
 Both were broken below the elbows, and the 
 hands hung limp and powerless. ' I'd angered 
 'n ; and yet, t'warnt my fault neither. The 
 coord snappt acause the coord were wore out.
 
 154 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 But never heed that. You won't tell o' he ? 
 See now ; say after me, " Bhist me blue if I 
 does." ' 
 
 ' My poor gu-1, I will not tell.' 
 
 'Say what I sez : "Blast me blue, and 
 glorj rallaluley ! " ' 
 
 ' There is no necessity for that. You may 
 trust my word.' 
 
 ' He'd a right to do it,' argued Joyce. ' I 
 be his daughter, and a vaither may do what 
 he minds to wi' his child. That's reason.' 
 
 ' I dispute that. He had no right what- 
 ever to maltreat you. But, tell me, have you 
 had no doctor to you ? Y'our bones must be 
 set.' 
 
 ' A doctor won't do me no good, maister. 
 I niver seed a animal as had been mashed that 
 hev come right again. 'Tain't in nature. I 
 be going to die right on end, I be. But I 
 don't wish vaither no hurt for it. I be his 
 daughter, and he has a right to do as he 
 pleases.' 
 
 ' Joyce, when was this done ? ' 
 
 ' When were this done ? Why, that night 
 the carriage were overset and the man killed.' 
 
 ' What ! all that time ago, and nothing 
 done to your arms ! Did not your father put 
 splints on them ? ' 
 
 ' What be they ? Yaither can't mend no-
 
 THE GIANT'S TABLE. 155 
 
 thino-. He'vo abrokecl and tore clown scores 
 and scores of things, but lie've amended no- 
 thing.' 
 
 ' And no one has been here to help you ? ' 
 ' Nobody niver comes here. My vaither 
 be a sight better now than he were. I'll tell'y 
 how that corned about. I'll tell'y the whole 
 tale rio^ht on end. When I returned home 
 after I'd a' been to WestWyke wi' you, carry- 
 ing the lady wi' the white face, him were a' 
 lying in wait for I, and when I comed up, then 
 he set on me wi' a great stone, and he hurted 
 me all over, and broke what he could break. 
 You see I'd a angered 'n, and he forgot him- 
 self. I've a forgot myself a times too. After 
 that I crept in here, and laid me down by the 
 turve hre. But vaither, he wouldn't come in, 
 he stood and peeped in at the door. I seed 'n 
 and I sed, " Yaither ! Miss Cicely sez you 
 may go and sleep in the calves' linny among 
 the straw, and it will be warm and comfort- 
 able for'y, vaither, better nor the old barril 
 was. So yon go along, and let me bide quiet 
 and die in peace." Then he went. In the 
 night I were that burning hot I could not 
 sleep, and I opened my eyes, and there I seed 
 old mother wot be buried under ihe hearth- 
 stone ; her were a heaving up in the midst of 
 the fire. I seed her head sticking straight
 
 156 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 out of the burnini^ turves, and her looked 
 hard at me ; her fiice were red as live coals. 
 Then her went on heavhig and pushing till 
 her'd a worked herself right out of the earth, 
 in the midst of the fire, and the burning 
 turves tumbled this way and that as her 
 corned out. Then I seed that her old gown 
 were flickering wi' blue light, just as you've 
 seed old touchwood. Pier comed to me and 
 her kissed me, but sure her lips were like fire, 
 and they burned me. Then her sed, " Joyce, 
 tell your vaither that I be acoming after 'n if 
 he does you any more harm. I knows Avhere 
 he be, in the linny, lying warm in the straw- 
 But I'll make 'n warmer. I'll throw fiery 
 turves in among the straw, and he'll burn, 
 he'll burn, he'll burn ! " As her were a saying 
 of that her went backerds into the fire, and 
 down through the turves, and they closed 
 over she just as afore. But I heard her still 
 a mumbling to herself under the hearth-stone, 
 " He'll burn, he'll burn, he'll burn ! " ' 
 
 ' Oh, Joyce, you were fevered and wander- 
 ing in your mind,' said Herring, who belonged 
 to the nineteenth century after Christ. The 
 condition of Joyce's mind was that of a savage 
 three centuries before Christ. 
 
 ' After that,' she went on, ' I told vaither all, 
 and he hev come here and been very good to I.
 
 THE GIANT'S TABLE. 157 
 
 You see he be mortal afeered o' beins: cauo-lit 
 asleep in the linny in the straw by mother wi' 
 a flaming turve in her hand. He thinks her 
 won't make much worrit o' nights, becos of 
 disturbiuo^ me. And then he lauo-hs and sez, 
 *• Mother be that pleased I hev a given her 
 summat to play with, and her be a playing 
 wi' that and won't trouble no more." ^ 
 
 'Jo^^ce, your father must be very sorry 
 for what he has done.' 
 
 'He is that for sartain. All becos you 
 see he've a got to do everything himself now. 
 Afore, I did a deal of things. I got up the 
 taties, and I baked 'em in the ashes, and I 
 milked the cow, and I did scores and scores 
 of things. But now that I hev my arms a 
 broke it puts a deal o' work on vaither. Her 
 hev to do everythmg from morning to night. 
 And vaither be getting an old man, and not 
 up to work as he were years by. He feels it, 
 sure, very much, and wishes he hadn't a done 
 it now. But wot's the good o' wishing. Wish- 
 ing won't mend broken bones.' 
 
 Herring was kneeling by her. He could 
 not understand the girl. \Yas she delirious, 
 or was this the outpour of her reasonable 
 soul? He put his hand on her low forehead, 
 brushing up the shock of coarse hair. He 
 wished to feel her pulse, but could not touch
 
 158 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 the artery in the broken hand. She lay very 
 still with her eyes fixed on him. 
 
 ' You are feverish,' he said. ' I am going 
 to fetch a doctor.' 
 
 ' I say,' exclaimed Joyce, vehemently, 
 ' 3^ou've swore not to tell the constable of 
 vaither. If you were to do that, I'd never 
 be friends wi' you more.' 
 
 Friends with him ! The poor savage and 
 the lieutenant in His Majesty's service! Her- 
 ring was unable to suppress a smile. 
 
 ' Joyce,' he said gravely, ' you must have 
 those poor arms patched up. The surgeon must 
 attend you. I shall have you carried hence. 
 No doubt Miss Cicely will know of a cottage 
 where you can be received.' 
 
 ' No,' she said hoarsely, even fiercely, ' I'll 
 go over no drexil (threshold). Let me lie 
 here and die where I've a lived.' 
 
 ^ But I insist on a doctor attending you.' 
 
 ' What can a doctor do for me? It ain't 
 in nature. What be broke be broke ; be it a 
 leg, or a neck, or a arm, or a heart, it be all 
 one. What be a broke be a broke for ever 
 and ever, Amen.' 
 
 After some difficulty he persuaded her to 
 consent. Then he ran off to South Tawton 
 for a surgeon. He returned with one rather 
 over an hour later. Then he stood outside
 
 THE GIANT'S TABLE. 159 
 
 ^vhilst the medical man entered the den and 
 examined the patient. Presently he was 
 called. 
 
 ' She is severely bruised, but no other 
 bones are broken except those in her arms. 
 She is obstinate, and I cannot induce her to 
 allow me to put splints on and bandage the 
 arms.' 
 
 ' Oh, Joyce ! if you wish to be well you 
 will submit.' 
 
 ' I don't care one way or other,' said the 
 oirl sullenly. ' I wouldn't give the turn of a 
 turf whether I lived or whether I died. Wot's 
 life to me? It ain't anything I cares for.' 
 
 ' But I do care very much about it, Joyce. 
 You must have your bones mended and get 
 Avell to make me happy.' 
 
 ' You care, do'y ? Then I'll live. There ! ' 
 She held out her broken arms, but as suddenly 
 drew them back. ' I won't hev the doctor 
 touch me. Blast me blue if I will. If I be 
 to get well and live, then you must make me 
 well and live, and none else. Take my hands 
 and do what you will. You may cut 'em off 
 and I won't cry. You may tie 'em up and 
 I'll say nort.' 
 
 The surgeon said to Herring, ' You had 
 better humour her. She is not a rational 
 being.'
 
 i6o JOHN HERRING. 
 
 So Herring put the splints in place, and 
 bound the bandages tightly round them. 
 
 Joyce watched him with her large animal- 
 like eyes fixed on his face. A feverish fire 
 was burning in them, giving them a factitious 
 light. She did not withdraw them from him 
 for a moment. 
 
 ^ You're right for sartain,' she said. ' If 
 I'd ha' died, what 'ud vaither ha' done? And 
 her be growing a brave age.' 
 
 Then, still kneeling by her, Herring spoke 
 with the surgeon about the girl, as to what 
 was to be done with her arms and what she 
 Avas to eat. Suddenly he exclaimed with a 
 start and recoil, ' Good heavens, Joyce ! what 
 are you doing ? ' 
 
 He looked at her. A human soul was 
 struggling to emancipate itself from brute 
 instinct. He saw it in her feverish eyes. She 
 had them fixed on him as those of a dog look 
 at its master — and slie was licking Ids hand.
 
 :6i 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OPHIR. 
 
 ' Sampy, my boy/ said Tramplara the elder, 
 * improve each shining hour, says Paul, after- 
 wards called Saul, and he couldn't have given 
 a better piece of advice if he'd been paid to 
 do it. Since Polpluggan has been blown I 
 have had nothing to do, and I want not only to 
 follow Paul's advice and improve the shining 
 hour, but do better, and improve the overcast 
 and rainy ones. You and I, Sampy, are the 
 men to whom the future belongs, the repre- 
 sentatives of the age, and it will not do for 
 the likes of us to keep our light under a 
 bushel. That ain't Scriptural, and it ain't 
 advantageous neither.' 
 
 ^ All right, gov'nor. What is this the 
 preface to? 
 
 ' Sampy,' said Tramplara, confidingly, ' we 
 must start another mine.' 
 
 'What — tin? lead? manganese? copper?' 
 
 ' Better still, my gosling.' 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 i62 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' I don't know what you can have better 
 except coal, and coal don't luxuriate alongside 
 of granite.' 
 
 ' Gold — the noblest of metals — gold.' 
 
 'Oh, ah ! gov'nor, that won't do. There's 
 no gold to be found here.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Why not? Because no folks are fools 
 enough to sink it in such a venture as gold 
 mining.' 
 
 ' You are wrong. There is one quality I 
 can always rely on — as the Apostle says, "Folly 
 never faileth, everything else may vanish 
 away." If you appeal to men's reasons, it is 
 like looking for ghosts in haunted tenements ; 
 they are supposed to be there, but never found 
 when wanted. Human folly is like Dozmare 
 pool, it is unfathomable, though you let down 
 into it all the bell-ropes of Cornwall. You 
 can set up windmills in Essex, for there the 
 wind always blows ; and you can establish 
 water w^heels in Cornwall, for the rain supply 
 is inexhaustible ; and you can float specula- 
 tions where you will, and the fools will keep 
 them going. In the stor}^ of the Fisherman in 
 the " Arabian Nights " the fish that have been 
 scraped and disembowelled and put in a frying- 
 pan over the coals stand up on their tails and 
 say, " We are doing our duty. If you reckon
 
 OPHIR. 163 
 
 we reckon ; if you fly we mount and are con- 
 tent." Xow those fish we are told were men. 
 And men are just the same now. They do 
 their duty in coming to be scraped and gutted 
 and roasted, and what you pipe they repeat ; 
 they have no pleasure apart from yours, and 
 they rush into your hands to be cleaned out, 
 just as the martyrs asked to be tortured.' 
 
 Sampson junior nodded. 
 
 ' What is it that Solomon said, " A fool 
 and his money are soon parted? " ' 
 
 ' I say, gov'nor, it is dry work listening. 
 Let us have in some grog.' 
 
 ' Bring the spirits out of the cupboard and 
 ring for Bella to give us sugar and hot water. 
 Are you listening to me ? What I say is im- 
 portant. I am leading you after gold.' 
 
 ' All right ; but you were speaking of 
 human folly.' 
 
 ' Human folly is the cable ^ that incloses 
 the ore. It is not for nothing, Sampy, that I 
 have been regular at chapel and paid for my 
 pew at Salem. Mr. Israel Flamank, the 
 minister, is a very good man ; a sort of cedar 
 in Lebanon, always green, and he is as soft as 
 butter and as easy to make a pat out of with, 
 at pleasure, a crown or a goose at top. There 
 
 ^ The rock altered by the vehi of ore it surrounds is termed 
 by miners the cable.
 
 1 64 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 are in the world good men of whom with 
 Scripture it may be said, *' It were better that 
 a millstone had been hanged round their necks 
 than they should have learned to read and 
 write." For, you see, Sampy, they read a 
 great deal without knowing the relative value 
 of what they read, and they write the first 
 craze that comes into their heads to set other 
 fools crazy after them. When there is a 
 choice of herbs set before an ass, he prefers a 
 thistle, because, as Shakespeare sings, ''It is 
 his nature to." You may take my word for 
 it, gosling, there is a parcel of people in this 
 world with an exuberant fund of piety in their 
 constitutions, just as some children are born 
 with water on the brain. And as these have 
 no definite belief, the pious element within 
 washes about, unable to settle. When you 
 was a boy, Sampy, it was your delight to make 
 silver trees. You had a fluid clear as crystal 
 in a bottle, and into it you introduced a scrap 
 of carpet thread, and all at once the metal 
 held in solution crystallised about the rubbish 
 you had inserted, and built round it a mass of 
 sparkling metal, hard as steel and shining as 
 silver. It is the same with folk of the calibre 
 of Israel Flamank. Their dilute piety is ready 
 to settle round any trashy notion that gets 
 into them, and rear about it a tree of fantastic
 
 OPHIR. i6s 
 
 conviction. Flamank has done a deal of 
 crystallising since I have known him, about 
 all sorts of odds and ends. First he was a 
 total abstainer, then a vegetarian, then he 
 found the gospel in the pyramids, and now he 
 is all for the Phoenicians.' 
 
 ' But, father, what does this concern us? * 
 * Everything, my son,' said old Tramplara, 
 with sunny self-complacency. ' Fill your 
 glass and listen. Do you know what the 
 Phoenicians were ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know, and don't care.' 
 ' Then Pll tell you. The Phoenicians were 
 next-door neighbours to the Jews, and, what 
 is a wonder, were on speaking terms, and did 
 each other little neighbourly acts, which shows 
 they lived in the Dark Ages. You don't 
 happen to know anything about the Cassiter- 
 ides, do'y, Sampy ? ' 
 
 ' Not a farthing. Had they anything to 
 do with the Phoenicians? ' 
 
 ^ Oh, what an ignorant boy you are ! You 
 are living in the midst of the Cassiterides, and 
 don't know it. Cassiterides is the Phoenician 
 for Devon and Cornwall. It means the place 
 whence the Phoenicians drew their tin ; and 
 where the Phoenicians went the Jews went 
 also. Marazion, as every fool knows, is called 
 also Market Jew, because the Jews came there
 
 1 66 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 to buy metal for Solomon's temple. You 
 haven't a Bible, have'y, Sampson junior, ready 
 to hand ? ' 
 
 '• I doubt if there be such a thing in the 
 house.' 
 
 ' There is, though, only I don't know where 
 it be stowed away this present moment. I 
 bought one for taking the level of the Phoe- 
 nicians under the guidance of the Keverend 
 Flamank. Now Solomon ; you've heard of 
 Solomon ? ' 
 
 ' Which, the pawnbroker? ' 
 
 ' No ; Solomon the wisest of men, and be- 
 cause the wisest the richest. He sent a navy 
 of ships with his own men and Phoenicians to 
 get gold for the temple at Jerusalem and his 
 own house. There is one thing strikes an 
 earnest inquirer like me about King Solomon, 
 and makes me admire the beauty of his cha- 
 racter greatly. When he were building the 
 temple he built his own palace at the same 
 time, and didn't make of 'em separate accounts. 
 So the Jews gave profusely for the building 
 of their temple, and how much of that sub- 
 scription went to the King's house, I reckon 
 Solomon himself would have been pushed to 
 answer. He was seven years building the 
 temple, and thirteen years over his own palace, 
 and when you know that, you can guess how
 
 OPHIR. 167 
 
 the material went. But that is neither here 
 nor there. I was just giving you a sample of 
 the wisdom of Solomon. Weil, the ships of 
 Solomon came for gold to Ophir, and fetched 
 thence four hundred and twenty talents of 
 gold-dust ; that, Israel Flamank tells me, is 
 nigh on fifty-three thousand pounds weight. 
 Think of that ! I^ow where gold came from, 
 there gold is to be had.' 
 
 ^ But where did it come from ? ' 
 '• From Ophir, to be sure. We must find 
 Ophir.' 
 
 ^ Governor, that won't do. You and I are 
 not going to leave Old England gold prospect- 
 ing. You are too old, and I am disinclined.' 
 ' Didn't I tell you we were in the Cassi- 
 terides ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; but Cassiterides is not Ophir.^ 
 ' But Ophir may be in the Cassiterides.' 
 ' Gold never was found in the West,' said 
 Sampson junior, shaking his head. 
 
 ' There never was any tin in Wheal Pol- 
 pluggan,' said the old man, w^ho turned blaz- 
 ing red with suppressed laughter. His sides 
 shook, his white hair gleamed ghastly against 
 his red skin. Then he broke into a roar, and 
 slapping Sampson on the knee, he shouted, as 
 he waved his glass of grog over his head, 
 and spilled the contents on his silver hair
 
 1 68 JOHN HERRING, 
 
 and gleaming cheeks, ' To the prosperity of 
 Ophir! Drink, Sampy, drink ! to Ophir, the 
 Ophir of Solomon in the "West Country.' 
 
 'Polpluggan was tightly salted,' said young 
 Sampson, ' and salted only with tin. Besides, 
 Polpluggan was in the Scilly Isles, some forty 
 or fifty miles from Penzance. There were 
 many who would rather jeopardise their 
 money than risk their breakfast in a rough 
 passage. But gold ' He shook his head. 
 
 ' We'll salt Ophir when we have found the 
 spot.' 
 
 'What! with gold dust? You'll sink a 
 fortune in that, and the success is doubtful.' 
 
 ' It is bound to succeed,' answ^ered the 
 father. ' My boy, I've come to see that there 
 is a pan of cream has not been skimmed yet, 
 and I hope, if I live long enough, to skim it. 
 There is not much more to be done at those 
 pans we have gone over hitherto. We must 
 try a fresh one. I'll tell you what that big- 
 rich pan is; it is the big rich pan of religious 
 fanaticism. I'll take a lesson from the rats. 
 The rat when he has an eye on the cream sits 
 down with his back to it, and looking up at 
 the wall lets drop the end of his tail into the 
 cream ; then he pulls it up with a shocked and 
 bashful air, sucks it, and lets it down again,
 
 OPHIR. 169 
 
 and in half an hour he has cleared the pan of 
 all but sky blue.' 
 
 ' I don't see how it is to be done,' said 
 young Tramplara, meditatively. 
 
 ' You are young and inexperienced,' an- 
 swered his father. ' You haven't sounded 
 the depths of human folly yet. Lord bless 
 you ! I've been surprised myself at its pro- 
 fundity. And when we come to religious folly, 
 my private conviction is that it goes down 
 through the world and out at the other side. 
 It is like the well of Zem-zem, that has no bot- 
 tom. I have not been an earnest inquirer at 
 the feet of the Reverend Israel Flamank for 
 nothing. Whilst kneeling to him I have been 
 like a shoemaker taking the measure of his 
 foot. I know the sort of gate he will clear, 
 and where the bellwether goes all the flock 
 will leap. You listen to me and I will give 
 }'ou a parable — a mighty comforting one. 
 There was an old mano-anese mine lono; dis- 
 used, and the adit ran level out into a meadow 
 where some bullocks were feeding. One hot 
 day, when the flies were troublesome, one bul- 
 lock took refuge in the adit, and when the 
 others saw that in they walked after him, each 
 thrusting forward the fellow before him. 
 Presently they got frightened with being so
 
 I70 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 far from the light, so the foremost bellowed, 
 and the second bellowed, and this was re- 
 peated to the last, who, in mighty alarm, dug 
 his horns into the hinder quarters of the bul- 
 lock in front, and he repeated the performance 
 on the one before him, and so on, driving one 
 another further and further into the heart of 
 the mine. Well, they got so far that there 
 was no getting them out, and the owner had 
 to kill them where they were. They were too 
 frightened to back, and to turn was impossible. 
 Sampy, that good foolish Israel Flamank is 
 just like the leading bullock. He'll go into 
 Ophir eagerly, and all his congregation after 
 him, thrusting one another on, and we shall 
 have the slaughtering of them. They will 
 be too compromised to back when they find 
 themselves in the wrong place.' 
 
 ' But how about the salting? ' 
 
 ' There are various sorts of salting. You 
 only know one sort. You have seen Pol- 
 pluggan salted with tin ore brought from 
 elsewhere, and basketfuls drawn out of the 
 shaft that had been previously put in. That 
 is one sort of salting, and I allow that with 
 gold this would come expensive. I shall 
 have to manage more economically. My dear 
 boy, when fools are hungering to be deceived, 
 they are not particular about the meat that
 
 OPHIR. 171 
 
 feeds their folly. They don't inquire if the 
 mutton comes of rotten sheep.' 
 
 ' How shall you float it?' 
 
 ' !N"othing easier. Let us find Ophir, and 
 the Eeverend Israel will do the rest. He 
 conducts a religious paper, entitled ^' The 
 Western Cornucopia," much read by those of 
 his persuasion, and throughout the West of 
 England. I like that word persuasion, Sampy. 
 When I hear a man talk of his persuasion, I 
 feel that he is persuadable to any sort of sui- 
 cide. Now, let me get my truck on Israel's 
 rails, and it will run down by the law of 
 gravity.' 
 
 ' But where will you light on Ophir ? ' 
 
 ^ I do not know yet. I am an earnest 
 inquirer, and I have been sitting with the 
 Eeverend Flamank many an hour, as solemn 
 as a Quaker, over our Bibles, making it out. 
 I'm hard to believe, he eager to convince. 
 He has no idea that I am leading him on ; he 
 believes he is driving me. Now and then, as 
 the light of nature prompts, I throw out a 
 suggestion, and he snaps at it enthusiastically, 
 appropriates it, and reproduces it as an ori- 
 ginal inspiration. Country folks will tell you 
 that every cloud brings with it wind. That 
 is the reverse of the fact. It is the wind that 
 brings the cloud. So in this case there occurs
 
 172 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 a little mistake as to which is the impelling 
 power. The Reverend Israel has shown me 
 that the situation of Ophir is pretty accurately 
 indicated. It is said in Scripture that Ophir 
 lies between Mesha and a mountain in the 
 East called Sephar. Now, with my incenting, 
 the Reverend Flamank has arrived at this — 
 that Mesha is the village of Meshaw, near 
 South Molton, and that Sephar is Sheepstor, 
 which is a mountain due east of Launceston.' 
 
 ' It is due south of Meshaw.' 
 
 ' Yes, but it is due east of Salem Chapel. 
 People always reckon from where they are 
 themselves. You see the line uniting them 
 passes through Crediton, South Tawton, Cos- 
 don ' 
 
 ' By the way, father, Squire Battishill 
 told me he had found a silver lead mine at 
 Upaver.' 
 
 ' Upaver ! — Upaver ! — Ophir ! Ophir ! 
 Sampy! By the wisdom of Solomon, we 
 have spotted Ophir ! '
 
 i73 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. 
 
 Captain Trecarrel was Captain only in the 
 militia, yet he flourished his captaincy with 
 as much pride as if he were in the regulars. 
 He was Trecarrel of Trecarrel, the head of 
 one of the oldest families in Cornwall. When 
 we say that, we mean that he was head in 
 the sense of a tadpole's head, which is head 
 and nothing else. Trecarrel was head and 
 nothing else. There was no tail of younger 
 brothers and sisters dependent on the pro- 
 perty. But then the property barely sup- 
 ported the head, and by no possibility could 
 have sustained the burden of a taiL 
 
 It was not always so. At one time the 
 Trecarrels were the chief family in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and Sir Henry Trecarrel, Knight, 
 at his proper cost, to the glory of God, and in 
 honour of St. Mary Magdalen, rebuilt the 
 parish church of Launceston in the most 
 sumptuous manner he was able. Not one
 
 174 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 stone was set in the fabric tliat was not the 
 finest granite, and not one block was un- 
 squared and unsculptured ; the sculpture was 
 as delicate as the grain of the granite would 
 allow, with trees distilling balsam, plumes 
 and palm-branches, with the arms of Trecarrel, 
 and with minstrels harping and playing the 
 rebeck, the tabor, and the bagpipe. Under 
 the east window in a niche was sculptured 
 the recumbent effigy of that most yielding 
 of saints, the Magdalen, wrought in the most 
 obdurate of stones. The pinnacles and gur- 
 goils were all cut out of the same material 
 with infinite labour, and at extraordinary 
 cost. 
 
 The church was not quite finished when 
 the Reformation came. Then the King's Com- 
 missioners paid a visit to Launceston and 
 swept from the church its valuables in silver 
 and gold, for the filling of the royal exchequer 
 and for the abolition of idolatry. After the 
 Commissioners had departed, a rabble fol- 
 lowed, headed by one Bunface, a butcher, who 
 burst into the church and destroyed what the 
 King's Commissioners had spared. They 
 smashed the stained glass in the windows, 
 and broke the legs of the Christ on the rood, 
 but left the thieves on either side unmolested. 
 They extinguished the perpetual lamp and
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. 175 
 
 spilled the oil over the chancel floor. They 
 threw down the altar, and, having broken open 
 the shrine, cast the sacrament under their 
 feet. They knocked the heads off the apostles, 
 and lastly, with a lever, overthrew the font, 
 and in so doing exceeded the intentions of 
 the Keformers, who having destroyed five 
 sacraments, and reduced a sixth to a stump, 
 elected to maintain the seventh intact. After 
 that the party rang a peal in the tower and 
 finished the evening by getting uproariously 
 drunk at the Pig and Whistle. 
 
 Bunface never again appeared in church, 
 for though the Government passed a law to 
 force the people to attend divine service and 
 receive the sacrament, under pains of fine and 
 imprisonment, just as children have to be 
 whipped to make them swallow medicine that 
 is necessary but nasty, yet Bunface could not 
 be induced to put in an appearance. ' Let me 
 burn the Bible, or break the Commandments, 
 or test my cleaver on the minister's head, but 
 if this be denied me, if there be no more de- 
 stroying to be done, then I'd rather pay my 
 fine than go.' 
 
 When Sir Henry Trecarrel refused to sit 
 in the church under the preacher, and take the 
 sacrament at the mean table under the pulpit, 
 the magistrates cautioned him, and when he
 
 176 JOHN HERRING, 
 
 disregarded their monition they fined him, 
 and when he paid the fine and continued recu- 
 sant they threw him into the common gaol, 
 and there, after languishing two years, he died 
 of the gaol-fever. 
 
 Sir Harry Trecarrel was succeeded by his 
 son, who suffered also in purse and liberty for 
 his attachment to the old religion. He was 
 convicted of harbouring a Popish priest, and 
 of hearing mass in his private chapel. The 
 priest was hung, drawn, and quartered — that 
 is to say, he was cut down the instant after 
 he had been slung up, sliced open, and his 
 heart torn out of his breast whilst still palpi- 
 tating. That was the way in which recusant 
 priests were dealt with by that bright Occi- 
 dental Star, good Queen Bess. Mr. Henry 
 Trecarrel saved his neck only by the surrender 
 of one of his best manors. 
 
 In the civil wars Trecarrel made large 
 sacrifices for the King, and was accordingly 
 dealt with as a Malignant by the Protector. 
 Confiscation and fine diminished his estates 
 still further. On the Restoration he went to 
 London, and laid the record of his services 
 and suff*erings at the feet of Charles II. The 
 King commended his loyalty, and promised 
 him, if he would take holy orders, that he 
 would recompense him with at least a canonry;
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. 177 
 
 but as Trecarrel was unable to do this, beino* 
 a Papist, he was dismissed with, as his sole 
 reward, a portrait of the royal martyr, full 
 length, in which the lower limbs were so 
 adjusted that, had they been true to life, the 
 royal martyr could neither have walked nor 
 sat on his throne. The Trecarrel of the reiern 
 of George I. gambled away everything that 
 had been left except the house and home 
 barton of Trecarrel, which were inahenable. 
 This Captain Trecarrel had inherited from his 
 ancestors, together with the picture of Charles I. 
 with distorted limbs, the Catholic faith, and 
 the Trecarrel blue eyes and beauty — but chief 
 of all these things, in his estimation, were the 
 hereditary blue eyes and beauty. 
 
 Captain Trecarrel's income was small, so 
 small that he could not marry on it. He was 
 obliged, therefore, to look out for a wife with 
 money. 
 
 Now, as has been said, nature and his an- 
 cestors had bestowed on him aristocratic good 
 looks, and he was admitted by the ladies of 
 the neighbourhood to be the handsomest man 
 they knew. 
 
 He was aware of his beauty, he knew pre- 
 cisely the effect he could produce on the 
 female heart by a look out of his blue eyes, 
 blue as the borage blossom There was not 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 a marriageable girl who would not have ab- 
 jured her faith, have adored Mumbo- Jumbo, 
 if required, to become Mrs. Trecarrel of Tre- 
 carrel. The Captain knew his value, and 
 was not impatient. The young ladies of good 
 birth in the neighbourhood were neither heir- 
 esses nor well dowered. He looked further 
 afield, and was caught by the handsome face 
 of Orange Trampleasure, and by the handsome 
 fortune with which popular opinion endowed 
 her. 
 
 Old Tramplara was thought to be enor- 
 mously rich, and to be eager to marry his 
 daughter well, and to be ready to pay for the 
 blood and position that would come to the 
 family through a good alliance. 
 
 Captain Trecarrel was not a man to feel 
 deeply. He liked Orange, and that Orange 
 liked and admired him was obvious to his 
 blue eyes. But then, he was accustomed to 
 be liked and admired, and he had only to 
 smile and look languishingly to draw to him 
 any amount of aifection from any number of 
 marriageable girls. He looked for something 
 more substantial than liking and admiration. 
 
 After much* hesitation, Trecarrel proposed 
 to Orange Trampleasiire and was accepted on 
 the spot. But the proposal was only the first 
 scene in a long drama, and the second scene
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. 179 
 
 did not pass with tlie same rapidity and suc- 
 cess. Captain Trecarrel had no intention of 
 being married till he was quite satisfied as to 
 the sum of money Orange would bring with 
 her. Old Tramplara spoke grandiloquently, 
 and made large promises of what he would 
 leave her when he was not himself in a posi- 
 tion to enjoy his money. But this was not 
 what the Captain wanted — which was some- 
 thing present, not prospective. At last he did 
 get the old man to name a very liberal dowry, 
 and when he next asked in what shape this 
 dower would come, he discovered an eagerness 
 on the part of his prospective father-in-law to 
 pay it hi Patagonian securities. jSTow Pata- 
 gonian bonds were not at par. They had been 
 declining very steadily in the money market, 
 and when the South American State deferred 
 meeting its coupons with punctuality, the drop 
 had been nearly to zero, for it was anticipated 
 that Patagonia was meditating repudiation. 
 
 Mr. Trampleasure supposed that the Cap- 
 tain was unaware of this, but Trecarrel was 
 not as innocent as his blue eyes led people to 
 suppose. He was one of those few men who 
 know exactly on which side their bread is 
 buttered ; and Captain Trecarrel knew fur- 
 ther, what very few people do know, how to 
 eat bread and butter with most satisfaction to 
 N 2
 
 i8o JOHN HERRING. 
 
 himself. An adult eats his slice witli the 
 butter uppermost, but a child turns the but- 
 tered side down. By so doing he extracts 
 from it the utmost enjoyment it is capable of 
 giving, for by this expedient the tongue is 
 brought into immediate contact with the 
 butter. Captain Trecarrel was not going to 
 eat his bread with thin Patagonian scrape 
 over it, instead of yellow English gold. Those 
 innocent blue eyes of his could see as far 
 into a millstone as the keen sloes of Mr. 
 Trampleasure. Consequently, till that Pata- 
 gonian business was satisfactorily settled, 
 Captain Trecarrel held aloof from hymeneal 
 felicity. 
 
 The arrival of Mirelle and her admission 
 into the family at Dolbeare were opportune. 
 Captain Trecarrel was struck with her beauty, 
 but then, he was struck with the beauty of 
 every girl whose looks were pleasing. But 
 what struck the Captain far more than her 
 beauty was the opportunity this arrival af- 
 forded him of rousing the apprehensions of 
 Orange and her father that he might slip 
 through the meshes of their net. 
 
 He resolved to pay his court to Mirelle, 
 to exhibit a lively interest in her, to wake up 
 a little convenient jealousy in the bosom of 
 Orange, and to give the father clearly to
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. i8i 
 
 understand that he himself repudiated Pata- 
 gonia. 
 
 The carious mixture of simplicity and 
 shrewdness in Mirelle amused him. It was a 
 real pleasure to him to converse with her, and 
 a particular pleasure to look into those deep 
 eyes and speculate what lay beneath. 
 
 Once a month a priest came to Trecarrel 
 on a circuit through the north of Cornwall, 
 and said mass in the chapel near the house. 
 On these occasions Mirelle walked over to 
 Trecarrel. Trecarrel lies, like most old manor 
 houses, in a hollow. A small stream dribbling 
 through the hollow constituted the only at- 
 traction which could lead a gentleman to build 
 his stately mansion in such a spot. A stately 
 mansion Trecarrel must have been in its 
 prime. The great banqueting hall was of 
 hewn granite, with granite windows and door- 
 way and chimney-piece. A little chapel stood 
 south of the hall, also of cut granite. The 
 mansion-house itself is, at the present date, 
 reduced to a fragment of the great house that 
 once occupied three sides of a quadrangle. 
 At the time of which we are writing it was 
 more than dilapidated, it was falling into utter 
 ruin. There was no glass in many of the 
 windows, and the roofs were breaking down. 
 Next to the hall the glory of Trecarrel was
 
 1 82 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 the gatehouse of granite, with a richly sculp- 
 tured doorway of the same intractable mate- 
 rial, moulded deeply, with strawberry leaves 
 carved in the hollows of the mouldings. The 
 Trecarrel who gambled pulled down the gate- 
 house because coaches could not pass beneath 
 the arch ; but when he had pulled it down he 
 had not the power or the means to remove the 
 huge blocks, and so he left them encumbering 
 the ground where they had fallen, and there 
 at the present day they lie, rankly overgrown 
 with nettles. 
 
 Captain Trecarrel could not suffer Mirelle 
 to walk home unattended when she made her 
 monthly pilgrimages to his chapel. She was 
 always pleased to see and converse with him. 
 He was her equal, a gentleman and a Catholic 
 — the two qualities which made them akin and 
 separated them from the ignoble and unbe- 
 lieving around. In these walks the Captain 
 told Mirelle the story of Sir Henry Trecarrel 
 and the building of Launceston Chiirch, and 
 the way in which the work was arrested. He 
 told her what his ancestor had done and suf- 
 fered in the civil wars, and he showed her 
 one day in the hall the sole reward he had re- 
 ceived for his sacrifices. Mirelle was able to 
 sympathise with the misfortunes of the house ; 
 she also represented a generous race, that had
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. 183 
 
 fought the Moors, had ruled a county, coined 
 its own money, and set up its own gallows. 
 In that last particular the Garcias and the 
 Trecarrels had differed. The Garcias had 
 hung men, the Trecarrels had had much ado 
 to keep themselves from being hung. 
 
 The story of the self-sacrifice of the Tre- 
 carrels for Church and King stirred the soul of 
 ilirelle, ready to warm to all that savoured of 
 heroism ; and she looked on the Captain as 
 the noble representative of a glorious line of 
 confessors and martyrs. She fondly deemed 
 him made of the same stuff, ready to lay him- 
 self down on the altar if need be. But no ! 
 Trecarrel was wholly free from the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice. He would not surrender his in- 
 dependence for five thousand pounds in Pata- 
 gonian bonds. During one of these walks the 
 Captain ascertained from Mirelle that her 
 father had left her six thousand pounds, not 
 in Patagonian bonds, but in hard cash. Six 
 thousand pounds ! That was one thousand 
 above the sum that Orange was promised. Six 
 thousand pounds in coined gold, with his 
 Majesty's head on each piece, God bless him ! 
 Trecarrel's tone assumed more tenderness, a 
 softer light shone out of his celestial eyes, and 
 he slightly squeezed the arm that was on his 
 own under the big umbrella, as he paddled
 
 l84 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 with Mirelle to Launceston under a Cornish 
 drizzle and throutrh West Country mud. 
 
 That night the Captain did not sleep. He 
 tossed on his bed. He sat up and hammered 
 the pillow into shape and put it under his 
 neck. Then he got up and drank cold water. 
 Then he tried to count sheep going through a 
 gap in a hedge. All was in vain. He could 
 not sleep and he could not count the sheep, 
 because his mind was active. He was stung 
 into wakefulness by the consideration whether 
 it would be possible for him to be off his en- 
 gagement to Orange, and on with one to 
 Mirelle. It would not be consistent with his 
 honour as a gentleman and an officer (though 
 only in the militia) to become engaged to 
 Mirelle before breaking with Orange. It would 
 also not be proper for him to break with 
 Orange ; but it would be perfectly honour- 
 able for him so to conduct himself as to force 
 her to break with him. He made no doubt 
 that Mirelle would have him. No woman 
 could refuse him, with his eyes and name, his 
 profile and his position. Besides, Mirelle mani- 
 festly liked him. She made no secret of the 
 pleasure she took in his society. Now the 
 only means of effecting a rupture with Orange 
 was for him to pay marked attentions to Mi- 
 relle, and to wane in his attentions to herself.
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. 185 
 
 Orange would then speak to her mother, and 
 the mother would communicate her daughter's 
 trouble to the father, and then a crisis would 
 be attained. The father would either break 
 off the match, in which case he would be free 
 to address Mirelle, or, in his dread of losing 
 such a son-in-law, he would drop the Pata- 
 gonians and offer ready money. Orange and 
 five thousand pounds ; Mirelle with six ! 
 There was no comparing the lots. 
 
 Captain Trecarrel turned the situation into 
 an equation. As Mirelle is to Orange, so is 
 6,000/. to X, 
 
 Mirelle y. x - Oracge x 6,000Z. 
 
 M 6,000/. 
 
 or -^ = -1 
 
 U X 
 
 Now Orange was of an inferior social 
 grade, and this difference could not be esti- 
 mated under 1,000/. Then Orange had in- 
 cumbrances, in the shape of very vulgar 
 parents and a cur of a brother. This could 
 not figure at less than 1,000/. Orange was 
 plump, and plump girls become obese women ; 
 a serious detriment that could only be covered 
 with another 1,000/. Mirelle was a Catholic, 
 and her faith was worth 1,000/. 
 
 The equation therefore stood thus : — 
 
 Mirelle + 6,000/. = Orange + 10,000/.
 
 1 86 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Hah ! ' said Captain Trecarrel, as lie 
 hammered his pillow with both fists. ' I'll 
 not take Orange under ten thousand pounds, 
 I'm confounded if I will.' 
 
 It must not be supposed that Orange 
 Trampleasure was ignorant of the walks 
 taken by the Captain with Mirelle. Captain 
 Trecarrel did not desire that she should 
 remain in ignorance of them, and when he 
 escorted Mirelle home he came on with her 
 to the house to pay his respects to Mrs. 
 Trampleasure, and inquire after her cold in 
 the head and her bronchial tubes. He usually 
 remained on such occasions for the early 
 dinner, and spent the afternoon with the girls 
 in the garden-house when it rained, or strol- 
 ling with them in sunshine through the Castle 
 grounds. 
 
 At these times he was civil to Orange, and 
 even attentive, but he let her plainly see that 
 when engaged in conversation with her his 
 eyes and thoughts were roving, and roving in 
 the direction of Mirelle. Orange would not 
 have been a woman, and a loving woman, if 
 she had not observed and been hurt by this. 
 
 Orange had set her heart on marrying 
 him, not only because she loved him, but also 
 because she was ambitious. She had more 
 culture than her father and mother and
 
 CAPTAIN TRECARREL. 187 
 
 brother, and she felt their coarseness. She 
 disliked their friends. She was a proud 
 girl, and when the prospect opened before 
 her of becoming Mrs. Trecarrel, she resolved 
 to make this the means of shaking herself 
 free from the sordid society in which she had 
 been forced to move, and to take her place, 
 as of right, in a class above it in culture, in 
 traditions, and in aspirations. 
 
 Orange volunteered to walk to Trecarrel 
 with Mirelle on her monthly expeditions, 
 and the offer was frankly accepted. 
 
 Mirelle did not know that her cousin was 
 engaged to Trecarrel, she had not been let 
 into the secret ; Orange was not of a con- 
 fiding nature, and the intercourse between 
 her and the Captain had of late been strained. 
 Mirelle regarded him as a friend of the family ; 
 she rather wondered what he could find in 
 the Trampleasures to make him seek their 
 society, but she entertained no suspicions of 
 a nearer tie than friendship. 
 
 The jealousy of Orange was roused. She 
 became less demonstrative in her affection 
 towards Mirelle, but she was not unkind. 
 She harboured bitterness in her heart, but it 
 was not suffered to brim over her lips. The 
 only token she gave of wrath and jealousy 
 was a heightened colour and a dangerous
 
 1 88 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 flicker in her eye, whenever subjected to one 
 of those slights which are only perceptible to 
 the eye of love. Trecarrel noticed this, and 
 was content. He would achieve his end by 
 means strictly honourable. Mirelle was un- 
 conscious and unsuspicious of what was going 
 on around her. She liked the Captain, she 
 told Orange as much, without colour rising in 
 her transparent cheek or lowering her eye. 
 She liked Orange, who, if not cordial, was 
 kind, and who proved a very serviceable 
 screen against the brutality of her father and 
 brother. That the Captain was playing her 
 off upon Orange for his own selfish purposes, 
 and that deadly jealousy and hate against her 
 were being kindled in the bosom of her 
 cousin — of this Mirelle was unsuspicious.
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 
 
 John Herring visited Joyce daily. He had 
 no choice. She would allow no one else to 
 touch her bandages. He was impatient to 
 prosecute his journey, but was detained by 
 this poor savage, who refused doggedly to 
 allow the doctor or Cicely to touch her arms. 
 Herring remonstrated, and insisted that he 
 must go. Cicely Battishill volunteered to 
 take his place. Then Joyce became wild, she 
 tore at the rags mth her teeth, and would 
 have ripped them off and relaxed the splints, 
 and undone all that had been done for her 
 broken bones, had not Herring hastily pro- 
 mised to remain and attend to her daily, and 
 so with difficulty allayed her apprehension 
 and anger. He was particularly anxious to 
 be in Exeter, but he could not risk the health 
 of Joyce by deserting her in this juncture. 
 He was held captive at West Wyke, held in 
 captivity by Joyce's broken hands. The
 
 190 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 reason why he was impatient to go forwarc 
 was that he had been summoned to Exeter tc 
 rejoin his regiment, then quartered there. The 
 morning following the accident he had applied 
 for an extension of leave, but no answer had 
 come to his application. He knew that he 
 ouo-ht to be with his regiment. He would 
 get into trouble for his absence, and yet— he 
 allowed himself to be detained. The call of 
 humanity was one he was unable to resist. 
 He was good-natured, that is — weak. The 
 strong men are the selfish men. Herring's 
 simple and kindly heart was interested in 
 Joyce, but perplexed and pained. He had no 
 experience of life, and no knowledge of its 
 problems. He had never before been brought 
 in contact with a character utterly rude and 
 destitute of that elementary knowledge which 
 we take for granted is as universally diffused 
 as the atmosphere. He sat under the Giant's 
 Table and talked to Joyce, asked her ques- 
 tions, and endeavoured to draw out the 
 thouo-hts of her clouded brain. But the 
 profound ignorance, the gross barbarism 
 of her mind and manner of thought amazed 
 him. 
 
 He saw nothing of Old Grizzly, who, as 
 Joyce expressed it, ' sloked away ' whenever 
 he came in sight.
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 191 
 
 * Joyce,' said Herring one day, as he knelt 
 by lier, having just bandaged her arms, ' do 
 you know the difference between right and 
 wrong ? ' 
 
 The question was called forth by some 
 words of the girl showing a startling ignorance 
 of the elements of morality. 
 
 ' In coorse I do,' she answered ; then sit- 
 ting up on her bed of heather, 'I'll tell'y 
 how I corned to know. I were once in a 
 turnip-field fetching a turnip for our dinner. 
 There were a wooddoo (dove) running up 
 an oak hard by, and he sings out, " Tak' 
 two, Joyce, tak' two ; " and in an old holm 
 tree sat a raven, and her shooked her head 
 and said, " Very wrong, Joyce, very wrong." 
 But I minded more what the wooddoo sed, 
 and I took two. Then as I were climbino: 
 over the hedge, I dropped one turnip back in 
 the field whence I'd took 'n ; and the wood- 
 doo called again " Tak' two, Joyce, tak' two." 
 " So I will," sez I, and I pitches on my feet 
 again in the field where the turnip had fallen 
 to, and as I picked 'n up, in at the gate corned 
 Farmer Freeze, and he seed me and set his 
 dog Towzer on me, and my legs be scored 
 now where Towzer set his teeth in me. After 
 this I knowed never to believe wooddoos no 
 more when they sez '' Tak' two." The raven
 
 192 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 were riffbt. I sliud ha' tooked one or three 
 
 o 
 
 or five. I knows now that it be wrong to 
 take even numbers of aught, and right to take 
 odd.^ For you sees,' she continued earnestly, 
 ' if I had taken only one turnip, I'd ha' been 
 over the hedge and away avore Farmer Freeze 
 corned in ; but as I minded the wooddoo, and 
 waited to take two, I were tore cruel bad by 
 Towzer.' 
 
 Herrino; looked in her face with wonder. 
 
 ' Joyce,' he said, ' is this possible ? Pray, 
 have 5^ou ever heard of God ? ' 
 
 ' Who be he ? ' 
 
 ' He is above the sky.' 
 
 ^ What, over the clouds, do'y mean ? * 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 * I've seed 'n scores and scores o' times.' 
 (Here we must note that by this expression 
 Joyce meant ' any number of times.' She 
 could not count above ten, the number of her 
 fingers, and a score was her highest reckon- 
 able number, for that was the number of her 
 fingers and toes.) ' You mean the sun as 
 goes running everlasting after the moon ; she 
 be his wife, I reckon.' 
 
 ^ Why so ? ' asked Herring, with a smile. 
 
 1 This story was told the author by a poor Devonshire 
 lahourer. He believed he had understood the language of the 
 birds.
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 193 
 
 ^ Becos her be always a trying to get out 
 of his way.' 
 
 ' Did your father ill-treat your mother ? ' 
 he asked. 
 
 ' In coorse he did, though I can't remember 
 much about it. Her was his wife, and he had 
 a right to.' 
 
 ^ Do you mean that he beat and kicked 
 her, as he has beaten and kicked you ? ' 
 
 ' Kicked ! ' echoed Joyce. ' Who ever sed 
 as he kicked mother or I. It be gentlefolks 
 and wrastlers as kick ; us has nothing on our 
 toes, and so us don't kick for fear of hurting 
 'em.' 
 
 ' Does your father often beat you ? ' 
 
 ' As he likes, but that don't matter now/ 
 
 ' Why not ? ' 
 
 ' Becos I don't belong to 'n any more.' 
 
 ' What ! emancipated at last. Joyce ? ' 
 
 'I belongs to you.' 
 
 ' To me ! ' Herrino- drew back, stafrorered 
 by the thought - 
 
 ^ A coorse I do. Yaithcr a'most broked 
 me to pieces, and I'd a died, but you mended 
 me up and made me to live again. So it 
 stands to reason that I don't belong to vaither 
 no more, but belong to you. 'Tes clear as a 
 moor stream. I can see the reason on it as 
 sartain as I can a trout in a brook. I've been 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 a thinking it over and over, and I never could 
 reckon it right out. Then, one night mother 
 began to grub her way up by thicky stone. 
 I seed her grey hairs coming out o' the 
 ground, and I thought 'twere moss ; but after 
 some'ut white and round like a turnip comes, 
 and I sed to myself, " How ever comes a 
 turnip to be growing here, under the Giant's 
 Table ? " Presently I seed her eyes acoming 
 up, and then I knowed it were mother. Then 
 I went over and I helped her wi' a rabbit's 
 legbone. I scratched the earth away, so as 
 her could get her nose and mouth out of the 
 ground, and her were snuffling like a horned 
 owl.' 
 
 ' !My dear Joyce, you were dreaming.' 
 ' It were true — true as I see you here.' 
 ' But, Joyce, how could you have helped 
 her out of the ground, as you say, with your 
 arms broken ? ' 
 
 Joyce was puzzled. Like other savages, 
 she had not arrived at that point of enlighten- 
 ment in which dream and reality are distin- 
 guished. 
 
 ' I don't know nothing about that,' said 
 Joyce, ' but it be true what I ses, I know 
 that very well. Let me go on. At last when 
 her could speak plain, her sed, '' Joyce, you 
 belong no more to Grizzly, you belong to the
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 
 
 195 
 
 young maister." So I sez to her, " How can 
 that be ? " Then her answers, " You mind 
 the old iron crock as were chucked away by 
 the Battishills. They'd a broke 'n, and 
 wanted 'n no more. Then your vaither 
 found 'n and mended 'n up somehow. There 
 her hangs now wi' turnips and cabbidge a 
 stewing in her over the fire. Do thicky crock 
 belong to the Battishills now any more ? 
 No, her don't, they broke 'n and chucked 'n 
 away. Her belongs to Old Grizzly for becos 
 he took 'n and patched 'n up. That be 
 reason," sed my mother, " for sartain." And 
 what her said be true and right. So I belong 
 to you.' 
 
 ' But I decline the honour, Joyce,' said 
 Herring, laughing. 
 
 ' Will you beat and break me and cast me 
 away, like as did vaither ? ' 
 
 'I beat and hurt you! God forbid, my 
 poor child.' 
 
 ^ Then till you does, I belongs to'y — that's 
 sartain ! ' 
 
 She laid herself down on the cushions 
 with the action and tone of voice that implied 
 the matter was concluded past contradiction. 
 
 Here was a state of affairs ! A state of 
 affairs sufficiently startling. A few weeks 
 ago John Herring had been his own master, 
 2
 
 196 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 with no one depending on him, and without 
 responsibility. Now he was in a measure 
 responsible for three girls. Mirelle, it is true, 
 had asserted her independence, but she had 
 nevertheless imposed on him obligations. 
 Cicely made no scruple of declaring that she 
 relied on him for direction, not to be got 
 from a father never very dependable, and 
 now enfeebled in mind and body. Joyce now 
 informed him that she had transferred her 
 allegiance to him from her father, and he had 
 seen so far into her dark mind as to perceive 
 that what she said she meant, and what she 
 meant she acted on. 
 
 ' Here,' said Joyce, ' you put your hand 
 on my elbow.' 
 
 ' Why on your elbow? ' 
 
 ' I can feel there what I want to feel. My 
 hands be as hard as my feet, and they don't 
 feel much. When I wants to know if the 
 porridge be scalding, or whether I can eat 'n, 
 I don't put a finger in, I put my elbow. Now 
 do as I ax'y. Put your hand there.' 
 
 She made Herring place his hand above 
 the splints on the elbow. Then she fixed her 
 eyes on him and asked, ' Wot's her name ? ' 
 
 ' Whose name ? ' 
 
 ' Her wi' the white face.'
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 197 
 
 ' What — Mirelle ! ' The name dropped in- 
 voluntarily from his lips. 
 
 ' You may take your hand away,' she said, 
 ' I know what I wanted to know.' 
 
 'What did you want to know, Joyce? — 
 the name?' 
 
 ' Ah ! I wanted to know more nor that ; 
 and I've a learned all in a minute.' She 
 paused, still intently watching him. Presently 
 she asked, ' Where did you take her to? 
 Where do you live ? Did'y take her to your 
 own home ? ' 
 
 ' No, Joyce, of course I did not.' 
 
 ' Why of course ? You likes her more 
 than any other.' 
 
 " I — I — Joyce ! are you daft? ' 
 
 * I hain't daft,' answered the girl. * What 
 I've a found out I know. My elbow told me 
 the truth. When you had your hand on my 
 arm one day I said to'y something about Miss 
 Cicely, and your hand w^ere quiet as if I spoke 
 about a tatie to one wi' a full belly. But 
 when I axed about the Whiteface — I cannot 
 mind her name — then you gave a start, and 
 your hand shooked. We'm friends, you and 
 I, and you won't hide nothing from me. Where 
 be Whiteface to now ? ' 
 
 ' I took her to some relations — cousins of 
 hers.'
 
 198 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 'Ah! we've folks (kindred) too out to 
 Nymet, but ours be reg'lar savages. We have 
 clothes to our backs, and taty ground, and a 
 new take. I reckon Whiteface's folk be of 
 other sort.' 
 
 ' Of course they are. She is comfortable 
 and well cared for by them.' 
 
 ' Why didn't they come and fetch her 
 away when her father broke his neck, instead 
 of leaving you to take care of her and take 
 her away ? ' 
 
 That was not a question Herring could 
 easily answer. 
 
 Joyce did not wait for a reply. ' No,' she 
 went on, ' 'twere you as cared for her and did 
 iverything for her, as you've a cared for and 
 done iverything for me. But me you think 
 on just now and then, and her you'll be 
 thinking on night and day, I know that very 
 well. It be natural, and I say nort against 
 it. And how be't wi' her I wonder. Did her 
 tell you afore her left how good you'd been, 
 and how her'd niver niver forget what you'd 
 a done for her ? ' 
 
 ' No, Joyce.' 
 
 '- Didn't her then look you in the face as I do 
 now, and if her didn't say it in words, let you 
 see in her eyes that her thought and felt it ? ' 
 
 ' No, she did not look at me at all.'
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 199 
 
 ^ See there now ! ' exclaimed Joyce. ' I be 
 nort but a poor savage, but I be better nor her. 
 I know what be right and vitty (fitting) — and 
 her don't.' 
 
 ' Of course you know what is right, with 
 the guidance of wooddoves.' 
 
 'It were the raven, not the wooddoo,' said 
 Joyce, eagerly. ' The wooddoo told me wrong. 
 The wooddoo sed " Tak two, Joyce, tak two." 
 But that's no count. It'll come right wi' 
 Whiteface and you in the end. Her'll find 
 them folk of hers not like you, always a 
 thinking and caring for her, and then her'll 
 remember you and think on 370U, just as I do 
 lying here. Be you a going? ' 
 
 Herring had risen from his knee as if to 
 leave. 
 
 ' Stay a bit longer,' pleaded Joyce. ' r)o'y 
 know what it be after it hev been rainino; all 
 day, and cold and wisht, out comes the sun 
 afore he goes down, and the clouds roll away, 
 and Dartmoor seems to be all alight, and then 
 for the glory and the beauty and the warmth 
 you forget all the time o' cold and darkness 
 and rain ? It be so wi' me. Here I lies and 
 I sees none but vaither, and her grumbles 
 becos I can't work, and when vaither bain't 
 here I sees nobody, and it be wisht, I reckon, 
 till you comes ; and then I be that full o' glad-
 
 200 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ness and joy I remember no more the time o' 
 loneness and pain and trouble. You'll bide a 
 bit longer, won't'y?' 
 
 '- 1 really cannot stay, Joyce, with the best 
 will to pleasure you, I cannot.' The demon- 
 strative admiration and affection of the poor 
 creature confounded and distressed him. 
 
 ' I've more to tell'y,' Joyce continued. 
 ' I've that to tell'y which be most partikler. 
 Do'y know what vaither did to make mother 
 lie quiet? He gived her some'ut. But her 
 bain't no more a child to be amused wi' toys 
 like theme May be for a night or two her 
 sat and turned 'em over and was kept quiet 
 wi' lookino^ at 'em. But it bain't the likes o' 
 them as will make mother still and sleep o' 
 niofhts, instead of rootin<i: about in the earth 
 under the table like a mole.' 
 
 ' What does she want, Joyce? ' 
 
 ' Her wants you to do it. You mun lift 
 the hearthstone and say glory rallaluley, and 
 Our Vaither — kinkum kum over her. Her 
 told me so herself. I cannot do it. I don't 
 know the words. I've just picked up a word 
 here and there when the Methodies ha' been 
 out on the down, singing and preaching, and 
 hugging and praying. You can say kinkum 
 kum over mother and make her lie quiet and 
 sleep.'
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 201 
 
 Poor dark soul ! Joyce had no knowledge 
 of God, and very dim, perverted conceptions 
 of right and wrong. Her only faith was in 
 troubled spirits, and that was no faith, but a 
 confusion of mind between death and life, and 
 dreaming visions and sight when waking. 
 Her sole idea of prayer was a spell to lay the 
 restless dead. Herring's heart was softened 
 by compassion for the girl. She watched the 
 expression of his face very intently, some- 
 what mistrustfully, fearful of a refusal, and. 
 worse than all, of ridicule. But though Her- 
 ring did meditate refusal, no thought of the 
 ludicrous in her request stirred a muscle of 
 his mouth. He was grieved for her, and he 
 was touched by her ignorant simplicity. 
 
 ' Poor Joyce ! ' he said, and knelt down 
 by her again. ' Poor Joyce ! ' 
 
 Then he tried to soothe her and turn her 
 thoughts into another channel. She, however, 
 persisted in forcing the task on him of saying 
 sacred words over a dead and buried woman. 
 When Joyce had made up her mind to any- 
 thing she was inflexible. Herring was being 
 forced into one position, then into another, for 
 which he was unsuited. Joyce had made him 
 her doctor, her nurse, her guardian, and now 
 she made him her priest. He was good-na- 
 tured, and good nature is weakness.
 
 202 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 After holding back he at length, out of 
 pity, and to humour the headstrong girl, did 
 as she required. She made him raise the 
 hearthstone, and trig it up with a piece of 
 granite. He could not lift the stone out of 
 its place, though Old Grizzly had been able- 
 armed enough to do this unaided. Then 
 Herring knelt and gravely said a prayer — the 
 prayer. 
 
 Joyce was satisfied. 
 
 ' That be right,' she said. ' Now mother 
 don't want her toys no more. There be a 
 stick wi' a crook to the end i' thicky corner.' 
 
 ' I see there is.' 
 
 ^ Fetch 'n, and scrabble with 'n under the 
 hearthstone.' 
 
 'What for?' 
 
 ' Do as I tell'y. You'll see what for fast 
 enough. Hav'y got the stick ? Now thrust 
 it well in, and poke about till you comes to 
 some'ut hard. 
 
 Herring groped as bidden, rather uneasy 
 in his mind at what he was doing, lest he 
 should rake out the bones of the dead woman. 
 
 'Do'y feelnort?' 
 
 ' Yes ; there is something there hard and 
 heavy.' 
 
 ' Yang 'n in to'y.' 
 
 Herring obeyed. There certainly was
 
 UNDER THE HEARTH. 203 
 
 something there. As the crook struck it, it 
 sounded like a metal box. After some work- 
 ing with the stick he managed to get it out. 
 It was a small box of japanned iron, which 
 had been locked, but had been battered till 
 the lock had given way. The lid accordingly 
 was loose. 
 
 ' Open it,' said Joyce. ' Yaither found 'n 
 the night o' the axidenk. He found 'n in one 
 of the boxes that had gone scatt wi' falling 
 from the carriage. He thought there might 
 be some'ut in him, and so he tooked *n away 
 and brought 'n here, and wi' a bit of stone 
 knacked the lock all abroad. I see 'n do it. 
 That were after he'd a broke me to pieces, 
 AVhen I came by my wits I seed old vaither 
 sitting by the fire and working till he'd a got 
 the lid started, and then he looked in and seed 
 what were there, and he sed he'd give me 
 some if I'd take 'em. But they wos no good 
 to me, and I couldn't a done nort wi' 'em with 
 both my arms broke. I couldn't move my 
 fingers, and I were that deadly ill I didn't care 
 for nort but to lie quiet and die right on end. 
 So then, after a bit, vaither said he knowed 
 what he'd do wi' 'em as they were no good to 
 he. He'd give 'n to mother, her'd play wi' 
 'em o' nights and be quiet. So he heaved up 
 the hearthstone — vaither be a deal stronger
 
 204 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 than you — and he shoved the box under, just 
 over where mother's heart be. There, look'y 
 what brave fine things they be.' 
 
 Herring had opened the box. He looked 
 in in speechless amazement. Then he raised 
 a tray and looked farther, and beneath the 
 tray was more still. 
 
 Presently he found his tongue, drew a 
 heavy breath, and said, ' Good heavens, Joyce, 
 these are diamonds. There are thousands of 
 pounds worth of diamonds here.' 
 
 ' They be brave shiney stones.' 
 
 ' They are diamonds.' 
 
 ' Well, you may take 'em. They belongs 
 o' rights to the Whiteface. You can take 'em 
 and give 'em to her or keep 'em yourself, just 
 as you likes.'
 
 205 
 
 CHAPTER XY. 
 
 EHEU, BUBONES! 
 
 When Balboa, from a peak in Darien, dis- 
 covered an ocean untroubled by waves, un- 
 stained by the shadow of a cloud, he named it 
 the Pacific. John Herring's exploration of 
 life was the reverse of Balboa's course ; he had 
 left behind him the Pacific Ocean, in which 
 he had hitherto sailed, and he had sighted 
 the sea of storms. Balboa had little idea of 
 the extent of the watery tract he discovered, 
 and Herring had but a faint suspicion of the 
 nature and fretfulness of the sea on which he 
 was about to embark. A few weeks ago the 
 problem of life had seemed to him a simple 
 addition sum ; he was about to discover that 
 it consisted in the extraction of surds, which 
 when extracted prove dead and dry symbols. 
 ' Vanity of vanities,' said the Preacher, after he 
 had worked at the sum all his days ; the con- 
 clusion of the whole matter is, ' all is vanity.' 
 With a sense of alarm Herrinof became
 
 2o6 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 aware that Joyce had put into his hands more 
 destinies than her own. Mirelle's future was 
 contained in a little casket of which the lock 
 was broken, and which was placed at his 
 unchallenged disposal. The fortune that had 
 been confided to the trustee under the will 
 was certain to be engulfed as the ship that 
 strikes the Goodwins. Here, however, was 
 the bulk of her property, providentially saved 
 from the grip of Tramplara, and lodged in 
 honest hands. What was he to do with this ? 
 Was he justified in retaining it till Mirelle 
 should need it, and then delivering it to her 
 untouched, or was he bound to deliver it to 
 him who was constituted legal trustee by the 
 will of her father ? 
 
 The conflict stood between moral and legal 
 obligation. It was a question whether, if he 
 acted in accordance with legal obligation, he 
 would not be morally guilty were Mirelle's 
 entire fortune made away with. 
 
 A week or two ago, had the question been 
 proposed. If you find a guinea, should you 
 return it immediately to the owner or keep 
 it till you think the owner needs it? Herring 
 would have been ready with an answer that 
 cost him little consideration. Now he was 
 not sure that the ready answer was the right 
 answer. Life is not a simple matter ; it is a
 
 EHEU, BUB ONES! 207 
 
 veritable problem. The problem of life is the 
 Pons Asinorum. 
 
 He met Cicely at the gate of West Wyke. 
 She was looking distressed, and she touched 
 his arm. ' I want a word with you. Look 
 here.' She held out a letter. 
 
 ' I have ventured to open it. The letter 
 is addressed to my father, but as it has the 
 Launceston postmark, and I knew the hand- 
 WTiting to be that of Mr. Tramplara, I did 
 not show it to my father. I opened it. Was 
 I right? I feared it might contain something 
 to distress him, and I found the contents more 
 distasteful than I had anticipated. I was 
 right, was I not, to open the letter?' 
 
 A week ago, if asked, Is any one justified 
 in opening another person's letter? Herring 
 would have answered in the negative. But 
 now, all the cut and dried precepts of mo- 
 rality he had learned began to fail him. They 
 did for copybook slips, not for rules of life. 
 
 ' You have something in your hand, Mr. 
 Herring,' said Miss Battishill, observing the 
 iron box. ' Is that yours?' 
 
 He hesitated. Is it justifiable ever to tell 
 a lie? Is it justifiable to evade the truth, and 
 so deceive? He had no doubts on this head 
 a week ago. He doubted now, and did evade 
 giving a direct answer.
 
 2o8 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' The box is broken, and I am going to 
 have the lock mended.' 
 
 ' But, Mr. Herring, you have just come 
 from the Cobbledicks.' 
 
 ' Yes,' he answered, and then hesitated. 
 He was unaccustomed to fence with the truth. 
 ' When the accident took place, the box was 
 lost somehow, and Joyce has found and re- 
 stored it me.' 
 
 ' I hope you have lost nothing of value 
 from it.' 
 
 ' I have lost nothing from it,' he replied. 
 ' But never mind the box now, Miss Battis- 
 hill. Tell me what it is that now occasions 
 you trouble.' 
 
 ' Old Mr. Tramplara has written a pe- 
 remptory letter to my father, calling up all 
 the money that he has advanced him on the 
 security of the property.' 
 
 * And your father is not in a position to 
 pay?' 
 
 ' I am sure he is not. The letter must be 
 answered, and that speedily. I need your 
 advice. I dare not let my dear father see the 
 letter ; the result might be fatal in his present 
 state.' 
 
 ' ]N'o,' answered Herring, ' he must know 
 nothing of the demand.' 
 
 ' But if we do not meet this call, and meet
 
 EHEU, BU BONES! 209 
 
 it we cannot, Mr. Tramplara will turn us out 
 and sell the estate.' 
 
 ' Is there no way of avoiding this ? Cannot 
 a portion be sold to clear the rest of incum- 
 brance ? What amount does your father owe ? ' 
 
 ' I do not know. Will you ascertain that 
 from him, and then consider with me what 
 must be done? If we are forced to leave West 
 Wyke, it will kill papa.' Then her tears 
 came. 
 
 ' Miss Battishill,' said Herring, in great 
 distress — he was unaccustomed to woman's 
 tears, and therefore moved by them — ' dear 
 Miss Battishill, do not give way. We will 
 find some mode of escape. I will do my 
 utmost for you ; be very sure of that.' He 
 took her hand and pressed it. She returned 
 the pressure, and, looking up into his eyes 
 through her tears, said, ' You give me con- 
 fidence, you are so strong and sure.' 
 
 ^I strono; ! I sure!' exclaimed Herrino^. 
 At that moment he was feeling the weakness of 
 his principles and the uncertainty of his course. 
 
 ' Go in, and talk to my father,' she said, 
 * whilst I try to forget my troubles among 
 my flowers.' Then with a relapse, ' Oh, Mr. 
 Herring, I do so love this sunny south garden, 
 and the old house, and the heathy moors, and 
 Cosdon reigning like a king over all. It will 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 2IO JOHN HERRING. 
 
 go nigh, to break my heart as well as my 
 father's, if I am forced to leave West Wyke.' 
 
 ' We must put faith in the future,' he said. 
 
 ' I did believe in the future till of late, but 
 now my path lies under eclipse.' She paused 
 and sighed. ' But after all, is it worth while 
 deferring to tell my father? He must shortly 
 know the truth. It is only a matter of weeks.' 
 She made a little effort to control her 
 emotion. ' You decide whether he is to be 
 told or not. I am not competent to form an 
 opinion. I shrink from agitating papa, lest 
 it lead to another stroke ; if however this 
 
 must be done ' She turned sharply away, 
 
 and signed to him with her hand to leave her 
 and go indoors. 
 
 Herring entered the hall. 
 
 Mr. Battishill was in his arm-chair. He 
 was much enfeebled by his seizure, but though 
 his utterance was not as clear as formerly, 
 his loquacity was undiminished. 
 
 ' Mr. Herring,' he said somewhat peevishly, 
 ' I have been left a long while alone, and yet 
 not altogether alone, I have had Shakespeare 
 and my own thoughts to company. But alas ! 
 as Lear says, " My wits begin to turn — I will 
 be a pattern of all patience, I will say nothing." 
 Herring, sit down in that chair and have a 
 talk. 1 wish you had known us in better
 
 EHEU, BUB ONES! 2U 
 
 days, and when my wife was living. We had 
 more of an establishment then. Now there 
 is only a maid- of- all- work, then we had a cook 
 and housemaid, and a nurse for Cicely. I do 
 not think we were the happier for having so 
 large an establishment. I believe it killed my 
 wife.' 
 
 'What, sir?' 
 
 ' The servants killed her. I have puzzled 
 my brain to know which were created first, 
 the beasts, or the parasites on their backs ; 
 but, of course it was the beasts, for they could 
 do without the parasites, but not the parasites 
 without the beasts. So I believe that the 
 common ruck of humanity w^as made to feed 
 on the noble specimens of the kind. We, the 
 aristocracy, exist not for ourselves, to enjoy 
 our lives and follow our mils, but for our 
 servants, to support them and be subject to 
 their whims. That which the palmer worm 
 hath left hath the locust eaten, and that which 
 the locust hath left hath the canker worm 
 eaten, and that which the canker w^orm hath 
 left hath the caterpillar eaten. My dear 
 wife always insisted that this was an Oriental 
 and prophetical manner of describing the ser- 
 vant nuisance. That which the housemaid has 
 left the cook carries off, and what the cook 
 spares the kitchen-maid embezzles, and what 
 p 2
 
 212 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 the kitchen-maid leaves the charwoman whips 
 off in her basket under her shawl. My poor 
 dear wife fought a long battle to keep the 
 house up, but in vain. The aristocracy I 
 explained to her are the pigs and poultry of 
 mankind, kept and fattened to be eaten. She 
 succumbed at last, and when, dear soul, she 
 was dying, almost the last words she said 
 were, " Where I am going there will be no 
 servants." In this hope she made a happy 
 end.' The old man paused and wiped his eyes. 
 ^ When the first woe was ended, then came the 
 second.' 
 
 'What was that? ' asked Herring. 
 
 * That was Tramplara, of course. I was 
 pretty v^^ell in Tramplara's web before the first 
 woe was overpassed.' 
 
 ' May I ask the amount of your indebted- 
 ness to Mr. Trampleasure ? ' 
 
 ^ Lord bless you ! — you ask me more than 
 I can answer. I have borrowed so often, and 
 when I have not paid as I expected, I con- 
 tracted an additional loan, — like an owl that 
 I was. Pace, Bubones ! ' the old man touched 
 his forehead as he looked at the heraldic glass. 
 ' However, if it be an amusement to you I 
 give you full liberty to overhaul my desk.' 
 
 ' It would be as well if I were to get your 
 indebtedness into shape,' said Herring. ' If
 
 EHEU, BU BONES! 213 
 
 I can be of any help to you in this way, 
 command me.' 
 
 ' I don't see that you can help me ; I am 
 past that.' 
 
 ' It struck me, sir, that by the sale of a 
 portion of your property you might be able 
 to wipe off some of the debt.' 
 
 ' Wipe off the debt ! as soon wipe a child's 
 nose dry. I said to a little urchin one day, 
 " Blow your nose, and cease snufBing." 
 '' Please, Squire," he answered, " it ain't no 
 good, it won't bide blowed." It is the same 
 with my accounts. I have tried to wipe off 
 my debts several times, but the debtor side 
 keeps running. Look at my books, you will 
 find . the figures show as remarkable a ten- 
 dency to turn one way as do the heads of the 
 trees at this elevation.' 
 
 ' You will then allow me to overhaul them.' 
 
 ' Certainly, if it will give you pleasure. 
 There is no accounting for tastes. There is 
 an old woman in one of my cottages who has 
 a bad leg, and insists on showing it me. I 
 say to her, " Betty, keep that for the doctor, 
 it revolts me." It is the same with a gentle- 
 man's accounts. They are his running sore. 
 But he is wiser than Betty, he covers it up. 
 If you are a doctor of sick ledgers, by all 
 means examine, and I wish you joy.'
 
 214 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Herring was now staying at West Wyke. 
 He went carefully over the accounts of Mr. 
 Battishill, and found them to be in utter 
 confusion. The old man kept receipts some- 
 times, but not invariably. He received his 
 rent when he could get it, and by instalments ; 
 his tenants were always behindhand because 
 punctuality of payment was not insisted on. 
 It took Herring some time to arrive at a just 
 idea of what the old gentleman owed, and he 
 was startled at the amount. He also obtained 
 an approximate value of the estate. It was 
 clearly impossible for him to meet his liabi- 
 lities. 
 
 Herring saw no course open except the 
 disposal of the property, or of part of it. 
 
 The estate was small, it had been reduced, 
 and the land was of inferior quality. It was 
 possible that the sale of Upaver alone might 
 suffice to clear off the mortgages, but then it 
 was doubtful whether Mr. Battishill and his 
 daughter could live on at West Wyke, farming 
 the barton, when Upaver was sold. To 
 farm without capital, and without being able 
 to superintend the workmen, meant to sink 
 deeper into the bog after having been extri- 
 cated from it. The wisest course for Mr. 
 Battisbill would be to sell the entire estate, 
 and retire to a cottao;e on what remained of
 
 EHEU, BUB ONES/ 215 
 
 the purchase-money, after all the liabilities he 
 had contracted had been discharged. He was 
 reluctant to propose this, and yet it was the 
 proposal which would be most advantageous 
 to the old man. 
 
 ' Well,' asked Mr. Battishill, a few days 
 later, ' my good friend, what has come of this 
 pondering over my papers ? You have grown 
 portentously dull, and left all the talking to 
 me.' 
 
 ' The case is hopeless,' said Herring, sadly. 
 
 ' I knew it was,' said the old man, with a 
 look and air of discouragement. In spite 
 of his words, he had nursed a hope that 
 Herring would by some feat of ingenuity find 
 a mode of relief, and would assure him that 
 the situation was not desperate. ' " I by 
 neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to 
 closeness and the bettering of my mind . . . 
 by being so retired, in old Tramplara waked 
 an evil nature." My situation is not unlike 
 that of Prospero — here I dwell with my 
 Miranda. Well, well ! what will be must 
 be— 
 
 He that has and a little tiny wit, — 
 
 With heigh, ho, the wind and the rain, — 
 
 Must make content with his fortunes fit. 
 Though the rain it raineth every day.' 
 
 The old man, though discouraged, did not 
 believe that the case was desperate.
 
 2i6 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Never mind,' he said, * the world of West 
 Wyke will hold out my time. There is but 
 one thing that I ask of Providence, and that I 
 am sure Providence will not deny me. I 
 desire nothing but to die here and be laid 
 with my ancestors. Do you know what our 
 motto is ? You would never guess, " Eheu ! 
 Eheu ! Eheu ! " I suppose that was given as 
 resembling the hoot of an owl, but it was 
 ominous. Poor Cicely ! she will not be able to 
 carry the ancestral house with her when some 
 Ferdinand comes to carry her off. She will 
 take with her nothing but the owls, and he 
 who marries her will bear those owls on an 
 escutcheon of pretence on his own coat. So 
 at last, at last, it will come to this, that the 
 white owls who have nested here in honour 
 for so many centuries will spread their wings 
 and seek a perch elsewhere. Eheu ! Eheu ! 
 Eheu, Bubones ! '
 
 217 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TRUSTEE NOT EXECUTOR. 
 
 Although John Herrino; had been devotino; 
 his attention as closely as possible to the 
 affairs of Mr. Battishill, and had found them 
 an engrossing study from the confusion which 
 pervaded them, he had not been able to shake 
 off the sense of responsibility incurred by the 
 possession of Mirelle's diamonds. Joyce had 
 constituted him trustee of the fortune of this 
 maiden. Mirelle had two trustees now, as 
 her father had intended, but John was trustee 
 without the knowledge of the other, and over 
 a fortune of the existence of which that other 
 was happily ignorant. Tramplara was trustee 
 by virtue of the testament of Mr. Strange, 
 John Herring by virtue of the caprice of 
 Joyce. 
 
 Herring satisfied his conscience that he 
 was acting rightly in retaining the jewels. 
 He knew that they could not be safely in-
 
 2i8 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 trusted to Mr. Tramplara. When he turned 
 the matter over in his mind, he thought he 
 could make out the course of events which had 
 influenced Mr, Strange. This gentleman had 
 called at Avranches on Mr. Eustace Smith, 
 the co-trustee, but he had not called on 
 Mr. Trampleasure when he passed through 
 Launceston. There must have been a reason 
 for this. He had probably heard in Fal- 
 mouth sufficient as to the character of Tram- 
 plara to determine him to cancel his name 
 from the will, as a person not to be trusted 
 with the fortune and destiny of his only child. 
 It was clear from Mr. Eustace Smith's letter 
 that he had not been consulted when Mr. 
 Strange saw him at Avranches. The de- 
 ceased must, therefore, have determined, when 
 renewing his acquaintance with him, not to 
 trouble him with the executorship or guardian- 
 ship of his child. Mr. Strange had, no doubt, 
 intended to draw up a fresh will w^hen he 
 reached Exeter. As we know. Herring's 
 conclusions were correct. Cruel fate had cut 
 the father off before he could rectify the error 
 into w^hich he had fallen. Now a happy 
 accident had constituted Herring guardian 
 of the major portion of Mirelle's property. 
 
 John Herring had confidence in himself. 
 It was impossible for him to commit a dis-
 
 TRUSTEE NOT EXECUTOR. 219 
 
 honourable action. The diamonds were as 
 safe in his hands as in the strongest bank 
 cellar. He believed the trust was given to 
 him by Providence. He was a simple-hearted 
 young man, and believed in Providence. He 
 recognised in this rescue of the jewels, and 
 their committal to his custody, an interposi- 
 tion of Heaven in behalf of the orphan. 
 Whom could Providence have chosen more 
 trustworthy than himself, and more interested 
 in the welfare of Mirelle ? The more he con- 
 sidered the situation the more convinced he 
 became that a finger out of heaven was point- 
 ing to him a plain duty, and that he could 
 not shirk that duty justifiably. But he had 
 no desire to shirk it. He was anxious and 
 interested about Mirelle. He was certain that 
 Tramplara would risk her fortune in some 
 rash venture. He had heard of the man. 
 He now remembered that his father had lost 
 money by him. Tramplara would take the 
 coin intrusted him, put it in a handkerchief 
 over the table before the eyes of his victim, and, 
 presto ! it was gone, and the kerchief empty. 
 A clink under the table told that the coin had 
 fallen into the conjuror's pocket. It was not 
 possible for John Herring, knowing the cha- 
 racter of Tramplara, and suspecting that the 
 deceased had desired to cancel his will, it was
 
 220 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 impossible, morally, for John Herring to sur- 
 render to him the trust now committed to him. 
 
 Of all men, he, John Herring, was the 
 most calculated to look after Mirelle's in- 
 terests, for he loved her better than any one 
 else in the world could love her. John 
 Herring being, as has been said, very simple, 
 thought that duties rose to the surface like 
 earthworms to be taken by the crows. Here 
 was an obvious duty which had worked up 
 under his eye, and he swooped down on it, and 
 made it his own immediately. 
 
 But if Mirelle was his first care, the 
 Battishills formed his second. Without anv 
 seeking on his part, they had thrown them- 
 selves on him, and he could not without 
 cruelty withdraw his support. He saw a 
 good and kind, if somewhat fantastical old 
 man and his sweet helpless daughter, menaced 
 with the greatest of evils — banishment from 
 their home, to become outcasts in the world, 
 with no income, or very little, to sustain 
 them ; he struck down by sickness, and she 
 too ignorant of life to know how to meet it, 
 weighted with the burden of a paralysed 
 father. 
 
 What was he to do ? 
 
 Then a bright idea struck him. He would 
 try to help Mirelle and Cicely at once. To
 
 TRUSTEE NOT EXECUTOR. 221 
 
 do this he must go to Lauiiceston, and to go 
 to Launceston he must obtain leave of absence 
 from Joyce. 
 
 John Herring was now, for the first time, 
 opening his eyes to the fact that to be good- 
 natured and ready to oblige all those appeal- 
 ing to him was to involve himself in many 
 difficulties. Among swimmers they who are 
 drowning lay hold of him who maintains him- 
 self above water ; it is necessary, though pain- 
 ful, to give each a kick in the face and send 
 him to the bottom, if the swimmer will reach 
 the shore himself alive. It is only the selfish 
 man who can sing as he walks in the face of 
 the robber. He has nothing to give, what he 
 has is too ingeniously stowed away to be dis- 
 coverable. Life is a Hounslow Heath where 
 footpads beset every road, and, where they 
 leave a gap, beggars step in. And these 
 demand and take from the traveller every- 
 thing he has, and kick him, when stripped, 
 off the heath, with a jeer, into the black 
 beyond. 
 
 A kind-hearted man such as John Her- 
 ring does good to others as he icould be done 
 by. Would is in the optative and ever un- 
 fulfilled mood. It is not the criminal who is 
 stung by remorse ; the only crime that brings 
 self reproach is generosity to abrother in need.
 
 222 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 The glow that succeeds a good deed is the 
 sting of repentance for having done it. 
 
 Of all this Herring was ignorant. Puppies 
 are born blind, but when thrown into the 
 water that is to drown them they open their 
 eyes. Herring was beginning life. He must 
 pay his footing. 
 
 If Herring had not been ridiculously sim- 
 ple, he would not have gone to the Giant's 
 Table and explained to Joyce that he could 
 not attend to her arms for a couple of days. 
 Would young Sampson have done this, or 
 Captain Trecarrel? They had their eyes 
 open, and allowed none to catch their ankles 
 as they swam. Herring took pains to make 
 Joyce understand that she must be patient, 
 and not by impatience undo the good already 
 done her. 
 
 She was stubborn and despotic. 
 
 ' Joyce,' said he, ' I am going to see 
 Mr. Trampleasure. Do you know him ? ' 
 
 'I know 'n,' she replied. 'He were here 
 yesterday along with vaither. Yaither went 
 off with 'n up the Coomb by Rayborough.' 
 
 ^ Mr. Tramplara was here ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, he were. He came down on 
 vaither hard, and sed he were going to turn 
 us out of 'our land, and tear down the
 
 TRUSTEE NOT EXECUTOR 223 
 
 Table, and send us out without home or ground 
 of our own.' 
 
 ' This is strange. He did not come near 
 West Wyke.' 
 
 ^ I reckon not. He said as how he were 
 going to turn the Squire and the young lady 
 out as well. He said we might give 'em 
 shelter under the Table for a bit till he 
 knocked that all abroad too.' 
 
 ' Why did he go to Rayborough ? ' 
 
 ' I reckon he were searching after some 
 mine. But I don't know. He scared vaither 
 pretty smart ; but he got vaither at last as 
 meek he would do anything he were axed. 
 Then Tramplara made 'n come along of he 
 on to the moors, and I seed mun no more.' 
 
 ' Joyce, I hope to save West Wyke for 
 Mr. Battishill, and that is why I am going to 
 Launceston. If I succeed, then you also will 
 be safe from disturbance. Your Table will 
 not then be thrown down.' 
 
 ' Squire won't hurt of us — t' I know by ; 
 he never did nobody harm, he.' 
 
 ' Then, Joyce, you understand, I shall not 
 return till the day after to-morrow, and you 
 must let the doctor or Miss Battishill attend 
 to your arms.' 
 
 ' I won't.'
 
 224 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' But you must. I tell you I cannot be 
 here.' 
 
 ' You may go.' 
 
 ' Thank you for givmg me my furlough/ 
 he said with a smile. ' But, as you see, when 
 I am absent you will have to be attended by 
 some one else.' 
 
 ' Neither vaither, nor doctor, nor Miss 
 Cicely shan't touch me, not by the blue 
 blazes. I tell'y you may go, and my arms 
 shall bide as they be. They won't take no 
 hurt. T shan't do nort to 'em till you comes 
 back. There, that's settled.' 
 
 Herring informed Mr. Battishill and 
 Cicely of his meditated expedition to Laun- 
 ceston to see Mr. Trampleasure. He told 
 them that he was in hopes of bringing him to 
 another mind about the mortgages, but he did 
 not enter into the particulars of his scheme, 
 nor did he tell them what he had learned from 
 Joyce relative to Mr. Trampleasure' s visit the 
 day before and exploration of Upaver. Her- 
 ring conjectured that the old man had seen 
 the ore brought up from the mine recently 
 opened, and was eager by foreclosing to 
 secure it for himself, having formed a high 
 opinion of its value. Herring went again that 
 evening to Upaver and explored the work- 
 ings, taking with him one of the labourers
 
 TRUSTEE NOT EXECUTOR, 225 
 
 Mr. Battishill had employed on it. The man 
 was familiar with mines, and was confident 
 that the lode was good. The ' shode ' had 
 led to as beautiful a ' bunch ' as a man might 
 hope to see in a lifetime. A fortune was to 
 be made at Upaver. 
 
 To his surprise, Herring learned from the 
 man that though Mr. Trampleasure had 
 passed the workings, he had not paid them 
 any attention, but had gone further up the 
 glen. But then, as the miner said, with a 
 jerk of the chin, there was nothing lying 
 about which might lead any one to suspect 
 what was below. All the samples were buried 
 or hidden in the gorse brakes. 
 
 Herring carried off with him some of the 
 best specimens of pure ore, and, on his return 
 to AVest Wyke, showed them to Mr. Battis- 
 hill, and told him his opinion of the mine. 
 He said that he was confident, if a respite 
 could be obtained from Tramplara, and a com- 
 pany be formed to work the mine, that the 
 royalties on the lead extracted would speedily 
 clear the property of its burdens. 
 
 The old man was elated. He talked over 
 the prospect, offering many suggestions, some 
 utterly unpractical, and his hollow cheek 
 flushed with excitement. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said he, ' if Tramplara knows 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 about that lead he'll not grant a respite, but 
 be down on me at once if he sees profit to 
 be got by it. 
 
 ril have my bond : I will not hear thee speak : 
 I'll have my bond ; and therefore speak no more. 
 ril not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool, 
 To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield 
 To Christian intercession.' 
 
 The old man shook his head. ' No, Her- 
 ring, 3^ou will not prevail on him with prayers. 
 " It is the most impenetrable cur that ever 
 kept with men." No, you must attack his 
 self-interest if you will bend him, and how 
 you will manage that passes my conception.' 
 
 ' But suppose I say to Tramplara, Here is 
 the money.' 
 
 Cicely looked sharply up from her work. 
 
 ^ Mr. Herring, you made me a promise.' 
 
 ' My dear,' said Mr. Battishill, ' you have 
 often let me see that you disapproved of my 
 speculations, as if I must be bhnd. But see ! 
 here at last, in Upaver, I have hit on one that 
 will succeed.' 
 
 ' You have hit on it, father, for others to 
 make fortunes out of it. You have hit on it 
 as West Wyke is slipping from us.'
 
 227 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 
 
 As John Herrino; entered the gates of 
 Dolbeare, he saw Mh'elle go into the summer- 
 house. This summer-house stood at the edge 
 of the terrace between the garden-gate and 
 the house. 
 
 He desired to see her alone, and therefore, 
 before ffoino^ to the front door, he turned to 
 tlie garden lodge and stood in the doorway. 
 
 Mirelle saw him and bowed slightly. 
 Herring went in, and up to her. Then, after 
 a moment's hesitation, she held out her hand. 
 
 He took it, but he might as well have 
 touched an icicle. No token of pleasurable 
 recognition appeared in her face. 
 
 ' You are surprised to see m.e,' said 
 Herring, 'I dare say.' 
 
 ' Not at all,' she answered. ^ AVhy should 
 I be? I know nothing of your movements. 
 If you had told me you were going to 
 Q 2
 
 228 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Moscow, and 1 had seen you start in that 
 direction, I should be surprised to see you 
 here now ; but as I know neither where 
 you live nor what places you frequent, there 
 is nothing in your reappearance to justify 
 surprise/ 
 
 '• I have come to-day from West Wyke.' 
 ' Indeed ! I hope you left all well there.' 
 ' Only fairly so. You have not heard 
 what happened to poor Joyce.' 
 
 ^ I do not know who poor Joyce is.' 
 ^ Joyce is that wild girl who helped you 
 to West Wyke on the evening of the acci- 
 dent.' 
 
 ' I remember an uncouth and unmannerl}^ 
 paysanne. Is her name Joyce ? I did not 
 know it. If I had heard it, the name escaped 
 my memory. Joyce ! what is the derivation 
 of the name Joyce ? ^ Joieuse, I presume — 
 a singularly inappropriate name in this case.' 
 ^ Very much so, poor child. That brutal 
 father of hers broke her arms, and otherwise 
 seriously injured her.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! These savages have their ways.' 
 Herring was shocked at her want of 
 feeling. 
 
 ^ In the Soutli Tawton Register stands this entry under 
 
 Baptisms : ' Jocosa, anglice Joyce, daughter of ,' &c. 
 
 It was formerly a common name in Devon.
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 229 
 
 ' You do not seem to feel for her, and yet 
 she helped you, as you may remember.' 
 
 ' Of course I am very sorry. I am sorry 
 when I hear a mason has fallen off a scaffold, 
 or a child has tumbled into a well, or a horse 
 has broken his knees ; I am sorry when a 
 donkey is roughly treated. But unless I am 
 acquainted with the mason, and the child, 
 and the horse, and the ass, I do not feel more 
 than a transient pity. You possibly have 
 seen sufficient of this wild girl to possess 
 some interest in her ; I know absolutely 
 nothing of her. How, then, can I feel for 
 her more than I do when I say I am sorry ? ' 
 
 ' May I take a chair ? ' 
 
 ' Certainl3^ Sit down, and we will talk. 
 I have something I wish particularly to say 
 to you. I am sorry that I let you go the 
 other time without thanking you formally 
 for having rescued me from the broken 
 carriage, for having seen to the funeral of 
 my poor father, and for having conveyed me 
 hither to the care of these people here.' 
 
 She spoke without any expression in her 
 tone, simply as though repeating a lesson 
 learned by rote. AVhen she had spoken, she 
 drew a long breath like a sigh of relief. She 
 had discharged a duty. It was off her mind, 
 and she was free.
 
 230 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 "- You see for yourself, Mr. Herring, that 
 the feelings of the heart are too sacred to be 
 dispersed over the earth, to be scattered like 
 coins amidst a crowd of bef>:2:ars. One meets 
 with some thousands of persons in the course 
 of existence, and cannot cut one's heart into 
 little bits and present each with a portion. 
 We must reserve it for true friends, and give it 
 them entire. Those who pass us by, and whom 
 we see but for a while, are like the figures 
 of a magic-lantern slide ; they make us laugh, 
 or they interest us for the moment, and then 
 are forgotten. When we hear that a slide is 
 broken, we ask, which ? The man driving 
 a wheelbarrow, or the old Avoman who desired 
 she were pope, or the cabbage that becomes a 
 tailor ? When we are informed, we do not 
 weep, we merely say. It can be replaced.' 
 
 ' I hope you do not class the Battishills 
 among your magic-lantern slides.' 
 
 ' No, I know them, and they have been 
 kind to me. I even like Mr. Battishill. He 
 has his ideas.' 
 
 ' And Miss Cicely ? ' 
 
 ' She is rustic and good-hearted. But 
 she does not think. She has no knowledge of 
 books. She could be made passable if sent to 
 school, but must be recreated to be given
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 231 
 
 ideas. Besides, I am not fond of the plump 
 and the ingenue^ 
 
 '• You have not asked after Mr. Battishill. 
 If it be not too great an effort for your 
 memory, you will recall that he had a stroke 
 before you left West Wyke.' 
 
 ' Do not be sarcastic. I remember that 
 perfectly welL If you will trouble your 
 memory, you will recall that I did, on first 
 learning you came from West Wyke, ask 
 after Mr. and Miss Battishill. I remember 
 that he had a paralytic stroke, but I recall as 
 well that he showed good signs of recovery/ 
 
 • 1 am afraid, Countess, that he stands the 
 chance of another stroke ; for he is menaced 
 wdth a great evil, and any profound agitation 
 is likely to bring on a second seizure.' 
 
 ^ I am very sorry to hear it.' 
 
 ^ His affairs are involved to such an extent 
 that it will be necessary for his property to be 
 sold, and he will have to leave West Wyke.' 
 
 ' Then he can go and live in France ; 
 anywhere must be better than that dismal 
 old house on a barren moor. It is best that 
 it should be so. He w^ill escape from a 
 dungeon.' 
 
 ' You do not understand that his heart is 
 bound up with West Wyke, and that to trans-
 
 232 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 plant him from the home of his ancestors will 
 be to kill him.' 
 
 ' He thinks West Wyke a Paradise only 
 because he has never crossed the ChanneL 
 When he reaches a nook where the sun shines 
 and the flowers ever bloom, he will thank 
 Heaven for having released him from his 
 prison and exile in that WTctched house and 
 on that howling w^aste.' 
 
 * Countess, you are young, and have no 
 conception of the power that association has 
 on the old. You can begin life anywhere, 
 and everywhere hopes and interests start up. 
 To the old it is not so, they are without 
 hopes, and their only pleasure is in re- 
 collection. To the aged the looking back is 
 almost as sweet as the looking forward is to 
 the young.' 
 
 ' Then let him sit down in an arbour of 
 roses, and dream of the past there ; not in a 
 dingy old parlour with smoked ceiling, and 
 the rain pattering against the window.' 
 
 ' I fear that he will be turned destitute 
 into the world, or, if not destitute, nearly so ; 
 and to a broken and sick man that means 
 death.' 
 
 ' He can hardly be worse oiF elsewhere 
 than he is now.' 
 
 ' He will have to go into a new home and
 
 IN TBE SUMMER-HOUSE. 235 
 
 accommodate himself to that, at a time of life 
 and in a condition of health unfitting him for 
 a change. You are unfeeling, Countess.' 
 
 ^ Pardon me, I am not. I know Mr. 
 Battishill, and I respect his many good 
 qualities, but I cannot put myself in hi^ 
 frame of mind. It seems to me that, were I 
 he, all thought of being allowed to leave such 
 a spot, with the world before me, would fill 
 me, if sick and dymg, with new life. I 
 would start up in my bed and cry out, Take 
 me to France ; there I know I shall be well.* 
 
 ' As he does not know France, he has no 
 such desire. And he is too old to acquire 
 new tastes. There comes a time when the 
 mind as well as the body is tired, and all 
 it asks is to be given rest. Xew scenes, new 
 associates, new habits exact too much of the 
 exhausted spirit. Have you not seen a 
 feeble flame extinguished by fresh fuel being- 
 put round it with the hope of coaxing it into 
 a blaze ? This is not all ; the rupture of old 
 associations is the rupture of the thousand 
 filaments the tree root has woven in the soil 
 about it. Break these, and though the tree 
 be transplanted from cold clay to richest loam, 
 it will die. Think of your own forefather 
 when he lost Cantalejo. Think how his 
 heart ached, how he turned to take a last
 
 234 JOHN HERRING, 
 
 look at the ancient walls, and could sec 
 nothing, for, strong man as he was, his eyes 
 were Ml of tears. He knew that with him 
 his entire posterity was banished for ever.' 
 
 ' I can understand that,' said Mirelle, 
 sadly ; ' never more able to coin his own 
 money, nor hang any one on his own gallows.' 
 
 ' And your ancestor went forth hale and 
 able to meet the world, and conquer himself 
 a new place in it.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Mirelle, raising her head 
 proudly, ' he was a brave soldier. He 
 fought, and was killed in the wars.' 
 
 'But this poor old man is broken with 
 years and infirmities.' 
 
 ' It is the will of God.' 
 
 ' He dies, and his daughter is cast adrift, 
 without means, and ignorant of the world.' 
 
 ' Do not speak to me of her. She is the 
 embodiment of prose — pleasing and entertain- 
 ing, but still prose. The world is prosaic, 
 and she will always find a hole in it into 
 which she can fit. It is those with ideas, the 
 originals and the poets, who are adrift and 
 homeless. Every gate is closed to them.' 
 
 ' Countess, think of that evening when the 
 accident took place, and your poor father was 
 killed. You were left on the moor, knowing 
 nothing of the place where you were, or of the
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 235 
 
 people among whom }-onr lot was to be cast. 
 What if, by an unlucky chance, I had not been 
 present to assist you, and the Battishills had 
 not been ready to receive you ? What would 
 you have done on that moor, alone, without 
 adviser, without home, and without money ? 
 The savages would have fallen upon jo\x — 
 that ruthless man who has smashed the bones 
 of liis own daughter would not have spared 
 you.' 
 
 Mirelle shivered. 
 
 ' You may well shudder ; I do not know 
 what would have become of you. But a 
 merciful Providence interposed in your behalf, 
 and raised up to you friends who have cared 
 for you.' 
 
 ' Yes,' she said, ' I see that. I see that 
 now.' 
 
 ' Cicely Battishill is like to be placed in 
 a very similar position ; to be left homeless 
 and friendless in the world, standing by a 
 father, who, if not dead, is as bad as dead for 
 all the help he can afford her. She cannot 
 become a governess and earn her bread, she 
 has her father to nurse. Xow, Countess, when 
 you think of your own condition on that 
 eventful night, and of what might have become 
 of you unless the Battishills had thrown open 
 their door to you and cherished you, then,
 
 236 JOHN HERRIXG. 
 
 perhaps, you will be able to realise the con- 
 dition of Miss Battishill, who, though she may 
 be prosaic, as you say, is a delicate maiden, 
 and has the nurture of a gentlewoman.' 
 
 ' Mon Dieu ! que puis-je faire, moi ! You 
 speak to me as though I could save them. I 
 can do nothing, with the best desire to help 
 them. I cannot invite them to make this their 
 refuge. This is not my home. It is simply 
 a menao:erie in which I am allowed a caci:e 
 among the bears.' 
 
 ' I think it is your cluti) to do what you can 
 to assist the Battishills.' 
 
 ' Show me the way, and I Avill not shrink 
 from performing any duty. But you must 
 see I am unable to help these good people.' 
 
 ' Not altogether unable. Countess. Your 
 father has left 3^ou several thousand pounds, 
 which are in the hands of Mr. Trampleasure, 
 in trust. He must invest them for you. He 
 is also the man who has a hold on the estate 
 of the Battishills. Get him to take your 
 money, or as much of it as is needed, in pay- 
 ment of the sum owed him by Mr. Battishill, 
 and to transfer to you his claims on the pro- 
 perty. That is, let him transfer the mortgage 
 on West Wyke from himself personally to 
 himself as trustee for you. Then you will be 
 mistress over the estate of the Battishills, and
 
 AV THE SUMMER-HOUSE. lyj 
 
 if you will not foreclose, I can promise you 
 that the interest shall be regularly and punctu- 
 ally paid. I am certain that the investment is 
 sound. By this means you will be benefiting 
 the Battishills and yourself simultaneously.' 
 
 ' I understand nothing about mortgages, 
 investments, or interest, I leave that to 
 others. If this proposal of yours enable me 
 to wipe oif an obligation I owe to those who 
 have been kind to me, I accept it gladly, and 
 if it be a duty I shall make it a matter of 
 conscience to fulfil it.' 
 
 ^ It is a duty. At least I think it is. 
 Judge for yourself. You see your benefactors 
 the Battishills in distress, and you have it in 
 your power to rescue them from ruin at no 
 cost to yourself. It seems to me that no duty 
 could be put in a plainer form before you.' 
 
 ' Mr. Trampleasure is in the house. He 
 will have to be consulted. We cannot act 
 without him. Will you summon him hither, 
 and we will arrange the matter on the spot. 
 You will not find me one to shrink fr-om the 
 discharge of a duty.' 
 
 John Herring left Mirelle, and did as she 
 desired. He found Mr. Trampleasure at home, 
 as she had said. He was eno;ncred with his 
 son in the dining-room on some plans, and 
 they had a bottle of spirits and a jug of hot
 
 238 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 water on the table at their elbows, though the 
 time was early m the afternoon. 
 
 Old Tramplara greeted Herrmg with 
 eflhsion, the young one sulkily. Herring 
 told the father that the Countess wanted to 
 speak to him in the summer-house for a few 
 moments, if he would oblige her with his 
 presence. 
 
 ' See what comes of having alive Countess 
 in the house,' said the old man, laughing ; ' I 
 have to dance after her. Now, if she had 
 been plain missie, she would have come here 
 to see me.' 
 
 Then he accompanied PI erring to the 
 summer-house. This house was, in fact, a 
 room of fair size, furnished with a fireplace 
 and carved mantelpiece, that contained a 
 quaint old painting on panel. The windows 
 were large, and that to the south-east over- 
 hung the precipice, and commanded a magnifi- 
 cent view down the valley of the Tamar and 
 up that of the Lyd to the range of Dartmoor, 
 which rose as a wall against the horizon, 
 broken into many rocky peaks, a veritable 
 mountain chain. 
 
 Mirelle had a chair and table in this 
 window, and was engaged on the manufacture 
 of tinsel flowers for the chapel at Trecarrel. 
 
 The table was covered with scraps of foil
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 239 
 
 and bits of coloured silks ; and the snippings 
 strewed the floor. 
 
 'Well, Serene Highness de Candlestickio !' 
 exclaimed the old man, noisilj^, as he came in, 
 with a burst of laughter ; ' what does your 
 consequentialness desire ? Some wires to 
 stick them gewgaws on ? ' 
 
 Mirelle shrank before the uproarious old 
 man, and spoke in her coldest and most 
 reserved manner. 
 
 ' I have sent for you, Mr. Trampleasurc, 
 about my money which has been intrusted to 
 YOU. Mr. Herrinof has been advisino: me how 
 to dispose of it.' 
 
 ' Oh, indeed ; very good of ^Ir. Lieutenant 
 Herring.' 
 
 ' I do not myself understand these matters, 
 and so I have requested Mr. Herring to ex- 
 plain my wishes to you. It seems that Mr. 
 Battishill is in trouble, "and owes you money I' 
 
 ' That is true as gospel,' said Tramplara ; 
 ' he owes me an imperial bushel of it. There 
 are some persons who have a liking for borrow- 
 ing, and much prefer that to paying. Mr. 
 Battishill is one of these, and I have been his 
 victim. And although David does say, 
 " Blessed is he that borroweth and payeth not 
 again," yet that is one point on which David 
 and Sampson Trampleasure are at issue.'
 
 240 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Mr. Battisliill is prepared to pay regularly 
 the interest on the loans he lias contracted/ 
 said Herring. 
 
 ' But, my dear lieutenant,' said Tramplara, 
 ^ I happen at this moment to be in immediate 
 want of a very large sum of ready money. I 
 call on Battishill to refund what he has bor- 
 rowed. He can't do it, and I sell up.' 
 
 ' You are very hard. Are you aware that 
 he has had a seizure, and is ill ? ' 
 
 ' Can't help that, lieutenant, I want money. 
 You saw sweet Sampy and me engaged on 
 some plans when you came into the room. 
 Well, we are in for a venture, and sliall want 
 money to carry it out.' 
 
 ' What the Countess proposes ' 
 
 ' Oh, ])low your Countesses,' said young 
 Tramplara, putting his head in, and then fol- 
 lowing with his body. ' There are no Coun- 
 tesses in this shop. The lady yonder is Miss 
 Strange, only daughter and heiress to James 
 Strange, Esquire, of Bahia, Brazil.' 
 
 ' Shut your trap, Sampy,' said his father. 
 ^ No impertinence here. Manners before 
 ladies of the tip-top aristocracy, please. What 
 do you say, sir, about the proposal of the 
 Countess ? ' 
 
 * I decline to discuss this matter before 
 your son,' said Herring, indignantly. ' It in
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 241 
 
 no Avay concerns him, and he was not invited 
 to be present.' 
 
 * The business is Trampleasure and Son/ 
 said young Sampson. * The firm bears that 
 name throughout the county.' 
 
 ' But the firm has nothing to do with the 
 aff'airs of the Countess Alirelle Garcia.' 
 
 ' Oh ! I beg pardon,' said the young man. 
 'The trustees and guardians of her ladyship 
 are Trampleasure and Herring — more cor- 
 rectly, Herring and Trampleasure.' 
 
 ' I have no further right to interfere,' said 
 Herring, with difficulty retaining his com- 
 posure, ' than as spokesman for the Countess, 
 who has empowered me to act in her name. 
 Have I your authority for what I say and do, 
 Countess ? ' He turned to Mirelle. 
 
 ' My full authority,' she answered. ' I 
 have requested you to speak my wishes in 
 this matter to Mr. Trampleasure. As for his 
 son, I must request him. to efface himself, and 
 not to trouble his head with my affairs.' 
 
 ' Go, Sampy,' said his father. ^ Good 
 angels attend you.' The young man withdrew 
 sullenl3\ ' Now tlien, Lieutenant Herring, I 
 am at your service.' 
 
 * The Countess wishes that her money, left 
 in your hands as trustee, may be invested in 
 the mortgages on the AYest Wyke estate. 
 
 VOL I. R
 
 242 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 These mortgages you hold. Five thousand 
 pounds are owing to you, and you are in 
 immediate need of the mone3\ Take five 
 thousand of her money, and transfer to her 
 the claims on West Wyke.' 
 
 * Oh, ah ! When is she likely to get her 
 interest ? You had to help the Squire out of 
 one hobble, and he will be dropping into 
 another shortly.' 
 
 ^ I can answer for it that the interest will 
 be paid punctually and in full.' 
 
 ' I don't approve of the investment. I 
 don't regard it as sound.' 
 
 * I wish it,' said Mirelle. 
 
 ' My dear pet and pearl of the aristocracy,' 
 said the old man, ' I am solely responsible 
 for what is done with the money. I must 
 look after your interest in the matter. Why, 
 if I yielded to your request, you would get 
 only four and a half for your money, and I 
 can assure you of seven.' 
 
 ' She w^ould prefer the smaller sum on 
 this security than the larger on one more 
 risky.' 
 
 ' Risky, risky ! what ! — Ophir a risk ! 
 My dear Herring, I know better than you 
 where security lies. The young lady's money 
 will be invested in a gold mine — in the gold 
 of Ophir ! I said seven per cent., but I am
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 243 
 
 sanguine of a rise to ten, fifceen, twenty, 
 twenty-five. What do you think of that, 
 eh?' 
 
 ' Mr. Trampleasure,' said Mirelle, ' if I 
 have any voice in this matter ' 
 
 ' You have none — none whatever.' 
 
 ' And if I particularly entreat you not to 
 run risks with my money in gold or other 
 mines, but to dispose of it for the relief of the 
 Battishills ' 
 
 ' Then I shall turn a deaf ear to you. I 
 am responsible to no one. Your father has 
 left me supreme judge in the matter, and I 
 shall act as my own conscience and your 
 interest direct.' 
 
 ' Surely, Mr. Trampleasure ' 
 
 ^ Surely you cry to a stone wall. I shall 
 discharge the obligation your father laid on 
 me with strict fidelity. I am a man of wide 
 experience, and I venture to think that Mr. 
 Herring's knowledge of money investments 
 is recent and partial. I object to his inter- 
 ference, and, but for the respect I owe to the 
 memory of his father, Jago Herring, I should 
 resent it.' 
 
 ^ I have no right, I admit,' said Herring, 
 
 ' other than that I derive from an interest in 
 
 the welfare of both the Countess and the 
 
 Battishills, and from the request she has 
 
 B 2
 
 244 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 made ine to speak in her name and make a 
 proposal which will benefit both parties.' 
 
 ' I refuse what is offered,' said Tramplara, 
 his natural insolence breaking through the 
 varnish of politeness he had assumed. ' I 
 refuse to be dictated to ; and I shall act as I 
 choose with both missie's money and with 
 that owl of a Squire.' 
 
 ' One moment,' said Herring, whose cheek 
 was flushed with anger. ' I ask one question 
 of the Countess. Is it still your wish that 
 the Battishills be saved from ruin ? ' 
 
 '- Certainly I wish it.' 
 
 ' Allow me to ask further, supposing the 
 means of relieving them were at your disposal, 
 would you act in the way I have suggested ? 
 That is, supposing you had money inde- 
 pendent of Mr. Trampleasure, would you 
 invest it in the West Wyke mortgages ? ' 
 
 ' I would do so.* 
 
 ' You are quite sure of your own mind ? ' 
 
 ' I do not speak w^ithout meaning what I 
 say.' 
 
 ' Then, Mr. Trampleasure, you shall not 
 lay a finger on the estate. It is safe. The 
 money shall be forthcoming on the day you 
 name to receive it.' 
 
 ' Are you going to find it ? ' 
 
 ' That in no way concerns you.'
 
 IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE. 245 
 
 ' If you are, you are softer than I sup- 
 posed.' 
 
 ' The money will be ready for you.' 
 
 Mirelle rose, and, steppmg up to Herring, 
 held out her hand. There was more feeling in 
 her voice and warmth in her hand than before. 
 
 ' I thank you, Mr. Herring. I am not 
 ungrateful.' 
 
 ' What for ? ' asked Tramplara, rudely. 
 
 ' For crossing your plans,' she said, and 
 turned to look out of the window at the 
 view.
 
 246 JOHX HERRIXG. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 SALTTS'G A 3riN"K. 
 
 Tea^iplara paid several visits to Upaver 
 without calling at West Wyke. sometimes 
 alone and sometimes along with his son. He 
 did more than visit Upaver; he got some men 
 to break ground there and begin a mine, 
 without asking permission of the landlord, 
 Mr. Battishill. or letting him know what he 
 was about. The farmer who rented Upaver 
 held his tongue. 
 
 One day. however, old Tramplara came to 
 West Wvke House, along with a person whose 
 looks betrayed what he was — a dissenting 
 minister: in fact, the Reverend Israel Fla- 
 mank. 
 
 Mr. Battishill was by no means pleased to 
 receive Tramplara. A mouse is not elated at 
 the sight of the cat. 
 
 Xothing. however, could be more friendly 
 than the manner of Tramplara. He was
 
 SALTING A MINE. 247. 
 
 L" -i:^ :- : rill. H^ presented his friend 
 Mr. Flamank. under vrhom, he said, to his 
 5 7- "rlfare lie had sat, one whom he should 
 alv. iiv- regard as, under Providence, the man 
 who had brought him to realise the great 
 value of eternity and the infinite nothingness 
 of to-day. Then followed a great deal of this 
 s "" f unctuous flattery, 'laid on with a 
 T L and sticking wherever applied. Mr. 
 
 E " 1 - i 1 1 looked on with amused surprise to 
 5r ^ " : ? iily Mr. Flamank accepted the 
 fcpia:M^ci; cuaTse and thick as they were. 
 
 Then Tramplara addressed himself directly 
 to the Squire. 
 
 '" You must allow me, BaitishiU, to shake 
 your hand once more ; you must indeed. My 
 friend and shepherd, Flamank, has made a 
 discovery — a discovery of such moment that 
 I doubt not it wiU astonish you- That it will 
 please you. I do not doubt either. Flamank 
 is a divine who has made prophecy his special 
 study, and his knowledge of Bible history and 
 geography is simply surprising. By the way, 
 before I tell you what his find is, will you 
 let me know whether you really propose to pay 
 me back in full what I ; :ed some years 
 
 ago ?' 
 
 •I shall not be able *:^ io so,* answered 
 Mr. Battishill, -but a ::: i^l has offered to
 
 248 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 find the money, and to relieve you of the 
 mortgages/ 
 
 ' You mean yomig Herring.' 
 
 Mr. Battishill nodded. 
 
 'But where the devil' — Mr. Flamank 
 started and looked remonstratingly at Trara- 
 plara — ' where in Deuteronomy — I said 
 Deuteronomy, — he can havB come upon the 
 money, I can't think. I did know something 
 about old Jago Herring, his father, and I 
 thought he had been a plate licked pretty 
 clean. I did not suppose there was much fat 
 left sticking. But I dare say the old woman 
 had money.' 
 
 ' What old woman ? ' 
 
 ' Mrs. Jago Herring, the lieutenant's 
 mother. And as there was no daughter, her 
 money naturally came to him. It is possible 
 that is how he must have come by it. Where 
 is he now ? ' 
 
 ' In London, I believe. He left a week or 
 two ago.' 
 
 ' I may take it for granted, I suppose, that 
 the money will be forthcoming ? ' asked Mr. 
 Tram pleasure. 
 
 * I do not doubt it. Mr. Herring is a man 
 of his word,' answered the old Squire. 
 
 ' I congratulate you, Battishill.' Mr. 
 Battishill winced each time he was addressed
 
 SALTING A MINE. 249 
 
 ^^ith familiarity. 'I congratulate yon. It 
 Avould have gone hard with me to sell you up. 
 I would not have done it unless forced to do 
 so. What drove me to threaten was need of 
 money, and the occasion of needing it I leave 
 to my reverend friend here to unfold. 
 AVhether I am wise in trusting him, I cannot 
 say. But what is a pastor for but to lead ? 
 But I must open the case, he is too modest to 
 tell the tale, as it redounds to his honour and 
 is a brilliant example of sagacity. I must tell 
 you, Battishill, that I have been privileged to 
 attend his Bible lectures, and he has deeply 
 impressed me with the greatness and com- 
 mercial enterprise of the Philistines.' 
 
 ' Phoenicians, of course,' said Flamank. 
 
 ' Phoenicians, of course — you see, Squire, 
 I'm not well up in the story. I follow my 
 guide, but all this lore is puzzling to me. 
 Well, you know the Pha^nicians came to 
 Cornwall to fetch tin and gold, and that 
 Solomon's servants came alons: with the ser- 
 vants of Hiram for the purpose, and they 
 brought the tin and the gold to Jerusalem for 
 the temple.' 
 
 ' Mr. Battishill nuist have heard of the 
 Phoenicians,' said Mr. Flamank, now on his 
 particular ground, and able to trot. ' From 
 them we derive clotted cream. It is a sinsfular
 
 250 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 and significant fact that clotted cream is made 
 nowhere in the world except in Devon, Corn- 
 wall, and Phoenicia. That is a wxll-esta- 
 blished fact, and it speaks volumes in favour 
 of an early intercourse between the Cassi- 
 terides and the natives of Tyre and Sidon. 
 The Cassiterides have been for some time 
 identified in the minds of antiquaries with 
 Devon and Cornwall. The only difiiculty 
 in the way is this. The Cassiterides are de- 
 scribed by the ancient geographers as islands. 
 But the difficulty vanishes when closely con- 
 sidered. The Phoenicians ascended Brown 
 Willy and Cosdon, and from these heights 
 saw the sea on both sides, and, not supposing 
 they were in an isthmus, they hastily and 
 incorrectly concluded they were in an isLand. 
 Bat the fact of clotted cream being found onl}^ 
 in Phoenicia and the West of Eng-land is, to 
 my mind, absolutely conclusive. A point not 
 considered by antiquaries has arrested my 
 attention. The point is, that the Jews came 
 with the Phoenicians, and that they actually 
 formed permanent settlements in our West 
 Country.' 
 
 ' elews, Jews!' put in Tramplara : 'they 
 would go after tin anywhere.' 
 
 ' Look at Marazion,* continued Mr. Flam- 
 ank ; ' the Bitter Waters of Zion. The place
 
 SALTING A MIXE. 251 
 
 bears the stamp of its origin in its name. 
 There is Port Isaac, also, no doubt named 
 after the patriarch, and Jacobstow, and, 
 touching memorial, Davidstow, so called after 
 the sweet psalmist by the servants of his son 
 Solomon. There is a hamlet of Herodsfoot, 
 and a village of Issey, that is, Isaiah, and St. 
 Sampson, after the strongest of men. Still 
 more remarkable is the fact of the Israelitish 
 colonists founding a parish which they called 
 Temple, because they were at the time en- 
 2:ag;ed on buildinjx that wondrous structure in 
 Jerusalem. Hedruth derives its name from 
 the ancestress of David, and we still sneak of 
 sending persons to Jericho, which is a farm 
 not flir distant from Launceston. A careful 
 study of the Scriptures led me some time 
 ago to this conclusion, that what the profane 
 writers call the Cassitcrides are, in the sacred 
 page, called Ophir.' 
 
 ' Ophir — "over the sea and far away!'^ 
 You recall the text, Squire,' interjected Tram- 
 plara. 
 
 ' Our friend's familiarity with the Scrip- 
 tures is late, and not as accurate as might be 
 desired,' apologised Mr. Flamank, with a look 
 of pity cast at Tramplara. ' Suffice it that, 
 led by a delicate chain of evidence as clear 
 and unmistakable as that of clotted cream, I
 
 252 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 was led to seek Ophir in these western 
 counties. You will recall that the inspired 
 penman lays down the situation of Ophir Avith 
 great nicety. It lies between Mesha and 
 Sephar. I^ow Mesha is undeniably Mesh aw 
 in North Devon, and Sephar is Sheepstor in 
 South Devon. Draw a line between Meshaw 
 and Sheepstor, and it passes over Cosdon.' 
 
 ' Why, bless my heart,' exclaimed Mr. Bat- 
 tishill, ' you are not going to find Ophir here ! ' 
 
 ' We have found it,' said the dissenting 
 minister, gleefully. ' The identification is com- 
 plete. Do 3^ou happen to see my " Western 
 Cornucophir " ? ' 
 
 ' Cornucophir, what is that ? ' 
 
 ' My paper — a monthly originally entitled 
 the Cornucopia, because of the abundance of 
 good things it contained. When this sur- 
 prising discovery dawned on me, I changed 
 the name to Cornucophir — Cornu, for Cor- 
 nubia, Cornwall, and Ophir, for the Land of 
 Gold. The combination is happy.' 
 
 ' But you are looking for Ophir in Devon, 
 not in Cornwall.' 
 
 ' Devon was included in Cornwall till the 
 time of Athelstan, who drove the Britons 
 back over the Tamar, and restricted them to 
 Cornwall. Tamar ' — Mr. Flamank paused 
 and rubbed his hands — ' there again, the river 
 
 itf
 
 • SALTING A MINE. 253 
 
 called after the daughter of David and twin 
 sister of Absalom. Having arrived at tliis 
 remarkable discovery by an exhaustive pro- 
 cess and irrefragable evidence, in which every 
 step is capable of being demonstrated with 
 mathematical certainty to Christian believers, 
 I begged Mr. Trampleasure, who has wide 
 experience in mines ' 
 
 ' Polpluggan,' groaned Mr. Battishill. 
 
 ' As in Polpluggan, as you rightly observe, 
 to examine the line between Meshaw and that 
 mountain in the east, Sheepstor. Mr. Tram- 
 pleasure is not as sanguine in this matter as I 
 am. He is hard to be convinced even now ; 
 I am not sure that his faith is firm. Whilst 
 we were discussing the nature of the land 
 between Meshaw and Sheepstor — he resolutely 
 refused to explore the red sandstone and clay 
 land, maintaining that gold is never found 
 except in the proximity of granite — he told me 
 of a farm of yours called Ophir.' 
 
 ' Ophir ! ' exclaimed the old gentleman ; ' I 
 have no such farm.' 
 
 ' Excuse me,' said Mr. Flamank ; ' you 
 have, and I have been over it myself, explor- 
 ing the ground for gold.' 
 
 ' I believe you call the place Upaver/ said 
 Tramplara, with a twinkle in his eye, which 
 watched the Squire intently.
 
 254 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' Upaver ! You have Dot been hunting up 
 my silver lead mine, have you ? ' 
 
 ' Silver lead, no ! ' answered the pastor ; 
 ' we have been hunting for gold.' 
 
 ' But this is stark nonsense,' exclaimed 
 Mr. Battishill ; 'the place never w^as called 
 Ophir. It is, and always has been, Upaver.' 
 
 ' Upaver and Ophir are all the same, just 
 as Sheepstor is the same as Sephar. I asked 
 the farmer the name of the place, and without 
 hesitation he said that he minded in old times 
 it w^as called Ophir, but that the maps spell it 
 with an U! 
 
 ' He has not been fifteen years on the 
 farm, and I have been here seventy.' 
 
 ' He has heard from the oldest inhabitant.' 
 
 ' I am the oldest inhabitant,' protested 
 Mr. Battishill. ' I can show you, moreover, 
 leases of a hundred and two hundred years 
 ago, in which it is called Upaver.' 
 
 ' The leases were drawn up by lawyers 
 ignorant of the pronunciation of the name. 
 What the farmer told me was confirmed by 
 another man, an old wild -looking creature, 
 almost a savage. He also said the place was 
 called Ophir, and he clenched his statement 
 with a dreadful imprecation on all those wdio 
 called it otherwise. What is more, he showed 
 me a silver coin he had found, and I bought
 
 SALTING A MINE. 255 
 
 it of him for five shillings. If 3-011 will 
 examine it, you will see Hebrew characters 
 on it. I have seen this coin figured in Com- 
 mentaries on the Bible ; on the obverse a vase, 
 the pot of manna, I presume, on the reverse a 
 flower, Aaron's blooming rod. It is a sliekel. 
 Now I ask you, how came a shekel to be 
 found at Ophir unless the Israelites had been 
 there to drop it ? ' 
 
 Mr. Battisiiill took the coin, and turned it 
 over in his hand. He was puzzled. 
 
 '- That man you describe is old Grizzly 
 Cobbledick, who lives under the Giant's 
 Table.' 
 
 ' I have seen the Giant's Table. It is an 
 Israelitish monument, a Gilgal. There are 
 many such in Cornwall, as well as upright 
 stones — the same that Jacob set up and 
 anointed with oil.' 
 
 ^ There are plenty of these upright stones 
 on Dartmoor,' said Mr. Battishill. ' On the 
 side of Belstone Tor is a circle called the 
 Nine Maidens. The story goes that they 
 were damsels so fond of dancing that they 
 w^ould not desist on the Sunday, and in con- 
 sequence were turned to stone. And it is 
 said that even now on Sunday at noon the 
 stones come to life and dance thrice round in 
 a circle.'
 
 256 JOHN HERRI XG. 
 
 * I must make a note of this foi^ my article 
 in the " Western Cornncophir." I pray you to 
 observe the continuance of Sabbatical ideas, 
 an evidence of Jewish teaching ; and of the 
 resistance to it on Belston Tor, a mountain 
 dedicated to Bel or Baal, the Sun God of the 
 Phoenicians.' 
 
 ' But you are holding back from Mr. 
 Battishill the most important discovery of 
 all,' said Tramplara, who saw that the old 
 gentleman w^as not much impressed by the 
 biblical and antiquarian theories of his 
 visitor. 
 
 'At my request, and against his own 
 convictions,' continued Mr. Flamank, 'my 
 good friend Trampleasure searched Ophir for 
 gold. A more qualified person could not have 
 been found, for he is thoroughly conversant 
 Avith the metals and their ores. He brought 
 me one day some sand, granite washings, with 
 grains in it that certainly looked like gold. 
 We tested them with nitric acid, and, sure 
 enough, they proved to be gold. I had no 
 rest in my mind till I had persuaded Mr. 
 Trampleasure to accompany me to Ophir, and 
 to assist me in the examination of the place. 
 He conducted me to the spot where he had 
 found the gravel, and there we searched and 
 I found this.'
 
 SALTING A MINE. 257 
 
 He held out some shining yellow cubes. 
 
 ' That is mundic,' said Mr. Battishill ; ' it 
 looks like gold, but is worthless.' 
 
 ' So Mr. Tramp] easure said. He laughed 
 at me for my mundic find, but I could hardly 
 be convinced that it was not gold. However, 
 later, I found these grains. Here they are 
 in my kerchief, with the quartz and mica as I 
 took them up. I did not find much, but still, 
 enough to show that the metal is present.' 
 
 He spread out his handkerchief on the 
 table. In the midst of the coarse white gravel 
 were certain yellow granules that looked like 
 gold. 
 
 ' You found this in Upaver valley ? ' asked 
 Mr. Battishill, in great surprise. 
 
 ' Yes, I was more successful than Tram- 
 pleasure. But then I worked in faith, and 
 he was dubious, so I dare say looked with 
 less eagerness.' 
 
 ' This is very extraordinary,' said the 
 old gentleman. ' I never suspected the exist- 
 ence of gold on my property.' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' asked Trampleasure. ' Gold 
 is always found in connection with granite.' 
 
 ' That is true ; but none has been found 
 hitherto in Devon.' 
 
 ' And yet the whole valley has been 
 streamed by miners in olden times. Their 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 mounds of refuse are traceable all the way to 
 the source of the stream. N'o gold has been 
 sought because none was expected to be 
 found. The Bible has led me, by a course 
 of inductive evidence, to the identical spot 
 whence came the gold that overlaid the tem- 
 ple, and that made the shields with which 
 Solomon adorned the walls of his palace.' 
 
 ' Whence that gold was got, more gold 
 must be obtainable,' put in Tramplara ; 
 ' especially with our modern appliances.' 
 
 ' It is most amazing,' said Mr. Battishill. 
 * Bless me ! I wish I were well enough to 
 get out ; but I am stricken, and can only 
 creep about with the aid of a stick. I should 
 like myself to examine the place where you 
 say you found the gold.' 
 
 ' Surely you cannot doubt my word,' said 
 Mr. Flamank. ' I can give you the best 
 possible proof of my sincerity. I am ready 
 to embark my little savings to the last penny 
 in the mines of Ophir, if you will consent to 
 their being worked.' 
 
 ' I have no objection whatever, so long as 
 I am not asked to risk any money in them 
 myself.' 
 
 ' Look you here. Squire,' said Tramplara ; 
 ' let us strike whilst the iron is hot. I am 
 as anxious as the Keverend Flamank about
 
 SALTING A MINE. 259 
 
 Gphir. You can lose nothing, and may make 
 a pot of money. I have brought with me a 
 lease ; read it. I will pay you a yearly 
 rental of a hundred pounds, and you shall 
 have the usual royalties on the gold raised. 
 Then I will undertake to form a company to 
 work the mines of Ophir. Not one penny 
 can you lose by it. If you choose to take 
 shares you may run some risk, not otherwise. 
 If the mine proves a success, 3'our fortune will 
 be made, and so will mine, and those other 
 lucky devils ' 
 
 ' Lucky what ? ' inquired the startled 
 pastor. 
 
 ' Lucky devotees, I said. I said devotees 
 distinctly. Those lucky devotees who took 
 shares in Ophir. ^' Out of the hills ye shall 
 dig brass," said the great lawgiver, and his 
 prophecy will be fulfilled, for brass in collo- 
 quial English means money.' 
 
 Tramplara took a lease out of his pocket 
 and opened it before Mr. Battishill. 
 
 'Eead it — nothing can be fairer.' 
 
 ' Father,' said Cicely, who had come in, 
 ^ please do nothing till Mr. Herring returns. 
 Take his advice before signing any docu- 
 ment.' 
 
 * Nonsense, my dear ; I can lose nothing. I 
 s 2
 
 26o JOHN HERRING. 
 
 shall not take a share, and I may gain 
 thousands of pounds.' 
 
 ' If you will work the mine yourself, do 
 so,' said Tramplara : ^ if not, let us work it. 
 The religious public is already screwed up 
 to a pitch of screaming excitement. The 
 " Western Cornucopia " ' 
 
 ' " Cornucophir,-' ' corrected the pastor. 
 ' Besides, I object to the term screaming 
 excitement.' 
 
 ' It is allegorical and Oriental — Phoenician, 
 in fact,' explained Tramplara. ' The " Cornu- 
 cophir " has been leading them on week 
 by week, expecting the discovery of Ophir. 
 Now all is ready for the announcement that 
 it has been found, and with that announce- 
 ment we must publish the prospectus of the 
 Ophir Gold Mining Company. If you do not 
 accept my terms, all I can say is, the place 
 will be invaded by religious gold-diggers, who 
 will turn everything topsy-turvy and carry 
 off every particle of gold they find without 
 giving you any share in their spoil.' 
 
 ' I will sign the lease ; it is only for a 
 year,' said Mr. Battishill, eagerly ; ' but I can 
 take no shares, I have not the money.' 
 
 ' I will take as many as I can,' said the 
 minister. ' Ophir must succeed.' 
 
 * Now then ! ' shouted Tramplara, waving
 
 SALTING A MINE. 261 
 
 the lease over his head. ' Xow for the run of 
 gold. Blow the trumpet in Zion; call the 
 solemn assembly of sharetakers together. I 
 shall be ready for them with my crushing 
 machines. Hoorah for the gold of Ophir, 
 and the fortunes that will be made out of 
 it!'
 
 262 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 TWO STRINGS TO ONE BOW. 
 
 Captain Trecakrel had the good luck to 
 find Mirelle alone in the garden house, en- 
 gaged on her flowers. She had not been 
 tausfht to do useful work. She cut out lace 
 patterns in paper, and made imitation flowers. 
 She could play and sing, but there was no 
 piano in the garden house, and she spent 
 mo.st of her time there, so as to be away from 
 the rooms frequented by Trampleasure senior 
 and junior. 
 
 Captain Trecarrel was playing his cards 
 very carefully. He did not intend to be ofl* 
 altogether with the old love till he was quite 
 sure that it was to his pecuniary advantage to 
 be on with the new. He was curious to know 
 in what Mirelle's money had been invested. 
 This was not easy for him to find out. He 
 could not inquire of old Tramplara. 
 
 After turning the matter over in his head,
 
 TIVO STRINGS TO ONE BO IV. 263 
 
 the Captain resolved on trying to ascertain 
 what he desired to know through Mirelle 
 herself, who was too simple to suspect his 
 purpose. 
 
 He took a seat by her in the window. 
 She smiled at him, and made room beside 
 her. 
 
 ' I have been thinking a great deal about 
 you, Mirelle,' said he. He had slipped into 
 calling her by her Christian name, and she did 
 not resent it. ' And the more I think of you, 
 the more I pity you. Your poor dear father 
 made a sore mistake in confiding you to the 
 
 care of these Tramnleasures.' 
 
 1. 
 
 ' They were his relations,' she said. 
 
 ' True; but then you are so utterly out of 
 place among them. You are unable to sym- 
 pathise with them ' 
 
 ' Fortunately.' 
 
 ^ Fortunately, indeed, or you would not 
 be charming. A grievous error has been 
 committed, I may even say that a great wrong 
 has been done you, unintentionally, and the 
 consequence is that you suffer. I see it in 
 your face.' 
 
 ' Captain Trecarrel,* said Mirelle, ' I once 
 thought to myself, suppose Heaven were to 
 rob me of all means, and I were obliged to be 
 a servant maid in the kitchen, then I thought
 
 264 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 how utterly unable I should be to live in 
 such a place, not because it was a kitchen, 
 but because of those I should have to asso- 
 ciate with. I and they would have no in- 
 terests, no pursuits, no ambitions, hardly a 
 thought in common. To all intents I might 
 as well live in a stable with horses, or in a 
 fowlhouse surrounded by cackling pullets. I 
 should not mind in the least shelling peas, 
 for I could think my own thoughts whilst so 
 engaged ; but to be encompassed with others 
 who think no thoughts, who have no ideas 
 worth uttering, who live as to their outsides, 
 and have no inner life, that would be unen- 
 durable. I find myself now in such a situa- 
 tion. The Trampleasures and I do not see 
 the same sights nor hear the same sounds. 
 We have not even the sense of smell in com- 
 mon, for Mr. Tramplara and young Sampson 
 like to sniff brandy and puff bad tobacco, and 
 I am convinced that Orange and her mother 
 do not dislike these, to me, intolerable odours. 
 In the garden is a sweet rose and a bed of 
 mignonette. I have not once seen a Tram- 
 pleasure apply his nose to a flower. We 
 have the same organic structure, and are 
 classed together in natural history as belong- 
 ing to the same genus, but there the simi- 
 larity ends. The likeness is superficial, the
 
 TIVO STRINGS TO ONE BOW. 265 
 
 dissimilarity is radical. The likeness is phy- 
 sical, the dissimilarity psychical. The Tram- 
 pleasures are animals made in the likeness of 
 man. I am human, made in the likeness of 
 God. I can see what is beautiful in nature 
 and art. I can feel music in my soul, I have 
 aspirations beyond making money and getting 
 married. I have interests beyond the claque 
 of Launceston gossip. But these Tramplea- 
 sures have no sense of beauty, no poetical 
 instinct, no spiritual aspirations. Orange is 
 the best of them, but in her I only think I 
 perceive a soul, I am not sure that it exists. 
 God took some of the beasts he had made and 
 bade them stand up on their hind legs, that 
 they might look at heaven instead of contem- 
 plating earth. But their souls did not stand 
 up also. The result was the ape. There are 
 men, likewise, not superior. They walk on 
 two feet, but their souls run on all fours.' 
 
 ' Poor Mirelle ! ' said Trecarrel, looking 
 tenderly at her out of the Trecarrel blue eyes. 
 ^ Yours is a cruel fate.' 
 
 * Yes, it is cruel, and, but for this summer- 
 house where I can be alone, would be insup- 
 portable. Life to these Trampleasures, and 
 people cast in their mould, is a harpsichord on 
 which they drone a strain void of invention, 
 freshness, and thought. When you have
 
 266 JOHN HERRING, * 
 
 heard their performance — it is the song of life 
 — you are aware that you have listened to a 
 succession of notes unworthy of being termed 
 a melody, in chords undeserving of being 
 designated harmony. When one with higher 
 thoughts sits down to the same instrument 
 and plays a piece like a sonata of Beethoven, 
 they yawn and say, " Let us have something 
 out of the Beggars' Opera ! " ' 
 
 Little did Mirelle guess how mean and 
 commonplace was the barrel-organ tune that 
 Captain Trecarrel cared to play on his harpsi- 
 chord of life. Because he was a gentleman by 
 birth, and a Catholic in faith, she supposed 
 that he stood, like Saul, a head and shoulders 
 higher than the vulgar beings that surrounded 
 him and her. We shall see, in the sequel, 
 how egregiously Mirelle was mistaken. 
 
 ' Is there no escape for you ? ' asked the 
 Captain. 
 
 ' I see none. I should like to return to 
 Paris, to the convent where I was reared, 
 but Mr. Trampleasure ^vill not hear of it. I 
 should be quite content to be a nun.' 
 
 ' A nun ! ' exclaimed Trecarrsl. ' Oh no, 
 no ! dear Mirelle, that must not be. With 
 your gifts of mind and soul and person, you 
 are suited to live and shine in the world.'
 
 TIVO STRINGS TO ONE BOW. 267 
 
 ' In what world ? This mean, dull Eng- 
 lish world ? * 
 
 ' Your place is here. Your heart has not 
 yet spoken. You are still young. Some day 
 you will make a good man happy, and you 
 will find your proper sphere of usefulness, 
 with a congenial spirit at your side, not in 
 shelling peas, but in spreading enlighten- 
 ment among the dark and erring souls around 
 you.' His voice shook. He took her hand, 
 and he felt it tremble in his. 
 
 ^ No, Mirelle, you were not born to wither 
 in a convent unloved and unloving. Excuse 
 me if I give you my opinion with great plain- 
 ness. You are here without a guide. These 
 Tramplaras cannot advise you, because they 
 cannot understand your position. Trust me 
 as a brother. Let us regard each other in 
 the afi'ectionate and familiar light of brother 
 and sister — that is our relationship in the 
 faith. Allow me to counsel you. My heart 
 aches when I think of your loneliness. I 
 place myself at your disposal: trust me, and 
 suffer me to be your adviser.' He raised her 
 hand to his lips, and kissed it fervently. 
 The little hand shrank back, and when he 
 looked up he saw alarm in her dark eyes. 
 
 ' A brotherly kiss,' he said, reassuringly.
 
 268 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' the seal cf our bond, nothing more. Shall it 
 be so ? ' 
 
 ' The seal will not need renevv-al,' she an- 
 swered. 
 
 He saw that her eyes were filling. He 
 knew that she liked him ; he was doing his 
 best to make her love him. It would be easy 
 for him to advance from brotherly to lover- 
 like affection^ and it was quite possible to 
 remain stationary on fraternal regard. This 
 he thought to himself, and he said in his own 
 soul, ' Bravo, Trecarrel ! you have not com- 
 promised yourself by a word.' 
 
 ' And now, dear sister Mirelle,' he said, 
 with his sweetest smile, ' the thing I desire to 
 know is. What has become of your father's 
 money ? ' 
 
 She was surprised. He saw it ; but he 
 went on quietly, ' You see in what a brotherly 
 and practical spirit I approach your affairs. 
 I want to know exactly how you stand, for — 
 between four eyes be it spoken — I am not 
 satisfied that a certain whitehaired person 
 who shall be nameless is the most prudent 
 man to be intrusted with money. He sank a 
 large sum in Patagonians which might just 
 as well have been sunk in Cranmere pool. 
 If he made a fool of himself with his own 
 money, he may play the fool also with
 
 TJVO STRINGS TO ONE BOW. 269 
 
 yours. For how long is he your trus- 
 tee ? ' 
 
 ' For five years. I am eighteen, and I do 
 not come of age till I am twenty-three.' 
 
 ' Unless you marry.' Trecarrel sighed, 
 and looked hard at the distant peaks of Dart- 
 moor. 
 
 'I do not think there is anything about 
 my marriage in the will, which I have read, 
 and I know the contents.' 
 
 'Oh!' said the Captain, and his mouth 
 went down at the corners. ' You do not come 
 into possession at marriage.' 
 
 ' I believe not — not till I am three-and- 
 twenty.' 
 
 The Captain released the tips of Mirelle's 
 fingers which he had seized when he put the 
 question. 
 
 ' Then Tramplara has the entire and un- 
 controlled disposal of the money for ^ve, years, 
 and if you were to marry now you would 
 still have to wait five years till you got it — 
 if you got it, in the end, at all.' 
 
 ' I suppose so.' 
 
 ' Do you happen to know what the old 
 fellow has invested your money in ? I ask 
 as a friend, because I wish to protect your 
 interests, and to advise you what you should 
 do.'
 
 270 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 ' I have already had an adviser here — Mr. 
 Herring : he was anxious about the money.' 
 
 ' He was, was he ? ' Captain Trecarrel 
 drew nearer, with revived interest, and again 
 attempted to possess himself of the hand, but 
 failed. 
 
 ' Yes, he appeared very anxious.' 
 
 ' On what grounds? What possible right 
 had he to inquire about it ? ' 
 
 ' He expressed friendly regard for me.' 
 
 ' A sort of brotherly interest ? ' inquired 
 the Captain. 
 
 ' No,' answered Mirelle, curtly, and drew 
 herself up. The Captain looked hard at 
 her. 
 
 ' Have you given him any encourage- 
 ment? Have you allowed him any right to 
 interfere ? ' 
 
 Mirelle' s cheek coloured, and a haughty 
 flash came into her eye. 
 
 ' Captain Trecarrel, I do not comprehend 
 you.* 
 
 ' My dear Mirelle,' he said in a gentle, 
 soothing tone, ' do not misunderstand me. 
 What I mean is harmless enough not to offend 
 you. Did you ask his advice, and in your 
 first loneliness give him such occasion as to 
 suppose that he was necessary, that as a pert 
 and pushing cock-sparrow he has hopped in
 
 TIVO STRINGS TO ONE BO IV. 271 
 
 where not wanted, since you have come under 
 the protection of others ? ' 
 
 ' No,' answered Mirelle, ' I have always 
 kept him at a distance. When he has volun- . 
 teered help it has been declined. He came 
 here about the money not for my sake only, 
 but for the sake of some friends whom he 
 wanted to assist out of a difficulty.' 
 
 ' Oh ! he wanted to help friends to your 
 money ! How disinterested and how bene- 
 volent ! ' 
 
 ' He wished to have my money invested 
 in mortgages on the estate of West Wyke.' 
 
 ' What did Mr. Trampleasure say to that ? ' 
 
 ' He absolutely refused. He said he had 
 a better investment in view, one that would 
 render double.' 
 
 ' What was that? — not Patagonia?' 
 
 'No; Ophir.' 
 
 ' What ! The gold mines of Ophir? ' 
 
 ' Yes, my money is to be put into that.' 
 
 Captain Trecarrel vented a low whistle, 
 and stood up quickly. ' Dear Countess, always 
 command my cervices — as a friend,' he said. 
 ' Excuse my flight, I must have a word with 
 Tramplara at once.' 
 
 He hurried from the summer-house, and 
 entered the front door of Dolbeare. He was 
 so often there that he no longer went throuo-h
 
 272 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 the formality of ringing. It was Liberty Hall, 
 as Tramplara assured all his friends. 
 
 He tapped at the dining-room door and 
 went in. 
 
 There he found Mr. Tramplara smoking 
 and working at accounts. Orange sat near 
 the window ; she had been speaking with her 
 father, and had been crying. Both father and 
 daughter rose hastily as the Captain came in, 
 and Trecarrel had sufficient penetration to see 
 that he had been their topic. 
 
 ' Halloo, Captain ! ' exclaimed the old man, 
 turning almost purple. ' Talk of the — hum, 
 and he is sure to appear, as the psalmist says. 
 The very man I wanted to see. How are 
 you?' 
 
 Orange slipped out of the room. 
 
 ' Sit dow^n. Captain, and let us have a 
 talk. Fact is, I want particularly to have a 
 bone picked with you. There is Orange, poor 
 girl, wasting to a shadow. You are not deal- 
 ing fairly by her ; you are engaged, and yet 
 you won't come to the scratch. She says you 
 are tateytating with the other party on the 
 trotters, as Mirelle calls the pavement, and 
 give Orange the gutter to walk in. Thac 
 won't do.' 
 
 ' You entirely mistake me,' said Trecarrel, 
 his blue eye becoming cold ; he drew himself
 
 TPVO STRINGS TO ONE BO IV. 273 
 
 up, and began to point his moustache, whilst 
 he looked Trampleasure over contemptuously. 
 ^ Do you dare to insinuate that I — a gentle- 
 man, a Trecarrel — am behaving otherwise than 
 honourably ? I love your daughter as much as 
 I loved her at first ; but you and I are men 
 of the world, and we both know that love and 
 onions are poor commodities on which to keep 
 house. You are well aware what my circum- 
 stances are, for I have concealed nothing from 
 you ; and you must therefore know that I 
 cannot, as a gentleman and a man of honour, 
 invite a lady to share my future with me 
 unless she be prepared to provide pepper and 
 salt with which to season the onions.' 
 
 ' I know that. Orange is not penniless.' 
 
 ' No, but Patagonian bonds are not nour- 
 ishing, Mr. Trampleasure.' 
 
 ' Who said that Orange would bring 
 nothing else with her ? ' 
 
 ' You offered me ^ve thousand pounds 
 with her in securities which are worthless.' 
 
 ' I offered you those bonds before I knew 
 they would depreciate so greatly. They may 
 recover any day.' 
 
 * I incline to wait for that day before set- 
 ting up house with Miss Orange.' 
 
 ' Nonsense, Trecarrel. If you won't take 
 these bonds, you shall have some sounder 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 stuff. I am a man of my word. I said I 
 would give Orange five thousand pounds, and 
 five thousand she shall have, the day she is 
 married.' 
 
 ' In bonds ? ' 
 
 ' In shares, if you like, in one of the most 
 promising of all ventures.' 
 
 ' In Ophir — no, thank you.' 
 
 ' You are a fool to refuse them. Why, 
 man ! have you read the " Cornucopia " ? Have 
 you seen the prospectus of the company?' 
 
 ' Mr. Trampleasure, I will have no paper 
 at all. Give me with Orange the sum of five 
 thousand down, and insure me five thousand 
 more when you are dead, and I will ask her 
 to name the day.' 
 
 ' You are mercenary.' 
 
 ' I am practical. You know that Tre- 
 carrel will support a bachelor — that is, keep 
 him in mutton chops and fried potatoes, and 
 a new coat twice a year. I will give you a 
 sample of my penury. Whenever I have 
 apple -tart for dinner, I think twice before I 
 indulge myself with clotted cream over it. 
 My circumstances will not allow me to sup- 
 port a wife and family. I am bound to look 
 ahead, and to consider my wife's interest as 
 well as my own. I cannot offer her the 
 humiliations of poverty.'
 
 TJVO STRINGS TO ONE BOW. 275 
 
 ' Well, well/ said Traraplara, ^ you shall 
 have the money down.' 
 
 ' Your word ? ' 
 
 Tramplara held out his hand, ' I give it 
 you.' 
 
 ' I should prefer it in black and white,' 
 said the Captain. 
 
 ' You shall have it in yellow and white,' 
 said the old man. ' And now in return you 
 shall grant me a favour — your name as a 
 director of the Ophir Gold Mining Company.' 
 
 ' My name is Trecarrel,' answered the 
 Captain, freezingly. 
 
 ' I know that well enough — that is why I 
 want it.' 
 
 ' And that is precisely why you shall not 
 have it.' 
 
 * You refuse me this favour? ' 
 
 ' Emphatically. I do not believe in Ophir.' 
 
 The old man drummed with his fingers 
 on the table, and raised his eyes furtively to 
 the Captain, met his cold, supercilious stare, 
 and dropped them again. 
 
 ' Well ! go into the drawing-room, and 
 patch up the rent with Orange.' 
 
 Then, when the Captain was gone, Tram- 
 plara laughed heartily. ' By Grogs ! ' he said, 
 ' who would have thought the fellow so keen ? 
 He don't look it.'
 
 276 ' JOHN HERRING. 
 
 The Captain found Orange standing in 
 the drawing-room leaning against the mantel- 
 piece, tearing a white lily that she had plucked 
 out of a vase into many pieces. Her fingers 
 were stained with the pollen. Her cheeks 
 were flushed, and an angry glitter was in her 
 eyes, twinkling through tears of mortified 
 pride. 
 
 Trecarrel had not much difficulty in chang- 
 ing the expression of that handsome face, and 
 before he left the reconciliation was com- 
 plete, sealed with a kiss, and the day was 
 named.
 
 277 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 GRINDING GOLD. 
 
 In a remarkably short space of time two 
 * leats/ that is, channels of water, had been 
 brought from Rayborough Pool along the side 
 of the moor to the site of the gold mine. 
 Buildings had been erected, wooden sheds run 
 up and tarred, and a crushing machine was in 
 operation. One stream of water was con- 
 ducted over a wheel, and the wheel set in 
 motion half a dozen hammers that pounded 
 the granite ; then the granite thus pounded 
 was passed under an iron roller which effec- 
 tually reduced it to powder. This powder 
 was made to slide through a trough into 
 water brought by the second leat, and the 
 water, as soon as it received the pounded 
 quartz, became milky. The milky water over- 
 flowed into a second tank, depositing in both 
 much that was held in solution, and then ran 
 away into the river, which it discoloured for 
 some distance down.
 
 278 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 Old Tramplara looked regretfully at the 
 white water. If OpMr had been nearer Ply- 
 mouth or Exeter, he might have sold it as 
 milk. 
 
 The deposit in the tanks was subjected 
 to a second and, indeed, a third washing. 
 It was washed and rewashed till all the quartz 
 had been carried away and nothing remained 
 but glittering gold. 
 
 The excitement created by the discovery 
 of Ophir was prodigious. The neighbourhood 
 came to see the works. The miners extracted 
 granite, and placed the pieces under the 
 stampers, and then transferred the gravel into 
 which they had been pounded to the roller. 
 Any one might watch the process. Every- 
 thing was above board ; there was no at- 
 tempt at concealment. Only, no one was 
 allowed to approach the precious deposit un- 
 attended by the overseer. Any respectable per- 
 son was allowed to follow the washing and 
 drying to the final process, where nothing re- 
 mained but the costly yellow grains. All he 
 had to do was to write for permission to 
 Mr. Tramplara, or to send in his card at 
 the works, and leave to go over the entire 
 mine — without any reserve — was freely ac- 
 corded. The number of crowns and guineas 
 pocketed by the very respectable overlooker
 
 GRINDING GOLD. 279 
 
 ripened the fruits of civilisation in him. He 
 became courteous, eager to instruct, pious, and 
 sober. Christian graces grew on golden roots. 
 There was a fixed time in the day when 
 visitors were given admission to the mine. 
 
 The limitation of time was rendered neces- 
 sary by reason of the crowd of visitors eager 
 to examine the works, and the consequent 
 interference with the working. The regula- 
 tion was reasonable and unassailable. Another 
 rule was made that no one was to be allowed 
 to go within arm's length of, nor to handle 
 the gold after final washing. The overseer, 
 however, made exceptions in favour of every 
 respectable visitor, letting him understand 
 that the exception in his case was unique, and 
 only granted because of his — the visitor's — 
 really extraordinary respectability. He was 
 allowed to gather up in his palm and turn 
 over with his finger the golden dust, and the 
 polite and pious overlooker always reaped 
 a rich harvest from this exceptional favour. 
 
 Headers of the ' Western Cornucophir ' 
 came from all parts of Cornwall ; serious men, 
 with heavy brows, big jaws, and firm lipless 
 mouths. Women also — married women, like- 
 wise serious, (unmarried women, speaking 
 broadly, are flighty,) in rich but sober dresses, 
 arrived in chaises, wearing spectacles and
 
 28o JOHN HERRING. 
 
 false fronts, and having bibles in tlieir pockets, 
 and vinegary attendants carrying shawls, and 
 guardians of their virtue. There were many 
 Methodical Christian, and Unmethodical Chris- 
 tian, and Primitive Christian, and Latter Day 
 Christian, and Universal Christian, and Par- 
 ticular Christian, and Ne-plus-ultra Christian 
 ministers, all intensely interested in Ophir, 
 taking up the matter as one of stantis vel 
 cadentis ecclesice. These were treated with 
 exceptional courtesy at the mine, by express 
 command of Mr. Tramplara. They were 
 shown everything. They were set to work 
 themselves in the adit. They galled their 
 soft palms in picking at the gold vein, or 
 granite supposed to contain the vein of gold. 
 They carried the lumps of their own extrac- 
 tion to the crusher. They watched theni 
 being pounded and rolled, not turning an eye 
 away the whole time. They assisted at the 
 washing. They picked out the gold them- 
 selves from the pan, and were liberally 
 allowed to carry home with them each at 
 least a guinea's worth of the precious grains. 
 Thereupon each became in his special circle 
 an agent of the company. And Methodical 
 Christian, and Unmethodical Christian, and 
 Primitive Christian, and Latter Day Christian, 
 and Universal Christian, and Particular Chris*
 
 GRINDING GOLD. 281 
 
 tian, and Ne-plus-ultra Christian applications 
 for shares, poured in by every post. 
 
 But the greatest hit of all was the solemn 
 opening and dedication of Ophir. 
 
 A huge tent had been hired from Exeter, 
 capable of seating many hundred persons. 
 Bunting in profusion, of every colour, fluttered 
 from it. Over the entrance rose a flagstaff 
 from which waved a gold -coloured banner 
 adorned with the Seal of Solomon. 
 
 A cannon had been brought from Exeter, 
 and it was discharged at intervals. The 
 Okehampton band was engaged, and it played 
 out of tune alternately with a military band 
 from Exeter, which played in tune, and 
 rivalled it in the worthlessness of the music 
 performed. 
 
 The day was magnificent. An autumn 
 day, with a glorious sun illumining the moor- 
 land rosy with blooming heather, as though 
 raspberry cream had been spilt over the hill- 
 sides. The scarlet uniforms of the band, the 
 gay colours of the flags, the white tent, the 
 glitter of the falling water over the wheel, 
 combined to form a charmino; scene. All 
 Okehampton, all Xorth and South Tawton and 
 Chagford was there, and many also from 
 Tavistock, Launceston, Moreton Hampstead, 
 and Exeter. The people Avere scattered over
 
 282 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 the moor slopes, listening to the music which 
 was not worth listening to, in the way in 
 which English people do listen — that is, talk- 
 ing the whole time ; they raced and rolled 
 over on the short grass, and strewed the hill- 
 sides with sandwich papers and empty ginger- 
 beer bottles. Gringer-beer bottles ! ay, and 
 bottles of cold tea. For Ophir was a great 
 Temperance mine, and the dedication of Ophir 
 a Temperance demonstration, Ri-lid-de-riddle- 
 roll! Who cannot rollick on ginger-beer? 
 Who that is by nature inane can fail to make 
 an ass of himself when out on a holiday on 
 cold tea? 
 
 Ophir was a great Temperance mine. All 
 the washers were sworn in as total abstainers. 
 As was stated on the prospectus, the work- 
 ings were to be carried on only with water. 
 ' We may as well fish in two ponds, Sampy/ 
 said old Tramplara ; ' let us angle for the 
 Temperites as well as for the Israelites.' 
 
 Thus the dedication of Ophir was not 
 only a grand religious demonstration for all 
 those who looked for Israel in England, but 
 also of those who have supplanted the Ten 
 Commandments by one, ' Thou shalt not 
 drink fermented liquor.' Old Tramplara was 
 desirous to have the mines blessed by mini- 
 sters of all denominations — twelve, if possible,
 
 GRINDING GOLD. 283 
 
 to represent the twelve tribes. He had there- 
 fore applied to the bishop of the diocese, and 
 requested his presence for the opening of the 
 proceedings. But the bishops of the Angli- 
 can Church are not the tugs that lead, but 
 the boats that follow, popular opinion. They 
 bless nothing till authorised to do so by the 
 daily papers, and as the daily papers had not 
 yet spoken on the subject of Ophir, the bishop 
 was in the bewildered condition of the priest 
 of Delphi when the oracle is silent. If Ophir 
 were to prove a magnificent success, he would 
 never forgive himself for not having been 
 at the opening. If it proved a disastrous 
 failure, he would never forgive himself for not 
 staying away. So he temporised, after the 
 manner of weak men and weak classes of men ; 
 he discovered that he was due at the opening 
 of a (barrel) organ at the Land's End on that 
 particular day, and he wrote a letter full of 
 apologies, expressive of his warmest interest 
 in the proceedings, promising his heartfelt 
 prayers, invoking the most solemn blessings 
 on the gathering, and then ate his breakfast, 
 devoured the ' Times,' and forgot everything 
 about Ophir and the barrel organ at the 
 Land's End. 
 
 But though the bishop of the diocese was 
 unavoidably absent, representative pastors of
 
 284 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 all the Christian denominations in the West 
 were present, and prayed and harangued to 
 their hearts' content, and ate and drank to 
 their stomaclis' content as well. 
 
 The tent was filled to overflowing. Grace 
 was said simultaneously by twenty -nine mini- 
 sters to avoid giving offence by exalting one 
 above another. A noble collation had been 
 provided. Waiters dressed like clergymen 
 attended on the guests. 'Lemonade, sir?' 
 * Gooseberriade, ma'am?' as they uncorked 
 long-necked bottles with gold foil about the 
 throats, and poured the effervescing drink 
 into champagne glasses. ' Temperance cake, 
 miss ? ' with an offer of an inviting dish of 
 sponge-cake sopped in — well, non-alcoholic 
 brandy — and with flummery over it to hide 
 its blushes. 
 
 Eeporters were present from every West 
 of England paper and several London journals 
 as well. These gentlemen were supplied freely 
 with ' gooseberriade,' and grew cheery in spirit, 
 and red in face, and watery in eye, and un- 
 critical in disposition under its influence. They 
 began to believe in Ophir as much as a re- 
 porter can believe in anything. And when, 
 on raising the napkins under their finger- 
 glasses, each found a ten-pound note, the 
 enthusiasm of the press for Ophir bordered on
 
 GRINDING GOLD. 285 
 
 fanaticism. After lunch, the entire party 
 sought the mine, and those who could get in 
 hammered at the stone, and there was much 
 ado in wheeling to the stampers the ' gozzen ' 
 that had been extracted. 
 
 Tramplara particularly urged on the re- 
 porters to dig and wash for themselves, and 
 they complied with his request. The prayers 
 and blessings of the pastors of discordant 
 Christianity had been of avail. Never before 
 had the rock yielded so much gold. There it 
 was — in glittering granules — strewing the 
 washing floor. The rock had been quarried 
 by ten reporters, seven pastors, and one old 
 lady, with a grim face and severely plain, 
 untrimmed costume. The stone had been 
 wheeled by them to the crushers, at that time 
 clear of every particle of stone. The grim old 
 lady had not wheeled, but carried her speci - 
 mens in her gown, exposing thereby some 
 elaborate lace frills beneath it. The entire 
 party saw the granite thus extracted washed 
 in several waters. They washed it themselves, 
 no workman touched any part of the ma- 
 chinery, or dipped a finger into the water, and 
 there — there was the gold — gold-dust in 
 abundance. There could be no deception. 
 There was no room for deception. 
 
 John Herring was there also, looking on,
 
 286 JOHN HERRING. 
 
 much puzzled. He had not been at the lunch, 
 but had strolled to Ophir after it. His lead 
 mine was not advanced. Xo company was 
 formed to work it. Who would look at lead 
 when orold was available? He watched the 
 whole process critically, and was convinced 
 that there was no deception in what passed 
 under his eye. There the gold was. Every 
 one present was given a grain as a memorial 
 of that day. The whole affair was marvellous. 
 The expense to which Tramplara had gone 
 was prodigious. Would he have thrown his 
 gold away in shovelfuls unless he were sure of 
 ofettino- orold out of the mine? Herrinsr was 
 young and simple. He was right. Tram- 
 plara would not have gone to this lavish ex- 
 pense unless he had made sure of getting gold 
 out of the mine? But then, it did not follow 
 that he was going to extract it from the granite. 
 Some things are softer than granite, and the 
 gold may be got easily enough by those who 
 can touch the vein. 
 
 ' What ! Lieutenant ! you here ? ' ex- 
 claimed Mr. Trampleasure, coming up to 
 Herring, looking flushed and glossy. ' Glorious 
 day, this. Wonderful discovery, this Ophir. 
 ^' Thither the tribes go up ! " said the prophet, 
 speaking of this day and the way in which 
 they went into the tent to their dinner. Come
 
 GRINDING GOLD. 287 
 
 in and have a glass of wi — , of Gomething 
 comforting but not exhilarating. Come in, my 
 dear lieutenant ; there is only the band there, 
 making clean the cup and the platter, when 
 their betters have done.' 
 
 ^ Xo, thank you,' answered Herring, ' T 
 have had an early dinner. Besides, I must 
 trouble you no longer to style me lien- 
 tenant.' 
 
 'Why so?' 
 
 * Because I have sold out.' 
 
 ' Sold out ! Become a civilian again ! ' 
 
 ' Yes. I have things to attend to which 
 demand my presence here. I am going to 
 work the silver lead.' 
 
 ' My dear fellow, don't throw money away 
 on that. Take shares in gold.' 
 
 ' I prefer lead.' 
 
 ' Herring, is that why you are taking up 
 the mortgages on West Wyke ? ' 
 
 ' Partly.' 
 
 ' You'll never work the lead yourself? 
 You have no experience. However, we will 
 talk of that another time. Are you likely to 
 be in Launceston next week ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. I shall go there to pay you the 
 mortgage money.' 
 
 ' Very well . We are going to have a kick 
 about on Thursday — the first dance in the
 
 288 . JOHN HERRING. 
 
 season. There is a reason : Orano^e is eno^afred 
 to Captain Trecarrel. Will you come? ' 
 
 Herring thought a while before answer- 
 ing. 
 
 ' Look here ! I will tell that little bleached 
 puss of a missie to expect you, and put your 
 name down as her partner for the first caper.' 
 
 ' I will come.' 
 
 All at once the Keverend Israel Flamank 
 was seen flying down the valley, with coat tails 
 expanded like wings, and his white tie loose 
 and flapping. He was shouting and waving 
 his arms. 
 
 What was it? Had he been bitten by a 
 serpent? Had he found a nugget? 
 
 When he came np, he was breathless and 
 of inflamed countenance. At length he 
 gasped — ' I have been privileged to discover 
 it?' Then he paused again. A circle formed 
 round him. 
 
 ' A do-deka-penta-hedron/ he said. Then 
 seeing the reporters with their notebooks in 
 hand and pencils pausing in mid-air, and 
 fearing that their knowledge of Greek sur- 
 passed his (he need have entertained no ap- 
 prehension), he added simply, * Solomon's Seal 
 carved on a rock.' 
 
 The whole crowd went after him. Here 
 was a wonderful coincidence ! Coincidence !
 
 GRINDING GOLD. 289 
 
 Avast ! Conclusive evidence that the servants 
 of Solomon had worked at this identical place. 
 The symbol of Solomon, the interlacing 
 triangles, cut in imperishable granite, was 
 there as an eternal witness to Ophir. 
 
 Herring did not follow the troop : he 
 turned to go back to West Wyke. He was 
 not eager to inspect the ' Dodekapentahe- 
 dron.' 
 
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