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 •f^Z^L«-e-''i— 
 
 S Y B I^l"tr7^ 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 Mrs G. LINN^US BANKS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "god's PROVIDENCE HOUSE," "THE MANCHESTER 
 MAN," "GLORY," ETC., ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 
 31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 
 1884. 
 
 \^All Rights reserved^
 
 F. V. WHITE & OO.'S 
 
 SELECT NOVELS BY POPULAR AUTHORS. 
 
 Crown Svo, c/of/i, 3J. 6d. each. 
 
 The following Volumes of the Series are now ready, and can 
 be obtained of all Booksellers in Town and Country, and 
 at all Railway Bookstalls : — 
 
 BY FLORENCE MARRYAT. 
 
 MY SISTER THE ACTRESS. 
 
 A BROKEN BLOSSOM. 
 
 PHYLLIDA. 
 
 THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL. 
 
 FACING THE FOOTLIGHTS. 
 
 PEERESS AND PLAYER. 
 
 HER WORLD AGAINST A LIE. 
 
 BY ANNIE THOMAS. 
 
 ALLERTON TOWERS. FRIENDS AND LOVERS. 
 
 JENIFER. 
 
 BY MRS ELIOART. 
 
 THE DEAN'S WIFE. SOME OF OUR GIRLS. 
 
 BY LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD. 
 
 SWEETHEART AND WIFE. MOLLIE DARLING. 
 
 ONLY A VILLAGE MAIDEN. 
 
 By the Author of 'RECOMMENDED TO MERCY.' 
 BARBARA'S WARNING. 
 
 BY MRS ALEXANDER ERASER. 
 
 A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY. A FATAL PASSION. 
 
 BY HARRIETT JAY. 
 
 TWO MEN AND A MAID. 
 
 BY IZA DUFFUS-HARDY. 
 LOVE, HONOUR AND OBEY.
 
 %^ /^/ 
 
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 8^5 
 
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 ^^Ml 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 r-\ 
 
 V 
 
 SYBIL LA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEW HOME, AND THE OLD WHEEL, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE FATHER AND THE LOVER, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 sybilla's suitors, . 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LIFE AT SPRING-HOLM FARM, 
 
 CHAPTER V. . 
 
 fortune's WHEEL, . 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 21 
 
 43 
 
 68 
 
 91 
 
 i
 
 IV 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PHANTOM SPINNER, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ii6 
 
 BY WAYS UNKNOWN. 
 
 ON THE BRIDGE, 
 
 THE HAVEN, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHAPTER I I. 
 
 • • 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MRS FLEMING'S FRIENDS, . 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 A TUNE ON A VIOLIN, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PINCH OF POVERTY, 
 
 145 
 
 16^ 
 
 179 
 
 198 
 
 217 

 
 S Y B I L L A. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEW HOME, AND THE OLD WHEEL. 
 
 HE ancient manor of Timperley, 
 on the north-east border of 
 Cheshire, has not been held by 
 a Timperley for more than two 
 centuries, so long is it since it was carried 
 by co-heiresses into other families, only to 
 be finally merged in the estate of Dunham- 
 Massey. And though the old black and 
 white Hall still clings to the soil, and to 
 the name of Timperley, and stands within 
 its own demesne, it has no longer a lordly 
 
 VOL. I. A
 
 2 Sybilla. 
 
 tenant, and is but one of the scattered 
 homesteads now inhabited by merchant 
 traders from the great commercial city 
 within a brief railway ride. For here and 
 there, besides the few small farms and cot- 
 tage homes these old places dot the undu- 
 lating landscape, almost lost amid their 
 own oaks and sycamores, and hard to find 
 amid the maze of winding lanes and 
 streams, o'er which the willow and the ash 
 wave graceful foliage. Fortunately for 
 pedestrian wayfarers, bridges, mostly of 
 stone, span these flowing waters ; ay, and 
 waters that are not flowing, for over the 
 serpentine lakelet, which separates the 
 picturesque garden ground of the Oak- 
 lands from the meadow-land, more than 
 one bridge has been thrown for private 
 convenience. 
 
 Neither, though tinted by time, dates 
 back to the far antiquity of the many- 
 gabled homestead, and one may have arisen 
 under the same artistic hand that added to 
 the quaint old place so lovingly in conson- 
 ance ; but the other, lying back to the
 
 Sybilla. 3 
 
 north-east of the dwelHng, half hidden 
 among trees, has, Hke the abode itself, a 
 far-away history for the telling. 
 
 The village proper has but one wide 
 street, with a few diverging alleys — one 
 shop for diverse commodities, one school 
 which flourishes under the winof of the 
 church ; which church, with its oddly- 
 shaped spire, stands as a landmark within 
 a green churchyard, on the top of a broad 
 knoll in the rear of the Oaklands ; the 
 one solitary spot of rising ground in the 
 rich, if somewhat level landscape. The 
 cosy vicarage looks out on its own beds of 
 old-fashioned, sweet-scented flowers, and 
 on wide-spreading market-gardens which 
 flourished all around. 
 
 It was otherwise in 1740, when Elizabeth 
 Coppock, the former owner of the Oak- 
 lands, having died a spinster, her executors, 
 John Coppock, of Timperley, a tanner, and 
 Esther Leicester, widow, the brother and 
 sister of the deceased, disposed of the house 
 and lands to Thomas Venables, of Prest- 
 bury, gentleman, a widower with a long
 
 4 . Sybilla. 
 
 pedigree and one child, a fair-haired 
 maiden of seventeen, ^vhose name was 
 Sybilla. 
 
 At that period the country roads here- 
 abouts were little better than cart tracks, 
 the lanes mere packhorse or bridle-paths ; 
 the hall, the farm, the tannery, and a few 
 cottages represented the village ; the near- 
 est market was at Altringham,* more than 
 two miles away ; the nearest church at 
 Bowdon, a like distance ; and the road 
 which came direct through the village from 
 Baguley Moor, was crossed by Fairy Well 
 Brook before it reached the Oaklands or 
 Timperley Hall, and again by Timperley 
 Brook ere it branched off right and left in 
 an acute angle to Altringham^ and Bowdon. 
 There was no canal then even projected 
 for Altringham, the bridges were unbuilt, 
 and whoso would pass over a stream must 
 ford it as best mio^ht be. But use is second 
 nature ; the peasantry would go fearlessly 
 through the water barefooted or shod with 
 thick wooden-soled clogs ; and even dainty 
 
 • Now spelled Altrincham.
 
 Sybilla. 5 
 
 misses would tuck up their skirts and trip 
 across the slippery stepping-stones on their 
 way to church or market. 
 
 Then, too, the lands and the homesteads 
 thereon were mostly in the hands of gentle- 
 men or of yeomen, who cultivated their 
 own grounds from father to son ; and 
 though the tatmer, John Coppock, was a 
 man of substance, and his wife disputed 
 precedence with the Widow Leicester in the 
 church porch, they both made way for the 
 wives and daughters of acknowledged 
 gentry with becoming reverence. 
 
 With a difference — that is. Mrs Leicester 
 had a snug cottage and an income of her 
 own, had buried the trade which had pro- 
 vided both, along with her dead husband, 
 and having no occupation but the cares of 
 her widowhood, on the strength of his 
 name claimed for her dead husband some 
 sort of affinity with Sir Peter Leycester's 
 family, and held her head somewhat high. 
 
 Mr Venables had certainly bought the 
 Oaklands at a very low figure ; and it was 
 said that had not Mistress Leicester's voice
 
 6 Sybilla. 
 
 outweighed that of her brother in striking 
 the bargain for her dead sister's property, 
 he would not have obtained possession so 
 cheaply. And it was hinted by her sister- 
 in-law, in the privacy of the tannery house- 
 place, that the widow had shown favour 
 to the widower, who was "a personable 
 man and a gentleman," with the ulterior 
 object of quitting her white-washed cot- 
 tage for the Oaklands, and so taking pre- 
 cedence of her, Joan Coppock, at once and 
 for ever. 
 
 But whether Mr Thomas Venables was 
 obtuse, or Mistress Leicester did not take 
 his fancy, or he was content with his state 
 of widowerhood, or she had no such views, 
 the result w^as the same. He came and 
 went many times before the purchase 
 was fully completed, but he evinced no 
 disposition to give the place any mistress 
 but his daughter Sybilla. 
 
 She had lost her mother quite two years, 
 but her father had not cast his mourning 
 suit ; indeed, he was quitting Prestbury for 
 Timperley partly to rid himself of old
 
 Sybilla, 7 
 
 associations and painful memories. Leav- 
 inof behind the old church wherein the 
 public benefactions of his immediate ances- 
 tors were recorded, and where his own 
 good wife lay buried. 
 
 There were censorious persons who said 
 that his wife had been a soft creature, 
 crushed under his arbitrary rule ; and that 
 remorse, not aching affection, had driven 
 him to let his paternal estate to strangers 
 and make a home for himself elsewhere. 
 
 However this might be, he set no bounds 
 to his love for her child, the one only 
 blossom of their married life ; and it might 
 be that there was some truth in the rumour 
 that as one covers up a honeypot from the 
 flies, so he had removed his sweet Sybilla 
 from rash admirers in Prestbury, lest he 
 should lose her also. 
 
 " Only the one ! Only the one ! " had 
 been the cry of the married pair whenso- 
 ever Illness dimmed the blue eyes of their 
 darling ; " Only the one ! " had been the 
 excuse when sterner fathers or mothers 
 blamed them for overmuch indulgence of
 
 8 Sybilla. 
 
 the girl God had given ; for family dis- 
 cipline in those days was something rigid 
 and awe-inspiring, and woful things were 
 predicted if the cherished Sybilla was al- 
 lowed to have so much of her own way. 
 And as she grew up tall and graceful, and 
 beautiful and winning with the growing 
 years, the parents were content, and only 
 loved her the more as they made little con- 
 cessions to her fancies or her inclinations. 
 Not so much Mrs Venables as her lord, who 
 rejoiced to see in Sybilla a shadowing forth 
 of his own resolute and determined will. 
 
 " A true Venables is Sybilla ! " he cried, 
 " none of your puny weaklings without a 
 will of their own." 
 
 And the mother quietly acquiesced, well- 
 content that it should be so, having a 
 notion that she herself would have fared 
 none the worse had her own self-reliance 
 and determination been a trifle stronger. 
 
 But with the true Venables' spirit and 
 strength of will, Sybilla had inherited the 
 clinging, sympathetic, affectionate nature 
 of her mother also, and by this she won
 
 Sybilla, 9 
 
 her way Into the hearts of others — and 
 others into hers. And when her mother's 
 faihne health threw the burden of house- 
 hold cares on younger shoulders, it was 
 the union of these qualities that enabled 
 her to control even those old servants most 
 inclined to resist her delegated authority. 
 
 Certainly it was admitted in the servants' 
 quarters, even by bent and wrinkled old 
 Josh, who had been groom and gardener 
 when the master was a boy, and by wadd- 
 ling Ursula, who ruled the roast and kept 
 the maids in order, that young Mistress 
 Sybilla was not ill-qualified to govern. 
 There had been controversy on the point, 
 and some show of rebellion at first, but in 
 assembled conclave so much was deliber- 
 ately, if reluctantly, conceded. 
 
 They were quite right ; she was not ill- 
 qualified. 
 
 Her mother's indulo^ence had not com- 
 prehended luxurious idleness. The distant 
 boarding-schools of the period had not been 
 thought of for the maiden. Teachers had 
 been found nearer to their own door ; and
 
 i"0 Sybilla. 
 
 the gentle mother herself, well skilled in 
 home-accomplishments, had kept her young 
 fingers busy, on the principle that 
 
 " Satan finds some mischief still, 
 For idle hands to do." 
 
 She could not only use her sewing- 
 needle well, but she could make wines and 
 confections, clearstarch the kerchiefs and 
 ruffles of father and mother, knit mittens 
 and hose, embroider cushions and covers 
 in tent stitch, lull her sire to sleep with the 
 music of her spinet, and, thanks to the 
 instruction of the vicar, she could write a 
 letter in a fair round-hand and tolerable 
 English, and keep the domestic accounts 
 with a clearness and accuracy by no means 
 common in that day and generation, even 
 amono^st orentlewomen. 
 
 A mere child when her father first set 
 her on horseback, she learned to ride alone 
 (without a pillion and supporter), a fearless 
 horsewoman regardless of rough roads. 
 
 But Sybilla's chief accomplishment was 
 spinning. Not that spinning was deemed
 
 Sybilla. 1 1 
 
 a mere accomplishment. From the fire- 
 side of the cotter or the farmer, to the halls 
 of the landed gentry, spinning was yet con- 
 sidered part of a woman's daily occupation ; 
 and the country damsel who had not spun 
 the linen for her future use and home, was 
 regarded as an unthrift, and scarcely 
 worthy to marry. But Sybilla's dainty 
 touch had converted the common art into 
 an accomplishment, and the even fineness 
 of her thread was discussed, and com- 
 mended on many a hearth as an exemplar 
 for other maidens. 
 
 It must be remembered that there was 
 no Mudie in those days to send relays of 
 novels in boxes by the carrier, the books 
 on Mr Venables' shelves were not alto- 
 gether inviting, and winter evenings were 
 illuminated only by candles, so that knit- 
 ting or spinning, which required little light, 
 and did not interfere with conversation or 
 meditation, was congenial employment for 
 feminine finders. 
 
 Whatever motive ur^ed the widower to 
 quit Prestbury for Timperley, Sybilla's
 
 1-2 Sybilla. 
 
 fame must have preceded her. When she 
 and her father on a chilly morning in 
 spring alighted from their horses at the 
 Oaklands, and found Mrs Leicester wait- 
 ing in the porch to surrender the keys and 
 show the young lady over the house, 
 which she saw for the first time, and which 
 the widow had effusively volunteered to 
 air for their reception, the obsequious 
 dame's salutations proclaimed it. 
 
 "Welcome to the Oaklands, sir ! Wel- 
 come to your new home, Miss Venables ! 
 and, meaning no offence, I would say I'm 
 proud my sister Bess is like to have so 
 gradely a successor in the old place." 
 
 Sybilla's face was shadowed by her 
 riding-hat, but she raised her head and her 
 eyelids somewhat as she adjusted her dis- 
 ordered skirts, and their questioning was 
 as clear as her father's audible " How so, 
 good dame ? " 
 
 " Well, sir," and the " good dame " kept 
 a watchful eye on the young face under the 
 black beaver's broad brim as she led the 
 way through a small queerly-shaped en-
 
 Sybilla. 13 
 
 trance-hall and other passages to a wider 
 apartment already provided with a table 
 and chairs, and an appetising repast for 
 the travellers by their attentive cicerone, — 
 "Well, sir," she repeated, "my dead and 
 gone sister, Bess Coppock, was counted 
 the finest wool-spinner in these parts ; and 
 I've been given to understand the young 
 mistress here is a match for the best 
 spinner in all Cheshire," and the same 
 furtive look went towards the fair face 
 under the beaver's brim. 
 
 " Ay, so 'tis said," was the complacent 
 answer of the well-pleased father. " But 
 'tis overfacing to flatter young maidens so 
 openly. You have brought blushes into 
 her cheeks already." 
 
 " Ay ! but it is none for the flattery she 
 is blushing, ofood lack ! I warrant miss 
 guesses where I got to hear of her fine 
 spinning," was the sly thought of the 
 knowing widow. Her open reply was, — 
 "Nay, it's more like the keen March wind. 
 I hope it's given Miss Venables an appe- 
 tite as well as a colour."
 
 1 4 Sybilla. 
 
 " Right, Mrs Leicester, there's nothing 
 like a brisk ride on a cold morning to paint 
 cheeks and sharpen appetites. The re- 
 freshments your civility has provided will 
 be welcome, and I thank you for both of 
 us, since Sybilla seems too shy." And, 
 hanofine his three-cornered hat on a knob 
 of the chair's high back, he took his seat 
 at the table with the ease of a man in his 
 own house, to whom such attention was 
 due, and made a sign for Sybilla to do the 
 same. 
 
 She had removed her travelling cloak or 
 cardinal, but not her hat, and had thanked 
 the widow before she took her seat ; but it 
 was with an air of reserve, which protested 
 aofainst a strang^er's familiar observations 
 and attention, rather than the gracious 
 acceptance of courtesy. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs Leicester had so much 
 to say for the pastry and the home-brewed, 
 the honey, the cheese, and the wheaten 
 bread, all of which were pressed upon them 
 as due to her own skill, or that of her "dead 
 sister, Bess Coppock," that soon Mr Ven-
 
 Sybilla. 1 5 
 
 ables became as weary of her fussy attend- 
 ance as his daughter. The hasty luncheon 
 over, Sybilla rose to inspect her new home, 
 the widow volunteering her services as 
 guide, while Mr Venables went out to in- 
 spect the stables. 
 
 She knew every nook and corner of the 
 old place, she said, though she never thought 
 it would be her duty to hand it over to a 
 stranger, and again she launched out into 
 praise of her dead sister, and encomiums 
 of her living successor as a wool-spinner. 
 
 " You are mistaken, Mrs Leicester. I 
 am not much of a wool-spinner. I have 
 principally spun flax," was the somewhat 
 distant acknowledgment of Miss V^enables, 
 as she hastened to follow her guide o\"er 
 the curious and intricate abode, before the 
 was^^ons laden with their ^oods and chattels 
 should arrive. 
 
 " Well now, only to think of that ! " ex- 
 claimed the other, as they turned midway 
 the sharp angle of the oaken staircase. 
 " And there, I wouldn't let John Coppock 
 or his wife disturb sister's wheel. I said
 
 1 6 Sybilla, 
 
 they might make away with the maid's 
 wheel in the house-place if they liked, but 
 I told them that maybe Mr Venables 
 daughter miorht choose Bess's room for 
 her own, seeing that it had two doors, and 
 was handy for keeping the lazy servant 
 lasses in order, being nigh both the front 
 stairs and the back.' 
 
 " Oh, is it?" interjected Sybilla, with just 
 a faint show of interest, and scarcely a 
 second o^lance at the laro^e wheel left as 
 a fixture against the wall. 
 
 "Ay, and I said you might be glad to find 
 a good wheel set up ready to your hand, for 
 all the folk about here spin wool, mostly 
 for the Manchester weavers, an' I'll war- 
 rant there's no better wheel i' all Timperley. 
 A rare lot of fine yarn did Bess spin with 
 it ; and a vast lot of fine hose and kersey 
 did Hugh Furnival get from his aunt, for 
 she was a knitter as well as a spinner, miss; 
 and there's a weaver nigh at hand on the 
 moor, should you happen to want one." 
 
 Sybilla had listened idly whilst taking a 
 critical survey of the apartment or apart-
 
 Sybil la. i J 
 
 ments, mentally resolving-, for various 
 reasons, to take the hint given, and make 
 them her own ; but as Hugh Furnival's 
 name fell from the widow's lips there was 
 the slightest possible start, and her colour 
 visibly changed. She turned to a window 
 to hide it, but not before the watchful Mrs 
 Leicester had seen all she wanted, unob- 
 servant as she appeared. 
 
 The latter went on, without waiting for 
 a response, " Well, to be sure, I thought 
 the wheel would be just the thing for you, 
 and sing as merry a tune to your turn- 
 ing as it did to our Bess. And, after all, 
 I reckon you won't want the wheel ? " 
 
 This last was half an interrogation, and 
 she looked more than a little disconcerted 
 by Sybilla's lack of appreciation. 
 
 So perceptible was this that the young 
 lady, having regained her own composure, 
 came to her relief and said, without turning, 
 " Thank you, Mrs Leicester, for your good 
 intent. The wheel can be left where it is, 
 at least for the present. Perhaps I may try 
 my hand at wool occasionally for a change. 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 1 8 Sybilla. 
 
 It would be unorrateful to neMect such a 
 thoughtful provision. I will mention it to 
 my father. But here come the wains. We 
 must complete our survey quickly." 
 
 And without another word, or a token 
 of interest in Hugh Furnival, Bess Cop- 
 pock's nephew, or the hose spun and 
 knitted for his use, she passed through the 
 opposite door, and from room to room, 
 looking into cupboards and presses by 
 the way, and went down the retired back 
 staircase to the house-place and kitchen, 
 in advance of the loquacious Mrs Leicester. 
 
 The servants had come aloncr with the 
 heavily-loaded waggons ; Josh on horse- 
 back with a maid on a pillion behind him, 
 whilst fat Mrs Ursula and another woman 
 were softly seated on the feather-beds at 
 the back of the last waggon. Soon all 
 was bustle and excitement ; Mrs Leicester, 
 quite unsolicited, hurrying hither and 
 thither, proffering her services as guide to 
 the premises with rather more zeal than 
 discretion. 
 
 Ere long the grave gentleman in black
 
 Sybilla. 19 
 
 raised his three-cornered hat and said, 
 "Many thanks, Mrs Leicester, but you 
 need not trouble. My daughter can direct 
 the men and maids. I leave all domestic 
 arrangements to her." And Sybilla herself 
 hinted later on that she was not wanted, 
 by saying, " Our old servants are shy of 
 strangers." 
 
 She had had enough of Mrs Leicester, 
 and Mrs Leicester saw it. 
 
 She trudged home through the green 
 lane, shaking her head as she went, and 
 muttering to herself, "If Hugh Furnival 
 is good enough for the company of 
 miss, surely Hugh's aunt might be; and 
 for all some folk hold their heads so high, 
 pride may have a come-down some day. 
 And what can a chit of a girl know of 
 household management ? I should like to 
 know ! " 
 
 She had frequent opportunities to learn, 
 for on any excuse or no excuse, Mrs 
 Leicester obtruded her society and ser- 
 vices at the Oaklands, most anxious lest 
 Mr Venables or his household should lack
 
 20 Sybilla, 
 
 anything at the hands of Sybllla, that her 
 more mature experience could supply. 
 
 But Sybilla Venables had already proved 
 her capacity for reigning alone. If she 
 could spin a fine thread with a dainty 
 hand, she could rule the domestics with a 
 firm one ; and her pride did not comedown 
 readily to familiar intercourse with vulgar 
 Mrs Leicester, whatever might be her 
 relations with the encroaching widow's 
 nephew. 
 
 Still less did the new master of the Oak- 
 lands, who wrote himself down " Thomas 
 Venables, Gentleman," feel disposed to 
 accept favours or familiarity from the 
 tanner's sister. And had he known of 
 any relationship existing between the 
 Coppock family and Hugh Furnival, he 
 would have closed his doors against her 
 entrance.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FATHER AND THE LOVER. 
 
 jO to your wheel, girl, and let me 
 hear no more of Hugh Fur- 
 nival ! " had been the command 
 of Thomas Venables to his 
 daughter six months before she dis- 
 mounted at the Oaklands ; "and, prithee, 
 think no more of wedlock until a worthier 
 man comes a- wooing to thee — a gentle- 
 man and no Jacobite ! " 
 
 " I am afraid, sir," she answered, '* you 
 are blinded by prejudice. It is not right 
 to judge of a man's worth by his politics 
 or by his position." 
 
 " You are of no age to judge what is
 
 2 2 Sybilla. 
 
 right, Sybilla, and I am not wont to brook 
 reply. Go to your wheel, and learn pa- 
 tience and docility therefrom." 
 
 Thus dismissed, after a sharp lecture, 
 she had gone to her wheel, but the thread 
 she spun was neither so even nor so fine 
 as usual. Her father's tone had been un- 
 wontedly harsh and severe ; there was 
 neither patience nor obedience at her 
 finger-tips ; and there was something which 
 miofht become rebellion in her heart. 
 
 " He is worthy as I — and I love him," 
 was all she could say or think, and the 
 wheel took it up like an echo, and went 
 round and round to the tune. 
 
 And now let us look on this Hugh Furni- 
 val, who had furnished " Thomas Venables, 
 Gentleman," with a crowning motive for 
 uprooting his house-tree and planting it 
 elsewhere ; a motive so strong as to bar 
 the door against all who were of the young 
 man's kith and kin. Was he so notoriously 
 a black sheep .'* 
 
 His own father did not think so ; the new 
 vicar did not think so ; and if he had not
 
 Sybilla. 2 3 
 
 watched the farmer's son grow from boy- 
 hood to manhood, his predecessor had 
 vohmtarily led the youth through the 
 intricacies of Greek and Latin, and the 
 Rev. Joseph Ward found him an intelHgent 
 companion where such companions were 
 few. The squires and farmers round about 
 Prestbury said freely enough that he had 
 been educated beyond the need or the 
 general run of farmers' sons, and that 
 Farmer Furnival would rue it ; but he 
 only laughed and said, Hugh had as much 
 right to learning as had the two sons of 
 his cousin Coppock, the Manchester tailor, 
 both of whom had gone straight from the 
 Manchester Grammar School to college, 
 and taken honours there. 
 
 Hugh Furnival had a well-knit frame, 
 stood five-feet ten in his stocking-feet, 
 wore neither powder nor periwig, perhaps 
 not so much because they were unsuited 
 to his condition, as because he knew his 
 own chesnut curls were a better setting for 
 his handsome face, and matched his dark 
 brown eyes, so full of fire and feeling.
 
 24 Sybil/a. 
 
 Then, never a squire in the county was a 
 better shot, or could ride to hounds against 
 him ; and where was the countryman who 
 could throw him at a wrestling-bout, or 
 keep an unbroken crown when he had the 
 handling of a quarter-staff? And if he 
 did aspire to wear gold-lace on his best 
 three-cornered hat, there was none on his 
 deep-flapped, buff waistcoat, or on his long- 
 skirted coat, and only on Sundays did he 
 buckle his breeches' knees and his shoes 
 with silver instead of steel. Yet his father 
 said he looked " as fine a fellow as ever 
 stepped across a farm — or won a girl's 
 heart." 
 
 Reasons these perchance for the blushes 
 and prepossession of Miss Sybilla, but 
 scarcely for the prejudice of Mr Venables 
 against Hugh's very kith and kin, or for 
 his assertion that he was " unworthy." 
 
 Yet the gentleman was not a man of 
 rash judgment ; and had the damsel shown 
 no tendency to blush at Hugh's approach, 
 Thomas Venables might have regarded 
 him as a passable young fellow, a likely
 
 Sybilla. 25 
 
 successor to his father on the Spring-Holm 
 Farm, and not have troubled himself about 
 either his property, his pedigree, or his 
 politics, not being given to meddle in what 
 did not concern him. 
 
 But no sooner did a rumour reach him 
 that " the fine young fellow " had been 
 observed to visit the new vicar on the days 
 Miss Venables went to the old-fashioned 
 parsonage for instruction, than he put a 
 sudden stop to the lessons, on a plea that 
 she had " learning enough for a woman," 
 and was wanted indoors now her mother 
 was gone. 
 
 It was no new thinof to see the son of 
 Farmer Furnival uncovered in the ivy- 
 clad church porch when they and the other 
 gentry passed out into the ancient grave- 
 yard, or for himself and daughter to 
 acknowledge the customary deference with 
 becoming courtesy. But it was new to 
 observe glances cross, and faces flush, as 
 civilities were exchanged, and to catch the 
 echo of a whispered word in passing. 
 
 At once the gentleman drew his daughter's
 
 26 Sybilla. 
 
 mittened arm within his own, and held it 
 there, as if he felt another hand was waiting 
 to pluck it forth and bear her away ; his 
 brows contracted, and he flung at the pre- 
 sumptuous young farmer a look of haughty 
 indignation, that said, with never a word 
 spoken, " How dare you ?" 
 
 And, as if in answer to a challenge, the 
 younger eyes shot back their bold " I dare ! " 
 
 Being taken to task, Sybilla admitted 
 that HuQfh Furnival had been wont to 
 carry home her books from the vicar's and 
 from church, when she was otherwise 
 unattended ; that he had now and again 
 brought her posies from Spring-Holm ; 
 and that once they had strayed for half-an- 
 hour alonpf the winding- banks of the River 
 Bollin ; but she would not admit that he 
 was an improper associate for her father's 
 child, even though she heard him stigma- 
 tised as a " lowborn lout" and a "traitor- 
 ous Jacobite." 
 
 Scarcely reasons these to move a maiden 
 of seventeen over whom the love of a 
 handsome man had cast a glamour. Yet
 
 Sybilla. 27 
 
 Thomas Venables weig^hted them with his 
 will, and expected them to serve her and 
 the lover also into whose teeth he flung 
 them discourteously two days later as an 
 answer to his suit. 
 
 Nor did the vicar fare better when he 
 essayed to put in a word for the young 
 people. 
 
 " The Furnivals are rank Jacobites, sir! 
 The whole family, root and branch ! " was 
 the irate answer. " Would you have me 
 fling my precious Sybilla away on a plotting 
 Jacobite, who may be hatching treason 
 even now ? Would you have me fling the 
 girl's fortune into the Pretender's pouch ^ 
 And there it would go if it got into Hugh 
 Furnival's fingers, if he did not fling it 
 into the gutter beforehand. Let him turn 
 to the plough and marry the dairymaid, 
 like his grandfather before him, instead of 
 racing after the hounds as if he had gentle 
 blood in his veins, or seeking a mate above 
 his degree." 
 
 " Consider his education," urged the 
 reverend gentleman mildly.
 
 2 8 Sydilla. 
 
 " Consider what ? The art of aericulture 
 is education for a farmer, sir ! What have 
 Greek and Latin done for Hugh Furnival 
 but teach him to despise the honest in- 
 dustry of his parents, and set him agog 
 to wield a sword — another Hector or 
 Achilles. Say no more, sir. I can have no 
 fellowship with upstart coxcombs, nor with 
 Jacobites. Say no more, or I may suspect 
 you to be tarred with the same brush." 
 
 The vicar, possibly conscience smitten, 
 drew a quick breath, but said never a word 
 more for the rejected suitor. It was dan- 
 gerous even to be suspected, so bitter was 
 the feeling of the time, so sharp the treat- 
 ment of convicted Jacobites, as the ad- 
 herents of James Stuart, the Pretender, 
 were opprobriously called by the upholders 
 of the House of Hanover and its repre- 
 sentative, George the Second. 
 
 It was after this conversation with the 
 vicar, which had somehow reached the 
 ears of Sybilla, that she ventured a remon- 
 strance with her sire, to be answered in 
 the words with which this chapter opens.
 
 Sybilla, 29 
 
 And it having reached his ears that 
 Hugh Furnival haunted the green lanes 
 of Prestbury, and met his treasured Sybilla 
 in spite of his interdict, he decided on 
 doing promptly that which he had con- 
 templated from the sad time of his wife's 
 death. 
 
 He took all precaution to keep the 
 whereabouts of his new estate secret, even 
 riding ahead of the laden waggons as a 
 guide, with Sybilla beside him. But he 
 overlooked the necessity for hiring other 
 waggons to supplement his own, and for- 
 got that the drivers went back to their 
 respective farms with the news. And he 
 had made the mistake of pitching his tent 
 too near the old encampment ; and though 
 defective roads, and want of roads, might 
 double the distance between Prestbury 
 and Timperley, what were eight or nine 
 miles to one who could ride his horse 
 bare-backed over hedge or ditch almost as 
 the crow flies, when his spurs were love 
 and exasperation. 
 
 To Sybilla, whose uneasy mind had
 
 30 Sybilla. 
 
 magnified the unknown miles they tra- 
 velled so slowly, this removal seemed like 
 transportation. She could only think of 
 Hugh and his despair on finding that she 
 had been spirited away ; and, mingled 
 with thoughts of Hugh, came bitter con- 
 demnation of her father's " cruelty " in 
 severing them. 
 
 And as if aware of all that was working 
 in the girl's mind like yeast, Thomas Ven- 
 ables strove to chase the shadows by 
 cheerful allusions to their new home, and 
 all he meant to do to make it pleasant. 
 
 He described to her the many-gabled 
 house, the w^ell-wooded lands, the winding 
 water overhung with alder and willow, 
 over which he proposed to throw a bridge 
 for communication with the meadow 
 and pasture beyond, of the great oaks 
 which gave their name to the place, of the 
 garden for her flowers, and that for kitchen 
 produce, of the stables, the dairy, and all 
 that could be supposed to interest a young 
 housekeeper. 
 
 Then he spoke of neighbours at the
 
 Sybilla. 3 1 
 
 Halls of Timperley and Baguley, RIddings 
 and Wythenshaw, of guests to be invited 
 to a hospitable hearth, where she was to 
 preside as queen ; but he scarcely won her 
 from her own unpleasant reflections on 
 that forced separation from Hugh ; and 
 though she listened, it was with a spirit of 
 resentment rather that satisfaction. 
 
 Mrs Leicester unquestionably startled 
 her. But she thought the woman vulgar 
 and intrusive, and it was not until after- 
 wards that she learned to tolerate her as a 
 livinof link between herself and distant 
 Hugh. She was scarcely conscious how 
 much the familiar mention of his name, 
 and the knowledge that he had relations 
 so close at hand, served to soften her 
 harsh judgment of her really kind father, 
 and contributed to the interest she took in 
 the painting and stenciling, the arrange- 
 ment of draperies, china, glass, and 
 pictures ; especially in the rooms which 
 had been given up to her on request. 
 
 Pleased with her activity, glad to show 
 that fatherly affection had alone been his
 
 32 Sybiila, 
 
 prompter, he had acquiesced readily enough, 
 though a single apartment had served her 
 hitherto. 
 
 " Well, well, Sybilla, if you prefer it to 
 a sitting-room downstairs for your own 
 work or study, when my company or that 
 of my friends is undesirable " (a needful 
 provision when to "drink deep " was the 
 privilege of a gentlemen), " I am content, 
 so long as you do not indulge in melan- 
 choly. But you will need more furniture for 
 the room than the old spinster's wheel. 
 How persistent Mrs Leicester was in 
 pressing the wheel upon us as a gift, as 
 though I could possibly accept such a 
 favour from a mere stranger, and an 
 inferior. The woman is well-meaning, no 
 doubt ; but she is ill-bred, and mistakes 
 her own position." 
 
 " So I thought, sir, at first ; but I fancy 
 she only means to be civil and obliging, 
 and I like her better than I did ; " and 
 Sybilla proceeded with her arrangement 
 of china punch-bowls and silver drinking- 
 cups on the oaken buffet in the dining-
 
 Sybilla. 2iZ 
 
 room in silence, mentally asking herself 
 whether she could have tolerated Mrs 
 Leicester, apart from her association with 
 Hugh Furnival ? 
 
 Mr Venables was too reserved and 
 proud to dine in the common hall with his 
 servants at the same board as his prede- 
 cessor at the Oaklands had done, and as 
 had been the wont with his own forefathers 
 at Prestbury. Indeed, the custom was still 
 so general that he was looked upon as an 
 innovator, and his " pride " contemned ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 They had been some seven weeks in 
 Timperley, and Sybilla had begun to fancy 
 her father had forgotten his promise ; the 
 last paint brush had done its work ; his 
 few fine pictures had found places on the 
 panelled walls ; his books — classical, his- 
 torical, and controversial — were on their 
 shelves ; the great clock had been set 
 going in the hall ; the servants' quarters 
 were in order likewise ; every pewter 
 dish and platter was freshly polished, and 
 in its place ; every wooden trencher scrub- 
 VOL. I. c
 
 34 Sybilla. 
 
 bed white and in array ; the oaken settle 
 shone as brightly in the house-place as the 
 chairs and tables in the dining-room and 
 parlour ; the servants had gone to bed 
 (along with the sun), and Sybilla was 
 saying " Good-night " to her father at the 
 head of the front staircase, when he held 
 her hand for a moment, and, with a smile, 
 said, — 
 
 " Busk yourself for a ride in the morning, 
 Sybilla. You know that Tuesday is the 
 Altringham market-day, and as it bids fair 
 to be fine, I intend you to accompany me to 
 select the furniture for your private sitting- 
 room. Josh will have the horses at the 
 door by the time breakfast is over." 
 
 Sybilla's eyes had been heavy of late, 
 but they brightened as she thanked him ; 
 and seeing that she was pleased, the stern 
 man, from whom such signs of affection 
 were rare, pressed a kiss upon her brow, 
 smoothed a hand over her falling hair, and 
 murmured " God bless thee ! " A spon- 
 taneous outburst of repressed emotion, 
 saying much for the inner feelings of the
 
 Sybilla. 35 
 
 father, at a period when it was not consid- 
 ered seemly to display parental attachment 
 openly. It was supposed that familiarity 
 with a child led to contempt and dis- 
 obedience. 
 
 He turned into his chamber, well satis- 
 fied and content, in that she was pleased. 
 She passed on to her own room softened 
 and elate, and stood looking out of the 
 window, whilst the shadow deepened over 
 the landscape, in a better frame of mind 
 than had been hers for many a day. 
 
 Her father's caress had been more to her 
 than the promise he had made, and that 
 held elements of delightful anticipation. 
 
 What young lady would not have been 
 gratified by such marks of kindness even 
 in these days when parents concede so 
 much to their offspring, and varying 
 fashion clamours for frequent changes. 
 Then, the furniture of one generation was 
 handed down to the next, to be again trans- 
 mitted, and this entirely new fitting up for 
 her sole use was an event indeed. 
 
 Ay, an event on which hung events
 
 o 
 
 6 Sybilla. 
 
 unforeseen either by father or daughter, or 
 neither would have sat down to breakfast 
 so serenely. 
 
 Josh had the horses groomed and in 
 readiness ; Ursula stood in the porch to 
 receive the last orders of her young mis- 
 tress, and to assist in the modest adjust- 
 ment of her small riding-hoop, which pro- 
 jected over the hips like a pair of panniers, 
 with no lower frame-work ; and she having 
 drawn her black silk mantua closer round 
 her shoulders, rode off beside her father, 
 with as sunny a smile under the brim of 
 the flat hat she wore tied down over her 
 ears as he himself could wish. 
 
 He had unbuttoned two flaps of his 
 three-cornered hat, to shield his eyes from 
 the sun, and from under the brim he 
 watched every change of her speaking 
 countenance, proud of her grace and beauty, 
 glad for her gladness, and rejoicing in the 
 success of his scheme to blot her unsuitable 
 lover from her memory ; and he smiled 
 upon her in his grave manner as he gazed. 
 
 INIrs Leicester's cottage lay on their
 
 Sybilla. 3 7 
 
 route just where the road branched off to 
 Altringham and Bowdon. It was a verit- 
 able bower of honeysuckle and roses ; and, 
 before they reached the low wooden gate, 
 they saw the dame by the side of her bee- 
 hives, hooped and hooded as if equipped 
 for a walk, but apparently watching her 
 bees as they went and came industriously, 
 dived into the nectary of a flower, or 
 brushed the pollen from their coats to fill 
 their little pockets — and it might be, her 
 big ones. 
 
 " Come, Sally, lass, how long dos't mean 
 to be ? " called in no measured tones, told 
 that she was simply waiting for a stout 
 serving woman, in a blue linen overgown 
 and petticoat, who made her appearance 
 with a huQ^e wicker-basket on her arm. 
 
 The muffled beat of hoofs on the dusty 
 road had not been heard until they were 
 all close to the garden gate, where they 
 made a pause, and she seemed well-pleased 
 to street them — the master of the Oaklands 
 and his daughter, who travelled with a 
 man-servant in their rear.
 
 ^8 Sybilla. 
 
 J 
 
 " I am wanting some good wool. Pray 
 can you tell me where I can be best 
 served ? " asked Sybilla, before they rode 
 away. 
 
 " Well, you're off to Altringham, I reckon; 
 so I'll maybe meet you in the market, and 
 I can take you to th' wool-comber's where 
 Bess got hers. You'll happen put your 
 beasts up at th' ' Unicorn,' sir ? " 
 
 Mr Venables assented. 
 
 " Well, four legs go faster than two, and 
 I've my markets to make when I get there, 
 but after noon I'm at your service, miss, 
 and we can keep a look-out for one another, 
 and maybe you'll find me ttseftcl before the 
 day's out." 
 
 She was thanked and they rode on, 
 Mr Venables remarking, affably enough, " I 
 think the orood dame is well-meanino- 
 thouQ^h somewhat too free in her manner." 
 But Sybilla fancied there was some hidden 
 meaning in her concluding words, and 
 wondered if they covered a rebuke or a 
 sarcasm. 
 
 Only for a moment did Mrs Leicester
 
 Sybilla. 39 
 
 look after them, with her brown hand shad- 
 ing the peculiar expression of her grey 
 eyes. Then, snapping the gate behind 
 her, she followed at a brisk pace, regard- 
 less of the heat, urging on her attendant. 
 
 The scene was new to Sybilla, who 
 patted the sleek neck of her horse when 
 under her father's pilotage he had carried 
 her, unscared by the noise, in safety 
 throuorh the crowd and hubbub to the stone 
 horse-block by the " Unicorn," a good inn 
 at the wider end of the triangular market- 
 place. There the obedient animal's head 
 was held by Josh, and drawn alongside 
 that his mistress might alight. Gracefully 
 she stepped from the saddle to the stone, 
 and stood erect in her proud beauty. 
 
 For a moment she looked around as if 
 in quest of someone scarcely hoped for. 
 Then pressing her lips close to keep back 
 a sigh, she came down the steps of the 
 block, with a firm resolve to dismiss that 
 "someone" from her thoughts, and obey 
 the father who was doing so much to prove 
 his love for her.
 
 4"o Sybilla. 
 
 Josh led away the horses, and she, hold- 
 ing fast by her father's arm, traversed 
 with him the lively market - place and 
 made sundry purchases ; then went from 
 one tradesman's shop to another to order 
 or select furniture of the newest mode, in- 
 cluding curtains and a square of carpet, 
 and that other luxury a Venetian glass, in 
 a walnut-wood frame, to hang between 
 the windows ; all, in short, that could make 
 her sitting-room bright and pleasant ; the 
 presence of the large spinning - wheel 
 fastened against the wall as a coach-wheel 
 on an axle, not being then considered an 
 incongruity. 
 
 There were s^reetin^rs in the market- 
 place. Cheshire is noted for its landed 
 gentry, its stalwart men, its good-look- 
 ing women ; but amongst them Sybilla 
 seemed to attract peculiar attention, 
 whether as a stranger or for her especial 
 comeliness. 
 
 Yet of the many jolly squires and yeo- 
 men who accosted Thomas Venables, he 
 presented but two to his daughter. These,
 
 Sybilla. 41 
 
 he told her, were neighbours. Squire 
 Gerard, of Riddings, a moated grange out- 
 side Altringham, of which the young squire, 
 who had been on his travels, had recently 
 taken possession ; and young Tatton, of 
 Wyvenshaw, an historic old mansion be- 
 yond Timperley, both of whom seemed 
 inclined to cultivate the acquaintance. 
 
 Many years had gone by since Mr 
 Venables had attended a market en- 
 cumbered with a female ; his wife had 
 been a stay-at-home, and he found his 
 daughter somewhat of a charge, as well 
 as a fetter on his own free movements, 
 proud as he was of the attention she 
 attracted. 
 
 He appeared no little relieved when 
 after luncheon he espied Mrs Leicester 
 from one of the windows of the " Unicorn," 
 as she came bustling up, as fast as 
 her inflated hoop would allow. Very 
 gladly did he then resign Sybilla to 
 her care, whilst he went about business 
 of his own. 
 
 I ween he would have left his own
 
 42 
 
 Sybilla. 
 
 business undone could he have had an 
 inkhng of Mrs Leicester's business. 
 
 Surely enough she led Miss Venables to 
 the wool-comber's, and helped her to choose 
 and bargain for her wool, as she had 
 promised. 
 
 And as surely, there too, was found a 
 
 fine 
 
 young 
 
 farmer, with fleeces for the 
 
 wool-comber, and the young farmer was 
 Hus^h Furnival. 
 
 o
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SYBILLAS SUITORS. 
 
 iYBILLA had eaten her luncheon 
 at the " Unicorn " in the best of 
 spirits, and although somewhat 
 abashed by the attentions of 
 Squire Gerard, who had accompanied them 
 thither, she could think only of her father's 
 lavish outlay for her gratification, and of 
 her own grateful duty towards him. 
 
 Overpowered by his affectionate gen- 
 erosity, taken too by surprise, she was 
 brimminof over with dutiful affection and 
 wise resolves to brine her own will into 
 subjection to her good and loving father's 
 in the one matter wherein they were at
 
 44 Sybilla. 
 
 variance, and sat in the window seat with 
 her elbow on the ledge and her cheek upon 
 her palm, deciding that she would see 
 Hugh Furnival no more — when, alas! for 
 her resolution, Mrs Leicester came in sight, 
 broke the thread of thought, and carried 
 her away. 
 
 Innocently and unsuspiciously she en- 
 tered the wool-comber's. Their talk by 
 the way had been of the market prices of 
 wool and flax, and such matters. When 
 Mrs Leicester opened the half-door (the 
 upper half was hooked to the low ceiling), 
 she walked as it were into a trap. She 
 saw only the dealer in wool, and with the 
 aid of her guide made her purchase, and 
 had turned to ^o when HuQ^h's handsome 
 face met hers. 
 
 There was a conflict between love and 
 filial obedience, a special pleader within to 
 second the eloquent eyes and low-toned 
 voice of Hugh, as he urged that he should 
 erow reckless and rush to destruction If 
 she abandoned him, promising to wait 
 patiently until her father withdrew his
 
 Sybilla. 45 
 
 interdict, if she would only meet him now 
 and again to keep hope alive — meet him 
 at his aunt Leicester's. 
 
 " And surely there can be no harm in 
 that, miss," put in the wily feminine match- 
 maker, whose sharp ears had been on the 
 alert. 
 
 " No harm in deceiving my father ? " 
 murmured Svbilla, shrinkinor back. 
 
 "It would only be for a time, sweet one ; 
 he loves you too well to withhold consent 
 for ever." 
 
 " Ah, yes, he doth love me well ; but — " 
 only a sigh finished the speech, and, if her 
 hand was in his warm clasp, her eyes 
 sought the ground, afraid to look up into 
 his beseeching ones. 
 
 "You cannot wish to break my heart ?" 
 whispered Hugh, bending near to her. 
 " Separation is worse than death to me ; I 
 cannot live without a word or sight of you, 
 my dearest one. You will kill me with de- 
 nial. If you love me do not say me nay.' 
 
 And with such pleading, in tones meant 
 for her ear and heart alone, she was won
 
 46 Sybilla. 
 
 over, Mrs Leicester keeping the wool- 
 comber discreetly apart, bundling up the 
 wool for convenience of carriage the 
 while. 
 
 Sybilla had entered the low shop fearless 
 and free. She left it fettered with stronger 
 bonds and burthened with a secret, and a 
 sense of treachery towards the father who 
 had only that very day loaded her with 
 favours. 
 
 The homeward ride late in the afternoon 
 had none of the morning's cheeriness. 
 Grey masses of cloud seemed to rise up 
 behind and follow them, and their steeds 
 being turned towards the west, the setting 
 sun sent a crimson glare into their faces 
 from between long bars of purple and 
 black. There was scarcely a twitter from 
 the trees or hedge-rows ; now and then 
 was heard a faint cricket-like chirp, but 
 whether from the golden-crested wren or 
 the lively insect, it could not be distin- 
 guished for the beat of hoofs. Either a 
 black-cap or a nightingale hushed its even- 
 song on their approach, but the air was
 
 Sybilla. 47 
 
 close and still, and the leaves had scarce a 
 quiver. A ghost-moth from the meadows 
 flew across their track, and now and then 
 a brimstone-moth fluttered about, as if 
 waking for the night. But Sybilla noted 
 none of these. She was lively and de- 
 pressed by fits, and sat her horse some- 
 what wearily. 
 
 " Thou art over-tired, Sybilla, lass. It 
 has been an exciting day for thee," re- 
 marked her father kindly, attributing her 
 long stretch of silence to fatigue. 
 
 A sigh accompanied the faint " Ay, 
 father," of her assent. 
 
 " Ah," said he, " the air is close and 
 oppressive. I think we are threatened with 
 a storm. It is well we are nigh at home." 
 
 They were at home ; and Sybilla, plead- 
 ing " fatigue " (the suggestion of her father), 
 had retired to rest after their early supper, 
 before the elemental storm burst over 
 Timperley ; but another storm threatened, 
 which might be longer in gathering, yet 
 would be far more scathing and destructive 
 to the inmates of the Oaklands.
 
 48 Sybilla. 
 
 Sybilla had retired to her room, but not 
 to rest. She paced the floor in unwonted 
 agitation. She had given a promise to 
 Huo;h in defiance of her father's will and 
 open interdict. And she could no longer 
 justify her disobedience with the pretext of 
 parental cruelty. Had she not found him 
 most kind and indulgent in all but where 
 Hugh Furnival was concerned. She knew 
 she had done wrong, and had not strength 
 of mind or will to right it. 
 
 The storm without seemed to mock the 
 tumult in her breast. She shrank from the 
 blinding lightning flashes, and huddled on 
 a chair, covered up her head to shut them 
 out, with a sort of fear that the angry voice 
 of God was thunderins: to her. 
 
 But she never threw herself upon her 
 knees to beseech pardon, or to ask for 
 guidance, or to be delivered from tempta- 
 tion ; and morning found her little more 
 composed. 
 
 At the breakfast-table the next morninof 
 her customary platter of oatmeal-porridge 
 and bowl of new milk went away almost
 
 Sybilla. 49 
 
 untasted. She drank the coffee, which 
 was there as a luxury, Hke one who feels 
 the need of a refreshing draught ; but 
 rejected alike the hung beef and the brawn 
 with which her father heartily supplemented 
 his porridge. 
 
 "What ails thee, Sybilla ?" cried Thomas 
 Venables at length ; " squeamish appetites 
 are not for healthy country maidens, and 
 thou'rt pecking like a bird," and he looked 
 across at her with much concern. 
 
 " The storm kept me awake last night ; 
 and I have a headache," was her excuse ; 
 but it was not made without hesitation or 
 change of countenance, for though the 
 headache was real enough, the plea was 
 not, and she was new at deception. 
 
 "Then give thy orders to the maids, Syb, 
 and come out of doors with me. The fresh 
 air will do thee good, and thou canst tell 
 me how thou wouldst have thy garden laid 
 out. It was all very well for a thrifty 
 farmer like spinster Coppock to turn every 
 rod of land to account, and plant nothing 
 thereon but what would serve for the pot 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 Sybtila, 
 
 or the market. But a young lady of fair 
 estate and good breeding must have her 
 sweet-smelling posies, her stocks and her 
 gilliflowers, her roses and lilies, her lawn 
 and summer-bower, her shady walk when 
 the sun is hot, and evergreens to cheat 
 winter of its gloom. Is it not so, Syb ? " 
 
 Sybilla was reaching her garden hat 
 from the antlers in the hall, and he saw 
 not her face as she answered, " Ay, father, 
 ay," with something rising in her throat, 
 as if to choke her. 
 
 " I will join you directly in the court- 
 yard, when I have spoken to Ursula," she 
 said, turning into the house-place or 
 servants' hall, whilst he passed out at a 
 door, near the back stairs, to the court- 
 yard in the rear. 
 
 She found him in the garden with Josh, 
 who was lamenting the overgrowth of 
 weeds, and explaining the necessity for 
 employing a younger back than his own 
 or that of his assistant, to stoop and grub 
 them up. 
 
 " There's a sharp little chap hanging
 
 Sybilla. 5 1 
 
 about th' gate now, as 'ud be glad o' th' 
 job, measter ; an' he'd be downreet weel 
 paid wi' a penny an' some o' them praties 
 yo're gooin' to hev dug up to mak' th' 
 lawn, they'd hauf o' them goo to th' pigs." 
 
 " Who is the lad ? " asked Mr Venables. 
 
 " Whoi, he says as his feyther's a wayver, 
 an' lives o' th' Moor, an' they're nigh 
 clemmin', for he conna' get warps enow 
 for his loom sin' Bess Coppock died. Yo' 
 see, mestur, theere beant spinners enow 
 to keep th' wayvers a-gooin', naether here 
 nor i' Manchester ; and if they canna' get 
 th' woo' they canna' wark." 
 
 Sybilla, standing by her father's side, 
 had heard Josh's adroit plea to serve the 
 lad and save his own back at the same 
 time ; and shocked at the word " clem- 
 min', " wondered that her father should 
 hesitate a moment between feeding the 
 pigs with the spare potatoes and a family. 
 Potatoes had not come to be reckoned the 
 porker's proper food — parings and refuse 
 only fell to their share ; to give them more 
 would be deemed waste. 
 
 ^^-^
 
 52 Sybilla. 
 
 As she said so, she added, " There may 
 soon be work for the weaver if I and the 
 maids are industrious." 
 
 " Right, Syb," answered her father ; 
 " right ! Encourage industry, and pay well 
 for work done ; but don't encourage idle- 
 ness with too much charity. Call the lad 
 in, Josh, and if he be willing to work, he 
 shall be paid both with pence and potatoes. 
 Neither we nor the hocrs will miss them." 
 
 o 
 
 A barefooted, ragged urchin, not more 
 than eight years old, whose hair was 
 bleached by capless exposure to the sun, 
 and whose cheeks told their own tale of 
 short commons, answered the sharp " Hi, 
 thee ! " of Josh, and the beckoning wave 
 of his arm. 
 
 He was a little fellow to be set to work, 
 but he seemed glad enough of the chance ; 
 he shrank from the hard questioning of Mr 
 Venables, but when Sybilla sent him to 
 Ursula for a breakfast of brown bread and 
 buttermilk, with a pitiful smile on her face, 
 he thought her little less than an ano-el. 
 
 And when, after a hard day's weeding,
 
 Sybilla. 5 3 
 
 Billy Barnes went home, with as many- 
 new potatoes as he could carry, and the 
 young lady compassionately added a silver 
 groat to the penny he had earned, and 
 sent a promise of future work for the 
 father, he could only describe her as " like 
 an angel out o' church winder." 
 
 But he had his day's weeding before 
 him when Thomas Venables led his 
 daughter over the o-rounds, still wet with 
 the late rainfall, noting what improvements 
 he designed, and — marvel for him — seek- 
 ing her opinion thereon. They had 
 reached the pea and potato plot, lying 
 between the side of the house and the 
 water, and had decided on the space to be 
 converted into a grassy lawn or bowling- 
 green, and then he turned, saying, — 
 
 " And now, Sybilla, whereabouts should 
 we have the brido-e ? It micrht save thee 
 wetting thy feet in crossing to thy flower 
 garden and the meadow beyond, and I fear 
 the stepping-stones are slippery and unsafe 
 for thee. The heavy storm has laid them 
 under water now."
 
 ■ 54 Sybilla. 
 
 At every step fresh proofs of his desire 
 to beautify the Oaklands for her had been 
 apparent ; and this last token of thoughtful 
 care in the parent she had been led to 
 regard as arbitrary and severe, was more 
 than she could bear, and conscience became 
 urgent. 
 
 Two minutes more and she would have 
 made confession of her error. Ah, how 
 often a life's destiny hangs on one moment, 
 one unspoken word ! 
 
 Her father's " Hillo! who's here ?" ar- 
 rested the words ere they reached her lips, 
 and they were never so ready again. 
 
 Squire Gerard, who had come riding 
 down Wood Lane at a trot, stopped his 
 horse at the gate, doffed his gold-laced 
 hat, and bowed low in salutation. 
 
 He was hospitably invited to enter. His 
 apologies for splashes contracted in the 
 muddy lanes and turbid streams were 
 accepted. 
 
 Josh called an underling to take charge 
 of the gentleman's horse, and soon the 
 master of Riddings was seated at a table
 
 Sybilla. 5 5 
 
 covered with grass-bleached damask of 
 Sybilla's own spinning, evidently thinking 
 more of the graceful hostess than of the 
 game-pie, or capon, or Cheshire cheese, or 
 the well-filled silver tankards, or any other 
 adjunct of that early luncheon. 
 
 Then followed a stroll through the 
 grounds v/ith Sybilla in company. He 
 listened to his host's detail of intended 
 improvements ; had something to say of 
 the land, and the crops it would bear ; 
 suggested a line of shrubbery on the far 
 side of the water, between the flower-beds 
 and the meadow ; and put in a word for a 
 durable bridge of stone or brick for g^eneral 
 use, rather than the wooden one in Mr 
 Venable's mind ; but his glances followed 
 Sybilla's movements, and from time to 
 time he drew her into the conversation, 
 as if it were a pleasure to hear her 
 speak. 
 
 He was a man little, if any, older than 
 Hugh Furnival, had travelled much, and 
 was a conversable companion ; but he had 
 not the like attractions of form and feature,
 
 56 Sybilla. 
 
 and there was more of sadness than of fire 
 in his deep-set eyes. 
 
 As he said, he had known much sorrow ; 
 had returned to the Riddings after long 
 absence, to find that he was the last of his 
 race ; and the face of his father's old 
 friend, in the Altringham market-place, 
 was a welcome sight to him. But Gerard 
 looked as if the old friend's dauo^hter had 
 been a still more welcome sight. His 
 glance seemed to follow her every move- 
 ment, as if fascinated. 
 
 He lingered, as if loth to depart, until 
 indeed the arrival of a cart with the pur- 
 chases of the previous day warned the 
 young squire to take leave. 
 
 That visit was but the precursor of many 
 more, a hearty welcome from Mr Venables 
 being sure to greet him, even if Sybilla 
 was not always to be seen. 
 
 Young Tatton also came riding across 
 the moor from Wyvenshaw ; but his fox- 
 hunting proclivities were not much in 
 accord with the grave and studious habits 
 of Mr Venables, and his reception was
 
 Sybilla. 5 7 
 
 of another sort than was accorded to 
 Gerard. 
 
 He not only came often, but he stayed 
 long, and was a favourite, especially with 
 the father, in whose improvements he took 
 all the interest of a fellow landowner ; then, 
 he was always ready in an afternoon or 
 evening to play a game at backgammon 
 with him, in hope of a song from Sybilla, 
 or a tune on her spinet, and well content 
 to watch her knitting-pins flash or her 
 spinning-wheel revolve, under the impulse 
 of her slender fingers, if so be he could 
 only win a word or a smile from her sweet 
 lips by times. 
 
 Yet as only the brightly-polished flax- 
 wheel was portable, and as the wool-wheel 
 was a fixture against the wall of her private 
 sitting-room, the one being a mere toy com- 
 pared with the other, and as she had taken 
 to wool-spinning with an earnestness which 
 Thomas Venables construed into forgetful- 
 ness of Hugh Furnival, it often served to 
 excuse her absence from the household- 
 room when the two men were occupied with
 
 58 Sybilla. 
 
 politics, or the backgammon board, or the 
 popular game of fox and goose. 
 
 And this occurred more frequently than 
 either approved, and generally when Mrs 
 Leicester happened to have stepped in to 
 see Miss Venables. 
 
 By this time the portly widow had con- 
 trived to obtain a familiar footing in the 
 house ; her offer to improve Sybilla's ac- 
 quaintance with her new wheel having 
 opened the path. Mrs Leicester was 
 always obliging, she was a near neighbour, 
 and Mr Venables was well pleased that his 
 daughter should take interest in anyone 
 and anything — except Hugh Furnival — 
 and he tolerated the widow for the sake of 
 his child, hoping that companionship would 
 prevent brooding over the past. 
 
 He would have preferred a younger 
 friend for her, either Miss Tatton, or Miss 
 Legh from Baguley, but he did not inter- 
 fere with the girl's choice ; and was rather 
 pleased than otherwise that she carried her 
 portly person and free manners where they 
 did not jar on his personal sensibilities.
 
 Sybilla. 59 
 
 He had no suspicion, not he, that when 
 Sybilla carried her sewing or her knitting 
 to Mrs Leicester's cottage now and then, 
 or when the latter came to the Oaklands, 
 and, after a gossip, retreated with Sybilla 
 to her own room, whence the musical hum 
 of the big wheel could be heard by all in 
 that portion of the eccentric and rambling 
 house, that either was a cover for a 
 meeting with Hugh Furnival. Still less, 
 that the beguiling widow artfully kept 
 the humminor wheel in motion once or 
 twice whilst Sybilla, at her suggestion, 
 slipped down the secluded and rarely-used 
 staircase, close by her room door, for a 
 hurried interview with the nephew, waiting 
 under the shadow of the twilight and the 
 trees. 
 
 Had the young creature, so ignorant of 
 the world, so easily led by her affections, 
 but confessed to her father the promise 
 extracted from her in a moment of surprise 
 and weakness, he would have kept Mrs 
 Leicester and her false advice at bay, would 
 have been at once adviser, shield, and sup-
 
 6o Sybilla. 
 
 port to his child. But at the time Sybilla's 
 heart prompted the admission of her error, 
 she could not overcome her awe of his out- 
 ward austerity, and no such opportune 
 moment ever came agfain. 
 
 As it was, that first meeting with Hugh 
 at his aunt's cottaore — in itself a surrender 
 of filial duty and obedience — served to 
 undermine resolution and riorht feelino-. 
 Not all at once, but one meetino; led to 
 another, and another followed that. 
 
 Mrs Leicester, in her nephew's interest, 
 argued awaythegirl's right-minded scruples, 
 and impassioned Hugh, who came rushing 
 across country at the risk of his neck for 
 half-an-hour's speech with her, either in the 
 grounds or at his aunt's cottage, was 
 hardl)^ to be gainsaid. 
 
 " Do you think a woman of my years 
 would sanction anything that was wrong .'* " 
 was asked by the cunning and unscrupul- 
 ous widow as an argument for these clan- 
 destine meetinors. 
 
 " It is cruel to deny me a few minutes, 
 when I come so far and love you so dearly,"
 
 Sybilla. 6 1 
 
 was the lover's plea ; whilst the arm round 
 her waist and the eloquent lips and eyes 
 had other arguments as strong. 
 
 " You can meet that fellow Gerard at 
 Bowdon church, walk home by his side, 
 listen to him, talk to him, sing to him, yet 
 you grudge me a stolen half-hour after 
 weeks of pain and absence. If I do not 
 see you, I can hear of it, and there are 
 times in my desperation I feel as if I could 
 shoot the fellow, so happy in your smiles," 
 he said, when ere long jealousy added fuel 
 to the fire of Hugh's passion. 
 
 Few and weeks apart were these stealthy 
 interviews, and chiefly in the shady parlour 
 behind the beehives at Mrs Leicester's ; 
 but letters came and went, and not always 
 through the same feminine courier. 
 
 Little Billy Barnes, who now rejoiced in 
 a pair of clogs and a warm suit of home- 
 spun, and who flourished under the united 
 patronage of Josh and JMiss Venables, and 
 who somewhere or somehow had imbibed 
 a wholesome dread of her stern and dark- 
 browed sire, carried more than one billet
 
 62 Sybilla, 
 
 in his breeches' pocket ; and the Httle lad, 
 who worshipped the flaxen-haired beauty, 
 would have died rather than betray his 
 trust even to his own father, whose loom 
 was once more at work ; for Ursula kept 
 the maids at their wheel as busily as their 
 mistress at hers. 
 
 Then when with the waning year night 
 shadows crept on, and outdoor labour 
 ceased earlier, Hugh urged that there was 
 less fear of observation, and then she migfht 
 surely meet him more frequently. I will 
 not say Sybilla had no misgivings, but they 
 were silenced. 
 
 Not altogether. In the solitude of her 
 own sitting-room, brightened by her father's 
 care, when the large wheel of her predecessor 
 hummed its loudest, and she stepped back- 
 ward and forward drawing out and twining 
 her delicate line of woollen yarn, there was 
 often an undertone of reproach in its music. 
 Or when seated in the glow of the fire on 
 the open hearth, opposite to her father, 
 encjrossed in a book or his accounts — or in 
 the summer bower he had delicately created
 
 Sybil la. 63 
 
 for her pleasure — she knitted in silence, 
 there was often a voice in her heart accus- 
 ing her of duplicity in knitting hose for her 
 father in his sight, and for her lover in the 
 privacy of her own room. It was as though 
 she alternated between two loves, or it may 
 be between love and duty. 
 
 And so the seasons came and went, and 
 with them guests to the Oaklands ; but none 
 so frequently as Squire Gerard, the one 
 of whom her secret lover was so jealous. 
 
 Ay, long before that summer evening, 
 when Sybilla's father laid down his volume 
 and broke the silence with a composed 
 announcement that their gallant neighbour, 
 who had been her devotee so many months, 
 was desirous to make her the mistress of 
 Riddings Hall. 
 
 She started to her feet. Her knitting 
 dropped to the floor and became the kitten's 
 prey. 
 
 " You cannot mean it ! Oh, father, re- 
 member Hugh ! " 
 
 " Remember the scheming Jacobite ? I 
 thoutrht thou hadst forfjotten him ere this? "
 
 64 SybiLLa. 
 
 " Forgotten Hugh ! Oh, sir, that is im- 
 possible ! " she murmured, holding by the 
 tall chair-back for support. 
 
 Her father's dark brows contracted, and 
 the old stern look she had not seen so long, 
 came back to his face. Yet was there a 
 curl of doubt on his lips as he said, " Noth- 
 ing Is impossible. Calf-love is not eter- 
 nal. Hugh Furnival has forgotten thee, 
 and the new wooer will make amends for 
 the old one." 
 
 A denial of Hugh's inconstancy rose to 
 her lips, but died away in a faint " Nay, 
 nay ! 
 
 " And I say yea, Syb. So look your 
 best when the squire comes for his answer, 
 and speak to him kindly, like a good and 
 dutiful daughter." 
 
 She always did look her best in the 
 bewildered eyes of the young squire, until 
 that bright morning in August, when she 
 met his stammering love-suit with an 
 agitated entreaty that he would not per- 
 secute her. 
 
 He had been prepared for some reserve,
 
 Sybilla. 65 
 
 which would wear away in time ; and all 
 he could answer was, " I do not want to 
 persecute or hurry you, Miss Venables ; 
 I would not trouble your mind for the 
 world. Give me but the shadow of hope. 
 I can wait." 
 
 This was more than she could do, but 
 still he hoped — and waited. 
 
 " Patience and a good cause win in the 
 long-run. The lass is only shy," was the 
 solace Thomas Venables gave to the dis- 
 concerted suitor as they stood together on 
 the red brick bridge, which had superseded 
 the old stepping-stones, and Gerard looked 
 ruefully on his own melancholy visage in 
 the smooth water below. " Take my word 
 for it, Sybilla will consent to be thy wife 
 before this year's swallows take flight." 
 
 And for lack of better assurance, the 
 devoted suitor took what comfort he could 
 from the confident father's word, and 
 waited with tolerable patience. 
 
 Squire Gerard's horse could have 
 brought his master to the Oaklands blind- 
 fold, so often was he stabled and fed there 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 66 Sybilla. 
 
 before the swallows took winof. And the 
 patient wooer came and went, or lingered 
 by the side of Sybilla, whether she tended 
 her flowers or sat silent sewing a seam ; con- 
 tent so long as he met with no open rebuff. 
 
 But long before the first swallow plumed 
 its wings for flight, another bird had flown 
 its parent nest. 
 
 The loud neighing of a horse in the lane, 
 and the barking of the mastiff by the gate, 
 had roused Mr Venables out of his first 
 sleep one night, at the close of September ; 
 but the horseman rode off, and he turned 
 on his pillow and went to sleep again, only 
 thinking some of his neighbours kept late 
 hours. 
 
 Miss Venables was wont to rise with the 
 lark. When Ursula went to her room for 
 the keys in the morning, no Sybilla was 
 there — only a letter. 
 
 Trembling and quaking in every limb, 
 the old servant carried it at arm's length 
 to her master, and as she toki Josh after- 
 wards, " I thought he'd ha' stiffened to 
 stone at the sight on it."
 
 Sybilla. 67 
 
 He had crushed the tear-stained letter in 
 his strong grip, as he set his teeth behind 
 close lips ; but then he smoothed it care- 
 fully out, not relaxing a muscle of his rigid 
 face ; and, when Gerard came a few hours 
 later, it was flung to him in answer to his 
 inquiries for Miss Venables. 
 
 It was the deluded father's only explana- 
 tion. Then he tore the letter into shreds. 
 Of pursuit he would not hear. 
 
 " By this time she has ceased to be 
 Sybilla Venables, and no longer belongs 
 to me," was said, sternly. 
 
 He locked the door of the rifled room 
 upon her spinning-wheel and all besides, 
 saying, as he turned the key, — 
 
 " Disobedience brings its own punish- 
 ment. Let me never hear the ingrate's 
 name as^ain under this roof. I have closed 
 the door of my heart as I have closed the 
 door of this room, never to be opened 
 more." 
 
 It was spoken as the mandate of a des- 
 pot. Indisputable and irrevocable, as a 
 decree of the Medes and Persians.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LIFE AT SPRING-HOLM FARM. 
 
 NDER the rule of Cromwell and 
 the Commonwealth the English 
 law of marriage was most strin- 
 gent. At the Restoration — 
 with many another law for the preserva- 
 tion of order — it was relaxed, until it be- 
 came so loose that all the formality neces- 
 sary to make a marriage binding was the 
 performance of the ceremony by a man 
 in holy orders ; it mattered not when or 
 where. Gross abuses led, in 1753, to 
 Parliamentary enactments against clan- 
 destine marriages, and since then other 
 Acts have been passed to regulate and 
 define a legal marriage.
 
 Sybilla. 69 
 
 But when Sybilla Venables, after long 
 hesitation, allowed herself to be over- 
 persuaded, and stealing down the secluded 
 back staircase like a ghost at midnight, 
 and across the deserted courtyard in the 
 full light of the harvest moon, and only 
 paused to reflect for one moment on the 
 bridge built in fatherly love, as she crossed 
 it in her flight to the meadow gate, well 
 away from the restless mastiff — when she 
 thus quitted her confiding father's roof in 
 silence and secrecy, there were no such 
 restrictions. 
 
 There were, however, restrictions upon 
 intercourse and correspondence. Only the 
 larger towns could boast the luxury of a 
 post-office ; and, albeit a market-town, with 
 a staple trade, and governed by a mayor, 
 Altringham, which had no church of its 
 own, was scarcely likely to have a post- 
 office. Even half-a-century later it had 
 only a receiving-house for the post at 
 Knutsford, eight miles away. Those few 
 who had the need and the ability to write 
 letters were compelled to entrust them to
 
 70 Sybilla. 
 
 private messengers or the public carriers ; 
 and, when addressed to an out-of-the-way 
 place like Timperley, have them left at 
 some ordinary house of call, and trust to 
 the chapter of accidents for delivery when 
 unexpected — and, consequently, unasked 
 for. 
 
 Thus, the packet containing the respect- 
 ful and apologetic letters of Hugh and 
 Sybilla Furnival — written the very day 
 after their marriage at Prestbury Church, 
 and carried to Altringham by Hugh the 
 following market-day — remained for weeks 
 where it was stuck, along with others, in 
 the leaden frame-work of the glass screen 
 round the bar of the " Unicorn." 
 
 Hugh had depended on Mrs Leicester 
 to become the bearer of this packet, and 
 had sought her out for the purpose ; but, 
 althouo-h she had done her utmost to bring 
 matters to this issue, she discreetly declined 
 to make her complicity known. Nay, she 
 went so far as to say that Hugh had been 
 precipitate, and had carried matters further 
 than ever she had expected ; and, when
 
 Sybilla. 7 1 
 
 brought shortly to book by her nephew, 
 boldly declared she thought he would 
 have asked the old gentleman's consent, 
 and not have carried his treasure off on the 
 sly. She had disclaimed all knowledge of 
 the affair to Ursula, she owned, and it 
 would never do to carry their letters and 
 prove herself a go-between at last. 
 
 Hugh stood aghast at her barefaced 
 double-dealing. With a muttered some- 
 thing that was not a blessing, he turned on 
 his heel in search of another messenger ; 
 and, finding no one sufficiently trustworthy 
 who was willing to undertake the embassy 
 and brave Thomas Venables' displeasure, he 
 carried the bulky missive to the " Unicorn," 
 and paid the customary fee for its display 
 against the dim pane, nothing doubting it 
 would reach his new father-in-law in a week 
 or so. 
 
 Farmers came in week by week, and 
 country squires, who read the superscrip- 
 tion and shrugged their shoulders, for the 
 story of the runaway match had spread far 
 and wide ; but Thomas Venables had never
 
 72 Sybilla. 
 
 crossed the threshold of the inn or shown 
 his face in Altringham from the day his 
 idoHsed daughter had disQ^raced herself 
 and him by her flight. 
 
 He kept within his own grounds and 
 excluded visitors, a stern, self-contained 
 man, whose contracted brows alone told 
 the pain within. 
 
 To Squire Gerard alone were his gates 
 freely open, and to him not so much for 
 converse as for companionship. They had 
 both loved the same object, and lost. Her 
 name was never mentioned between them, 
 but they looked in each other's faces, 
 grasped each other's hands, and knew 
 their sympathy was mutual. 
 
 There had been the like sensitive disin- 
 clination for "greetings in the market-place," 
 and the free questions and comments of 
 other men. For those were days of coarse 
 jest and badinage, when no wound was 
 sacred from rouo-h handline. 
 
 The younger man was by nature the 
 more elastic, and the sooner inclined to 
 seek relief in crowds. It was he who
 
 Sybilla. 7S 
 
 found the packet addressed to "Thomas 
 Venables, Esquire," in the bar window of 
 the " Unicorn," a month after it had been 
 placed there, and volunteered to carry it 
 to the Oaklands. 
 
 But the intelligence conveyed in the 
 long-delayed missives — that Sybilla was 
 the wife of Hugh Furnival, had been 
 united to him in Prestbury Church by his 
 cousin, the Rev. Thomas Coppock, who 
 had journeyed from Manchester to per- 
 form the ceremony — had been rudely anti- 
 cipated, and all there was of deferential 
 entreaty for reconciliation was lost. It 
 was too late. 
 
 Altringham's one lawyer was closeted 
 with Mr Venables in his library, when the 
 squire — who bore his own disappointment 
 manfully — entered. A marriage certificate 
 and other papers lay on the table. 
 
 "See, Gerard," cried the old man bitterly, 
 " that harpy Furnival has not long waited 
 to lay his claws on the three thousand 
 pounds her uncle left the girl ! " He did 
 not say " Sybilla." " WeJl, she has flung
 
 74 Sybilla. 
 
 herself 2i\N2iy ; let the money go after her. 
 And tell them, sir" (to the attorney), "to 
 make the most of it, for not one penny- 
 piece will she have of mine, now or ever ! 
 The ingrate ! " 
 
 " I found this at the ' Unicorn,' sir. It 
 has been lying there a month at least," said 
 the squire, with a stifled sigh, handing him 
 the package. " I think it is from — from 
 — her." 
 
 A briorht fire was blazino- between the 
 brass dogs on the hearth. Barely was the 
 superscription glanced at when the un- 
 opened package was flung into the flames, 
 and all that might perchance have softened 
 his austerity smouldered to ashes. 
 
 The intervention and remonstrance of 
 the other two were of no avail. 
 
 Gerard's love was of a noble order, and 
 he endeavoured to eflect a reconciliation. 
 
 He might as well have tried persuasion 
 to a rock. 
 
 The certificate was pushed across the 
 table to the squire of Riddings. 
 
 " Coppock ! " exclaimed he ; " surely not
 
 Sybil la. 75 
 
 the young parson I saw at the tanner's a 
 while back ? " 
 
 " Ay," answered Mr Venables grimly ; 
 " a nephew of his, the son of the man who 
 made my coats when I cared to pay for 
 fashion. The nephew of the woman whose 
 house I now hold." 
 
 " Was not Mrs Leicester a Coppock ?" 
 put the squire meditatively, the paper still 
 in his hand. 
 
 " Ay," jerked out the exasperated father ; 
 "and I hear, now it is too late, that they 
 are kin to the Furnivals. There has been 
 a plot, a vile plot, to rob me of my child's 
 duty and affection ; and that woman Lei- 
 cester coming and going, with her smooth 
 face, has been the prime mover from first 
 to last ! S/ic comes here no more." There 
 was a brief pause ; then, turning to the 
 lawyer, he went on, in changed tones, 
 slowly and deliberately, as if delivering a 
 fiat, — " In three days, master lawyer, have 
 the transfer-deed in readiness, and a quit- 
 tance for all that is hard cash. I will 
 trouble you to make my will at the same
 
 76 Sybilla. 
 
 time — and here. Good day ! " and the 
 lawyer was dismissed. 
 
 By the following Saturday SylDilla's own 
 fortune had passed into the hands of her 
 husband, and her father had disinherited 
 her ; had made a will which did not even 
 contain her name. 
 
 If Mrs Leicester had any ulterior motive 
 beyond love for her own nephew, she had 
 made a mistake, had done her own busi- 
 ness effectually. The gate of the Oaklands 
 was barred against her, Mr Venables 
 passed her by in the lanes, or in the church 
 porch, without recognition, though she 
 curtsied low ; and, to her further mortifica- 
 tion, the tanner's wife was there to see ! 
 
 To Sybilla it was all heartbreaking. She 
 had run counter to her father's will, deluded 
 into the belief that his love was too strong 
 to cast her off; that she had only to sue 
 for forgiveness and obtain pardon ; that 
 she would be recalled, and Hugh with her ; 
 and that all would end happily as a fairy 
 tale. 
 
 With the making of her father's will, and
 
 Sybilla. jj 
 
 his stern message, all her bright hopes of 
 reconciliation died out, and she stood 
 aghast with dismay. 
 
 Her first impulse was to gallop off to 
 Timperley and force herself into his pres- 
 ence, but Hugh restrained her. 
 
 " Why should you abase yourself only to 
 be spurned ? " he asked, " Would you go 
 to hear your husband maligned ? Leave 
 him alone. He will come round in time. 
 So show a brave front, Sybilla mine ; " and 
 with his kisses and caresses he strove to 
 chase her compunctions. 
 
 He assured her he loved her, not her 
 money, and cared little if her father cut 
 her off without a shilling. There would 
 be good days coming ere long, when he 
 would carve a fortune for her, and, may be, 
 win the Oaklands to boot, in spite of 
 parchment. A covert allusion to the re- 
 turn of the exiled Stuarts to the throne, 
 which she well understood. 
 
 Sybilla was somewhat bewildered be- 
 tween her father's loyalty to the king upon 
 the throne, and her husband's loyalty to
 
 yS Sybilla. 
 
 the king without a kingdom ; but the fire 
 and enthusiasm in Huo-h's handsome face 
 and glowing speech carried her with him, 
 if not to conviction. 
 
 They were still living at Spring-Holm 
 farm when Hucjh came home from Altrino-- 
 ham laden with coin and credentials for 
 the remainder of his wife's three thousand 
 pounds ; and there is no doubt the cash in 
 hand tended to soothe the irritation and 
 ill-humour visible in Farmer Furnival and 
 his dame at the disinheritance of the " lady- 
 wife Hugh had brought home to them with 
 no more clothes than would fill a pair o' 
 saddle-bags." But their equanimity was 
 speedily disturbed. 
 
 So long as Sybilla could build on a recall 
 home to all her possessions there, she re- 
 sisted her husband's offer to replenish her 
 scanty wardrobe. But now that the last 
 hope was dispelled, and that he had means 
 of her own at command, she was as anxious 
 to equip herself as any other bride. 
 
 A horse was saddled, Hugh mounted 
 Sybilla on a pillion behind him, they forded
 
 Sybilla. 79 
 
 the briofht Bollin, where is now a bridsfe of 
 many arches, and rode off to Macclesfield 
 the next market-day to visit the mercer's, 
 and mantua - maker's, and cordwainer's. 
 And so proud was he of his bride, and so 
 anxious that she should not feel she had 
 married beneath her, that he was lavish 
 rather than wise in the choice of materials 
 and habiliments, over-ruling her better 
 judgment. 
 
 Moreover, Sybilla rode back to Spring- 
 Holm on a horse he had bouQrht for her 
 own use, with a fine new saddle. 
 
 There v/ere glum looks in the farm 
 kitchen that night. 
 
 " Marry come up ! Would nothing suit 
 my lady but a horse to ride, and silks and 
 
 furbelows, as if she had married the 
 
 •\ J) 
 squire : 
 
 " She brought the money to buy them, 
 and has a right to have them," answered 
 Hugh testily. 
 
 " Thou'll soon gallop the money away, 
 my lad, at the pace thou'rt going," his 
 father put in.
 
 8o Sybilla. 
 
 " Ay ! and plain linen and linsey might 
 serve the turn of a farmer's wife, if she had 
 a tabinet for Sundays, without fal-lals. 
 An' be those fine shoes, with roses and 
 high heels, to carry her into the shippons 
 a-milking ? " questioned the dame sarcas- 
 tically. 
 
 " Sybilla milk ! That's Betty's work ! " 
 cried the young man sharply. 
 
 " And why not Sybilla's. Be she too 
 fine or too proud to milk a cow ? " 
 
 " Neither too fine nor too proud to be 
 useful. But I'll not have her asked to 
 milk the cows." 
 
 " Hoity-toity, now ! A farmer's wife and 
 not milk a cow ! Thou's brought thy pigs 
 to a pretty market." 
 
 This was the first altercation between 
 Hugh and the old people over his "lady- 
 wife," but by no means the last. And they 
 were not carried on in undertones to spare 
 Sybilla's ears ; and not all Hugh's fondness 
 or all his care could shield her from rude 
 shocks. 
 
 There is a good deal of rough and slop-
 
 Sybilla. 8 1 
 
 ping work about a farmhouse, and Sybilla 
 did not care to handle a mop and pail, any 
 more than to carry a brimming milk-pail 
 on her head to the dairy ; and the good 
 dame thought her squeamish. 
 
 She would have helped the dame with 
 her cookery ; but there her very skill was 
 at fault. " What good be kickshaws for 
 hungry men ?" was asked ; and her delicate 
 pastry was pronounced " nothing to bite at." 
 
 " Get to thy wheel, lass ! " the old woman 
 would say ; " thou'rt fit for nothing in the 
 Varsal world but to spin." 
 
 And Sybilla, who had ruled so proudly 
 and ably her father's household, with ser- 
 vants to do her bidding, and friends to say 
 " Well done ! " sat down to spin her flaxen 
 thread, or pace backwards and forwards 
 drawing out the yarn of wool, with a mono- 
 tonous hum and burr-r-r in her ears that 
 was no longer a song of hope or joy, but 
 a dreary, wearisome drone, which seemed 
 like a wail for the years that were gone 
 and the home she had forsaken. 
 
 There she was loved and respected, her 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 82 Sybilla. 
 
 own mistress and that of others, to whom 
 her word was law ; there she had a private 
 room for work or recreation (she did not say 
 " devotion ") ; there were more books than 
 she cared to read ; there was her sweet 
 spinet wherewith to while away a vacant 
 hour, and so win her father's thanks ; there, 
 too, she had the constant interchange of 
 thought with a man of birth and breeding ; 
 there she was courted and admired. 
 
 Here all, save Hugh, were coarse and 
 unmannerly, and her very refinement was 
 held in contempt ; here her domestic arts 
 and accomplishments were rated as below 
 the skill of the lowest drudge on the 
 farm ; books and music were not — she had 
 been told " the best spinet was a cheese- 
 press ; " here she was a wife without a wife's 
 authority, something between mistress and 
 maid, yet neither. And, worst of all, here 
 there was no privacy, not even for long- 
 neglected prayer and self-communion. Not 
 even at church could she feel herself alone, 
 for there she occupied another seat, was 
 made to feel her lowered rank. The bene-
 
 Sybilla, 83 
 
 factor's name writ up in letters of gold was 
 no longer hers. Hats that had been lowly- 
 doffed at Miss Venables' approach barely 
 left their wearers' sconces ; gentry, who 
 had formerly chatted familiarly on their 
 way through the churchyard, passed her 
 by with a bare recognition. 
 
 All this and more the big wheel seemed 
 to burr-r-r in her ears, until half wild she 
 would tear away the bunch of loose wool 
 from her waist (for the wool-spinner 
 wrought much as does the rope-maker 
 still from a bunch of hemp or tow at 
 the waist), and rush out into the garden 
 or meadows to rid herself of its monoton- 
 ous drone and suggestive undertones. 
 
 Or she would rush to the stable and, if 
 Hugh was not at hand, saddle her horse 
 herself — she had now no obsequious serv- 
 ine-man at command — and set off at a 
 gallop to shake her rebellious heart into 
 its place, and school herself into the lesson 
 she was learning so late — submission. 
 
 " As you make your bed so you must 
 lie," Dame Furnival had said to her before
 
 84 Sybilla. 
 
 her marrlaofe was three weeks old ; but she 
 was finding the bed harder every day, and 
 it was not softened by the reflection that 
 it was of her own making. 
 
 Only in Hugh's love had she any hope 
 or comfort, and even he seemed another 
 man on the farm and away from it. He 
 was no more his own master than she was 
 mistress there, and they were both made 
 to feel it. 
 
 There was evidently some disappoint- 
 ment either in the girl herself or her en- 
 dowment, and there was a quarrel between 
 the farmer and his son because he re- 
 fused to hand over more than a third of 
 her cash into his keeping. 
 
 Indeed, quarrels were not infrequent, 
 for the father was as hot-tempered and im- 
 petuous as his son, and often some short- 
 coming or fashion of Sybilla's caused the 
 first word. The hours she wasted on 
 horseback, and the extravagance of keep- 
 ing a horse for neither cart nor plough, 
 were standing grievances. 
 
 Hugh was fiery in defence of his be-
 
 Sybilla. 85 
 
 loved and beautiful wife ; but a wife Is 
 never the better loved for needing defence 
 against her husband's kin, and Sybilla 
 began to fear this. 
 
 She had another cause for apprehension 
 — a vague something, she could not tell 
 what. 
 
 His cousin, the Rev. Thomas Coppock, 
 had long been gone from Spring-Holm, 
 but letters, mysteriously delivered, which 
 came from him to Hugh, were at once 
 destroyed, and were answered as secretly 
 and mysteriously, or she thought so. At 
 such times she would observe the heads of 
 Hu^h and his father close tooether as if 
 in earnest conference, but always out of 
 earshot. 
 
 Her father's bitter invectives against 
 Hugh as a 'plotting Jacobite' now re- 
 curred to her, and she trembled lest some 
 harm should come to him with all this 
 mystery. 
 
 She upbraided Hugh with having secrets 
 she did not share, reminding him of his 
 oft-repeated vows to share every thought
 
 86 Sybilla. 
 
 of his heart with her ; but he only patted 
 her on the cheek, and answered, laugh- 
 ingly,— 
 
 " Ah ! I was a lover then, Sybilla, I am 
 a husband now ; and, dearest, if it was 
 wise and needful for thee to keep a 
 secret from thy father, may it not be as 
 wise and as needful for me to keep a 
 secret from my wife ? " 
 
 It was lightly and gaily spoken, and the 
 argument was conclusively sealed with a 
 kiss on her brow, for Hugh was as master- 
 ful as her father ; but he had roused a 
 thought never to slumber again. 
 
 He, who had prompted and urged her 
 to deceive her father, was the first to 
 retaliate, if not taunt her with it. She 
 was told she could expect no more con- 
 fidence from her husband than she had 
 rendered to her parent ; and in anguish 
 and bitterness she asked herself over and 
 over again, " Was it either wise or needful 
 to have secrets from my father ? " The 
 unwisdom had become painfully apparent. 
 
 Not that Hugh loved her less, but that
 
 Sybilla. 87 
 
 others loved her not, and he did not trust 
 her wholly. 
 
 She began, too, to feel that her father 
 had known more than he had told ; and 
 that, if prejudice had blinded him, prepos- 
 session had equally blinded her. 
 
 Sybilla had been married little more 
 than six months, yet she had begun to 
 repent her disobedience and precipitation, 
 and to long ardently for her old home 
 and the good father she had so unwisely 
 quitted. 
 
 Now and then Hugh had met his Aunt 
 Leicester in the Altringham market-place, 
 and had even been passed by Thomas 
 Venables with a set face and darkening 
 brows ; but he never brought her back 
 any cheering news or any prospect of 
 pardon, and he refused to take her with 
 him on market-days, lest she should en- 
 counter her father and be as sternly met. 
 
 For some time she had turned her deft 
 hand to butter-making on the farm, but 
 she had not brought down her pride to 
 stand in the market and offer it for sale, as
 
 88 Sybtlla. • 
 
 did other farmers' wives. And Dame 
 Furnival was as strongly against her "go- 
 ing on an idle jaunt" as was Hugh in his 
 care for her. 
 
 At last, unable to bear her own pain, 
 she mounted her horse one fine spring 
 morninof when the laburnums were shed- 
 ding their golden tears, and the lilacs began 
 to fade ; and, heeding not the bird-melody 
 of the season, she patted the neck of 
 Chevalier, and was off through the intricate 
 network of green lanes, and along a high- 
 way almost as green, to the beloved old 
 home at Timperley, resolved to throw 
 herself at her father's feet and entreat 
 forgiveness. 
 
 She had only memory as a guide ; me- 
 mory of the flitting when she rode so un- 
 willingly on by her father's side — memory 
 of a starlit ride by the same route on a 
 pillion behind Hugh to meet the Rev. 
 Thomas Coppock in Prestbury Church, 
 when the vicar warily held aloof, and the 
 clerk who brought the keys and signed the 
 book as witness seemed half afraid.
 
 Sybilla. 8^ 
 
 All that and more came back to her 
 in that long rough ride, at least sixteen 
 or eighteen miles (Hugh, riding across 
 hedges, ditches, brooks, or rivers, had 
 been wont to halve it, spurred by love). 
 She rode on regardless of fatigue, with 
 her brain at high pressure, rehearsing 
 as she went all she would say to 
 soften her father's heart, her own the 
 while beating faster than Chevalier's 
 hoofs. 
 
 A new brick wall, a solid oaken gate, 
 had arisen to shut her out of the Oak- 
 lands, and no prayer of hers could 
 move a bar. Josh looked out through 
 a tiny trap, muttered " Oi daurna!" and 
 then shut it in her face. 
 
 Faint, sick, dizzy, she attempted to turn 
 her horse's head, then, reeling in the 
 saddle, urged him on. 
 
 A poor weaver, who had a cottage on 
 the confines of Baguley Moor, to the north 
 of the Oaklands, found her lying on the 
 sward by the wayside half-a-mile from 
 Thomas Venables' gate. A riderless hon-^
 
 90 
 
 Sybilla. 
 
 flying- past with bridle loose had led him to 
 look for her. 
 
 The canvas poke which had held warp 
 and weft for his loom was thrown down 
 in his haste to succour. Many a piece of 
 homespun had filled his loom for Miss 
 Venables ; many a coin had found its way 
 to his pocket from hers ; many a gift to 
 his children ; many a kind word had she 
 said to cheer them. And her luckless 
 love-match had been the talk of the 
 country-side.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FORTUNES WHEEL. 
 
 HEN Chevalier found his way 
 back to Spring- Holm without 
 his mistress, all was already in 
 commotion. Sybilla's absence 
 from the mid-day meal had brought down 
 on Hugh the free comments and sharp 
 censure of his mother on the wife he had 
 chosen, and he answered hotly, as usual, 
 the father striking in, regardless of the 
 listening men and maids at the common 
 table. 
 
 Already stung by his mother's taunts, 
 the empty saddle drove Hugh Furnival 
 almost frantic. Half mad, he flung him-
 
 92 Sybilla. 
 
 self across his own fresh horse, barebacked, 
 to scour the country in search of his wife, 
 all the men on the farm turninof out like- 
 wise. 
 
 Night fell before he found her, lying 
 unconscious and helpless in the weaver's 
 lonely cottage ; a bare-legged lad de- 
 spatched by Barnes to Mrs Leicester — 
 no other than sharp little Billy — having 
 met him by the way, his grimy face all 
 streaked with the course of tears. 
 
 It was a sorry sight for Hugh Furnival, 
 when he bent his head to the low doorway 
 of the hut, built at some time by Barnes 
 himself from turf and stones found on the 
 moor. Bare enough was the room, in 
 which the loom by the broad low window 
 was the chief furniture. A roughly-made 
 table, with three legs, and a bench as 
 rough made up the list, if we except a 
 stool or so. The floor was simply of clay, 
 hardened and smoothed by long trampling. 
 
 On the bench, where a bundle of weft 
 had been placed for a pillow, lay his fair 
 Sybilla, her flaxen hair all in disorder, a
 
 Sybilla. 9 ^ 
 
 J 
 
 spot of unnatural red on either cheek, and 
 a strange, incoherent medley of words on 
 her tongue. 
 
 The weaver's wife, whose linen mutch 
 was white and clean, though her blue linen 
 over-gown and homespun petticoat were 
 none of the newest, was endeavouring to 
 make her swallow a soothing potion she 
 had concocted from herbs, bunches of 
 which decorated the rafters of the low, 
 thatched roof. 
 
 Barnes had found her apparently life- 
 less, and all his wife's homely skill had 
 been exercised to restore animation. 
 
 Hugh's hand was an open one, and both 
 the weaver and his wife had reason to 
 rejoice over their humanity. 
 
 " Poor young thing," said they, " it was 
 little enough we could do for her ; didn't 
 she save us fro' clemmin', an' help to keep 
 the loom aofoin' } " 
 
 The sward had been soft, and the 
 mental shock had been worse to Sybilla 
 than that of her fall. Barnes had gone 
 to Altringham himself for an apothecary.
 
 94 Sybilla. 
 
 The patient was at once " blooded " by the 
 man of lancets and boluses ; and, before 
 night, was pronounced out of immediate 
 danger. 
 
 But Sybilla never went back to Spring- 
 Holm, 
 
 She was carried with care and caution 
 to Mrs Leicester's for recovery, and then 
 Hugh severed his connection with the 
 farm, and bore his wife off to Manchester. 
 There his Uncle Coppock, the fashionable 
 tailor of Short-Millgate (the chief thorough- 
 fare from the Market Place to the Col- 
 legiate Church), opened his doors to receive 
 them, at the instance of his son, the Rev. 
 Thomas Coppock, B.A,, who had married 
 them. 
 
 Whether any inkling of this disastrous 
 occurrence — almost at his own gate — ever 
 reached the ears of Thomas Venables, was 
 unknown. He had forbidden the utter- 
 ance of his daughter's name, and he made 
 no sign. 
 
 Squire Gerard heard, and his sad eyes 
 grew sadder.
 
 Sybilla. 95 
 
 In Manchester a new world seemed to 
 open out to Sybilla Furnival ; and her 
 Hugh also seemed to become another 
 man. It was not alone that he cast the 
 slough of his country garb and came out a 
 full-blown beau, with wide coat-skirts and 
 ruffled wrists, snuff-box, periwig and gold- 
 laced hat. He had also cast aside his 
 country manners and conversation, talked 
 more of swords than of scythes, and dis- 
 cussed matters with his uncle's many 
 visitors, which Sybilla feared were fraught 
 with dangrer. 
 
 And much Sybilla wondered at the 
 number and character of those visitors to 
 John Coppock, the Millgate tailor — cus- 
 tomers they could scarcely all be, though 
 she knew tailors did occasionally work for 
 women as well as for men. 
 
 Sedan chairs set down dignified, long- 
 stomachered dames, with sacques of silken 
 damask or tabinet over enormous hoops, 
 with hoods to cover their powdered heads 
 and screen their faces. Men of fortune 
 and position also came, exchanged a word
 
 96 Sybilla. 
 
 or two with John Coppock or his sons, 
 shook hands with Hugh warmly, and went, 
 only to re-appear another day. 
 
 Amongst these a certain Dr Byrom was 
 the most prominent, and Sybilla liked him 
 well, for, though only a teacher of a short- 
 hand which he had invented, he was a wit 
 and a poet ; his humour was overflowing, 
 and he had always a verse or an epigram 
 at command. 
 
 He was a man about fifty- three, with a 
 kindly, intelligent face under his full wig ; 
 and he took quite a fatherly interest in the 
 young couple, the secret of which is easily 
 told. He belonged to an old, proud and 
 wealthy family, owning large estates near 
 Manchester ; and, marrying his cousin 
 without his father's consent, had been 
 abruptly discarded, and never received 
 into favour. 
 
 His wife and daughter were introduced 
 to Mrs Furnival, and after that she was a 
 welcome visitor at the house of the Byroms 
 in Hanging-Ditch (a ditch only perpetuated 
 by name) ; little Mrs Byrom entering fully
 
 Sybilla. 97 
 
 into her anxieties, well remembering the 
 sorrows and struggles of their own early 
 married life. Her sympathy was very 
 cheering to Sybilla, but even she seemed to 
 have a mysterious air of reservation at times. 
 
 Now and again a card-party would gather 
 under the roof of the Coppocks, but there 
 was more of conversation than cards, and 
 much of the former was enigmatical to 
 Sybilla. The introduction of a bowl of 
 punch and another of water was the signal 
 for these parties to break up. Every glass 
 was then filled to the brim, the hand that 
 held it was extended over the water-bowl. 
 "To the King!" was said, loyally, and in 
 honour to the toast every glass was emptied 
 to the dreofs. 
 
 On the first of these occasions to which 
 Sybilla was admitted, she, who knew that 
 none but friends of the exiled Stuarts were 
 there received, expressed her surprise. 
 
 "The king?" said she. 
 
 " Tush ! my child," explained Dr Byrom, 
 " do you not see, we drink the king — over 
 the water. God bless the kine ! " 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 Sybil la, 
 
 " Then you mean the Pretender ? " added 
 she, innocently enough. 
 
 " Hush ! my dear, I mean — " and he 
 nodded significantly, — 
 
 ' God bless the king — I mean our faith's defender ; 
 God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender ; 
 But who pretender is, and who is king, 
 God bless my soul, that's quite another thing.'" 
 
 And, with a flourish of his hat, he bowed 
 himself out. 
 
 Her father was right. Hugh and his 
 friends certainly were Jacobites, but she 
 had not altogether learned to think with 
 her husband that the Georges were 
 usurpers, or that it was the duty of every 
 rigfht-minded man or woman to strive to 
 bringr the banished Stuarts back. 
 
 Meanwhile they were living merrily, 
 and she had no suspicion how rapidly her 
 three thousand pounds were melting. 
 Hugh was always sanguine, and spoke of 
 buying a commission in the army, as if 
 that were a certain provision for the 
 future ; and she, in her ignorance, be- 
 lieved him.
 
 Sybilla, 99 
 
 During this time there was a boy born 
 to them ; and the pair, who agreed that 
 he was a perfect marvel of a babe, had 
 a warm dispute concerning his name. 
 Nothing less than that of the exiled young 
 prince would do for Hugh, and Sybilla 
 was as steadfast in adopting that of her 
 own father. It ended in a compromise. 
 When the child was baptised by the Rev. 
 Thomas Coppock, he named it Charles 
 Thomas ; but those around noticed, as the 
 child erew, that the father called him 
 Charlie, the mother always Tom. 
 
 It was apparently a slight difference, 
 but it was a difference, and told of a deep- 
 seated yearning for the father and the 
 home she had lost, for which her marriage 
 had not compensated. 
 
 The child had seen the light three 
 months when 1745 opened its tearful 
 eyes ; and, as the months went round, so 
 did he grow and thrive, and still they 
 linofered at the fashionable tailor's, free 
 with cash and no burden to their host. 
 
 Summer had ripened its harvests in the
 
 I oo Sybilla. 
 
 field when another harvest began to ripen 
 for the field, and first whispers, then 
 rumours, confirmed that Charles Edward, 
 the young Pretender, had landed in Scot- 
 land, and that there was a general gather- 
 ing of the clans around him. 
 
 There was a general stir among the 
 Manchester Jacobites, and sure in the 
 Coppock house, where was a constant 
 comingr and o-oina-. 
 
 Hugh Furnival and Thomas Coppock, 
 the one on his own horse, the other on 
 Sybilla's, rode away on secret embassies, 
 and brought back news of the Prince's 
 glorious advance, the proclamation of King 
 James, the success and ovation of his pro- 
 gress. Then that Sir John Cope, sent to 
 oppose him, was defeated near Edinburgh, 
 at Prestonpans ; and all was glee and 
 enthusiasm at the Coppocks'. Only 
 Sybilla had forebodings. 
 
 The year had travelled on to the closing 
 days of cheerless November. The Prince 
 — who had certainly wasted time in Carlisle 
 — was in Preston, within thirty miles of
 
 Sybilla. loi 
 
 Manchester, and the bridges over the 
 Mersey were broken down to arrest his 
 progress south. 
 
 On the morning of the 27th, a single 
 sergeant, who had without orders marched 
 from Preston during the night, entered 
 Manchester with one drnmnier and a 
 woman, wearing the white cockade, and 
 beating up for recruits — and he got them, 
 if not in the numbers he had counted on. 
 
 At nightfall came Prince Charles with 
 the vanguard of his army. A fine brick 
 mansion, standing back from Market-Stead 
 Lane, was requisitioned as his palace. A 
 bellman went round the town — not a 
 very large town then — to give notice of 
 levies to be exacted, and of quarters re- 
 quired for the soldiers of King James, and 
 all the place was in an uproar. The loyal 
 inhabitants shook and trembled, and parted 
 with their coin on compulsion. 
 
 The Jacobites, in high feather, illuminated 
 their houses, and pressed forward to do 
 homage. And from the high double steps 
 of the "palace" the Prince harangued the
 
 102 Sybilla. 
 
 multitude assembled in the open area in 
 front. There Colonel Townley proudly 
 drew up his Manchester regiment, three 
 hundred strong, to which the Rev. Thomas 
 Coppock had been appointed chaplain, and 
 in which a younger brother, John, and 
 Hugh Furnival had obtained commissions ; 
 though how much of Sybilla's money had 
 gone to the purchase she, poor girl, never 
 knew. 
 
 When, on the ist of December, the 
 Manchester regiment marched, with one 
 division of Hio;hlanders, throuo-h Altringr- 
 ham, en route for Derby as a stage towards 
 London (having bridged the river with 
 felled poplar trees and planks), Sybilla 
 mounted on Chevalier, with her boy before 
 her, rode alongside the marching regiment, 
 keeping as close to her husband as circum- 
 stances would permit, sad enough at heart. 
 She saw the wool-comber looking out over 
 the half-door of his shop, and drew in her 
 breath with a gasp. 
 
 The boy clapped his little hands at the 
 music, and just then Sybilla's eyes encoun-
 
 Sybilla. 103 
 
 tered those of her father, standing sternly 
 erect by Squire Gerard's side. 
 
 A look of mingled sorrow, scorn, and 
 shame crossed his fine face, and then he 
 turned away. 
 
 She would have cried out to him, but 
 her tongue seemed tied ; another moment, 
 and he was gone. 
 
 How keenly the contrast smote her 
 between this ride throuQ^h Altrino^ham 
 market-place and that other when she was 
 Sybilla Venables ! It was overpowering, 
 for she had been reared in allegiance to 
 the reigning dynasty, and had not even the 
 enthusiasm of a righteous cause to uphold 
 her. Her child's prattle scarcely roused her. 
 
 The weather broke. The boy became 
 weary, uncomfortable, and restless ; she had 
 much ado to keep her cloak around him. 
 Hugh gave his " bonnie Charlie " a caress- 
 ing word now and then, himself elate ; but 
 her heart sank. 
 
 There was a halt at Macclesfield for rest 
 and refreshment, the gathering in of strag- 
 glers and recruits ; but when they reached
 
 I04 Sybilla. 
 
 Derby on the 4th, Sybilla was utterly worn 
 out, and so was the poor little fellow in 
 her lap. 
 
 Wet, hungry, fatigued — they were by no 
 means alone in their discomfort — yet 
 neither shelter nor food was provided. The 
 mayor had flown, and not until an alder- 
 man (too lame to decamp) was forcibly 
 made to proclaim " King James," could free 
 quarters be exacted ; and then the people 
 were unwilling to receive them. Hugh, 
 coming with the advance, in white laced 
 blue uniform, with scarlet vest, at last 
 secured a large house for the ladies ; but 
 the troops pouring in six a-breast, many 
 with disordered dress, and dirty, footsore, 
 and exhausted, were marshalled in the 
 market-place under their drooping stan- 
 dard — St Andrew's red cross on a white 
 field — to await the coming of the Prince ; 
 the bagpipes playing to keep their spirits up. 
 
 Not until dusk did the Prince arrive — 
 a tall, straight, handsome man, wrapped in 
 a Highland plaid, with a broadsword by his 
 side, and a white bob-wig under his gold-
 
 Sybilla. 105 
 
 laced green bonnet — and not until then 
 could the soldiers be billeted or dispersed 
 to find quarters for themselves ; many hud- 
 dling together in sheds and passages, 
 wherever there was the shelter of a roof, 
 scramblincr and almost fiorhtinor for food. 
 The Prince himself found quarters at Lord 
 Exeter's house, at the end of Full Street. 
 
 Levies and exactions in the name of 
 " King James " were the order of the night 
 and of the morrow, but of these Sybilla was 
 ignorant. She saw little of Hugh or of his 
 cousins, until drum and bagpipe summoned 
 her with the rest to All Saints' Church at 
 six in the evening to hear the young army 
 chaplain preach, as he had preached to 
 them in the Old Church, Manchester. 
 There was rest and repose for her in 
 the service until the fiery eloquence of 
 Thomas Coppock roused and excited her. 
 " He has the fiery zeal of a martyr," she 
 whispered to Hugh, little thinking how 
 many martyrs were gathered under that 
 sacred roof, martyrs to a hopeless cause. 
 
 It was a sermon to inspire flagging and
 
 1 06 Sybilla. 
 
 drooping men ; for even on that Thursday 
 night there were doubts and fears in the 
 breasts of many that the projected encamp- 
 ment on Finchley Common would never be 
 reached. The people did not rise as ex- 
 pected. French and Welsh levies did not 
 appear ; and on the morrow dissatisfaction 
 reached a climax; even sanguine Hugh 
 advocatinor retreat before Kine Georee's 
 forces rendered it impossible. 
 
 After a solemn council of war, " retreat " 
 was the word. And if advance meant 
 discomfort, what must retreat have meant. 
 
 Manchester was entered in very different 
 array and spirits on Monday the 9th. 
 There was no cordial reception from even 
 a section of the community. The wise 
 and merciful policy of the chief merchants 
 alone prevented hostilities and loss of life ; 
 they were harassed and pelted by the mob 
 as they went ; and had not Sybilla been a 
 good horsewoman she would never have 
 kept her seat and guarded her boy, her 
 steed, though jaded was so harried. 
 
 Such a revolution had set in that even
 
 Sybilla. 107 
 
 John Coppock, the tailor, was ahnost afraid 
 to receive his sons and the Furnivals 
 under his roof, and refused point-blank to 
 take charge of Sybilla and her child, whom 
 Hugh was not only anxious to leave in 
 safety, but had begun to feel burdensome. 
 
 Something of this she had seen in Derby, 
 when the difficulty to obtain quarters for 
 the officers' wives had disconcerted him ; 
 their after discomfort, no less than his own, 
 and the fretful restlessness of his boy stung 
 him to irritability, and he blamed her 
 angrily for her inability to " keep Charlie 
 quiet." 
 
 During the hurried retreat she had seen 
 little of her husband, and when she did 
 there was little comfort to be p-iven. Foot- 
 sore and weary with the hasty march, he 
 was scarcely disposed for sympathy with 
 the fatigue of one on horseback, and the 
 sorrow he expressed for bringing wife and 
 child into such straits was as much for 
 himself as for them. 
 
 Loth as Sybilla was to separate from her 
 husband, all the mother spoke within her
 
 1 08 Sybilla. 
 
 when John Coppock, having refused more 
 than temporary shelter, she went with her 
 boy in her arms through the rabble in the 
 streets, to seek a home with the Byroms, 
 whilst Hugh went on with the troops. 
 
 Compassionate enough was Mrs Byrom, 
 but her answer was, '''' I dare not ! Byrom 
 will have to flee and hide himself. If I 
 were known to harbour and shelter the wife 
 and child of what they call ' a rebel ' in 
 arms, I should bring destruction on our- 
 selves. / dare not, my dear, for the sake 
 of my own daughter and our home, much 
 as I feel for you both." 
 
 " Then there is nothino- for us but to pfo 
 forward," said Sybilla despondingly, "and 
 hope for the best. But I fear we shall 
 be a sorry drag on Hugh, and how poor 
 little Tom will bear the cold and wet, I 
 know not ! " 
 
 What would the young wife have given 
 now for a father's heart and home to flee 
 to for comfort and shelter ? The recollec- 
 tion of the abundant stores and warm 
 fireside she had wilfully foregone seemed
 
 Sybilla. 1 09 
 
 to mock her misery. How often did Dame 
 Furnival's harsh proverb recur to her. 
 
 She was finding the bed she had made 
 for herself wofully hard. 
 
 Pass we briefly over the hurried, anxious, 
 miserable retreat from Manchester to Car- 
 Hsle in the bitterest mid-winter, through 
 towns and villages where the populace were 
 either openly hostile, or afraid to show 
 favour or compassion — for it had come 
 to that. 
 
 Sybilla was no modern fine lady. She 
 had been accustomed to brave the weather, 
 but not privation, and both had to be met ; 
 and, though a good horsewoman, had not 
 been trained to keep in a saddle day after 
 day, with barely an intermission ; nor yet 
 to carry a child fifteen months old on her 
 lap, huddled up in her cloak. 
 
 There was a halt and a day's rest on the 
 1 2th at Preston, whilst compulsory levies 
 were made on the inhabitants, or she would 
 have given in utterly. 
 
 She was too proud to complain, whilst 
 not only her dear Hugh, but women and
 
 no Sybilla. 
 
 children marched on foot with shoes so 
 worn that people on the route were robbed 
 of theirs to supply the need. And what 
 became of the weariness of riding, when 
 first one and then another dropped out of 
 the line of march to perish of cold, hunger, 
 and fatigue by the wayside ; and strong 
 men fought and contended for the horses 
 of others. 
 
 No one was heard to envy the Prince 
 the black horse he bestrode ; but many a 
 covetous Mance and word was flunor on 
 S)billa and her black horse, with its one 
 white stocking hidden in mud. 
 
 Once or twice she voluntarily dismounted 
 to give a more weary mother a lift, and 
 she offered the like to Hugh and the Rev. 
 Thomas Coppock ; but the lieutenant said 
 he must march with his men, and the 
 chaplain that it was not for the soldier of 
 Christ to seek his own ease. 
 
 But the retreat had become a flight. Not 
 only was the small army of Highlanders 
 and English harassed by Georgian Rangers 
 as they fled, but the ruthless Duke of Cum-
 
 Sybilia. 1 1 1 
 
 berland was followino; fast with an over- 
 whelming force. 
 
 There came a rumour from the south 
 that the Pretender's French alUes had 
 landed on the coast. It was a new aspect 
 of affairs, and the Duke stopped abruptly 
 for assurance. 
 
 It was only a brief respite, but a massacre 
 was doubtless saved ; and the followers of 
 Charles Edward, utterly worn out in cross- 
 ing the Westmoreland Fells, had thereby 
 a chance to bivouac at Shap. Few were 
 the cottages, and there was no place in 
 them for Sybilia. 
 
 The ruined walls of an old abbey were 
 their only shelter from the bleak and cutting 
 north winds. Yet there, by such a fire as 
 soldiers make where wood is plentiful, she 
 accepted thankfully the coarse morsel of 
 food obtainable, fed her ravenous boy, and, 
 with him in her arms, slept on a wisp of 
 straw, with the sky for a canopy. Fatigue 
 was stronger than fear or caution, and 
 Hugh slept likewise. 
 
 There is a blast from the bagpipes. Up,
 
 1 1 2 Sybilla. 
 
 sleepers, up ! The Duke is again on the 
 march ; there is no time for slumber or 
 delay. Delicate women or hardy men must 
 alike be on the move. And now it is a 
 panic ! 
 
 But where is Chevalier ? Stolen whilst 
 his owners slept ! 
 
 There was no seekinor the horse in the 
 skurry. The wife of the lieutenant and 
 of the private were on a level now ; she 
 must foot it with the rest, and be thankful 
 she had good shoes to her feet for the 
 tramp before her. 
 
 Ten miles of the rudest road, and 
 Egmont Bridge was crossed and Penrith 
 gained. But there was no pause. Terror 
 gave her strength to carry her boy, who 
 whimpered now and then, but never cried 
 aloud. Cold and hunger and fatigue had 
 overmatched the little one's strength and 
 spirit. 
 
 Eighteen more miles before them ere 
 they could reach the stronghold they 
 sought, whilst the roar of artillery and the 
 rattle of musketry in their rear were telling
 
 Sybilla. 113 
 
 how the brave Macphersons were laying 
 down their Hves to give them a chance to 
 make good their retreat. 
 
 And now across the cultivated plain the 
 battlemented towers of Carlisle cathedral 
 and castle loom.ed in the distance, on the 
 high hill-tops, through the morning mist, 
 and hope awoke again, though every mile 
 seemed three to weary, blistered feet. 
 
 And now the English gate is open, and 
 over the bridges and up the hill stream the 
 motley and ragged regiments, and Sybilla 
 whispers to her boy, — 
 
 " Now, Tom, we are safe. We can rest 
 at last." — Safety and rest ! Ah, me ! 
 
 Carlisle was about as well prepared for 
 this second visitation of Charles Edward's 
 army as any other garrison town with a 
 roomy castle in its midst could be ; yet, for 
 all that, the inhabitants had to turn out of 
 their beds to supply the more urgent needs 
 of the newcomers. 
 
 Sybilla did not trouble herself whence 
 it came when she lay down on one of the 
 requisitioned beds in the castle itself, with 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 1 1 4 Sybilla. 
 
 little Tom in her arms. She could only 
 think that the strong walls of the city and 
 of the castle lay between them and their 
 foes. 
 
 She resigned herself to repose with a 
 delicious sense of security, and slept long. 
 With some ado Hugh obtained from the 
 bao^o-aore a change of raiment for his wife 
 and boy ; and, after a sadly-needed wash, 
 she felt refreshed and cheerful. 
 
 The child, too, laughed, and in its form- 
 less speech expressed its satisfaction. 
 
 Yet, even then, a council of war was 
 being held on which hung the balance of 
 fate. 
 
 Lord George Murray — he who had 
 driven back the English advance at Clifton 
 in the darkness of the night to cover the 
 retreat — he counselled the abandonment of 
 Carlisle and the destruction of the castle, 
 but other counsels prevailed ; and Colonel 
 Townley, with many an oath, in his excess 
 of loyalty vowed that he and his Manches- 
 ter regiment would hold Carlisle for King 
 James, until Prince Charles should return
 
 Sybilla. 115 
 
 with reinforcements to relieve him of his 
 trust. 
 
 There was a sharp debate, but the vol- 
 untary sacrifice was accepted. And a 
 sacrifice it was — or blind infatuation. 
 
 Deeply touched with this devotion, 
 Charles Edward at once appointed Colonel 
 Townley, Governor, and nominated the 
 chaplain, Thomas Coppock, Bishop of 
 Carlisle. 
 
 Then, after an address to the assembled 
 garrison, the Prince, who had led his army 
 in at the English gate on the 19th, left 
 Carlisle by the Scotch gate on the 21st, 
 and his army with him — not all, some few 
 Highlanders and Lowlanders and French 
 were left to strengthen Colonel Townley's 
 forlorn hope. A forlorn hope indeed ! 
 The Manchester regiment had shrunk and 
 dwindled before Lancashire was traversed, 
 and the whole garrison left to hold the city 
 against veteran troops did not far exceed 
 three hundred men. Three hundred men ! 
 So many were the Spartans at Thermo- 
 pylae !
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 THE PHANTOM SPINNER. 
 
 HE new Governor depended on 
 
 the strength of the city walls 
 
 and the Duke of Cumberland's 
 
 want of artillery, Alas ! the 
 
 walls were old and decaying, and the 
 
 vigorous Duke obtained artillery from 
 
 Whitehaven. 
 
 Until then Lieutenant Furnival had 
 shared the sanguine faith of his more ex- 
 perienced colonel, and had represented to 
 Sybilla that city and castle were all but im- 
 pregnable ; and she, only too thankful to 
 rest her exhausted limbs day after day, 
 was well content to watch the gambols of
 
 Sybilla. 117 
 
 her boy, and kiss his father for the glad 
 assurance. Nay, she laughingly held up 
 Tom's little feet and one of her own, and 
 asked if it was not time they had new shoes. 
 
 In reply, Hugh drew forth his pocket- 
 book, and handed to her a bank-note, with 
 the admonition to be careful. 
 
 She looked up in his face with sur- 
 prise. When had Hugh been " careful," or 
 suggested care to her ! But as he closed 
 his pocket-book, she remarked its dimin- 
 ished bulk, and wondered how much re- 
 mained therein. 
 
 And then as he turned to oro, she looked 
 at the note in her hand. It was for twenty 
 pounds, the lowest issued at that period. 
 
 Stifling a sigh, she dressed herself and 
 boy, and, taking the little toddler by the 
 hand, went forth from the castle in search 
 of a cordwainer. 
 
 Her own wants were the sorest, and 
 soonest supplied, but then came a difficulty 
 about the bank-note, on which the man of 
 leather and lapstone fixed a rueful stare. 
 
 ** Have you no change ? " asked Sybilla.
 
 ii8 Sybilla. 
 
 " Ou, ay ; bud mappen bank's brokken ! " 
 
 Rumours of the run on the Bank of Eng- 
 land must have reached Cumberland, and 
 the shoemaker stroked his bristly chin and 
 scratched his red head long- before he pro- 
 duced his bag of guineas and counted out 
 her change, minus half-a-guinea for the 
 risk he ran. 
 
 The half-guinea seemed less to Sybilla 
 ^/len than the supply of her immediate 
 needs, and she went on, carrying her boy, 
 to make one or two other purchases for 
 Hugh's comfort as well as theirs, in which 
 two or three of the guineas melted. 
 
 Wool and knitting-pins were amongst 
 the things she bought, and then she sat 
 down in tolerable content to knit warm 
 hose for her husband and child. 
 
 The calm was but the prelude to the 
 storm. 
 
 On the 27th, the dreaded Duke began to 
 batter down the crumbling walls in answer 
 to Colonel Townley's refusal to surrender. 
 
 On the 31st, the hopeless garrison Aad 
 surrendered. The only terms granted
 
 Sybilla. 119 
 
 being that the rebels should be reserved 
 for the king's pleasure — not put to the 
 sword. 
 
 At the sound of the first gun, Sybilla's 
 heart had sunk within her. She had 
 snatched up Tom, and would have flown 
 in quest of Hugh, but — "orders were per- 
 emptory that the ladies must keep to their 
 quarters," There, shut in out of sight, 
 but not of hearing, they crowded together, 
 adding to each other's terror. Only the 
 new bishop came to their relief, and told 
 the progress of the siege, and strove to 
 cheer them with his own briMit faith. 
 
 When Hugh came, with white and weary 
 face, all was over. 
 
 *' My love," said he, with a sob, as he held 
 her and Tom clasped in a close embrace, 
 "they will not, cannot harm you, but they 
 will separate us, and — oh, I was surely 
 mad to plunge you into this misery ! — 
 there is no time to lose, you must quit the 
 castle, and seek shelter in the town." 
 
 " I will not leave you," she said, with 
 mournful resolution, clinging to him in
 
 I20 Sybil la. 
 
 agony. " I am punished for leaving my 
 father, but I will not quit you in your 
 extremity." 
 
 She had no choice. The castle was ran- 
 sacked. The frightened women, robbed 
 of their valuables, were driven by the 
 brutal soldiery into the castle-yard, to be- 
 hold their nearest and dearest stripped of 
 watches, rings, money, uniforms, shoes, and 
 pinioned together like malefactors, driven 
 half-clad through the streets in coarse de- 
 rision to the cathedral on the opposite hill, 
 with the new Bishop of Carlisle at their 
 head to " lead his flock." 
 
 Blows and hideous jests were not spared, 
 and Sybilla thought her brain would have 
 turned, as Tom, stretching out his little 
 arms, shrieked " dada " to his father, who 
 was struck with the butt-end of a firelock 
 for turning his head to reply. 
 
 A poor widow, finding her fainting on a 
 doorstep, with the child crying in alarm, 
 took compassion on them and gave them 
 shelter. 
 
 There was no communicating- with the
 
 Sybilla. 1 2 1 
 
 prisoners huddled together, half-naked, in 
 the cold cathedral. Sybilla could only- 
 wait, and wait, and strive to still her throb- 
 bing pulses by some active work. 
 
 It so happened that Widow Fell got her 
 living by spinning wool. Sybilla set down 
 her boy on the floor, took her place at the 
 wheel, and stepping to and fro, on and off 
 the treadle, kept it in motion, and from the 
 tuft of wool at her waist spun so fine a 
 yarn that the widow could only look on in 
 wonder. 
 
 Ten busy days and restless nights, and 
 then there was a stir throughout the city. 
 The cathedral doors were thrown open, 
 and the prisoners brought forth. 
 
 The Rev. Thomas Coppock and several 
 of the Hiijhlanders were marched across 
 the town to the castle, there to abide the 
 rebels' doom. 
 
 But Sybilla, with the hood of her cloak 
 drawn over her gipsy hat, and her boy in 
 her trembling arms, watched only, with 
 gasping breath, for Hugh — her Hugh. 
 
 And she saw him, but with the rest of
 
 I 2 2 Sybilla. 
 
 the officers on horseback, with legs tied 
 together underneath the girth, and arms so 
 pinioned that he could barely hold the reins. 
 As for the poor privates, they were strung 
 together with ropes, and driven forth on 
 shoeless feet. 
 
 Sybilla pressed forward to exchange a 
 parting word with Hugh, but was roughly 
 driven back ; and she could only shriek his 
 name, as the mounted dragoons, with flash- 
 ing swords, kept back the crowd, and led 
 their ill-clad prisoners away through the 
 English gate, the head of one horse tied to 
 the tail of the former. 
 
 There was no rest for Sybilla now, she 
 must follow — but whither .-* 
 
 The compassionate widow, well known in 
 the town, ascertained that Colonel Town- 
 ley and one or two others were bound to 
 London, 
 
 " London ! And no horse, and little 
 money, and my boy to carry. Oh ! what 
 shall I do ?" and she wrunor her hands in 
 helpless impotence. 
 
 The thoughtful widow came to her aid.
 
 Sybilla. 123 
 
 " T' rooads are danoferous for leddles. 
 You must goo as a puir boddie. Strap t' 
 lad on yer back, and tak a basket wi' sum- 
 mut t' eat o' t' rooad, an' knit as yo goo 
 alang. T' fwoak at farms '11 gie yo bite 
 an' sup ; an' yo can pay weel for lodgin' 
 wi' a spell at th' spinnin'-wheel." 
 
 She would take no coin in payment for 
 her service or the shelter she had afforded. 
 She said she had had a lesson in spinning 
 which would repay her all her life through. 
 
 " Ah, my friend," said Sybilla, " your 
 wheel has been my safeguard. But for 
 that I think I should have gone mad." 
 
 The woman took the proffered guinea, 
 but only to get it changed and buy a 
 basket and so forth. 
 
 Then, professing to have herself an 
 errand out of the town, she took up a 
 huge bundle of yarn, as if for a weaver, 
 and bearing Sybilla company, managed to 
 get her out through the guarded city gate. 
 
 " Mappen turf-cutters here and there '11 
 gie t' lad a ride in t' panniers ; or yo may 
 get a lift i' t' stage waggon. But dinna
 
 124 Sybilla. 
 
 show t' colour on your money an' yo can 
 help." 
 
 And so, with tears and thanks, they 
 parted, Sybilla with a load on her back 
 and in her breast, and the length of Eng- 
 land to traverse on foot. 
 
 Of the dangers of the road she had 
 heard, but hardly knew. She soon found 
 that her occupation and her poverty were 
 her security. Though more than once 
 when her pockets were searched, and 
 found almost empty, she had trembled for 
 their lives, yet was she allowed to pass un- 
 harmed. And though she rarely got a 
 better bed than a litter of straw or a nook 
 in a hayloft, she seldom found hospitality 
 denied. Her offer to pay for accommoda- 
 tion by the work of her hands won her 
 respect even where it was rejected. Here 
 and there she was allowed to rest more 
 than a night ; her manners, her sorrowful 
 beauty, her early motherhood, winning 
 favour with some, though from others they 
 brought down only scorn and revilings. 
 Occasionally she got a lift for her boy, or
 
 Sybilla. 1 2 5 
 
 both of them, on a packhorse, or in a cart 
 or a stage-waggon ; for the last by pay- 
 ment. 
 
 But she learned to be sparing of her coin. 
 In the country it was seldom needed ; the 
 bowl of milk, the hunch of bread, the scrap 
 of cake were freely given. 
 
 In towns it was otherwise. There she 
 had to pay, or be treated with contumely 
 as a strolling vagabond. Yet was she afraid 
 to touch her hidden store, the first trades- 
 man to whom she had offered a guinea 
 having roundly accused her of theft, so 
 little did her appearance justify its posses- 
 sion. Her tears and what she told of her 
 pitiful story to save herself from the watch- 
 house disarmed the baker, who changed 
 her coin, and bade her show no more of 
 the colour if she valued her freedom or 
 her life, for the roads swarmed with 
 footpads. 
 
 That was at Lancaster, under the very 
 shadow of John O'Gaunt's castle, where the 
 man,himself a Jacobite, told her in a whisper 
 several of the rebels were then imprisoned.
 
 126 Sybil ia. 
 
 There, too, she obtained certain informa- 
 tion that Hugh and his colonel had been 
 carried farther south ; and the man, as 
 respectful as he had been harsh, recom- 
 mended her to a decent lodmno- for the 
 night, and freed her a stage in the waggon 
 next day. 
 
 After that, she depended more on the 
 mittens and hose she knitted. At first she 
 had found Tom such a load on her back 
 that she could scarcely use her knitting- 
 pins, but necessit}'^ and a little time made it 
 easier. Then she set him down to stretch 
 his limbs and run by her side betimes. 
 
 And so she went forward after her un- 
 fortunate husband — in what hope or fear 
 she hardly knew herself — wounded to the 
 core by the brutal jests on the rebels and 
 their probable fate which everywhere fell 
 on her ears, and enduring hardships, in- 
 dignities, and anguish, of which she could 
 only thank God her little son could know 
 nothing. He could feel hunger and incle- 
 ment weather, but, to the best of her poor 
 ability, she guarded him from them.
 
 Sybilla. 127 
 
 She reached London at last. But she 
 found the walls of Newgate harder, colder, 
 and more pitiless than the weather. Grim, 
 grey, and unresponsive they rose between 
 her and Hugh, 
 
 Yet scarcely harder, colder, or more piti- 
 less than the strange city in which she stood 
 homeless in the month of March, with few 
 coins about her, a name she dared not own, 
 a helpless child to keep, and no means 
 of support but her knitting-pins. What 
 wonder if visions of the far-off Oaklands, 
 its glowing fires, cushioned chairs, rich 
 clothing, appetising viands, floated before 
 her, and smote her with self-reproach, as 
 she staggered away from the prison gate, 
 refused admission, and not knowing whither 
 to turn for hope or shelter ! 
 
 Was this all for which she had forsaken 
 father and home ^. 
 
 • ••••«•• 
 
 The fields of Cheshire were ripened 
 unto harvest, kine were lowing in the pas- 
 tures, sickles were sharpened for the rust- 
 ling corn, the flaunting poppies nodded
 
 128 Sybilla. 
 
 carelessly, orchards bent beneath their 
 load of fruit, in the dairies churns and 
 cheese-presses were full and at work. 
 
 Another harvest was being gathered in. 
 
 In the great kitchen of the Oaklands, 
 where the rows of pewter platters and 
 dishes shone like silver against the white- 
 washed wall, and the wooden bowls and 
 trenchers were ranged, as fresh and clean 
 and tempting, Ursula — fat, fussy, and self- 
 important, as she thought it behoved her 
 to be — watched a preserving-kettle hang- 
 ing from a crane over the hot fire on the 
 open hearth in the huge chimney, alter- 
 nately wiped the moisture from her fore- 
 head and scolded the younger maids, who 
 were stripping currants and shelling broad 
 beans, and whispering low their wonder, 
 " What would become of poor Mrs Fur- 
 nival ? " 
 
 Out in the grounds the master of the 
 Oaklands stalked moodily to and fro ; now 
 slowly, as if lost in thought ; now hurriedly, 
 and with a sort of fierce light in his eye, 
 and a grip of his closed hand, as if an 
 
 i
 
 Sybilla. 129 
 
 enemy was crushed within it. At such 
 times he held his head erect as of yore, 
 but his shoulders had contracted a per- 
 ceptible stoop, and his hair was no longer 
 black, but iron-grey. 
 
 There was a sound of hoofs in the lane, 
 a pull at the great bell of the closed gate ; 
 Josh hobbled round the corner of the house 
 to open it, and Mr Venables, who had 
 crossed the bridge he had built for Sybilla's 
 convenience, turned back and stood with 
 one hand upon the parapet to await his 
 visitor, 
 
 " Well, what news ? " said he, as Squire 
 Gerard came towards him, with a curious 
 expression on his long, melancholy visage. 
 
 " News ? Terrible news, I call it. The 
 rebels in London have been tried, and 
 their leaders executed — barbarously." 
 
 " They were traitors, and deserved their 
 punishment," said Mr Venables sternly. 
 
 " Ay, punishment if you will, but not 
 torture ! The horrid sight killed Jemmy 
 Dawson's sweetheart, poor lass ! I saw 
 the heads of Townley and Deacon spiked 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 1 30 Sybilla. 
 
 atop of the Manchester Exchange yester- 
 day." 
 
 " And what of—" 
 
 Gerard filled up the pause, — 
 
 " Furnival ? — he is one of those reserved 
 for transportation." 
 
 " The traitor ! they should have hanged 
 him too ! " and Thomas Venables set his 
 teeth on the words, 
 
 " The blow will fall heavily enough on 
 her as it is," said his gentler companion 
 sadly ; then adding, as he drew a soiled 
 letter from his pocket, " I found this lying 
 at the ' Unicorn' as I came through Altring- 
 ham this morning. It is from London, 
 from—" 
 
 " Then let it fall ! she cast in her lot with 
 traitors, and deserves no pity ! " 
 
 As the words burst from the inflexible 
 old man, his glance fell on the superscrip- 
 tion of the letter. For a moment his hand 
 shook, and his face paled. 
 
 Then the unread missive was torn hastily 
 up into shreds, and cast forth over the 
 water.
 
 Sybilla. 131 
 
 The breeze blew pieces of the paper 
 back. One fell at Gerard's feet, another 
 on the stone parapet of the bridge, close to 
 his hand. A word or two caught his eye. 
 
 He started, picked up the scrap at his 
 feet, regardless of ceremony. 
 
 " Snow Hill, Lond — " was upon it. 
 
 "If your love has turned to gall, mine 
 has not,' he said, in bitter reproach ; 
 ' Sybilla stands in sore need of a friend, 
 and she shall at least have one. I shall 
 start for London ere daybreak to-morrow 
 — Josh, my horse." 
 
 His horse was brought back. His foot 
 was in the stirrup. 
 
 " Have you no word for her ? " 
 
 There was no answer. Gerard galloped 
 off, with a face as set and determined as 
 the one he had left behind, but it was set 
 to a kinder purpose. 
 
 The harvests of rebellion had been 
 reaped on the field and on the gallows. 
 
 The harvests of Cheshire had been gar- 
 nered ; geese feasted amid the stubbie ;
 
 132 Sybilla. 
 
 the aftermath was mown and stacked ; 
 the potatoes dug on Bowdon Downs ; the 
 hazel nuts in Wood Lane tempted the vil- 
 lage boys ; beech and oak were dropping 
 mast and acorns within the precincts of 
 the Oaklands ; leaves — yellow, red, brown 
 — hung limp upon the trees, or, crisp and 
 sear, littered the pathways, and driving 
 before the wind, tapped at the windows of 
 the house, whose master, sitting alone by 
 his fireside, had a something tapping at his 
 breast, just as the leaves tapped on the panes 
 — and conscience was the driving wind. 
 
 Walking moodily through his own 
 meadow that afternoon, he had looked 
 over the hedge, where it skirted Wood 
 Lane, to rebuke some children who were 
 roughly tearing down the brambles to 
 gather the ripe blackberries. He knew 
 them for the younger children of Barnes, 
 the weaver ; but in their midst stood a 
 white - headed ragged urchin some two 
 years old, who looked up at him with 
 large blue eyes, and a mouth all stained 
 with the fruit.
 
 Sybilla. 133 
 
 That face was haunting him as he sat by 
 the fire at eventide, with his book of philo- 
 sophy unread — sat until the moon rose, 
 and the bats came out and flapped against 
 the casement louder than the leaves. 
 
 Why did it haunt him so ? 
 
 " Such a child might have been Sybilla's 
 had she borne one ! — and they called it 
 Tom,'' whispered conscience. 
 
 " Gerard has not returned. I have 
 neither friend nor child by my hearth. 
 Might I not have had child and grand- 
 child both, had I been more forofivino- ? " 
 
 And so conscience tapped, as there he 
 sat, the shadows deepening around him, 
 the curtain undrawn, no candles lit. 
 
 In the bright kitchen, Ursula sat in 
 state in her blue camlet gown and far- 
 thingale, directing the maids, who were 
 busy sorting damsons for wine, picking 
 stray leaves from elderberries, and prepar- 
 ing the evening meal. Josh, with a dog 
 at his feet, and a red handkerchief over 
 his head, sat dozing by the fire. Candles 
 in tall mahogany silver-mounted candle-
 
 1 34 Sybilla. 
 
 sticks stood unllghted on a waiter, with 
 snuffers and tray by their side. 
 
 "Strange, master has not rung for his 
 candles," said one. 
 
 "Hush!" exclaimed another, in a fright- 
 ened whisper. " There it is again ! Don't 
 you hear it ? " 
 
 Hear it ! the dog heard it, and Josh 
 heard it and wakened up ; and Ursula 
 heard it, and clasping her hands, uttered 
 a pious ejaculation in her fear. 
 
 " God save us all ! there it is again : 
 Miss Sybilla's wheel going hard and 
 fast, and her door locked, and her far 
 away." 
 
 '• Ay, it be Miss Sybilla's wheel, sure 
 enoof," put in Josh. " What be oop ? " 
 
 " An' this be th' third toime we'n heared 
 it," cried a girl. 
 
 " Summat's happened to th' young 
 misses, an' yon's her ghoast ! " said Josh, 
 in an oracular whisper. 
 
 The musical hum of the wheel was 
 certainly clear and distinct as a song. 
 Silence fell on the white-faced listeners.
 
 Sybilla. 1 3 5 
 
 " I wonder if master hears it ? " asked 
 one, below her breath. 
 
 " Master, he seems to hear nowt, now- 
 a-days," muttered the old man. 
 
 A bell rang. 
 
 " There's master ringing for his candles," 
 cried Ursula. 
 
 But no one stirred. And still was heard 
 the monotonous hum-m-m-m. 
 
 Again rang the library bell. In fear 
 three maids together threaded the passages 
 with the lighted candles. Nothing was 
 to be heard at the library door, and no one 
 dared speak of Sybilla's spinning-wheel to 
 their master. 
 
 The servants were afraid to go about 
 the house alone, or to pass the door of the 
 deserted room, on their way to bed, for the 
 drone of the wheel did not cease. And it 
 drove sleep from their pillows. 
 
 Mr Venables used the other stairs, and 
 heard nothing more than what he took for 
 the sighing of the wind. 
 
 Night by night the sound was heard ; 
 only on the Sabbaths was it silent.
 
 136 Sybilla. 
 
 Rumour went abroad that the house was 
 haunted. The timid maids at length re- 
 fused to pass the doors of Sybilla's rooms 
 on their way to bed, and Ursula was no 
 more courageous. They preferred sleeping 
 as best they could on tables and settles in 
 the kitchen ; Ursula took possession of a 
 guest-chamber near her master's ; Josh 
 resumed his abandoned quarters above the 
 stables. 
 
 Only Mr Venables, occupied with his 
 own thoughts, walked about in unalarmed 
 ignorance ; yet even he was conscious of a 
 mysterious something in the air of his 
 household and of the village ; and he 
 began to speculate why Gerard did not 
 return. 
 
 Now and again he encountered the same 
 little fellow in the lanes with others, poorly 
 clad, but no longer in rags ; and once or 
 twice he stooped and stroked the child's 
 white head, and gave him a silver groat. 
 But he only went back to his solitary 
 hearth more moody and silent. 
 
 And still from twih'oht until dawn the
 
 Sybilla. 137 
 
 wheel was heard to hum-m-m ; and whis- 
 pers went abroad of a mysterious figure 
 like Miss Sybilla (always Miss Sybilla) 
 seen in the dim light to flit under the dark 
 shadows of yews and evergreens and over 
 the bridge, and to carry a bundle with her, 
 as she must have done when she fled. 
 
 There was only one opinion, that she 
 was dead, and her unquiet spirit could not 
 rest — unforaiven. 
 
 With the coming of December came 
 back Squire Gerard. 
 
 In every line of his melancholy face was 
 seen disappointment. 
 
 He sat down in his old place, opposite to 
 Mr Venables, wearily. 
 
 He thought he saw a look of expectation 
 in the old man's face, and he noted that 
 his hair had become white as snow, 
 
 " I have no tidino-s. No one bearino; the 
 name of either Furnival or Venables had 
 been heard of in Snow Hill. I tried 
 Southwark, whither the prisoners had 
 been removed, thinking she might have 
 followed her unfortunate husband ; but
 
 ijS SybiLla. 
 
 though I heard of a poor, torn-down 
 wretch, who had shrieked out ' Hu^jh ' as 
 the prisoners were driven on board the 
 transport, I could find no trace of her, high 
 or low ; and I fear we never shall. God 
 help her!" 
 
 With his head bent low, his hands 
 clasped between his knees, Mr Venables 
 had listened in silence. But Gerard saw 
 his shoulders heave, and his whole frame 
 convulse with stronof emotion. 
 
 Gerard made no stay. As Josh went 
 with him to open and secure the outer 
 gate, he told in awe-stricken tones how the 
 house was haunted, and the servants afraid 
 to stay. 
 
 " Master heerd the wheel himsel' last 
 week ; but he swore some on us weer 
 playin' him a trick, and only last night as 
 was, he nailed up th' door as shuts off them 
 rooms, and with his own hands, while th' 
 varry wheel wer buzzing its loudest. He 
 said he'd silence the spinner ; no tricks 
 should be played in his house. But lor,' 
 Squire, th' wheel went on just th' same."
 
 Sybilla. 139 
 
 Gerard rode away thoughtfully. He 
 was not without a tinge of the superstition 
 of the time ; and what he had heard but 
 confirmed his fears that his dearly-loved 
 Sybilla was no more. 
 
 The morning, crisp and keen, saw him 
 once more at the Oaklands. 
 
 He found the owner in the grounds 
 giving orders for the filling up of a gap 
 in the hedge that separated the meadow 
 from Wood Lane, and looking haggard, 
 though composed. 
 
 They strolled together by the water side, 
 talking of various matters ; but no sooner 
 were they out of earshot than Gerard ad- 
 verted to the rumour he had heard. 
 
 " A dastardly trick, sir," cried the old 
 gentleman, through the ashen pallor of his 
 lips. "It was a sorry time and a sorry 
 jest to play on a childless man. But I've 
 silenced the wheel ; there was no spinning 
 last night." 
 
 " But, sir—" 
 
 What further Gerard would have said 
 was cut short.
 
 140 Sybilla. 
 
 A little blue- eyed child, coming through 
 the gap in the hedge, ran across the 
 meadow to meet them, followed at a dis- 
 tance by Barnes the weaver. 
 
 "What 00 done wi' my mammy, grandad? 
 Mammy, 'at tum'to 'pin ? What 00 done 
 wi' mammy ? ' almost shrieked the little fel- 
 low between his sobs. 
 
 Gerard gazed at the child, and then at 
 Mr Venables, who seemed struck dumb as 
 a statue. 
 
 " I want my mammy ! " began the child 
 again. 
 
 "MrsFurnival, mester," explained Barnes 
 apologetically as he came up, ' she cam' oop 
 here to spin i' th' noight-toime t' keep her 
 sen an' th' little chap ; an we hanna seen 
 her sin — " 
 
 A hoarse cry burst from the old man. 
 Flinging his arms wildly in the air, he 
 rushed over the bridge, and through the 
 court-yard, towards the house. But Gerard 
 was before him, armed with a gardener's 
 pick he had caught up by the way. 
 
 At the very back of the splintered door
 
 Sybilla. 141 
 
 they found Sybilla prostrate with hunger, 
 cold, exhaustion, and despair. 
 
 For the first time Gerard's arms enfolded 
 her, and he bore her swiftly to the warmth 
 and life below, insensible, but living. 
 
 Kisses from little lips did almost as much 
 as Ursula's cordials to restore her. 
 
 She opened her eyes to see Tom on her 
 father's knee ; to feel her hand within that 
 father's clasp ; to hear his fervent " Thank 
 God ! she revives ! I have not killed my 
 darling ! " And, as in a dream, a soothing 
 sense of home, forgiveness, peace stole 
 into her soul, though her eyelids drooped 
 again. 
 
 Later, she had a hazy consciousness of 
 Gerard watching her with shaded eyes from 
 behind her father's chair, and of Ursula 
 and others hovering near. 
 
 And she heard, still dreamily, the voice 
 of Barnes as he related how he had found 
 her one stormy afternoon in October, sitting 
 half-dead with cold, want, and fatigue, on 
 Baguley Moor, huddled up to keep the lad 
 on her lap from the rain. He took her for
 
 142 Sybil la. 
 
 a beofSfar ; but he could not leave her to 
 perish. He chanced to have in his poke 
 some cake and elderberry wine, given him 
 at the Hall, where he had been with a web 
 of homespun. They helped the poor 
 creatures round, so that when he took 
 the lad she could just drag herself to 
 his cottage, where his missus set up a 
 shout, and called him a "thick-yed" for 
 not knowing who he'd brought home. It 
 was a poor shelter for such as she ; but 
 'twas better than none. And whatever 
 they had done for her, they had been paid 
 both beforehand and since, through Billy 
 and her spinning. 
 
 That neither Thomas Venables nor 
 Squire Gerard thought so, the humane 
 weaver and his family had ample proof 
 in the aftertime. 
 
 From Sybilla herself they learned how 
 she had slipped in from the court-yard 
 before the doors were barred for the night, 
 and how, on findings her sittinof-room door 
 locked, she passed through the open land- 
 ing door, found her bedroom door beyond
 
 Sybilla. 143 
 
 2/;^locked, and so had the range of both. 
 She had made use of her old wardrobe as 
 well as of the wheel, thus adding uncon- 
 sciously to the delusion of the ghost. She 
 had resorted to her wheel as a means of 
 support, and to relieve her preservers of 
 an extra burden. She had occupied by 
 day a bed they used by night ; and their 
 humble cot had been a peaceful haven. 
 Nothing could repay them. 
 
 There were sighs and self-reproaches on 
 both sides. Mrs Leicester and the Furni- 
 vals came in for their share of blame ; 
 but though Sybilla expressed contrition for 
 her wilfulness and disobedience, and con- 
 fessed that she had soon found her ill- 
 advised marriage a mistake, she avoided 
 reference to Hugh. Her wifely love and 
 sorrow were sacred. 
 
 She was at home, at rest. The love of 
 her boy and his grandfather was hers ; the 
 friendship of Gerard — of whose fruitless 
 quest she had heard ; but there was still 
 the canker of grief at her heart, and neither 
 love nor friendship could overcome the
 
 144 
 
 Sybilla. 
 
 effects of anguish and privation in her 
 wanderings. 
 
 They laid her to rest in the spring, and 
 Sybilla's Spinning Wheel was silent for 
 evermore. 
 
 In eighteen months Thomas Venables 
 lay by his daughter's side, and little Tom 
 was left as a sacred trust to the squire. At 
 least so he regarded his executorship ; and, 
 when he died in fulness of years, " Gerard 
 of Riddings, last of his name and race," 
 was inscribed on his tomb. He had 
 never married.
 
 BY WAYS UNKNOWN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE BRIDGE. 
 
 F all sleepy country towns, surely 
 Sandwich, on the Kentish coast, 
 is the very drowsiest. Let us 
 admit it is, at the same time, 
 one of the cleanest. 
 
 On the hottest summer day the quaint 
 irregular buildings spread cool shadows 
 over the narrow streets, where Progress 
 fell asleep more than two centuries agone, 
 and never prince or peer with magic kiss 
 has wakened her again. The very wasps 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 146 By Ways Unknowjt. 
 
 and flies seem to have forsaken the spot ; 
 the few that Hnger float about as if im- 
 bued with the universal somnolence, not 
 daring to disturb the repose of the people 
 by buzzing- and humming too busily. 
 
 Few are the carts or carriages rumbling 
 through the streets to break their silence 
 save on the market days ; no seamstress 
 sits by the open window to look out ; no 
 eager young faces peer over blinds ; there 
 is nothing new to be seen, nothing to be 
 expected. Besides, respectability forbids 
 vulgar curiosity ; and the whole place is 
 eminently respectable, as a small town, 
 ruled by a mayor and corporation, and 
 the clergy of three churches, and boasting 
 two foundation hospitals and a grammar 
 school, must be as a matter of course, 
 even thouorh the venerable grammar school 
 
 o o 
 
 be neglected in its dotage, a building only, 
 without a master and without scholars. 
 You may see grass in the thoroughfares, 
 but no beggars and no rags. 
 
 When the womenkind do their shop- 
 ping, or their visiting, is a puzzle for the
 
 By Ways Unknown. 147 
 
 speculative. They do not meet or jostle 
 on the narrow footpaths ; do not flutter 
 their finery before admiring throngs ; — 
 there is no one to admire. 
 
 Of late years, a railway, passing the 
 town at a respectful distance on the 
 western border, has brought a some- 
 thing of vitality, under cover of modern 
 brick and stucco, to the suburb ; and now 
 and then a train may land there an ad- 
 venturous visitor from bustling Deal, or an 
 inquisitive antiquary, fresh from Rich- 
 borough, may stray thither to pore into the 
 recesses of its ancient churches, examine 
 its gateways, and other relics of the past, 
 in order to establish some historic fact, or 
 knock down some opponent's theory. Or, 
 maybe, an artist, with a love for the 
 antique, lounging lazily through his holi- 
 day, strolls past the new villa residences 
 with scarcely a lifted eyelid, and coming 
 fresh upon the quaint old place, falls 
 straightway in love with its " cool tones," 
 the picturesque buildings thronging its 
 winding ways, with here an arch of ancient
 
 148 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 masonry, there an overhanging window in 
 a high-pitched gable, or a front of over- 
 lapping plank, relics of the past both in 
 churches and quiet nooks, and so, being 
 dreamily inclined, may be beguiled into a 
 brief sojourn there until Sandwich, as he 
 sees it, finds its way into his porfolio in 
 sketches of still life. 
 
 For, of the active life of Sandwich in 
 its palmy days, before the sand silted up 
 and the sea retired, when it was chief of 
 the Cinque Ports, and furnished its quota 
 of war-ships to the king in his need, the only 
 memory lies outside the ancient Fisher- 
 Gate, and the Barbican, amongst the line of 
 old warehouses and wharves on the water 
 side, where still a few schooners, and other 
 vessels of broad build and light draught 
 load and unload, or across the river Stour 
 and the long swing bridge, where a clink 
 of hammers in a shipbuilder's yard (backed 
 by rapidly disappearing green woods), 
 mayhap gives token that the black hull of 
 some damaged schooner or lugger is under- 
 going repair.
 
 By Ways Unknown. 149 
 
 Such was the case a few years before 
 the railway hove in sight, when just such 
 a stroller, dressed in a loose blouse, and 
 with one of the newly-introduced soft felt 
 hats upon his head, turned his back alike 
 upon the smooth dusty road trending to- 
 wards Ramsgate, and on the verdure of 
 sward or shrubbery on either hand, and, 
 propped against the trunk of a tall elm 
 near the bridge (one of a line, skirting the 
 road), sketched bridge and Barbican gate- 
 way and surroundings, at his leisure, under 
 shadow of the foliag'e. 
 
 A vessel, newly-laden either at the great 
 Kent Brewery, or some other storage to 
 his right, was working its way down the 
 sandy Stour with the outgoing tide ; and 
 an old seafaring man or bridge-keeper, 
 pipe in mouth, leaned with both arms on 
 the parapet of the bridge, watching its 
 approach, 
 
 " Now, if there was only a pretty girl or 
 an old woman to occupy the foreground, 
 the picture would be complete. The old 
 salt is all very well for the middle distance,"
 
 150 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 said the artist to himself, as he put a fresh 
 dab of colour on his sketch, " but — " 
 
 As if conjured up by the wish, a young 
 girl, between fifteen and sixteen, wearing a 
 straw bonnet with an open brim, a clean 
 but well-washed printed frock, which fell 
 to her instep in full soft folds, and a small 
 shawl-handkerchief, laid lightly over her 
 shoulders, came along the sandy footpath, 
 under the shadow of the high hedge and 
 the wooden palisade of the shipyard, to 
 make her way over the bridge. 
 
 " Hillo ! here she is, by Jove! " almost 
 burst from the lips of the sketcher, as, 
 unobservant of him or his occupation, 
 she pursued her way, bearing an open 
 basket on her arm and a parcel in her 
 hands. 
 
 " Now, if she would but stop and turn 
 her face. Egad, Pierce ! you are in luck's 
 way this morning. And, good heavens ! 
 what a face, and what eyes under that 
 poor straw bonnet ! What lucky chance 
 swung the bridge open for that over- 
 grown barge to pass, just as she came up.
 
 By Ways Unknown. 151 
 
 Pierce, my boy, you must make the most 
 of your moments," 
 
 " Oh, dear, what a pity I was not across 
 before the bridge was opened, I shall be 
 kept such a while ! " was the inaudible 
 ejaculation of the young girl, as the centre 
 of the bridge, answering some mechanical 
 leverage under command of its keeper, 
 swung back to let the approaching vessel 
 glide slowly through the gap, " I may as 
 well put my basket and parcel down, a hot 
 day like this," she further communed with 
 herself, as she deposited the flat open 
 basket at her feet, and laid the good-sized 
 paper parcel lightly on the top ; " it's best 
 to wait patiently. Mother would call this 
 stoppage ill luck, seeing the hurry I'm in. 
 But what's the use, as Mrs Rye says, of 
 making every small hindrance into a real 
 misfortune with grumbling, I catch my- 
 self at it more than is o-ood for me. As 
 for poor mother, one needn't wonder if 
 her great misfortune does make her fret at 
 small ones. She never seems to get it 
 out of her mind. I wonder if ever — "
 
 152 By Ways U7iknow7i. 
 
 and here, as she rested against the stone 
 parapet of the bridge, with her Hghtly- 
 clasped hands hanging low before her, 
 thought wandered off in a haze of specula- 
 tion ; her head uplifted, her large dark 
 eyes expanded dreamily, and she looked 
 across the bridge roadway and up the 
 river, seeing neither shipping nor ware- 
 houses, nor trees, nor people, save those of 
 her own wonderland, and was only roused 
 at last by the noise the bridge-centre made 
 in its readjustment. 
 
 Meanwhile, crossing the open country 
 by the grass-grown Monk's Walk, a mili- 
 tary officer in undress had come upon the 
 scene. He was not apparently more than 
 three-and-twenty, slender for his height if 
 not for his years, with a face full of fire and 
 enthusiasm, of prompt decision and stead- 
 fast purpose. He was clean shaven, but 
 there was a close crop of ruddy chesnut 
 curls under his military cap, and they had 
 sent their advanced lines down his fair 
 cheeks, as a protest against effeminacy. 
 
 Coming unheard over the thick grass, he
 
 By Ways Unknown. 153 
 
 saluted the busy sketcher lightly, " So, my 
 knight of the brush, still at work ? How 
 long do — " and Captain Ainslie paused. 
 
 In stooping to take a sidelong glance at 
 the sketch, his gaze was attracted — not to 
 the picture of Sandwich harbour, but to a 
 face apart in a corner of the paper. 
 
 " What wondrous eyes ! " he ejaculated, 
 " Why Hathersage, my boy, that face will 
 make your fortune ! " 
 
 " I've no objection. But hush. Captain, 
 or the owner may hear you," and Pierce 
 Hathersage looked up across the road 
 once more at his unconscious model. 
 
 She had heard only the clash of the 
 re-settling bridge. Involuntary was her 
 start, and slight, as was the sudden move- 
 ment of her head ; but it brought the tree 
 within range, and those beneath it. 
 
 In an instant she had picked up the 
 parcel and basket at her feet, and hurried 
 away over the bridge, and under the arch- 
 way of the Barbican Gate, with the crim- 
 son flag of insulted modesty fluttering in 
 her face.
 
 154 By Ways Unk7iown. 
 
 The momentary glimpse had revealed 
 two pairs of masculine eyes fixed upon 
 her ; and she needed no telling what the 
 sketch-book meant. 
 
 " Ah ! modest as well as pretty, and 
 modesty eclipses beauty," exclaimed the 
 officer, as he watched her disappear under 
 the archway. "As rare a sample of a 
 Kentish maid as I have met. Poor, by 
 her garb. Alas ! for her, beauty and poverty 
 together form a dangerous heritage for a 
 girl. The interesting damsel bids fair to 
 play havoc with the hearts of despairing 
 swains when she grows to womanhood. 
 But rough labour and hard usage are 
 destructive to female charms, and at the 
 best she can but fall to the lot of some 
 clodhopper, tinker or tailor, incapable of 
 appreciating the prize he wins." And, as 
 he spoke, a pair of shoulders that had not 
 as yet attained their full breadth, rose with a 
 significant shrug alike of contempt and pity. 
 
 "Nay, nay, Captain," argued the painter, 
 still working at the face whilst memory was 
 fresh, " I do not admit that. There are
 
 By Ways Unknown. 155 
 
 poor men with as strong an appreciation 
 of beauty as the rich. Artistic taste may 
 be cultivated, but the love of beauty is 
 innate ; witness the flowers flourishing in 
 broken crocks and blacking-bottles on win- 
 dow-sills in foetid alleys ; the botanists and 
 naturalists amongst our toiling masses ; 
 and of the painters, whose genius speaks 
 from the canvas of the past or present — 
 how many think you have been cradled in 
 the lap of luxury ? The girl may find a 
 husband in her own rank to love and admire 
 her as truly as any coroneted earl who weds 
 a reigning beauty. But, if I read aright, 
 those dreamy orbs hold no communion 
 with clodhopping.' 
 
 " May be you are right ; every country- 
 man is not a Peter Bell ; and most likely 
 had we heard the rustic damsel speak, her 
 hroTkApatois would have dispelled the charm 
 of her marvellous eyes. But are you 
 ready ? And is that all you have to show 
 for a morninor's work ? " 
 
 The artist was closinQf sketch-book and 
 colour-box. " I thought that face was to
 
 156 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 make my fortune ! " said he, drily, with a 
 smile upon his lips. " And tJiat would 
 surely be a fair day's work. Yet, I have 
 something else to show. A sketch I took 
 from the centre of the bridge. Come with 
 me thither and compare the view with 
 this," and he presented his re-opened book 
 to the other. 
 
 " See," he continued, with a nod of his 
 head towards the shipyard on their left, 
 " I have brought that schooner's freshly- 
 patched black hull, and half the shipwright's 
 shed into the foreground, with just a fringe 
 of the overhanging Stonar shrubbery be- 
 3-ond ; and see, stretching far away into 
 the level distance, the meandering river 
 winding its tortuous way across the sandy 
 flats, with just a single sail to break the 
 monotony, and give life and emotion to the 
 silvery thread of river, the wide expanse of 
 reedy waste, and the faint line of sea on 
 the horizon. You see the river widens to 
 the forefront, where other craft lie moored 
 to wharves barely indicated on our right. 
 How like you it .-* "
 
 By Ways Unknown. 157 
 
 " Well, right well. The dappled sky, 
 the lights and shadows, have been admir- 
 ably caught for a sketch so slight, and the 
 perspective is beyond all praise. You 
 should make a fine picture from this. But, 
 I say, Hathersage, can your imagination 
 re-cover those flats with rolling billows, 
 and bring up to Sandwich Haven full 
 seas, in which the nation's fleet might 
 have safe anchorage ; or, going farther 
 back ere Sandwich was a port, can 
 you imagine what it was when the 
 galleys of Agricola made for the Haven ^. 
 We see only what lies before us, and 
 all the rest seems a myth, an old wife's 
 tale, and yet we cannot doubt that such 
 has been." 
 
 " Ay, Captain, if I shut my eyes and 
 dream, I can see it all. See the painted 
 Briton's coracles before the Roman galley, 
 Elizabeth's cumbrous floating-castles, and 
 the old herring-fleets ; build up once more 
 the Priory, reinstate the abbot and set a 
 portcullis in Sandown Gate. Imagination 
 is the faculty of painter and of poet. We
 
 158 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 see with the inner sense, and I much mis- 
 doubt if history owes not half its charm to 
 the same faculty." 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt," assented the cap- 
 tain, with a light laugh. " But will your 
 fertile imaQ;ination set a luncheon before a 
 hungry man ? " 
 
 " It has had to do so before to-day," 
 quoth the other, with a peculiar something 
 in eye and lip ; " but I scarcely think the 
 famous fruit of Apelles would be as satis- 
 factory at this moment as a mouthful of 
 ordinary bread and cheese, with a glass of 
 Kentish ale to w^ash it down. We are not 
 likely to get anything better at a moment's 
 notice in this ' deserted village,' though its 
 inns be legion, but, if you are not dainty 
 regarding accommodation, here at the gate 
 is an ' ancient hostelry ' ready to wel- 
 come us." 
 
 " Ah ! the Bohemian instinct ! For my 
 own part, I should prefer a less ancient 
 flavour of salt and tar in ' mine inn,' but 
 — as you will." And the captain looked up 
 at the long, low corner inn, where the one
 
 By Ways Unknown. 159 
 
 upper-floor overhung the lower, with no 
 great favour. 
 
 The assent was given in answer to a 
 whispered suggestion, which Boniface, 
 chatting with the bridge-keeper in front of 
 his own door, might have overheard. 
 
 At all events, he gave a nod of intelli- 
 gence to the " old salt," as he turned 
 lead to the way through the low portals of 
 the " Crispin " to the sacred precincts of 
 the bar-parlour. 
 
 There was a smell of spirits and tobacco- 
 smoke about, but otherwise the room was 
 clean, cool, cosy, and private. Boniface 
 himself bustled about to supply their wants. 
 
 " Well," said Captain Ainslie to his com- 
 panion, as he sat down in a round-backed 
 arm-chair, with an angular seat, " the shade 
 is at least refreshing after the hot sun, and 
 who knows but I may have to put up with 
 worse quarters and worse fare if Nicholas 
 and Menschikoft^ carry out their little pro- 
 gramme against ' the sick man.' I smell 
 sulphur and gunpowder in every despatch, 
 and all Europe is on the qui viveT
 
 i6o By Ways Unknozvu. 
 
 " Ay, ay," assented the other, holding a 
 tall glass of ale in his uplifted hand, " but 
 is a dismal anticipation of war and its dis- 
 comforts needed to o^ive a zest to nectar 
 such as this, after a long walk under a hot 
 sun ? / feel the need to fortify myself 
 against the six miles back. ' tiere's to 
 the face that is to make my fortune ! ' " and 
 when the glass was put down it was 
 empty. 
 
 " Nay," amended the officer, " say rather, 
 ' To the modest Kentish Maiden, with the 
 wondrous eyes ! ' " and his own ale went 
 down without any wry face, though it was 
 not champagne. 
 
 " As a reason for another c^lass when I 
 have despatched the ambrosia men call 
 bread and cheese, I accept your toast, 
 Captain, though I have a weak leaning to 
 my own, for its sweet prophetic ring. If 
 I could find the girl, and cajole or bribe 
 her to give me a sitting, I should think I 
 had taken a step on that same road to for- 
 tune, I'll have a try for it." 
 
 " And fail. Nay, Hathersage, you must
 
 By Ways Unknown. i6i 
 
 be content to make a picture from the 
 sketch you have, and I will be the pur- 
 chaser." 
 
 "All right. Step the first. Now for 
 step the second." 
 
 A tug at a primitive bell-pull brought 
 the landlord into the room so quickly that 
 he must have been pretty near at hand. 
 And if he had looked mysterious when he 
 ushered them into the room, he was doubly 
 so then. His ordinary manner was un- 
 known to his customers, so the change 
 passed muster, even to his hesitation ovei 
 the reckoning. 
 
 " Do you know a Kentish damsel here- 
 abouts like that, or that ? " and the artist, 
 opening his book, pointed to a roughly- 
 outlined figure standing on the bridge, and 
 to the more finished face in the corner. 
 
 " No more I don't. Dere be no Kent 
 maid anewst* Sandwich had de blyt of dat. 
 Wull, she come from Ramsgit now ? " and 
 Boniface shook his head as if in utter 
 ignorance. 
 
 * Anewst — nigh to. t Bly — look. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 1 62 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 Outside, the artist tackled the bridge- 
 keeper. The man was quite as oblivious, 
 and had no memory to be stimulated by 
 silver shillings. 
 
 Nor had a couple of thirsty loiterers by 
 the inn-door. 
 
 Had the strangers, who avoided the 
 steep hill appropriately called the High 
 Street, but looked over their shoulders as 
 they crossed the road and turned into the 
 narrow thoroughfare at the back of the 
 river warehouses called Strand Street, with 
 their faces towards Knightrider Street and 
 Deal, they might have seen other faces at 
 the inn windows and at the door — gripped 
 hands and angry faces ; and Fine-ear's gift 
 might have told them they were taken for 
 foreign spies, and that all Barbican Gatewas 
 exercised to learn why they wanted to 
 "cajole" or "bribe" '' Our Hetty T
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE HAVEN. 
 
 UR Hetty ! " Who was Hetty ? 
 And why did so many differ- 
 ent rough voices claim her as 
 " ours ?'" 
 
 The ever-restless, cruel, and insidious 
 sea, the sea which, smiling, hides so much 
 and tells so little, which makes so much 
 work for geologists, and plays such pranks 
 with our coast line, which centuries ago 
 left historic Sandwich high and dry behind 
 a long stretch of sandy flats, very much 
 nearer to our own time, took the law into 
 its own strong wet hands, and, marching 
 with long strides up the shrinking beach,
 
 164 By Ways Unknoiun. 
 
 closer and closer to Sandown Castle, built 
 on the bare coast between them and Deal, 
 at length took possession of the fortress, 
 almost within sight of sealess Sandwichers. 
 Took possession, as any other powerful 
 enemy, to have and to hold at will, to work 
 destruction withal. The castle, with its 
 four rounded bastions, might have looked 
 over the Downs defiantly, as if mocking 
 Neptune's might too long ; and sometimes 
 with a whisper, and sometimes with a roar, 
 his challenge was proclaimed. The great 
 giant was weary of soft beds of sand, his 
 prey escaped too oft. He determined he 
 would have the castle, hard and firm as a 
 rock, to batter oak, or teak, or iron upon. 
 Let it stand there awhile to look pictur- 
 esque when tides were low and waves were 
 merciful, so long as it was ready to hand 
 when in his wrath he and the winds fought 
 together for men's lives. 
 
 More than eleven years before the sunny 
 day when " Our Hetty" stood waiting and 
 dreaming on Sandwich bridge, for the un- 
 suspected behoof of a wandering artist,
 
 By Ways Unknow7t. 165 
 
 durinor the hio^hest of hiQ;h tides, a terrible 
 tempest had burst upon the eastern coast, 
 bringing wreck and desolation. 
 
 Great masses of purple cloud had dark- 
 ened the sun at noon-day, and over the 
 Downs and the whole North Sea the 
 wildest of wild winds had come tearing 
 from the north-east and held a witches' 
 carnival. They beat and buffeted the sea 
 in scorn, and the furious waves rose in 
 their might to claw at the mocking winds 
 and driving rain ; and, failing impotently, 
 fell foul of all that was near and helpless in 
 their tremendous clutch. How many a 
 fishing-smack, how many a merchantman, 
 went down, or was disabled in that terrific 
 storm will never be revealed ! The Good- 
 wins are as silent as remorseless. 
 
 One, a fine, fast-sailing barque, well 
 manned and officered, laden with wine 
 and fruit from Lisbon, and bound for the 
 port of London, was caught in the swirl of 
 winds and waves, and, after a desperate 
 struggle for the mastery, was hurled 
 aeainst the hard front of Sandown Castle
 
 1 66 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 (then standing firm, and proud of its own 
 strength), as the first proof what they 
 meant to do hereafter. 
 
 There was terror in the castle and on 
 the shore at the invasion lone ere this 
 occurred, for the dungeons and the moat 
 had been filled by the tide ; now there 
 were shrieks from ship and shore, but 
 the shrieks of men and women were 
 lost in the shrieking of the blast, and 
 only blanched faces could tell the common 
 dread ! 
 
 Back swept the imperious sea, and with 
 it swept the barque, her bows crushed, her 
 bulwarks shattered ; and then, as another 
 huge billow came rolling on, bent on de- 
 struction, some supreme act of seamanship, 
 some derisive shifting of the wind, carried 
 her out of the huge triton's grasp, and sent 
 her reeling and tumbling out into the open 
 Downs. 
 
 Not to safety — that one blow against 
 Sandown walls forbade — only to doom as 
 certain. Masts were snapped, cordage 
 rent, timbers riven, and the waters washing
 
 By Ways Unknown. 167 
 
 in and rolling over, made a speedy end of 
 " the fast-sailing barque Eureita." 
 
 What of her freight ? of the human lives 
 she had had in her keeping ? 
 
 Who could tell ? 'Twas not the only 
 barque that had gone to pieces in that 
 storm. Bodies were washed ashore and 
 reverently buried, casks of wine were found 
 afloat by the Deal boatmen in their stout 
 luggers and claimed as flotsam ; others, 
 drifted shorewards by the tide, in less fre- 
 quented spots, were broached where they 
 lay, without a scruple of ownership, and 
 wine was cheaper in seaside cottages than 
 milk or ale. Whilst, as if in mockery, for 
 many a day the waves played at ball with 
 oranges, and as they went bobbing up and 
 down, or tumbled in with the tide, lads and 
 lasses ran bare leQfcred into the surf to 
 rescue the srolden fruit. 
 
 Those said brave and sturdy Deal boat- 
 men had gone forth, almost in the teeth of 
 the storm, to rescue life and property, and 
 earned the gratitude of many a thankful 
 soul. But their harvest did not end with
 
 1 68 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 the storm. The sea was strewn with 
 wreckage, and amongst their many glean- 
 ings was a painted figurehead ; a woman 
 with a sky-blue flowing robe, and her name 
 in golden letters on her belt — " Euretta." 
 
 A young military cadet from Sandhurst, 
 whose name was Paul Ainslie, happened to 
 be in Deal at the time. He had been at 
 once awed and fascinated by the storm ; 
 and all the following day he seemed to 
 haunt the shore in restless excitement, now 
 here, now there. Standing in the evening 
 on the spot whence a wooden pier was to 
 run four years later,. he watched the lugger 
 Saucy Jane come in with the figurehead 
 and other drift in tow. 
 
 Lad-like, he joined the curious crowd 
 upon the beach, as the entangled mass was 
 hauled up; the first cry being it was "a 
 drowned woman." 
 
 He it was who read the peculiar name 
 out aloud to them, whilst an old fisherman, 
 learned in his calling, but not in bookish 
 lore, spelled the letters slowly one by one, 
 and boggled at the word " Euretta."
 
 By Ways Unknowji. 169 
 
 There were officials busy on the beach 
 to whom the name and figurehead served 
 as a clue for communication with Lloyds' 
 and the luckless owners. 
 
 The boy, Paul Ainslie, listening to specu- 
 lations anent the Etiretta, her crew and 
 cargo, rolled the semi-classic word upon 
 his tongue, and carried it away with him 
 to Sandhurst, not to be foro-otten whilst 
 the previous night of storm and wreck was 
 remembered ; and its impression was in- 
 effaceable. 
 
 In the early light of morning, after the 
 wind had spent its fury, a broad, flat-keeled 
 vessel, built on the coast for the Dutch 
 trade, made its well-known way, after a 
 prolonged tussle with the spirits of the 
 storm, into the Sandwich Haven, when 
 any gayer craft, not Deal or Dutch built, 
 must have come to Pfrief on the sands. 
 
 Besides her carsfo of butter and cheese, 
 The Lass of Kent had on board a woman 
 and a child, found together alone and adrift 
 in an open boat. 
 
 When discovered, the woman was sit
 
 I/O By Ways Unknown. 
 
 ting almost up to her knees in water that 
 threatened to swamp the boat, her arms 
 clasped round the child on her lap, which 
 was closely wrapped in a seaman's water- 
 proof. And, lest the mother's strength or 
 clasp might fail, they were lashed together 
 and to the seat, and swathed in rugs and 
 covers, over all, like one great mummy. 
 
 All skill and care had been given to 
 their warmth and security, but whether the 
 boat had capsized and righted itselt, or 
 had shipped seas, and their long exposure 
 to driving spray and rain had served to 
 drench them, could only be imagined. 
 
 They had been rescued from their peril- 
 ous position, during a brief lull in the 
 tempest, and then only at the hazard of 
 men's lives. 
 
 It was a daring feat to swing at a rope's 
 end into the tossing boat and make it last 
 to The Lass of Kent, the poor half-drowned 
 mother beino; too numb with cold and wet, 
 too dazed with fright to put out a hand to 
 save herself had she been free and not fast. 
 
 It was almost as hazardous to attempt
 
 By Ways Unknown. lyi 
 
 her release whilst the boat rocked and 
 swayed on the unquiet sea, but binding 
 knots were severed with a knife, and they 
 were hauled on board together as they 
 were, as helpless as logs ; only the wail of 
 a child proclaiming animation. The boat 
 broke away almost at that instant, their 
 deliverer saying " it was a close shave," as 
 he scrambled on deck. 
 
 Fortunately, the wife of Kit Blean, the 
 skipper, was on board ; a woman strong of 
 voice and limb and nerve, full of human 
 sympathy, but not helplessly tender. 
 
 Mrs Blean's cabin was not large, and 
 the floor was far from level as a drawinof- 
 room, but she had a stout heart and a stout 
 pair of sea-legs, and when the half-dead 
 mother and child were surrendered to her 
 keeping — not a man of the small crew 
 could be spared below — she did all 
 for them her humanity and experience 
 prompted. 
 
 She tried the efiicacy of unadulterated 
 Hollands as an inward and outward applica- 
 tion on mother and child both, and, finding
 
 172 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 that under the oilskin wrap the latter's 
 body was comparatively dry and warm, 
 she handed it over to a big lad of her own, 
 with a charge to chafe its cramped limbs 
 till it cried, a charge he obeyed to the 
 letter. 
 
 Meanwhile Dinah herself was not idle. 
 The gasping of both at the strong liquor 
 had been an assurance of vitality. At 
 once she set about to remove the mother's 
 drenched outer wraps, and to wring the 
 wet from soaking skirts. To change gar- 
 ments was impossible with the floor at all 
 angles and her own equilibrium so insecure ; 
 but she stripped her berth of its blankets 
 and rolled them round the helpless form 
 with an instinctive knowledge of a " water- 
 cure " process not derived from books. 
 
 The cabin was close and warm, the 
 blankets were thick, the Hollands a potential 
 specific, and ere long the saturated clothes 
 — of finer texture than Mrs Blean's — ceased 
 to chill, and beQfan to warm. It was not, 
 however, until the little one, roused by 
 rough kindness to a perception of strange
 
 By Ways Unknow7i. 173 
 
 faces and strange surroundings, cried for 
 " Mamma ! " that the quivering of Hps and 
 eyehds betokened returning consciousness. 
 
 The child's piteous cry had stirred the 
 feeble heart and given the sinking pulse 
 the fillip that was needed. 
 
 " There," cried the good woman, as she 
 watched the white face by the light of the 
 swinging lamp, " that's just what I wanted. 
 Give the little lass that, Chriss, she be 
 hungr}^," and a piece of roughly-buttered 
 bread was put into the little one's trembling 
 hand, to appease at once its hunger and its 
 anxieties. It was more than bread and 
 butter could do. 
 
 All this while the rollino- and strainingf 
 of the vessel, the dash of waters, the shrill 
 whistling of the wind had continued, with 
 now and then a temporary lull to give the 
 weary mariners a breathing space. 
 
 The fury of the storm was well-nigh 
 spent before Dinah's good offices were more 
 thoroughly rewarded. She had watched 
 uneasily for some time, with the child on 
 her own lap, when she saw, by the flicker-
 
 174 ^y ^Vciys Unknown. 
 
 ing light of her overhanging lamp, a little 
 warmth come over the ashen-grey face, the 
 eyes open, the lips part, and soon a faint 
 voice murmur, " Etta, Etta." 
 
 Little arms outstretched at the sound, 
 and " Mamma, mamma ! " came in quick 
 response. 
 
 " Thank God for all His mercies! She 
 be coming round," cried Dinah Blean fer- 
 vently. 
 
 Straightway she placed the little one on 
 the bunk beside her mother, saying sooth- 
 ingly, " Here, Hetty, kiss mammy. All 
 safe now, Hetty." 
 
 " Hetty" was the rendering of the name 
 most familiar to Mrs Blean's ear and 
 tongue. The child was not skilled in 
 niceties of sound. The mother only an- 
 swered her soft kisses with " Etta, Etta ; " 
 and long before she was capable of ex- 
 planation, the aspirated version had been 
 adopted, and clung to the girl. 
 
 When at last The Lass of Kent had 
 navigated the Stour, and was safely moored 
 by the quay-side, the skipper was free to
 
 By Ways Unknown. 175 
 
 go below and inquire about the castaways. 
 It was over sleeping "Hetty" he bent a 
 rugged but kindly face. And when towns- 
 people near the quay, kept awake by the 
 storm, came flocking round to hail their 
 safe arrival, it was as " Hetty " the pretty 
 child was shown to FosfSfe the bridge- 
 keeper (who lived beside the gate), to mine 
 host of the " Crispin," and also to the Rev. 
 Austin Ughtred and to Dr Manningham, 
 both of whom had been drawn thither by 
 the swiftly-circulated intelligence that a 
 shipwrecked lady needed attention. 
 
 '* So you've turned the lady's wet cloth- 
 ing into a sort of vapour bath ! Very good, 
 very good, Mrs Blean ; in fact, the best 
 thing you could have done under the cir- 
 cumstances. In all probability she owes 
 her life to your care," said the doctor, who 
 had felt the garments steaming under the 
 blankets, and then had his fingers on an 
 intermitting pulse. " But the question is, 
 What is to be done with her ? She is in a 
 very critical state — no doubt owing to 
 the shock as much as to the immersion —
 
 ] 76 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 and, in fact, though scarcely fit to be re- 
 moved, is still less fit to remain here." 
 
 Indeed, she was utterly incapable of 
 giving a lucid answer to a question ; all 
 she could say was " Etta, Etta," whenever 
 the child was taken from her, as if she had 
 only an instinctive perception left. 
 
 There followed an immediate consulta- 
 tion on deck, the result of which was the 
 removal of the helpless creature and her 
 child to the " Crispin," the clergyman and 
 the doctor between them guaranteeing ex- 
 penses to the landlord, in case friends did 
 not claim her, though it is only justice to 
 say he repudiated the necessity for such 
 guarantee as a stigma on his humanity. 
 
 Let us not speculate how much the lady's 
 finger-rings, or the heavy gold chain round 
 her neck, had to do with the care bestowed 
 on her by one and all ; let us give Chris- 
 tian compassion full credit, and waive 
 human weakness into the background. 
 
 For, though there was a valuable gold 
 watch attached to the chain, and the chain 
 of the period was more than a yard long
 
 By Ways Unknown. 177 
 
 and thick as a child's finger, they would 
 hardly have served as payment for all that 
 lady and her daughter required during the 
 long weeks in which she remained an un- 
 known, unnamed stranger, dependent for 
 food, physic, care, clothing, to the kindness 
 more than the expectations of others, seeing 
 that the watch had been ruined with sea- 
 water, and that no friends had come for- 
 ward with claim or inquiry. 
 
 And longr before it was known that she 
 was the wife (or widow) of Karl Fleming, 
 the commander of the ill-fated barque 
 Euretta, or that the child had been named 
 after his ship, the pretty little Euretta had 
 been petted and fondled by the wives and 
 daughters of doctor and clergyman, as well 
 as trades-people and fisher folk, the fre- 
 quenters of the innkeeper's bar-parlour, to 
 say nothing of good Mrs Blean and the 
 brave skipper, whenever The Lass of Kent 
 came into port. Then she ran about the gate 
 and the bridge under the watchful eyes of 
 Jack Fogge, lingered to prattle to his old 
 wife in their neat parlour, which almost 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 178 By Ways Unkiiown. 
 
 seemed a part of the old stone barbican, 
 and, as if by general adoption and consent, 
 was dubbed " Our Hetty." 
 
 For that which gave permanence to 
 the pronoun we must crave the reader's 
 patience. 
 
 We have at least shown that when Boni- 
 face, the bridge-keeper, and others dis- 
 claimed all knowledge of "Our Hetty's" 
 painted semblance, as presented by Pierce 
 Hathersage, they had disregarded truth. 
 They had justified the malversation to 
 themselves, no doubt. They set up the 
 lie as a barrier between Hetty and a — 
 supposition.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MRS FLEMINGS FRIENDS. 
 
 0" 
 
 1 
 
 fl. 
 
 ls£ 
 
 HE "Bell," in Strand Street, was 
 a much larger inn than the 
 "Crispin." Under its roof King 
 Charles H. had been entertained; 
 it had stabling and accommodation for the 
 yeomen and farmers who drove into Sand- 
 wich for the corn-market on Wednesdays ; 
 and it had a sort of frontage to the river, 
 its taproom standing broadly forth upon 
 the quay, whilst the " Crispin " had little to 
 boast of but its antiquity. 
 
 Anyone not in the secret might have 
 expected that "Hetty" and her mother
 
 i8o By Ways Unknown. 
 
 would have been borne straightway to the 
 nearer and larger hostelry. 
 
 But if the landlord was on the quay at 
 the time, he was not one of the special few 
 Kit Blean invited into his cabin, or he 
 might have been as ready to open charit- 
 able doors to the castaways as mine host of 
 the smaller tavern. Indeed, he was heard 
 to say that he "thought the * Bell' would 
 have been a much fitter refuge for a ladyT 
 For when the lady and her child were 
 carried under the Barbican Gate to the low- 
 roofed "Crispin," it was expected that a 
 few hours' or at most a few days' rest and 
 quiet would set her up again. 
 
 It was also anticipated that when pro- 
 perly conscious she would give some 
 account of herself, some clue to her con- 
 nections, or the ship whence she had been 
 cast adrift, so that her friends misfht be 
 communicated with. 
 
 That she had friends anxious for tidings 
 of her fate, friends who would rush to re- 
 ward her deliverers, and claim her and her 
 child with joy and gratitude, was taken for
 
 By Ways Unknown. i8i 
 
 granted. The texture of her linen, of her 
 full-skirted silken dress, of her shawls and 
 cloak, in which they were both enveloped, 
 no less than her jewellery, were suggestive 
 of abundant means, not to say wealth. 
 And the wealthy are seldom without 
 friends. 
 
 Then the imperfect prattle of the lovely 
 and artless little child was English, and 
 what more likely than a belief that friends 
 were English too, and, therefore, at hand. 
 
 But many weeks went by — weeks in 
 which torpor and delirium alternated. 
 Long immersion had brought on rheumatic 
 fever, and the shock to the nervous system 
 had acted on a brain never over strong. 
 Yet, though the fat and fussy little doctor 
 had rubbed his bald pate, and brushed 
 back with both hands the white hairs that 
 bristled up around his crown, and brought 
 out as a rarely-failing source of inspiration 
 the silver snuff-box, known as a tribute 
 from a grateful patient, when discussing 
 the " interesting case," in acknowledged 
 doubt and perplexity, with the benevolent.
 
 1 82 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 but lank-bodied, lean-visaged clergyman, 
 who had been his joint-guarantee for "ex- 
 penses," he never rubbed up the sublime 
 idea of advertisinof. 
 
 Nor did there seem more inspiration in 
 the many pinches of " lundy-foote" he dis- 
 pensed to his intimates, for never a Sand- 
 wicher suggested what would now-a-days 
 be the first thouo-ht. 
 
 Forty years ago the newspaper press 
 had not obtained its present proportions — 
 had not entered so closely into the homes 
 and lives of the people. There were events 
 looming in the far distance which would 
 waken up the activities and test the powers 
 of the press, but the first stirring of the 
 whirlwind had not besfun to be felt. Then 
 advertisinof was regarded neither as a 
 science nor a fine art, and the "agony 
 column" had yet to be recognised as such. 
 Certainly it was not a known fact in Sand- 
 wich, if at all. 
 
 Even when reason regained her seat, 
 and the sick lady was able to note her sur- 
 roundings, and answer her hostess that her
 
 By Ways Unknown. 183 
 
 name was " Flemino^," such an outburst of 
 passionate grief followed, that Dr Man- 
 ningham forbade further questioning. 
 
 Indeed a relapse, and more than a re- 
 lapse, might be expected to follow, he told 
 the innkeeper's wife. 
 
 " Yes, you are curious, no doubt. So 
 are we all curious. But we must keep 
 our curiosity bottled up like wine, until it 
 is ripe for use. Mrs Fleming is low, very 
 low ; this agitation will throw her back con- 
 siderably. In fact, so prostrate is her con- 
 dition, that any premature reminder of 
 what she must have suffered or lost in the 
 storm might cause her to slip through our 
 fingers, Mrs Tilby — and — and — in fact, we 
 can hardly afford that." A significant tap 
 on the brown head of little Hetty, and a 
 glance as significant, pointed his speech, 
 as he bowed himself out. 
 
 "In fact, sir," said he to the Rev. Austin 
 Ughtred, whom he met in Strand Street, 
 not far from St Mary's Church, half-an- 
 hour later, rapping the lid of his silver 
 snuff-box with his well-covered knuckles
 
 184 By Ways Unkjtown. 
 
 as he spoke, " though perfectly well mean- 
 ing, Mrs Tilby's curiosity is apt to outrun 
 her discretion, and it was needful to give 
 it a check. In fact, sir, we must not only 
 wait until the poor young creature is 
 stronger, but we must approach the subject 
 of the storm with caution. We know not 
 whom she may have lost, or what horrors 
 she may have witnessed. There is cer- 
 tainly some great load on her mind. The 
 subject will have to be approached with 
 great tact and delicacy — when she can 
 bear it — and — a — in fact, I wish you, sir, 
 would undertake the office. I know no 
 fitter man for the task. A painful one it 
 is sure to be." 
 
 " Suppose, doctor, we wait until Mrs 
 Fleming — I think you said that was her 
 name — until she questions tis ? " was the 
 reverend gentleman's reply. " Much in- 
 terrogation will not be necessary, I imagine. 
 She will be as anxious for our intelligience 
 as we for hers. I have seen how eagerly 
 and wistfully her eyes followed her lovely 
 little child, and then wandered round the
 
 By Ways Unknown. 185 
 
 room as if in search of some missing face 
 or faces." 
 
 " You are quite right, Mr Ughtred, so 
 far " (with another dip into his box), " and I 
 advise waiting — but only until the patient's 
 nerves are stronger. And if we don't take 
 the initiative, someone else will who has 
 no tact. In fact, sir — and it's but human 
 nature, — the Tilbys are getting uneasy 
 about the bill running up, and are specu- 
 lating how far our hasty guarantee may 
 be depended upon.' 
 
 " Have they said anything ?" asked the 
 other gravely. 
 
 " Not exactly, but I've seen it in their 
 faces, and in speculations on the value of 
 the poor creature's trinkets ; and — and — in 
 fact, though I'm as willing as any man to 
 forego fees in such a case, I'm a family 
 man — and, and — " 
 
 ' You would like to be satisfied who is 
 to meet the innkeeper's bill ? ' put in the 
 other, with a faint smile. 
 
 " Well, — not exactly," replied the doctor, 
 unwilling to have his motives probed too
 
 1 86 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 closely; "but I think Mrs TIlby is. She 
 said to-day, the people at the ' Bell ' were 
 glad to have missed the charge, and she 
 thought Mrs Fleming had no friends ! " 
 
 " Then, doctor, it behoves us to prove 
 the contrary ! Good morning ; " and the 
 clergyman, who had walked back with him, 
 went his way up a wofully narrow and un- 
 inviting road called Bowling Street, 
 where the houses were all of the poorer 
 class, to Vicarage Lane, a short lane shut 
 in by blank walls, without hedge or tree, 
 with its other outlet in Church Street, 
 and where the long, low, unpretentious 
 Vicarage was the only respectable abode. 
 And only the doorway gave distinction to 
 that. 
 
 He was a man not more than thirty-five 
 years of age, with a pale face, broad high 
 forehead, and deep-set serious eyes, which 
 seemed to have grown sad with looking on 
 the sorrows and sins around him. His 
 face narrowed to the chin, and already 
 pitiful lines were deepening around his 
 mouth — a mouth with tender and com-
 
 By Ways Unknown. 187 
 
 passionate curves and smiles, if it never 
 broke into broad laughter. 
 
 After the doctor's hint he left Mrs 
 Tilby small chance to satisfy impatient 
 curiosity to the injury of the patient, and 
 there were whispers in the bar-parlour that 
 "between doctor, vicar, and the vicar's 
 housekeeper, there would not be a rag of 
 carpet left on the stairs." 
 
 You see, Mrs Tilby had not been con- 
 sulted in the arrangement which placed an 
 invalid and a child in her chartre to be 
 nursed and tended for an indefinite period, 
 with indefinite results, and good nature has 
 its limits. 
 
 Her womanly instincts and her com- 
 mercial ones were at variance. She bes^an 
 to reproach her husband with his precipita- 
 tion and imprudence, but for all that she 
 never suffered her vigilant watch of the 
 invalid to relax, or made anything but a pet 
 of the child, who somehow reminded her 
 of a little one of her own, long laid to rest 
 under a green coverlet in St Clement's 
 Churchyard.
 
 1 88 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 That she had fine fibres in her nature, and 
 that they had been stirred by Etta's forlorn 
 condition, was shown in the conversion of 
 a sacred little wardrobe laid up in lavender, 
 to the poor wee stranger's use, and in the 
 care bestowed on her glossy dark hair. 
 
 Of her time and toil she gave ungrudg- 
 ingly and without stint ; the limit of her 
 ofood nature was the cost — the cost in coin. 
 
 Mrs Tilby and Dr Manningham were 
 not so widely different after all, even in 
 the matter of curiosity, but his was kept in 
 check by scientific knowledge ; as was that 
 of the Rev. Austin Ughtred by a delicate 
 shrinking from the infliction of pain. 
 
 The landlady, as had been anticipated, 
 forestalled both of them, in spite of caution. 
 There were two entrances to the " Cris- 
 pin." One to the bar, the other nearer to 
 the Barbican, a two-leaved door opening 
 almost at the foot of the private staircase, 
 between the bar and a smoking-room to the 
 right. 
 
 Five or six days had gone by since his 
 conversation with Dr Manningham, when
 
 By Ways Unknown. 189 
 
 the clergyman bent his tall head to enter 
 at this double door, but ere he could set 
 his foot on the first stair, which was barely 
 a stride for his long legs, Mrs Tilby darted 
 out of the bar to confront him, with a face 
 and tone of importance, in which habitual 
 awe of the vicar was lost. 
 
 "Lawcus heart! sir, what do you think ? " 
 she began. " Why, the poor thing upstairs 
 was on board the barque that struck on 
 Sandown Castle, and her husband was the 
 captain. I only just asked if the figure- 
 head of his ship was a woman with a blue 
 skirt, and a queer name on her belt, when 
 she screamed out ' The Euretta ! ' and I 
 thought all had gone to wrongs with her 
 again. The doctor's with her, and I think 
 she's all to rights now, but I got feared." 
 
 "Dr Manningham advised you to be 
 cautious, Mrs Tilby," said the vicar, in 
 accents of rebuke. 
 
 " But that was a week ago, sir, and one 
 cannot always have one's wits about one." 
 
 "So it would seem," he remarked, quietly. 
 *' What more did your wisdom suggest ? " 
 
 > 
 
 ./
 
 IQO By Ways Unknozvn, 
 
 " Why, sir, when she cried and begged 
 so hard to know the worst, I could not 
 help telling her that the barque had gone 
 to pieces, and not a soul had been saved 
 but her and Hetty." 
 
 " And what then ?" he asked, gravely. 
 
 " Why, she fell back in a dead faint ; and 
 Tilby ran off helter-skelter for the doctor. 
 But, lawcus heart ! I meant no harm, no 
 more I didn't. I only said she might be 
 thankful she and Hetty were saved." 
 
 " Ah ! and also thankful that her hus- 
 band was lost ? " and to the speaker's caustic 
 tone was added a keen, sideway glance at 
 Mrs Tilby's conscience-smitten counten- 
 ance, as, with his hand on the balustrade, 
 he put a second foot forward. 
 
 "No, sir! no more I didn't," she an- 
 swered, sharply ; " not but what some hus- 
 bands are better lost than found," and with 
 that she retreated to her customers in the 
 bar, leaving him free to join the doctor in 
 the room above. 
 
 It was a room with a window overlooking 
 Strand Street. Beneath this window stood
 
 By Ways Uyihiown, 191 
 
 a small oaken chest of drawers, which did 
 duty as a dressing-table ; and close beside 
 stood the head of a four-post bed hung 
 with chintz of a by-gone pattern, the tester 
 of which touched the low ceiling. 
 
 Propped on pillows little whiter than the 
 face that pressed them, lay the fair-haired 
 woman for whom death had been fighting 
 by sea and on shore. 
 
 She did not seem more than five or six- 
 and-twenty, and might be younger. There 
 had been a certain kind of beauty in the 
 face, but there had never been strength or 
 power, and the sharpening fingers of pain 
 had left their marks upon it. 
 
 Little Etta, in a dark frock and pink 
 pinafore, lay coiled on the white coverlet, 
 with her brown head nestling ag-ainst the 
 fair one — her mother's only solace. 
 
 On a chair by the bedside sat the 
 doctor, a labelled phial and wine-glass on 
 the dressing-table behind him telling of a 
 draught he had administered. There, too, 
 lay a gold watch and chain. 
 
 As the vicar entered the room, head
 
 192 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 foremost, with a stoop rendered natural by 
 long practice in low doorways, the doctor 
 held up his finger to bespeak caution. 
 
 " Hush ! she is sleeping, and I think the 
 worst is over," he said, in low tones, as he 
 gave his hand to the other's clasp ; " she 
 will no doubt be calm and reasonable 
 when she awakes. In fact, that blunder- 
 inof woman downstairs has done less harm 
 than might have been expected ; and she 
 has spared us a painful task." 
 
 " Has Mrs Fleming said anything to 
 you : 
 
 " Not much. But I have other patients 
 to see. Can you take my place so as to 
 be at hand if she awakes clear-headed ? " 
 
 The vicar assented. He took the 
 vacated chair, drew a book from his pocket, 
 and read to fill the time, and something 
 more, for ere long he lost himself in his 
 study. 
 
 An hour or more had gone by, during 
 which, it seemed as if the ordinary noises 
 of the house and the corner had been 
 thoughtfully stilled.
 
 By Ways Unknown. 193 
 
 " You are very kind, sir," said a faint 
 voice, from the pillows, breaking the still- 
 ness ; " all are very kind. I — know not how 
 I shall ever repay it." 
 
 " Gather strength, my dear madam, and 
 that will repay us." 
 
 " Ah, yes ; perhaps you, sir, you are the 
 — clergyman ? But — but," and tears seemed 
 welling up into the blue eyes, " I have 
 been — ill a long time, and there is the 
 doctor — and — " 
 
 " Oh, don't trouble about the doctor, he 
 only wants to get you off his hands." 
 
 " And the — the person of the house, she 
 tells me we have been here for more than 
 six weeks. She will want us off her hands 
 too, and how am I to pay — " 
 
 " You must not talk, Mrs Fleming. 
 Keep your mind easy. The Lord will 
 provide." 
 
 She was silent a few moments as if 
 pondering his speech. Then she began 
 afresh, — 
 
 " Yes, yes — but I must talk, or how will 
 you understand. It is so miserable to lie 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 194 ^y W'ays Unknown. 
 
 and think — and to be helpless " (she had 
 almost lost the use of her lower limbs), "and 
 friendless, twice wrecked as it were, and 
 not to know — " and here she beean to sob. 
 
 " The Eternal Friend who drew you and 
 your little one out of the deep waters, will 
 not leave you helpless if you seek Him. 
 And here am I, His servant, ready to wTite 
 to any relative you may desire to send for." 
 
 " Oh, sir, the cruel waves have swallowed 
 up the only friend left to me ! " She burst 
 into fresh lamentation. "Oh, my poor Carl ! 
 my dear husband ! torn from us so terribly!" 
 
 A little arm stole round her neck, a little 
 cheek was pressed to hers, and the child he 
 had thought asleep said pitifully, " Don't ky, 
 mamma, don't ky. Etta don't like to see 
 mamma ky." Deeply moved, he left her 
 grief time to subside. Then he asked, 
 gently, " Have you no brother, no father ? " 
 
 At the word " father," she clasped her 
 thin hands together, and cried, piteously, 
 " Father? ah, the kindest, best ; but he has 
 discarded, disowned me. He cast me off 
 when Carl took me to sea with him."
 
 By Ways Unknown. 195 
 
 " Then had you married without his 
 consent ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 She put forth a thin hand and pointed 
 towards the watch and chain on the dress- 
 ing-table. 
 
 " Father gave me ten thousand pounds 
 and that gold watch and chain on the 
 condition that Carl should make our home 
 in his, and that I should never be taken 
 from him, or to sea. Oh, it was an unlucky 
 promise ! " 
 
 "Unlucky in the making or the break- 
 ing?" put the clergyman. 
 
 " Both, said she," in a tone of distress. 
 
 And then, bit by bit, she told, with 
 many a sobbing interruption, how, after a 
 voyage or two, Carl had insisted upon 
 taking her with him, and how her father 
 had bade her make choice between the 
 two, and when she had clung to her hus- 
 band, her father had cast her off in a rage, 
 which had terrified her. But she did not 
 say how she had pined for her husband in 
 his absence, or how, on his return, her
 
 196 By Ways U^tknown. 
 
 fretful tears at a fresh parting had wrought 
 upon his affections — ay, to the forfeiture 
 of his word. And she could not tell what 
 Carl had done with her fortune. She did 
 not know. 
 
 But the vicar gathered that Martin Cope- 
 land, the great city merchant, was a man 
 to whom a promise was as binding as a 
 sealed bond, and that his resentment was 
 against the man who had deceived him, 
 not against his only child. He felt assured 
 that he had only to write and lay before the 
 offended father a simple statement of the 
 condition in which his child and grandchild 
 were cast among strangers, and forgiveness 
 would surely follow. 
 
 Mrs Fleming was not so sanguine. Her 
 own appeals for reconcilation had been all 
 unanswered. 
 
 " Perhaps, sir, if you enclosed your letter 
 in one to my aunt, Mrs Norreys, who came 
 to live with us in Russell Square before my 
 marriage, and if you gave my dear love to 
 her, and asked her, for little Etta's sake, to 
 intercede with him, he miaht be moved to
 
 By Ways Unknown. 197 
 
 pity. If not " — here her eyes turned to the 
 jewellery on the table, — " will you please 
 tell me if the chain and rings would pay 
 Mrs Tilby if sold?" she sighed heavily; 
 " I should not like to part with the watch, 
 unless — " 
 
 He did not say the watch was spoiled 
 and all but worthless, only " Time enough 
 for that, madam, when other sources fail. 
 Pray look forward cheerfully." 
 
 He pressed her thin hand reassuringly, 
 patted the brown head of Etta, nestling 
 against her mother's shoulder as if for mu- 
 tual comfort, and left the room to set Mrs 
 Tilby's fears at rest and her tongue in 
 motion, with the announcement that Mrs 
 Fleming's father was a rich London mer- 
 chant, with whom he was about to com- 
 municate.
 
 pigwj^^Tjr^s^^^^^^^^^ 
 
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 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A TUNE ON A VIOLIN. 
 
 HE vicar's letters were written 
 and despatched. 
 
 Mrs Fleming, more composed 
 now the first shock was over, 
 was gaining strength, and had been lifted 
 from the bed to an easy-chair, but was as 
 yet quite unable to use her feet, or to 
 stand. It is probable that she was reviv- 
 ing under the influence of hope. 
 
 But as one day after another died out, 
 and no one either came or wrote, the wist- 
 ful eagerness with which she listened for 
 the postman's foot in the street, changed
 
 By Ways Unknown. 199 
 
 to doubt and disappointment as hope died 
 with the days. 
 
 Then, weary of Mrs Tilby's wonderings 
 and comments, she asked for pen and ink, 
 and herself made a pathetic appeal to her 
 father's heart for the sake of her " fatherless 
 Euretta." 
 
 The tear-stained epistle came back under 
 cover to the Rev. Austin Uijhtred, with a 
 few curt lines from Mrs Norreys, to say 
 that " Mr Copeland refused to hold any 
 communication whatsoever with his un- 
 o^rateful daughter. She had forsaken him. 
 No further appeal for or by her would be 
 regarded or answered. He was not the 
 man to change or waver. The five-pound 
 note enclosed was from her own purse, but 
 no more would be forthcoming, as she risked 
 her brother's displeasure in sending that, and 
 her private income was not a large one." 
 
 With these in his hand the good vicar 
 sought Dr Manningham, whom he found 
 on his own door-step in King Street. 
 " What do you think of that ?" he asked. 
 
 " Think ? " said the doctor, when he had
 
 200 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 read the epistle, ' It is a case of unmiti- 
 gated barbarity. Unfortunately it is not 
 without parallel. In fact, I attended a 
 man who — But perhaps you are in haste, 
 and so am I, a man at the Black Mill has 
 broken his leg." 
 
 " Then I will walk with you," said the 
 vicar, well accustomed to the doctor's in- 
 completed instances. " I wish to have 
 your opinion about the five-pound note. 
 My own inclination would be to send it 
 back, but I fear we cannot venture to do 
 that." 
 
 " Send it back ! " cried the litde doctor 
 aghast, " when the poor creature has not a 
 penny, and Mrs Tilby is in a fidget about 
 her bill. In fact, she gave me a strong 
 hint yesterday that she wanted paying, and 
 said, if it had not been for little Hetty, 
 she could not have waited so long ; that it 
 was like Tilby's thoughtlessness saddling 
 her with a sick woman and child ; that the 
 ' Bell ' took most of the water-side custom, 
 and had a right to take such chances — 
 she had not."
 
 By Ways Unk7iown. 201 
 
 " Then you think this had better be 
 flung as a sop to the Tilbys ?" 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but what then ? Even if 
 we amputate her bill, if there is no more 
 cash to follow, what is to become of the 
 poor woman ? We cannot treat her as a 
 common pauper." 
 
 " Charity forbid ! " ejaculated the vicar. 
 
 " And 1 fear she will be disabled for life," 
 continued the other. "In fact, she will want 
 a pair of crutches out of that bank-note." 
 
 " It is a sad case, a very sad case," ru- 
 minated Austin Ughtred ; "a terrible fall 
 for one reared in luxury ; but I should 
 think she would have some claim on the 
 shipowners. At all events, we can but try 
 And, doctor, if you will lend me your cob, 
 I will ride over to Canterbury to-morrow, 
 and do my best in converting the poor 
 creature's few trinkets into coin, as Mrs 
 Tilby suggested to her long ago." 
 
 They had reached the curious old house 
 in Strand Street (recently rebuilt) where 
 Queen Elizabeth had lodged, and there 
 they parted, the one bustling off to the
 
 202 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 Black Mill, which stood beyond the Walls 
 on the Richborough road, the other retrac- 
 ing his steps thoughtfully with his hands 
 clasped behind him, until he reached the 
 Crispin. 
 
 The letter was a sad blow to Mrs Flem- 
 ing's new hopes, and she wept copiously ; 
 said her " aunt and father must both be 
 dreadfully changed ; " that " it was only 
 natural she should want to be with her hus- 
 band, and that her aunt had no need to be 
 niggardly with her bank-notes, they were 
 plentiful enough when she was at home." 
 
 It was some time before the vicar could 
 get her to look broadly into the facts of the 
 case, with reference to the future ; she 
 could but weep, lament her helplessness, 
 and her inability to see what was to be 
 done. She was one of those weak, clinging 
 women who, like the woodbine, need sup- 
 port and training ; had been a pretty 
 inanity, petted, spoiled, and utterly unfitted 
 to combat with the world. One of those 
 women who expect everything to be done 
 for them — and get it too, as a rule.
 
 By Ways Unknowji. 203 
 
 She assented to every proposition, was 
 thankful to have a few pounds for Mrs 
 Tilby, was disconsolate at the prospect of 
 the crutch, and gave up her trinkets readily 
 if ruefully, retaining only her father's 
 watch and a brooch containing a portrait 
 of the lost captain, Carl Fleming ; it was 
 set round with opals, and in good preserva- 
 tion, having been worn in her bosom. 
 
 The five-pound note was handed over 
 to Mrs Tilby intact, and a wonderfully 
 soothingr influence it had. Loud were 
 her denunciations of "unnatural fathers who 
 could leave a sweet innocent like Hetty to 
 the mercy of strangers," and many her 
 protests that "the little darling should 
 never want a friend while she lived ; and 
 as for the clothes she had found her, 
 she should think it a sin to charge for 
 them." 
 
 Moreover, in private confidence she 
 imparted to her husband her opinion that 
 perhaps they had, as the vicar had said, 
 entertained angels unawares, so many pro- 
 fitable customers had the child and her
 
 204 By Ways Ujiknown. 
 
 mother brought to the " Crispin," either 
 out of kindness or curiosity. 
 
 Having put his hand to the plough, the 
 Rev. Austin Ughtred was not the one to 
 turn back. He argued that the very 
 heartlessness of Mrs Fleming's relations 
 made his duty as a minister of God only 
 the more urgent. 
 
 He journeyed to Canterbury with her 
 few trinkets ; he wrote at once to the 
 shipowners. 
 
 The result of his journey was ten 
 guineas ; of his letter to the shipowners 
 a bundle of clerky correspondence and 
 considerable delay. 
 
 It appeared that two seamen, one a 
 Portuguese, had been picked up from the 
 floating mainmast, and on claiming their 
 wages had severally made affidavit that 
 the loss of the Euretta was mainly due to 
 the captain's wife, who distracted his atten- 
 tion from the charge of his ship to care for 
 herself and child. That, such being the 
 case. Captain Fleming was liable to forfeit 
 more than the moneys due to him.
 
 By Ways Unknown. 205 
 
 This she denied, said that she and Etta 
 were not placed in the boat until all hope 
 of saving the barque was gone, and that 
 the Portuguese sailor had sent them adrift 
 in revenge on the captain, who had threat- 
 ened to punish him for disobedience and 
 laziness. 
 
 Her denial was duly attested and for- 
 warded, and then came, after some delay, 
 thirty pounds, not in acknowledgment of 
 any claim, but as a compassionate sub- 
 scription from the three partners in relief 
 of the widow's distress. 
 
 The utter helplessness and incapacity 
 of some women seems to touch the heart 
 of man like the helplessness of infancy. 
 Especially must it be so when the woman 
 is comparatively young and pretty, is re- 
 fined and well-bred, and has been over- 
 whelmed by a sudden calamity. 
 
 The vicar of St Mary's was never known 
 to turn a deaf ear to either ao^e or uo^li- 
 ness in distress, but he was man enough 
 to be unconsciously stirred by common 
 human influences, and he had never taken
 
 2o6 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 up a cause with more earnestness than 
 when, as he said to the doctor, he felt as 
 if they had two children on their hands 
 to think and act for. 
 
 Sandwich, small as is the town, has 
 three parish churches, — St Peter's, St 
 Clement's, and St Mary's. The two latter 
 are now united under one vicar, but at 
 that time they were separate, and not very 
 mao^nificent livingfs. 
 
 It so happens that, although the "Crispin" 
 is situated at a corner of Strand Street, 
 and almost in a line parallel with St Mary's 
 Church, it lies within the parish of St 
 Clement's, a church in the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 It was no sooner bruited abroad that a 
 lady and her child had been rescued from 
 shipwreck and lay at the little inn, than 
 the vicar of St Clement's and his wife 
 called together, fondled the little girl, 
 made inquiries, but finding that the vicar 
 of St Mary's had " taken up the case," 
 departed in a huff at the unwarrantable in- 
 trusion beyond his own parish boundary.
 
 By Ways Unknown. 207 
 
 They did not even console themselves 
 on being spared the trouble and cost, until 
 a few weeks later, when it reached their 
 ears that the lady had no friends, and that 
 the Rev. Austin Ughtred and Dr Man- 
 ningham had " passed their word for 
 Tilby's bill." 
 
 " You are well out of it, my dear," said 
 the lady complacently. " I only wonder 
 what Mrs Manningham will say to it." 
 
 Her ' say' had not made the doctor too 
 comfortable over his impulsive gener- 
 osity. 
 
 And not too comfortable did St Cle- 
 ment's vicar feel when his brother cleric 
 of St Mary's called upon him in behalf 
 of the widow, at the modest red brick 
 house in Knightrider Street, near the 
 church, which served him in lieu of a 
 vicarage. 
 
 He sat stiffly silent, listening to the 
 earnest missionary's explanatory proem ; 
 but no sooner did he comprehend that he 
 was called upon as the vicar of St 
 Clement's to consider how the unfortunate
 
 2o8 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 lady and her child could be provided for in 
 the future, than he comfortably washed his 
 hands of the whole business. 
 
 " Yes, sir, the ' Crispin ' is in my parish, 
 you say ; but I do not see that these 
 strangers are in my cure. Moreover, 
 when you officiously intermeddled with my 
 parishioners, the Tilbys, and left your own 
 parish work to meddle with mine, I washed 
 my hands of the whole business." 
 
 " Charity is of no parish," answered the 
 other, rising, " or I should not have in- 
 truded on yours. Its domain is the world. 
 Good day, sir." 
 
 He was more successful with the rector 
 of St Peter's, though he, too, talked of 
 parish limits, and feared to intrude on his 
 neighbour's province ; but he did bestir 
 himself, and the two together waited upon 
 the mayor to discuss the possibility of 
 findlno- the widow and her child a home in 
 one or other of the old monkish hospitals 
 or almshouses connected with the town, 
 and in the gift of the corporation. 
 
 Their reception was cordial ; but though
 
 By Ways Unknown. 209 
 
 the mayor confessed he was "willing' to 
 strain a point in such an extreme case," the 
 laxity of old rule was of the past, and 
 barriers rose on all sides. 
 
 Not merely her child, but her age (or 
 want of it), excluded Mrs Fleming from 
 St Bartholomew's, no brother or sister 
 being admitted younger than sixty. 
 
 " I thought, Mr Mayor, that the ' Har- 
 binge ' of St John's, being chartered for 
 Pilgrims, might open its doors to the lady 
 and child both," said the rector ; " one 
 woman was admitted with her four chil- 
 dren, and is there now." 
 
 " Yes, sir," replied the mayor ; " but that 
 was an abuse of the charity ; still, the 
 woman was the widow of a fi'eema7i, and 
 only such are eligible. The shelter for 
 pilgrims was only temporary, and has fallen 
 into desuetude in the lapse of centuries and 
 of pilgrimages. The shipwrecked lady 
 has no claim, either as a pilgrim or a native 
 of the town. I am sorry we cannot help 
 her ; but so it is. Can Mrs Fleming do 
 nothing towards her own support ?" 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 210 By Ways Unknown, 
 
 " Until she can use her crutches, she will 
 be Unable even to wait on herself or child," 
 was Austin Ughtred's reply. "But she has 
 had a good education; is, she tells me, a fair 
 needlewoman ; was a good musician before 
 she went to sea, and, if she had but a 
 home, might in time earn her own living 
 — if the mayoress and other ladies would 
 interest themselves to procure her work 
 and pupils. But the first thing is to find 
 her a home, and since no public charity is 
 open to her needs, I must see what can be 
 done in my own area." 
 
 " You know she can have coals free, on 
 application to the churchwardens," struck 
 in the rector, 
 
 " She will require much more than coals. 
 She will need a house and furniture, if she 
 is to keep a school, and at least food and 
 shelter until she can," said her thoughtful 
 advocate. " Then, save the change of 
 linen sent at the outset by the mayoress for 
 Mrs Fleming's use, she is almost destitute 
 of raiment. Mrs Tilby, good woman, sup- 
 plied the sweet little one with clothes from
 
 By Ways Unknoiun. 2 1 1 
 
 a sacred store of her own ; and she declares 
 the mother's outer garments are utterly 
 ruined by the sea water ; indeed, that she 
 will want clothing, to be commonly decent." 
 
 "No doubt, no doubt! I'll name it to 
 Mrs Rolfe ; she knows more of such 
 matters than I, and will not require 
 prompting," responded the mayor quickly, 
 bowing them out. 
 
 Walking homewards, with his hands 
 behind him, as was his wont, the exigencies 
 of his new trust upon his mind, the vicar's 
 ear was arrested by the melody of Cowper's 
 solemn hymn, " God moves in a mysteri- 
 ous way," vibrating on the strings of a 
 well-known violin, under the touch of no 
 uncertain bow. 
 
 The musician struck a chord he had not 
 anticipated. 
 
 The clergyman paused, smiled, as if a 
 difficulty was clearing away, and, instead 
 of crossing into Church Street on his way 
 home, turned the handle of a cottage door 
 opposite to the church porch, and stepped 
 without ceremony over the threshold.
 
 212 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 Passing through a neat front parlour 
 over a clean rag carpet, he entered a back 
 apartment, one corner of which was occu- 
 pied with a very low stool, bundles of 
 osiers, and an unfinished basket. A middle- 
 aged woman, in a dark cotton gown, was 
 placing a saucepan on the fire ; and 
 standing by the table, in front of the 
 window, as if for the benefit of the light, 
 stood the musician in his shirt-sleeves 
 handling his bow, a man almost as thin 
 and tall as himself, one who had no need 
 of the light ; for he was sightless. 
 
 It was Will Ashurst, basket-maker, and 
 leader of St Mary's choir. There was no 
 organ in the church, and it was before the 
 day of harmoniums. 
 
 The wife, a homely woman, who wore a 
 spotless white muslin cap, primly frilled 
 around her plain but pleasant face, curtsied 
 respectfully, and hastened to dust a dustless 
 chair with her check apron, touching her 
 husband on the arm as she passed. 
 
 " Will, here be the vicar." 
 
 The bow quivered on the strings for an
 
 By Ways Unknown. 213 
 
 instant, then was lifted, and the man whose 
 whole being had been surrendered to the 
 divine strain, lowering his instrument, 
 confronted their visitor, as if he saw 
 him. 
 
 " Mr Ashurst," said the vicar, more re- 
 spectful than he might have been to a 
 different man nearer his own rank, "could 
 you contrive for a short time to make room 
 for the shipwrecked lady and her child now 
 at the ' Crispin,' or rather could your wife ? 
 For I must tell you she is likely to be very 
 helpless for some time, and, although quite 
 a lady, will now be compelled to sew or 
 teach for her own maintenance and her 
 child's." 
 
 " Ay, ay, sir, and welcome," cried the 
 man impulsively. 
 
 "Well, sir," answered the woman, more 
 hesitatingly, " our poor place be never fit 
 for a lady, no more it don't — but — if, as 
 you say, she be reduced to get her own 
 living, maybe she could put up with it, and 
 a child in the house would be a God-send 
 to Will."
 
 2 14 ^y Wciys Unknown. 
 
 " Ay, ay," interrupted he, " a blessing 
 comes with a child." 
 
 " She could have the parlour and front 
 bedroom, sir. We could make shift with 
 the back, couldn't us, Will ? " 
 
 "Ay, ay, Matty." 
 
 Nothing had as yet been said about pay- 
 ment, but before the vicar left he had 
 arranged for the reception of Mrs Fleming 
 and Euretta, on terms as creditable to 
 them as to herself. 
 
 Scrupulously clean was Mrs Ashurst's 
 little parlour ; but though the narrow 
 limits of a ship's cabin had familiarised 
 Mrs Fleming with want of space, no 
 luxury had been spared in the cabin's 
 adornment, and the poverty of her new 
 surroundings affected her keenly. 
 
 When Fogge and a man from the quay 
 carried her, well wrapped up, in an arm- 
 chair, straight from the street into her 
 parlour, without any intermediate passage, 
 she noted not the fire blazing in the old- 
 fashioned grate to welcome her, not the 
 cleanliness of the well-washed chintz cover
 
 By Ways Unknown. 215 
 
 of the squab sofa and easy-chair surrendered 
 for her use, not the brightness of the brass 
 fender and fireirons, and the candlesticks 
 on the low mantelshelf — only the common 
 order of things, and the want of privacy in 
 a room opening direct on the street. 
 
 Her first ejaculation told it. 
 
 "Is this my room ? Is there no entrance- 
 hall ? Oh. dear!" 
 
 Neither the words nor the heavy sigh 
 which followed were lost on Mrs Ashurst. 
 She, however, had a large fund of sympathy 
 to draw upon ; had been a domestic in a 
 great house before her marriage, so could 
 imagine what Mrs Fleming's loss had 
 been ; and, as she removed wraps, helped 
 her new inmate to the sofa, dismissed the 
 men, and set out her best teacups" on her 
 best tray, chatting the while to lively little 
 Euretta, who danced about delighted with 
 the novelty, she said to herself, — 
 
 " Poor thing ! Lame, and lost all I It's 
 a fearsome blow for her. No doubt she 
 do feel the difference. We must be very 
 patient with her."
 
 2i6 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 A good deal of patience was needed. 
 Never having been trained to self-denial, 
 Mrs Fleming had neither perception nor 
 knowledge of any self-sacrifice on the part 
 of those who had opened their door to 
 lodgers for the first time in their lives, and 
 who gave up their best of all things for her 
 use. She saw only meanness and poverty 
 in her surroundings. When the ship- 
 brokers' donation came, a few articles of 
 furniture were added to briorhten her 
 rooms, but nothing would reconcile her to 
 her new life — not even the artless caresses 
 of her child. And had she foreseen how 
 many years she would have to exist under 
 that lowly roof, it is more than likely her 
 brain would again have lost its balance.
 
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 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PINCH OF POVERTY. 
 
 H E traveller through Strand Street, 
 with his face set towards Canter- 
 bury or Richborough, would pass 
 between the long, low, one-sided 
 church of St Mary on the left, and Will 
 Ashurst's modest dwellinor on the rio;ht — 
 one of two with red-tiled gable-roofs — more 
 inclined to note the divergence of the 
 church from the parallel line of street, or 
 the " King's Arms " thrusting itself squarely 
 forth at the other corner of Church Street, 
 than any peculiarity possessed by the 
 modest dwelling occupied by the musical 
 basket - maker, unless he had an eye
 
 2 1 8 By Ways Ujtknown. 
 
 for shininof windows and well -washed 
 paint. 
 
 But blind Will might have told you that 
 from those windows you could look far up 
 Church Street and see when the vicar was 
 coming ; just as the admiring eyes of Mrs 
 Ashurst followed him when he crossed the 
 road, beaminof with satisfaction at the 
 arrangement he had made. 
 
 " I am glad that business is settled," he 
 said to himself, as his hands again went 
 behind him. "It is better than the alms- 
 house and the parish dole. We must 
 induce Mrs Tilby to accept another five 
 pounds in entire settlement of her claim. 
 That will leave a few pounds to maintain 
 the widow and orphan, until we hear from 
 the shipowners, or she can earn a living 
 by her own industry. And by payment 
 she will retain her own self-respect and 
 self-dependence. Dr Manningham will be 
 pleased to be released from his responsi- 
 bility. The little man's fidgetiness about 
 it of late has been quite amusing. I should 
 think Mrs Fleming would equally rejoice
 
 By Ways Unknown. 219 
 
 to remove her little one to a purer atmo- 
 sphere." 
 
 And so well content was he with his 
 morning's work, that neither the grumbling 
 of his housekeeper nor the chippiness of 
 his over-cooked dinner had disturbed his 
 equanimity. 
 
 It was somewhat discouraging to find 
 that the impoverished and helpless lady, 
 on whose behalf he had taken so much 
 trouble, did not share his satisfaction. 
 
 He found her, on his first visit in her 
 new abode, lying on the sofa drowned in 
 tears, bewailing her misfortunes, whilst Etta, 
 Mrs Ashurst, and blind Will were all three 
 endeavouring to console her, and in vain. 
 
 The poor child was sobbing because her 
 mother cried, in sympathy for a sorrow 
 she could not comprehend. 
 
 At the entrance of the vicar, the basket- 
 maker and his wife retired to their own 
 interrupted employments, the former ob- 
 serving, in a low tone, before he went, — 
 
 " It is a great hardship for one who has 
 been a lady all her life to come down to
 
 2 20 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 our common ways and humble rooms, sir. 
 It has put her all out of tune, just as if I 
 was to hang my fiddle up in the washhouse. 
 And no wonder, sir." 
 
 This was rather discouraging to the 
 Rev. Austin Ughtred, after he had 
 established the poor creature so much to 
 his own satisfaction, and not without some 
 little sacrifice out of his narrow income. 
 He had been moved by her tears, when 
 she wept for her husband's loss, for her 
 father and aunt's unkindness, for her in- 
 ability to pay Mrs Tilby, for her helpless- 
 ness and dependence on others, but he 
 was scarcely so sympathetic when she 
 began to decry the refuge he had provided 
 for her utter destitution. 
 
 It was not in his nature to be harsh, 
 but he felt that Mrs Fleming needed a 
 common-sense reminder of her duty, and 
 while he took the sobbing child on his lap, 
 and felt in his pockets for sweets to 
 comfort her, he asked the distressed 
 mother quietly, — 
 
 " What is the matter, Mrs Fleming ? "
 
 By Ways Unknown. 221 
 
 " Oh dear, dear, I cannot bear it ! These 
 poor rooms, these common people, I 
 have never been used to — oh dear! the 
 contrast between my own home and this ! 
 What have I done to deserve this hard 
 fate ? " 
 
 " What has this Httle one done, that her 
 mother should cause her this needless 
 distress ? " 
 
 "Needless? Oh, Mr Ughtred, you 
 cannot understand — you — " she sobbed. 
 
 " Nay, madam, it is you who do not 
 understand. Were you content to remain 
 at the inn, contracting a debt you had no 
 means to discharge ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir, you know I was not, but this 
 place — " 
 
 " Is it not clean ?" he asked, interrupting 
 her. 
 
 " Oh, dear, yes ! " she assented, tear- 
 fully. 
 
 " And quiet ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Are not the people kind and at- 
 tentive 1 "
 
 22 2 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 " Oh, yes, but—" 
 
 " Do you not think the music of blind 
 Will's violin better for this little one's ear, 
 than the coarse songs and blasphemy of a 
 tavern ? " 
 
 There was that in his voice which 
 seemed to hold her sobs in check. She 
 assented faintly as one who faced a truth 
 for the first time. 
 
 "If Mrs Tilby had wearied of you and 
 turned you out of doors, had you anywhere 
 a shelter for your own head or this child's?" 
 
 "God help me! No." 
 
 " Then, pray, Mrs Fleming, if you can- 
 not yet be thankful to God for a clean, 
 quiet home, with kind and pious people, 
 who surrendered their own bed and sittinc:"- 
 room to you, a stranger, do not, as a lady, 
 wound their feelings with reflections on 
 the poverty of a home which they have 
 regarded for years with decent pride." 
 
 She started ! Had she been doing or 
 saying anything unbecoming a lady ? She 
 began to take herself to task. She hardly 
 heard his further remark, —
 
 By Ways Unkiiown. 22^ 
 
 v) 
 
 "And now let me remind you that we 
 cannot gauge the decrees of the Almighty 
 by our own deserts, real or imaginary, any 
 more than we can gauge those deserts. 
 The blind man in the other room mieht 
 teach you a lesson of cheerful submission. 
 He was blinded twenty years ago by a 
 flash of lightning, which set fire to his 
 farm, and burnt up the corn he had 
 harvested. He has suffered and sorrowed, 
 but he utters no complaint. He is no 
 common man." 
 
 He left her calmer, and ashamed of her 
 own want of good breeding. She had 
 observed his courtesy towards these poor 
 people, and henceforth felt constrained, as 
 a lady, to accept their kindness and civility 
 with like courtesy. 
 
 But she did not feel one whit more 
 contented with her surroundings, and 
 "only put up with them as a temporary 
 necessity," until the receipt of Captain 
 Fleming's salary from the shipowners 
 should enable her to make a chanoe. 
 
 Their first letter Mr U^htred had
 
 2 24 By W'ays Unknown. 
 
 withheld until she was sufficiently com- 
 posed to give it her attention. Their 
 final one, enclosing- a benefaction of thirty 
 pounds, where she had expected a payment 
 of about three hundred, to her mind honestly 
 due, crushed her utterly. 
 
 She had no idea of the value of money 
 or the expenditure of small sums. Her 
 aunt had taken the cares of household 
 management off her hands ; on shipboard 
 all her wants were supplied. 
 
 " Thirty pounds ! " she exclaimed. 
 " Why, that will not even purchase a 
 pianoforte, and how can I teach music 
 without a respectable house and an in- 
 strument ? My father gave more than a 
 hundred pounds for mine." 
 
 It needed some argument to convince 
 her that her own plans were impracticable ; 
 that she would have to remain where she 
 was, and be content with a cheap second- 
 hand piano, if she would retain cash 
 for immediate use, and that until she 
 could obtain piano and pupils, she 
 had better employ her fingers on the
 
 By Ways Unkfwwn. 225 
 
 needlework the mayoress and others had 
 offered her. 
 
 It is needless to say that every conces- 
 sion to common sense cost a shower of 
 tears. 
 
 A well-stocked work-table which had 
 belonged to Austin Ughtred's mother, and 
 been treasured as a sacred memorial, he 
 offered for her use, not without some pain 
 at its transfer ; respecting the piano he 
 enlisted the services of his friend, the 
 organist of Canterbury Cathedral, and 
 successfully. A square piano in a 
 mahogany case, which had seen its 
 best days but was not quite worn out, soon 
 filled the wall beneath the one window, like 
 a sideboard, and but seven of her few 
 sovereigns had gone in the purchase. 
 
 She thanked her good friend for every 
 kindness, in genuine, if stereotyped phrase; 
 but she let little Etta play with the fittings 
 of the well-kept work-table, and only 
 withheld the piano-keys from her busy 
 fingers, because " the very sound of the 
 old tin-kettle was excruciating." 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 2 26 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 Fashionable masters had made of 
 Margaret Copeland a brilliant pianist ; 
 but playing and teaching require very- 
 different qualifications, and Margaret 
 Fleming speedily discovered that not 
 only a poor instrument and want of 
 practice, but a deficiency of theoretical 
 knowledge barred her progress as a 
 teacher of music. 
 
 Her first pupil would have been a 
 failure, but for Will Ashurst, who, whilst 
 voluntarily bending his long back over the 
 piano to tune and set it in order, began to 
 converse with her on his favourite theme, 
 and soon discovered her ignorance of 
 fundamental principles. 
 
 " If I were you, Mrs Fleming, I would 
 stick to my needle until I could pick up 
 what I had forgotten, before I began to 
 teach. You are out of practice " (so he 
 delicately put it). " I have never let my 
 bow lie idle a day. If you will condescend 
 to call me in when your memory fails, 
 perhaps I may be some little help." 
 
 She thanked him somewhat stiffly, but
 
 By Ways Unknown. 227 
 
 she took his advice ; and the respect the 
 Rev. Austin Ughtred paid to his choir- 
 master somewhat softened the humihation 
 of learning from him what her own highly- 
 paid masters had not sufficiently taught. 
 
 With all Mrs Ashurst's help in carrying 
 home her work, and her practical lessons 
 in frugality, Mrs Fleming's reserve fund 
 slowly melted, and she soon found sewing 
 for a living a trial alike of her strength and 
 patience. 
 
 She had to rise with the lark as did the 
 Ashursts, the " Morning Hymn " on Will's 
 violin being the signal ; and thus only did 
 she gain time for the musical study now so 
 necessary if she meant to live by it. 
 
 But she never crossed the threshold, 
 thoufjh she soon learned the use of her 
 crutches in the house ; and, had it not 
 been for others, Etta would have lost 
 spirit and elasticity. Fortunately her 
 peculiar introduction to Sandwich, and 
 her beauty, had made " Hetty," as she 
 was generally called, the child of many 
 friends. They came for her, they sent for
 
 2 28 By Ways Unknown, 
 
 her — not only Mrs Tilby, but Mrs Blean 
 and the skipper — and there was always 
 some little thing to take home with her — 
 a Dutch doll dressed on shipboard, or a 
 pair of warm socks knitted. Mrs Tilby's 
 gifts mostly took the practical shape of 
 frocks and bonnets. Even Fogge would 
 have wonderful sea-shells, or an orange in 
 reserve for " Hetty " when she ran to renew 
 acquaintance. And so much had Dr Man- 
 ninaham been asked about her and her 
 mother by Mrs Rye, at the Black Mill, 
 that lonof before he had ceased his attend- 
 ance on the broken leg, he had stopped 
 his horse at the Ashursts' door, and carried 
 the delighted child off in triumph before 
 him, to be exhibited as " Euretta the 
 Mermaiden." She came back in high 
 glee, with hands full of cakes and posies, 
 to talk of the wonders of the mill, the 
 pigs and the chicks, and the lady who 
 kissed her, and said she must come again. 
 The vicar, cominof to and fro occasion- 
 ally, and always with a preliminary knock 
 at the door, would bring her a picture-
 
 By Ways Unknown. 229 
 
 book, or smooth her brown hair, and talk 
 down to her ; but of all her friends and 
 companions she had none to be compared 
 with the blind basket-maker and musician. 
 
 Refined and soft as was the voice of her 
 mother, there was a mournful cadence in 
 its undertones far from inspiriting to a 
 child ; but the blind man's voice ever sang, 
 as it were, a ringing peal of jubilant life — 
 a swelling anthem of praise. And whether 
 she took his hand to be led across the road 
 through the porch to the choir of the 
 dilapidated church, and her questionings 
 were answered in a reverent whisper that 
 "in a terrible storm nearly two hundred 
 years before, the church tower was blown 
 down on the roof, and the long rows of 
 pillars smashed," or that he " cannot tell 
 why they put up fresh pillars only along 
 one aisle," or " why sham pillars of rough 
 wood were put up instead of nice smooth 
 ones of stone along the other aisle," it is all 
 cheery and kind. 
 
 And whether together they wandered 
 after service like two children along the
 
 230 By Ways Unknown. 
 
 quay and the walls, stopping at the Bar- 
 bican for a chat with Fogge by the way ; 
 or strayed away past the Black Mill, and 
 he explained why the huge sails, then 
 keeping Sabbath, went merrily round 
 before the wind on other days, to grind 
 corn into flour ; or bade her listen to the 
 melody of the skylark rising from the 
 meadow In the bend of the river, or to 
 the blackbird on a bramble, or to the 
 croak of the frogs, or to the harsh cra-cra, 
 crac-crac of a stray gannet seeking the 
 sea ; or laid a discriminatlnQf finofer on 
 the wild-flowers she gathered, and straight- 
 way gave her their names, all was fresh and 
 charming to her whose world had been 
 a floating barque on a restless waste of 
 sea. 
 
 Her questions were endless, and grew 
 with her growth ; and when at home her 
 mother had "the headache," or was "weary," 
 or " busy," or could not " attend to her," she 
 slipped into the next room, where the blind 
 man was never too busy — even to explain 
 why all the baskets he made were crooked,
 
 By Ways Unknown. 231 
 
 though the answer touched closely upon 
 his infirmity. 
 
 As time rolled on, through months and 
 years, Mrs Fleming, who had begun to 
 walk with a stick, had, thanks to the vicar, 
 three or four music pupils to vary the 
 monotony of stitching, and help them to 
 live. 
 
 Unless Euretta escaped to the basket- 
 maker and his wife, she was compelled 
 to sit still and silent during these lessons, 
 sometimes sewing a weary seam, until one 
 of the girls compassionately imparted the 
 new art of crochet, and then the busy 
 little fingers never seemed to find the time 
 long. What a joy it was to carry her work 
 for inspection by Will's sensitive fingers 
 and Mrs Ashurst's eyes! It was so much 
 more to her than her mother's languid 
 praise. After a time, so many customers 
 were there for the pretty and durable 
 trimming, that Euretta's crochet-hook was 
 kept almost in incessant motion. But of 
 education, as the word is understood, she 
 was having none, unless the check her
 
 232 By Ways Unknoiun. 
 
 mother kept on her manners and deport- 
 ment might be counted, and the scraps of 
 knowledge she picked up by her own 
 inquiries and intelh'gence. 
 
 Not that Mrs Flemino- as a mother was 
 either unloving or inattentive ; but the 
 drudgery of life had come very hard to 
 her, and she spent in lamenting the past, 
 and looking forth on a dreary future, the 
 time she had better have given to brighten- 
 ing the present. 
 
 Will Ashurst had made for " Hetty" an 
 alphabet of osiers, and syllabic lore had 
 come to her in play. He did the same 
 with numerals, and so she learned to count 
 and calculate small sums as a childish feat. 
 By the same means he early familiarised 
 her \vith musical notation, illustrating 
 sounds with his beloved fiddle. But it 
 v^as not until the girl's tenth birthday that 
 the vicar — who had of late grown chary 
 of intrusion — takinsf a hint from his choir- 
 master, remonstrated openly with Mrs 
 Fleminof on the " too much work found for 
 Euretta's fingers, and too little for her head."
 
 By Ways Unknown. 233 
 
 " Oh, Mr Uohtred, how can I help 
 it ? You know every shillin^^ is of im- 
 portance, and children must be kept out 
 of mischief." 
 
 " Yes," said he, looking down on the 
 pretty young face no longer set in a 
 widow's cap, as he rested one hand on the 
 square piano, and held his hat behind him 
 with the other, " but not to the detriment 
 of health or future welfare. You have had 
 a liberal education yourself, and it would 
 cost you neither time nor money to hear 
 a few lessons every day. Suppose her 
 grandfather were to relent, even on his 
 death-bed, you would surely not wish to 
 present an ignorant girl to society as your 
 daughter.' 
 
 Her face flushed, then paled. 
 
 " Ah, sir, I have given up hope in that 
 quarter ; but I would not neglect Euretta, 
 superficial as I know my own education 
 has been, if I had suitable books or the 
 means to purchase them. She will need 
 
 some education even to earn her own 
 
 11) 
 ivmg.
 
 2 34 By Ways Unhiown. 
 
 And her Interlocutor saw that the widow's 
 eyes were suffused with tears. 
 
 " Well, well, we will see what can be done 
 about books," said he, in a different tone, as 
 he bowed himself out, and betook himself 
 straightway to fussy but kindly Dr Man- 
 nlngham's. 
 
 " Old school books ! Ay, enough to 
 stock a library. In fact, every child of 
 mine has wanted a fresh supply, and the 
 others have been dismissed to the nursery 
 shelves, In all the disgrace of dogs'-ears and 
 dilapidation. The Mermalden Is welcome 
 to the lot." 
 
 The suggestion thrown out so adroitly 
 by the vicar took full hold of Mrs Fleming's 
 mind. Nevertheless Euretta's education 
 proceeded after a somewhat desultory 
 fashion, with now and then a music lesson 
 thrown In, which blind Will was ready to 
 supplement long before he obtained per- 
 mission for her entrance into St Mary's 
 choir, permission not given by the reduced 
 gentlewoman without many a sigh. And 
 though Austin Ughtred stepped in occa-
 
 By Ways Unknown. 235 
 
 sionally to examine and assist the progress 
 oi\{\?> protdg^e, setting more than one heart 
 in a flutter during his catechism, he could 
 but shake his head when Euretta had 
 crossed the threshold of her teens, and say- 
 she possessed but the rudiments of a good 
 education. 
 
 For as every year had increased the cost 
 of her attire and maintenance, so did the 
 girl's own handiwork become of greater im- 
 port ; and little was the time to be spared 
 for study or practice, whatever the vicar 
 might say. 
 
 He, good man, grew more anxious on 
 this account, as the winning, artless child 
 grew into a wistful, dreamy girl, and he 
 heard " our Hetty's beauty " praised by her 
 first friends around the Barbican, as a 
 something for Sandwich to be proud of, 
 something to make the girl's own fortune ; 
 and he took her improvement on himself 
 as a duty, giving her hints and lending 
 her books to be read aloud either to her 
 mother or Will Ashurst when work was 
 slack. She was apt and diligent. In a
 
 236 By Ways Unknown, 
 
 year or two he was ready to reverse his 
 dictum. 
 
 It so happened that the fortunes of 
 Euretta and her mother had occupied his 
 mind no Httle of late, and at the very 
 time Captain AinsHe suggested to Pierce 
 Hathersage that her painted face would 
 make the artist's fortune, the clergyman 
 was asking himself if he might not promote 
 the fortune of the Flemings both, by a 
 journey to London and a personal interview 
 with Martin Copeland either in his home 
 or his city counting-house. He could surely 
 inspire the rigid merchant and father with 
 some of the pity he felt. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 COLSION AND SON, PRINTERa, EDINBURGH.
 
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