 CHAPTER XXX on the road. All at nole was indicative of that break-up that was so near at hand. Mr. Brierly arrived according to his promise. He was in a whirl of business all the time, he and Mr. Danvers conferred about the management of the estate. It was agreed that the grounds and gardens should be let, but not the house of which Mrs. Rusk was to take the care. The gamekeeper remained in office, and some outdoor servants, but the rest were to go except Mary Quintz, who was to accompany me to Bartram Hof as my maid. Don't part with Quintz, said Lady Nullis, preemptorily. They'll want you, but don't. She kept harping on this point, and recurred to it half a dozen times every day. They'll say, you know, that she is not fit for a lady's maid, as she certainly is not, if it in the least signified in such a wilderness as Bartram Hof. But she is attached, trustworthy and honest, and those are qualities valuable everywhere especially in solitude. Don't allow them to get you a wicked young French milliner in her stead. Sometimes she said things that jarred unpleasantly on my nerves and left an undefined sense of danger such as, I know she is true to you and a good creature but is she shrewd enough. Or with an anxious look, I hope Mary Quintz is not easily frightened. Or suddenly, can Mary Quintz write, in case you were ill? Or can she take a message exactly? Or is she a person of any enterprise and resource, and cool in an emergency? Now these questions did not come all in a string as I write them down here, but at long intervals and were followed quickly by ordinary talk. But they generally escaped from my companion after silence and gloomy thought, and though I could extract nothing more defined than these questions, yet they seemed to me to point at some possible danger contemplated in my good cousin's dismal ruminations. Another topic that occupied my cousin's mind a good deal was obviously the larceny of my Pearl Cross. She made a note of the description furnished by the recollection, respectively, of Mary Quintz, Mrs. Rusk, and myself. I had fancied her little vision of the police was no more than the result of a momentary impulse, but really to judge by her methodical examination of us I should have fancied that she had taken it up in downright earnest. Having learned that my departure from Noel was to be so very soon, she resolved not to leave me before the day of my journey to Bartram Hough. And as day after day passed by, and the hour of our leave-taking approached, she became more and more kind and affectionate—a feverish and sorrowful interval it was to me. Of Dr. Briarley, though staying in the house, we saw almost nothing, except for an hour or so at tea-time. He breakfasted very early, and dined solidarily, and at uncertain hours, as business permitted. The second evening of his visit, Cousin Monica took the occasion to introduce the subject of his visit to Bartram Hough. You saw him, of course, said Lady Nollis. Yes, he saw me, knew was not well. On hearing who I was he asked me to go to his room where he sat in a silk-dressing gown and slippers. Not business principally, said Cousin Monica leconically. That was dispatched in very few words, for he was quite resolved, and placed his refusal upon grounds which it was difficult to dispute. But difficult or no, mind you, he intimated that he would hear nothing more on the subject. So that was closed. Well, and what is his religion now? inquired she irreverently. We had some interesting conversation on the subject. He leans much to what we call the doctrine of correspondence. He is read rather deeply in the writings of Swedenborg, and seems anxious to discuss some points with one who professes to be his follower. To say truth, I did not expect to find him either so well read, or so deeply interested in the subject. Was he angry when it was proposed that he should vacate the guardianship? Not at all. Contrary wise, he said he had at first been so minded himself. His years, his habits, and something of the unfitness of the situation, the remoteness of Bartram Hof from good teachers, and all that had struck him, and nearly determined him against accepting the office. But then came the views which I stated in my letter, and they governed him. And nothing could shake them, he said, or induce him to reopen the question in his own mind. All the time Dr. Brierly was relating his conference with the head of the family at Bartram Hof, my cousin commented on the narrative with a variety of little pitches and sneers which I thought showed more of vexation than contempt. I was glad to hear all that Dr. Brierly related. It gave me a kind of confidence, and I experienced a momentary reaction. After all, could Bartram Hof be more lonely than I had found Noel? Was I not sure of the society of my cousin Millicent, who was about my own age? Was it not quite possible that my sojourn in Darbyshire might turn out to be a happy though very quiet remembrance through all my afterlife? Why should it not? What time or place would be happy if we gave ourselves over to dismal imaginations? So the summons reached me from Uncle Silas. The hours at Noel were numbered. The evening before I departed I visited the full-length portrait of Uncle Silas, and studied it for the last time carefully with deep interest for many minutes, but with results vaguer than ever. With a brother so generous and so wealthy, always ready to help him forward, with his talents, with his life and gorgeous beauty, the shadows of which hung on that canvas. What might he not have accomplished? Whom might he not have captivated? And yet where, and what was he? A poor and shunned old man, occupying a lonely house in place that did not belong to him, married to degradation, with a few years of suspected and solitary life before him, and then swift oblivion his best portion. I gazed on the picture, to fix it well and vividly in my remembrance. I might still trace some of its outlines and tints in its living original, whom I was next day to see for the first time in my life. So the morning came. My last for many a day at Noel, a day of partings, a day of novelty and regrets. The travelling carriage and post-horses were at the door. Even Monica's carriage had just carried her away to the railway. We had embraced with tears, and her kind face was still before me, and her words of comfort and promise in my ears. The early sharpness of morning was still in the air. The frosty dew still glistened on the window-panes. We had made a hasty breakfast, my share of which was a single cup of tea. The aspect of the house, how strange! Uncarpeted, uninhabited, the doors, for the most part, locked. All the servants but Mrs. Rusk and Brantston departed. The drawing-room door stood open, and a charwoman was washing the bare floor. I was looking my last, for who could say how long, on the old house, and lingered. The luggage was all up. I made Mary Quince get in first, for every delay was precious. And now the moment was come. I hugged and kissed Mrs. Rusk in the hall. God bless you, Maud Darlin! You must not fret, mind. The time won't be long going over, no time at all. And you'll be bringing back a fine young gentleman, who knows, as great as the Duke of Wellington for your husband, and all take the best care of everything, and the birds and the dogs till you come back, and I'll go and see you and Mary if you're a low and daubisher. And so forth. I got into the carriage, and bid Brantston, who shut the door, good-bye, and kissed hands to Mrs. Rusk, who was smiling and drying her eyes and curtsying on the hall-door steps. The dogs, who had started gleefully with the carriage, were called back by Brantston, and driven home, wondering and wistful, looking back with ears oddly cocked and tails dejected. My heart thanked them for their kindness, and I felt like a stranger and very desolate. It was a bright, clear morning. It had been settled that it was not worth the trouble changing from the carriage to the railway for the sake of five and twenty miles, and so the entire journey of sixty miles was to be made by the post-road, the pleasantest traveling if the mind were free. The grander and more distant features of the landscape we may see well enough from the windows of the railway carriage, but it is the foreground that interests and instructs us, like a pleasant gossiping history, and that we had in the old days from the post-chase window. It was more than traveling piquet. Something of all conditions of life, luxury and misery, high spirits and low, all sorts of costumes, livery, rags, millinery, faces buxom, faces wrinkled, faces kind, faces wicked, no end of interest and suggestion, passing in a procession silent and vivid, and all in their proper scenery. The golden corn-chiefs, the old dark-allied orchards, and the high streets of antique towns. There were few dreams brighter, few books so pleasant. We drove by the dark wood. It always looked dark to me, where the mausoleum stands, where my dear parents both lay now. I gazed on its somber masses, not with a softened feeling but a peculiar sense of pain, and was glad when it was quite past. All the morning I had not shed a tear. When Mary Quince cried at leaving Null, Lady Nullis's eyes were not dry as she kissed and blessed me, and promised an early visit, and the dark, lean, energetic face of the housekeeper was quivering, and her cheeks wet as I drove away. But I, whose grief was sorest, never shed a tear. I only looked about from one familiar object to another, pale, excited, not quite apprehending my departure, and wondering at my own composure. But when we reached the old bridge with the tall osiers standing by the buttress, and looked back at poor Null, the places we loved and are leaving look so fairy-like and so sad in the clear distance. And this is the finest view of the gabled old house, with its slanting meadowlands and noble timber reposing in solemn groups. I gazed at the receding vision, and the tears came at last, and I wept in silence long after the fair picture was hidden from view by the intervening uplands. I was relieved when we had made our next change of horses and got into a country that was unknown to me. The new scenery and the sense of progress worked there accustomed effects on a young traveller who had lived a particularly secluded life, and I began to experience on the whole a not unpleasurable excitement. Mary Quince and I, with the hopefulness of inexperienced travellers, began already to speculate about our proximity to Bartram Hoff, and were sorely disappointed when we heard from the nondescript courier, more like an ostler than a servant, who sat behind in charge of us in the luggage and represented my guardian's special care, at nearly one o'clock, that we still had forty miles to go, a considerable portion of which was across the high Darbyshire mountains, before we reached Bartram Hoff. The fact was, we had driven at a pace accommodated rather to the convenience of the horses than to our impatience, and finding, at the quaint little inn where we now halted, that we must wait for a nail or two in a loose shoe of one of our relay, we consulted, and being both hungry, agreed to beguile the time with an early dinner, which we enjoyed very sociably in a queer little parlor with a bow window, and commanding with a little garden for foreground a very pretty landscape. Good Mary Quince, like myself, had quite dried her tears by this time, and we were both highly interested, and I a little nervous too, about our arrival and reception at Bartram. Some time, of course, was lost in this pleasant little parlor, before we found ourselves once more pursuing our way. The slowest part of our journey was the pull-up the long mountain road, ascending zigzag, as sailors make the way against the headwind, by tacking. I forget the name of the pretty little group of houses, it did not amount to a village buried in the trees, where we got our four horses and two postillions, for the work was severe. I can only designate it as the place where Mary Quince and I had our tea, very comfortably, and bought some gingerbread, very curious to look upon, but quite unedible. The greater portion of the ascent, when we were fairly upon the mountain, was accomplished at a walk, and at some particularly steep points we had to get out and go on foot. But this to me was quite delightful. I had never scaled a mountain before, and the ferns and heath, the pure boisterous air, and above all the magnificent view of the rich country we were leaving behind, now gorgeous and misty in the sunset tints, stretching in gentle undulations far beneath us, quite enchanted me. We had just reached the summit when the sun went down. The low grounds at the other side were already lying in the cold gray shadow, and I got the man who sat behind to point out, as well as he could, the sight of Bartram Hoff. But the mist was gathering overall by this time. The filmy disc of the moon which was to light us on, so soon as twilight faded into night, hung high in the air. I tried to see the sable mass of wood which he described, but it was in vain, and to acquire a clear idea of the place as of its master. I must only wait, that nearer view, which an hour or two more would afford me. And now we rapidly descended the mountain side. The scenery was wilder and bolder than I was accustomed to. Our roads skirted the edge of a great healthy moor. The silvery light of the moon began to glimmer, and we passed a gypsy bivouac with fires alight and cauldrons hanging over them. It was the first I had seen, two or three low tents, a couple of dark withered crones, veritable witches, a graceful girl standing behind, gazing after us, and men in odd-shaped hats, with gaudy waistcoats and bright-colored neck handkerchiefs and gaitered legs, stood lazily in front. They had all a wild tawdry display of color, and a group of alders in the rear made a background of shade for tents, fires, and figures. I opened a front window of the chariot and called to the post-boys to stop. The groom from behind came to the window. Are not those gypsies? I inquired. Yes, please them, Im's gypsies shall miss, he answered, glancing with that odd smile, half contemptuous, half superstitious, which I have often since observed the peasants of Darbyshire, eyeing those thievish and uncanny neighbors. End of CHAPTER XXXI in a moment, a tall lithe girl, black haired, and, as I thought inexpressibly handsome, was smiling with such beautiful rings of pearly teeth at the window, and in her peculiar accent with the suspicion of something foreign in it, proposing with many courtesies to tell the lady her fortune. I had never seen this wild tribe of the human race before, children of mystery and liberty. Such vagabondism and beauty in the figure before me. I looked at their hovels and thought of the night, and wondered at their independence, and felt my inferiority. I could not resist. She held up her slim oriental hand. Yes, I'll hear my fortune, I said, returning the cybill's smile instinctively. Give me some money, Mary Quince. No, not that, I said, rejecting the thrifty sixpans she tindered, for I had heard that the revelations of this weird sisterhood were bright in proportion to the kindness of their clients, and was resolved to approach Bartram with cheerful auguries. That five-chilling piece, I insisted, and honest Mary reluctantly surrendered the coin. So the feline beauty took it, with curtsies and thankies, smiling still and headed away as if she stole it, and looked upon my open palm still smiling, and told me, to my surprise, that there was somebody I liked very much, and I was almost afraid she would name Captain Oakley, that he would grow very rich in that I should marry him, that I should move about from place to place a great deal for a good while to come, that I had some enemies who should be sometimes so nearest to be in the same room with me, and yet they should not be able to hurt me, that I should see blood spilt and yet not my own, and finally be very happy and splendid like the heroine of a fairytale. Did this strange girlish charlatan see in my face some signs of shrinking when she spoke of enemies, and set me down for a coward whose weakness might be profitable? Very likely. At all events she plucked up a long brass pin with a round bead for a head, for some part of her dress, and holding the point in her finger, and exhibiting the treasure before my eyes, she told me that I must get a charmed pin like that, which her grandmother had given to her. And she ran glibly through a story of all the magic expended on it, and told me she could not part with it, but its virtue was that you were to stick it through the blanket, and while it was there neither rat nor cat nor snake. Then came two more terms in the catalogue which I suppose belonged to the gypsy dialect, and which she explained to me, as well as I could understand, the first a malevolent spirit, and the second a cove to cut your throat, could approach or hurt you. A charm like that she gave me to understand I must by hook or by crook obtain. She had not a second. One of her people in the camp over there possessed one. I am ashamed to confess that I actually paid her a pound for this brass pin. The purchase was partly an indication of my temperament, which could never let an opportunity pass away irrevocably without a struggle, and always apprehended, some day or another I'll reproach myself for having neglected it, and partly a record of the trepidations of that period of my life. At all events I had her pin, and she had my pound, and I venture to say I was the glatter of the two. She stood on the roadside bank, curtsying and smiling, the first enchantress I had encountered, and I watched the receding picture with its patches of fire-light, its dusky groups and donkey-carts, white as skeletons in the moonlight, as we rapidly drove away. Today I suppose had a wild sneer and a merry laugh over my purchase, as they sat and ate their supper of stolen poultry about their fire, and were duly proud of belonging to the superior race. Mary Quince, shocked at my prodigality, hinted a remonstrance. It went to my haunt, miss, it did. There's such a lot, young and old, all alike thieves and vagabonds and many a poor body wanting. But Mary, never mind, everyone has her fortune told sometime in her life, and you can't have a good one without paying. I think, Mary, we must be near Bartram now. The road now traversed the side of a steep hill, parallel to which, along the opposite side of a winding river, rose the dark steeps of a corresponding upland, covered with forest that looked awful and dim in the deep shadow, while the moonlight rippled fitfully upon the stream beneath. It seems to be a beautiful country, I said to Mary Quince, who was munching a sandwich in the corner, and thus appealed to, adjusted her bonnet, and made an inspection from her window, which, however, commanded nothing but the heathy slope of the hill, whose side we were traversing. Well, miss, I suppose it is, but there's a deal of mountains is not there. And so, saying, honest Mary leaned back again and went on with her sandwich. We were now descending at a great pace. I knew we were coming near. I stood up as well as I could in the carriage to see over the postillion's heads. I was eager but frightened too, agitated as the crisis of the arrival and meeting approached. At last a long stretch of comparatively level country below us, with masses of wood, as well as I could see, irregularly overspreading it, became visible as the narrow valley through which we were speeding made a sudden bend. Down we drove, and now I did perceive a change. A great grass-grown park wall, overtopped with mighty trees, but still on and on we came at a canter that seemed almost a gallop. The old gray park wall flanking us at one side and a pretty pastoral hedgerow of ash trees irregularly on the other. At last the postillions began to draw bridle and at a slight angle, the moon shining full upon them, we wheeled into a wide semi-circle formed by the receding park walls and halted before a great fantastic iron gate and a pair of tall fluted piers of white stone, all grass-grown and ivy-bound, with great cornices surmounted with shields and supporters. The ruthen bearings washed by the rains of Darbyshire for many a generation of ruthens, almost smooth by this time, and looking bleached and phantasmal, like giant sentinels, with each a hand clasped in his comrades, to bar our passage to the enchanted castle, the florid tracery of the iron gate showing like the draperies of a white robe hanging from their extended arms to the earth. Our courier got down and shoved the great gate open and we entered between somber files of magnificent forest trees. One of those very broad straight avenues whose width measures the front of the house. This was all built of white stone, resembling that of cane, which parts of Darbyshire produce in such abundance. So this was Bartram. And here was Uncle Silas. I was almost breathless as I approached. The bright moonshining full on the white front of the old house revealed not only its highly decorated style, its fluted pillars and doorway, rich and florid carvings, and ballastrated summit, but also its stained and moss-grown front. Two giant trees overthrown at last by the recent storm lay with their upturned roots and their yellow foliage still flickering on the sprays that were to bloom no more, where they had fallen at the right side of the courtyard which, like the avenue, was studded with toughed weeds and grass. All this gave to the aspect of Bartram a forlorn character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture. There was a ruddy glow from a broad window in the second row, and I thought I saw someone peep from it and disappear. At the same moment there was a furious barking of dogs, some of whom ran scampering into the courtyard from a half-closed side door, and amid their uproar, the bawling of the man in the back seat, who jumped down to drive them off, and the crack of the postillian's whips, who struck at them, we drew up before the lordly doorsteps of this melancholy mansion. Just as our attendant had his hand on the knocker, the door opened, and we saw, by a not very brilliant candlelight, three figures, a shabby little old man, thin and very much stooped, with a white cravat, and looking as if his black clothes were too large and made for someone else, stood with his hand upon the door. A young, plump, but very pretty female figure, in unusually short petticoats, with fattish legs and nice ankles, in boots, stood in the center, and a dowdy maid like an old charwoman behind her. The household paraded for welcome was not certainly very brilliant. Amid the riot, the trunks were deliberately put down by her attendant, who kept shouting to the old man at the door, and to the dogs in turn, and the old man was talking and pointing stiffly and trimulously. But I could not hear what he said. Was it possible, could that mean-looking old man be Uncle Silas? The idea stunned me, but I almost instantly perceived that he was much too small, and I was relieved and even grateful. It was certainly an odd mode of procedure to devote primary attention to the trunks in boxes, leaving the travelers still shut up in the carriage, of which they were by this time pretty well tired. I was not sorry for the reprieve, however. Being nervous about first impressions and willing to defer mine, I sat shyly back, peeping at the candle and moonlight picture before me, myself unseen. Will you tell, yes or no, is my cousin in the coach? Screamed the plump young lady, stamping her stout black boot in a momentary lull. Yes, I was there, sure. And why the puck don't you let her out, you stoop you? Run down, giblets! You never do not without driving and let cousin Maud out. You're very welcome to barter him. This greeting was screamed at an amazing pitch and repeated before I had time to drop the window and say, thank you. I'd let you out myself, there's a good dog, you wouldn't bite cousin. The parentheses was to a huge mastiff who thrust himself beside her by this time quite pacified. Only I dare go down the steps, for the governor said I shouldn't. The venerable person, who went by the name of giblets, had by this time opened the carriage door and our courier, or boots. He looked more like the latter functionary, had lowered the steps. And in greater trepidation than I experienced when in after-days I was presented to my sovereign, I glided down to offer myself to the greeting and inspection of the plain-spoken young lady who stood at the top of the steps to receive me. She welcomed me with a hug and a hearty bus, as she called that salutation on each cheek, and pulled me into the hall and was evidently glad to see me. And you're tired a bit, I warrant, and who's the olden who? She asked eagerly in a stage whisper, which made my ear numb for five minutes after. Oh! Oh! The maid! What a precious olden! Ha, ha, ha! But Locke, how grand she is, with her black silk, cloak, and crepe, and I only entwilled cotton and rotten old coberg for Sundays! Odd, it's a shame, but you'll be tired, you will. It's a smartish pull, they do say, from knoll. I know a spell of it, only so far as the cat in the fiddle near the London Road. Come up, will you? Would you like to come in first and talk a bit with the governor? Father, you know he's a bit silly he is this while. I found that the phrase meant only bodily infirmity. He took a pane of Friday, Neworgie, something or other he called it, rheumatics it is when it takes old giblets here, and he's sitting in his own room, or maybe you'd like better to come to your own bedroom first, for it's dirty work-traveling, they do say. Yes, I preferred the preliminary adjustment. Mary Quince was standing behind me, and as my voluble kinswoman talked on, we had each ample time and opportunity to observe the personnel of the other, and she made no scruple of letting me perceive that she was improv-ing it, for she stared me full in the face, taking in evidently feature after feature, and she felt the material of my mantle pretty carefully between her finger and thumb, and manually examined my chain and trinkets, and picked up my hand as she might a glove to con over my rings. I can't say, of course, exactly what impression I might have produced on her, but in my cousin Millie I saw a girl who looked younger than her years, plump but with a slender waist, with light hair lighter than mine, and very blue eyes rather round. On the whole very good-looking. She had an odd, swaggering walk, a toss of her head, and a saucy and imperious, but rather good-natured and honest, countenance. She talked rather loud, with a good-ringing voice, and a boisterous laugh when it came. If I was behind the fashion, what would cousin Monica have thought of her? She was arrayed, as she had stated, in black-twilled cotton, expressive of her affliction, but it was made almost as short in the skirt as that of the prince of the Bavarian broom-girls. She had white cotton stockings and a pair of black leather boots with leather buttons, and, for a lady, prodigiously thick soles, which reminded me of the navvy boots I had so often admired in punch. I must add that the hands with which she assisted her scrutiny of my dress, though pretty, were very much sunburnt indeed. And what's her name? She demanded, nodding to Mary Quince, who was gazing on her awfully with round eyes, as an inland spinster might upon a whale beheld for the first time. Mary curtsied, and I answered. Mary Quince, she repeated. You're welcome, Quince. What shall I call her? I've a name for all of them. Old Giles there is Giblitz. He did not like it at first, but he answers quick enough now, and old Lucy Wyatt there—nodding toward the old woman—is Luscia de la More, a slightly erroneous reading of Lamermore, for my cousin sometimes made mistakes and was not much versed in the Italian opera. I know it's a play, and I call her Lamer for shortness. And she laughed hilariously, and I could not forbear joining, and was winking at me, and called aloud, Lamer!—to which the crone, with a high-called cap resembling Mother Hubbard, responded with a curtsy enda, Yes,m? Are all the trunks and boxes took up? They were. Well, we'll come now. And what shall I call you, Quince? Let me see. According to your pleasure, Miss," answered Mary, with dignity and a dry courtesy, Why, you're as horse as a frog, Quince! We'll call you Quincy, for present. That'll do. Come along, Quincy! So my cousin Millie took me under the arm and pulled me forward. But as we ascended she let me go, leaning back to make inspection of my attire from a new point of view. Hello, cousin! she cried, giving my dress a smack with her open hand. What a plague do you want with all that bustle! You leave it behind the last, the first bush you jump over! I was a good deal astounded. I was also very near laughing, for there was a short importance in her plump countenance, and an indescribable grotesqueness in the fashion of her garments, which heightened the outlandishness of her talk, in a way which I cannot describe at all. What palatial wide-stairs those were which we ascended, with their prodigious carved banisters of oak, and each huge pillar on the landing-place crowned with a shield and carved heraldic supporters. Florid oak paneling covered the walls. But of the house I could form no estimate, for Uncle Silas's housekeeping did not provide light for hall and passages, and we were dependent on the glimmer of a single candle. But there would be quite enough of this kind of exploration in the daylight. So long dark oak flooring we advanced to my room, and I had now an opportunity of admiring at my leisure the lordly proportions of the building. Two great windows with dark tarnished curtains rose half as high again as the windows of knoll, and yet knoll, in its own style, is a fine house. The door frames, like the window frames, were richly carved. The fireplace was in the same massive style, and the mantelpiece projected with a mass of very rich carving. On the whole I was surprised. I had never slept in so noble a room before. The furniture, I must confess, was by no means on par with the architectural pretensions of the apartment. A French bed. A piece of carpet about three yards square. A small table. Two chairs. A toilet table. No wardrobe. No chest of drawers. The furniture painted white, and of the light and diminutive kind, was particularly ill adapted to the scale and style of the apartment. One end only of which it occupied. And that, but sparsely, leaving the rest of the chamber in the nakedness of a stately desolation. My cousin Millie ran away to report progress to the governor, as she termed Uncle Silas. Well, Miss Maud, I never did expect to see the like of that, exclaimed Honest Mary Quince. Did you ever see such a young lady? She's no more like one of the family than I am. Lord bless us. And what she dressed like. Well, well, well. And Mary, with a rueful shake of her head, clicked her tongue pathetically to the back of her teeth, while I could not forbear laughing. And such a scrap of furniture. Well, well, well. And the same ticking of the tongue followed. But in a few minutes, Batcain cousin Millie and, with a barbarous sort of curiosity, assisted in unpacking my trunks and stowing away the treasures, on which she ventured a variety of admiring criticisms in the presses which, like cupboards, filled recesses in the walls, with great oak doors, the keys of which were in them. As I was making my hurried toilet, she entertained me now and then, with more strictly personal criticisms. Your hair is a shade darker than mine. It's none the better of that, though, is it? Mine said to be the right shade. I don't know, what do you say? I conceded the point with a good grace. I wish my hands were as white, though. You do lick me there. But it's all gloves. I never could abide them. I think I'll try, though. They are very white, sure. I wonder which is the prettiest, you or me. I don't know, I'm sure. Which do you think? I laughed outright at this challenge. And she blushed a little, and for the first time seemed, for a moment, a little shy. Well, you are a half an inch longer than me, I think, don't you? I was fully an inch taller, so I had no difficulty in making the proposed admission. Well, you do look handsome, doesn't she, Quincy lass? But your frock comes down almost to your heels, it does. And she glanced from mine to hers, and made a little kick up with the heel of the navvy boot to assist her in measuring the comparative distance. Maybe mine's a thought too short, she suggested. Who's there? Oh, it's you, is it? She cried as Mother Hubbard appeared at the door. Come in, Lamour. Don't you know, lass, you're always welcome. She had come to let us know that Uncle Silas would be happy to see me whenever I was ready, and that my cousin Millicent would conduct me to the room where he awaited me. In an instant, all the comic sensations awakened by my singular cousin's eccentricities vanished. And I was thrilled with awe. I was about to see in the flesh faded, broken, aged, but still identical, that being who had been the vision and the problem of so many years of my short life. End of chapter 31, chapter 32 of Uncle Silas. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Uncle Silas by Jay Sheridan LeFennu, chapter 32. Uncle Silas. I thought my odd cousin was also impressed with a kind of awe, though different in degree from mine, for a shade overcast her face, and she was silent as we walked side by side along the gallery. Accompanied by the crone who carried the candle, which lighted us to the door of that apartment, which I may call Uncle Silas's present chamber. Millie whispered to me as we approached. Mind how you make a noise. The governor's as sharp as a weasel, and nothing fexes him like that. She was herself toppling along on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head of the great staircase, and Lamour knocked timidly with her rheumatic knuckles. A voice, clear and penetrating, from within summoned dust to enter. The old woman opened the door, and the next moment, I was in the presence of Uncle Silas. At the far end of a handsome wainscotted room, near the hearth in which a low fire was burning, beside a small table on which stood four wax lights, in tall silver candlesticks, sat a singular-looking old man, the dark wainscoting behind him, and the vastness of the room in the remoter parts of which, the light which fell strongly upon his face and figure, expended itself with hardly any effect, exhibited him with the forceful and strange relief of a finely-painted Dutch portrait. For some time I saw nothing but him, a face like marble with a fearful monumental look, and for an old man singularly vivid strange eyes, the singularity of which rather grew upon me as I looked, for his eyebrows were still black, though his hair descended from his temple in long locks of the purest silver and finest silk, nearly to his shoulders. He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all in black, with an ample black velvet tunic, which was rather a gown than a coat with loose sleeves, showing his snowy shirt some way up the arm, and a pair of wrist buttons, then quite out of fashion, which glimmered aristocratically with diamonds. I know I can't convey in words an idea of this apparition, drawn as it seemed in black and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with a singular look of power and an expression so bewildering. Was it derision or anguish or cruelty or patience? The wild eyes of this strange old man were fixed upon me as he rose, and habitual contraction, which in certain lights took the character of a scowl, did not relax as he advanced towards me with his thin-lipped smile. He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, the import of which I was too much agitated to catch, and he took both my hands in his, welcomed me with a courtly grace which belonged to another age, and led me affectionately with many inquiries which I only half comprehended to a chair near his own. I need not introduce my daughter. She has saved me that mortification. You'll find her, I believe, good-natured and affectionate. A rest, I fear, a very rustic Miranda, and fitted rather for the society of Caliban than of a sick old Prospero. Is that not so, Millicent? The old man paused sarcastically for an answer with his eyes fixed severely on my odd cousin who blushed and looked uneasy to me for a hint. I do not know who they be, neither one nor t'other. Very good, my dear, he replied with a little mocking bow. You see, my dear Maude, what a Shakespearean you have got for a cousin. It's plain, however, she has made acquaintance with some of our dramatists. She has studied the role of Miss Hoidon so perfectly. It was not a reasonable peculiarity of my uncle that he resented with a good deal of playful acrimony. My poor cousin's want of an education, for which, if he were not to blame, certainly neither was she. You see her, poor thing, a result of all the combined disadvantages of want of refined education, refined companionship, and, I fear, naturally, of refined tastes. But a sojourn at a good French conventional school will do wonders, and I hope to manage by and by. In the meantime, we jest at our misfortunes and love one another, I hope, cordially. He extended his thin white hand with a chilly smile towards Millie, who bounced up and took it with a frightened look. And he repeated, holding her hand rather slightly, I thought. Yes, I hope very cordially. And then turning again to me, he put it over the arm of his chair and let it go, as a man might drop something he did not want from a carriage window. Having made this apology for poor Millie, who was plainly bewildered, he passed on to her and my relief to other topics, every now and then expressing his fears that I was fatigued and his anxiety that I should partake of some supper or tea. But the solicitudes somehow seemed to escape his remembrance almost as soon as uttered, and he maintained the conversation which soon degenerated into a close and to me a painful examination respecting my dear father's illness and its symptoms, upon which I could give no information and his habits upon which I could. Perhaps he fancied that there might be some family predisposition to the organic disease of which his brother died, and that his questions were directed rather to the prolonging of his own life than to the better understanding of my dear father's death. How little there was left to this old man to make life desirable. And yet how keenly I afterwards found he clung to it. Have we not all of us seen those to whom life was not only undesirable, but positively painful? A mere series of bodily torments. Yet hold to it with a desperate and pitiable tenacity. Old children are young, it is all the same. See how a sleepy child will put off the inevitable departure for bed. The little creature's eyes blink and stare, and it needs constant jogging to prevent his nodding off into the slumber which nature craves. His waking is a pain, he is quite worn out and peevish and stupid, and yet he implores a respite and deprecates repose, and vows he is not sleepy, even to the moment when his mother takes him in her arms and carries him in a sweet slumber to the nursery. So it is with us old children of earth, and the great sleep of death, and nature our kind mother. Just so reluctantly we part with consciousness. The picture is, even to the last, so interesting. The bird in the hand, though sick and molting, so inestimably better than all the brilliant tenets of the bush. We sit up, yawning and blinking and stupid, the whole scene swimming before us, and the stories and music coming off into the sound of distant winds and waters. It is not time yet, we are not fatigued. We are good for another hour still, and so protesting against bed, we falter and drop into the dreamless sleep which nature assigns to fatigue and satiety. He then spoke a little eulogy of his brother, very polished and indeed in a kind of way, eloquent. He possessed in a high degree that accomplishment, too little cultivated, I think, by the present generation, of expressing himself with perfect precision and fluency. There was, too, a good deal of slight illustrative quotation, and a sprinkling of French flowers over his conversation, which gave to it a character at once elegant and artificial. It was all easy, light and pointed, and being quite new to me had a wonderful fascination. He then told me that Bartram was the temple of liberty, that the health of the whole life was founded in a few years of youth, air, and exercise, and that accomplishments, at least, if not education, should wait upon health. Therefore, while at Bartram, I should dispose of my time quite as I pleased, and the more I plundered the garden and gypsied in the woodlands, the better. Then he told me what a miserable invalid he was and how the doctors interfered with his frugal tastes. A glass of beer in a mutton shop, his ideal of dinner, he dared not touch. They made him drink light wines, which he detested, and live upon those artificial abominations, all liking for which vanishes with youth. There stood on a side table in a silver coaster a long-necked, renish bottle, and beside it a thin, pink glass, and he quivered his fingers in a peevish way toward them. But unless he found himself better very soon, he would take his case into his own hands and try the dietary to which nature pointed. He waved his fingers toward the bookcase and told me his books were altogether at my service during my stay, but this promise ended, I must confess, disappointingly. At last, remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose and kissed me with a solemn tenderness, placed his hand upon what I now perceived to be a large Bible, with two broad silk markers, red and gold, folded in it, the one I might conjecture, indicating the place in the Old Testament, the other in the New Testament. It stood on the small table that supported the wax lights with a handsome cut bottle of Eau de Cologne, his gold and jeweled pencil case, and his chased repeater, chain and seals beside it. There certainly were no indications of poverty in Uncle Silas's room, and he said impressively, remember that book, in it your father placed his trust, in it he found his reward, in it lives my only hope, consult it, my beloved niece, day and night, as the oracle of life. Then he laid his thin hand on my head, and blessed me, and then kissed my forehead. No, uh, exclaimed Cousin Milley's lusty voice. I had quite forgotten her presence, and looked at her with a little start. She was seated on a very high old-fashioned chair. She had palpably been asleep, her round eyes were blinking and staring glassily at us, and her white legs and navvy boots were dangling in the air. How of you anything to remark about Noah? Inquired her father with a polite inclination and an ironical interest. Noah, she repeated in the same blunt accent, I didn't snore, did I? No, uh. The old man smiled and shrugged a little at me. It was the smile of disgust. Good night, my dear Maude. And turning to her he said with a peculiar gentle sharpness, had not you better wake, my dear, and try whether your cousin would like some supper. He accompanied us to the door, outside which we found Lamore's candle awaiting us. I'm awful afraid of the governor I am. Did I snore that time? No, dear, at least I did not hear it. I said, unable to repress a smile. Well, if I didn't, I was awfully near it, she said reflectively. We found poor Mary Quinn's dozing over the fire, but we soon had tea and other good tidings of which Millie partook with a wonderful appetite. I was in a qualm about it, said Millie, who by this time was quite herself again. When he spies me a napping, maybe he don't fetch me a prod with his pencil case over the head. Odd. Girl, it is sore. When I contrasted the refined and fluent old gentleman whom I had just left with this amazing specimen of young ladyhood, I grew skeptical, almost as to the possibility of her being his child. I was to learn, however, how little she had, I won't say of his society, but even of his presence, that she had no domestic companion of the least pretensions to education, that she ran wild about the place, never except in church, so much as saw a person of that rank to which she was born, and that the little she knew of reading and writing had been picked up in desultory half-hours from a person who did not care a pin about her manners or decorum, and perhaps rather enjoyed her grotesqueness, and that no one who was willing to take the least trouble about her was competent to make her a particle more refined than I saw her. The wonder ceased. We don't know how little is heritable and how much simply training until we encounter some such spectacle as that of my poor cousin Millie. When I lay down in my bed and reviewed the day, it seemed like a month of wonders. Uncle Silas was always before me, the voice so silvery for an old man, so preternaturally soft, the manners so sweet, so gentle, the aspect smiling, suffering, spectral. It was no longer a shadow. I had now seen him in the flesh, but after all was he more than a shadow to me. When I closed my eyes, I saw him before me still in necromantic black, ashy with a pallor on which I looked with fear and pain, a face so dazzlingly pale, and those hollow, fiery, awful eyes. It sometimes seemed as if the curtain opened and I had seen a ghost. I had seen him, but he was still an enigma and a marvel. The living face did not expound the past any more than the portrait pretended the future. He was still a mystery and a vision, and thinking of these things, I fell asleep. Mary Quinn's, who slept in the dressing room, the door of which was close to my bed, and lay open to secure me against ghosts, called me up. In the moment I knew where I was, I jumped up and peeped eagerly from the window. It commanded the avenue and courtyard, but we were many windows removed from that over the hall door, and immediately beneath ours lay the two giant lime trees, prostrate and uprooted, which I had observed as we drove up the night before. I saw more clearly in the bright light of morning the signs of neglect and almost of dilapidation which had struck me as I approached. The courtyard was toughed over with grass, seldom from year to year crushed by the carriage wheels or trodden by the feet of visitors. This melancholy verter thickened where the area was more remote from the center, and under the windows and skirting the walls to the left was reinforced by a thick grove of nettles. The avenue was all grass grown, except in the very center where a narrow track still showed the roadway. The handsome carved balustrade of the courtyard was discolored with lichens and in two places, gapped and broken, and the air of decay was heightened by the fallen trees, among whose sprays and yellow leaves the small birds were hopping. Before my toilet was completed, in Marched my cousin Millie, we were to breakfast alone that morning, and so much the better, she told me. Sometimes the governor ordered her to breakfast with him and never left off chafing her till his newspaper came, and sometimes he said such things as he made her cry, and then he only boshed her more and packed her away to her room. But she was by chalks nicer than him, talk as he might. Was not she nicer? Was not she? Was not she? Upon this point, she was so strong and urgent that I was obliged to reply by a protest against awarding the palm of elegance between parent and child, and declaring that I liked her very much, which I attested by a kiss. I know right well which of us you do thinks the nicest, and no mistake only you're afraid of him, and he had no business boshing me last night before you. I knew he was at it, though I couldn't twig him altogether, but wasn't he a sneak now, wasn't he? This was a still more awkward question, so I kissed her again and said she must never ask me to save my uncle in his absence anything I could not say to his face, at which speech she stared at me for a while and then treated me to one of her hearty laughs, after which she seemed happier and gradually grew into better humor with her father. Sometimes when the curate calls he has me up, for he is as religious as six he is, and they read Bible in praise, oh, don't they? You'll have that last like me to go through, and maybe I don't hate it, oh no. We breakfasted in a small room, almost a closet, off the great parlor, which was evidently quite disused. Nothing could be homelier than our equipage or more shabby than the furniture of the little apartment. Still somehow I liked it. It was a total change, but one likes roughing it a little at first. End of chapter 32, chapter 33 of Uncle Silas. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan LeFennu, chapter 33, The Windmill Wood. I had not time to explore this noble old house as my curiosity prompted, for Millie was in such a fuss to set out for the blackberry dell that I saw little more than just so much as I necessarily traversed in making my way to and from my room. The actual decay of the house had been prevented by my dear father, and the roof, windows, masonry, and carpentry had all been kept in repair. But short of indications of actual ruin, there are many manifestations of poverty and neglect which impress with a feeling of desolation. It was plain that not nearly a tithe of this great house was inhabited. Long corridors and galleries stretched away in dust and silence, and were crossed by others whose dark arches inspired me in the distance with an awful sort of sadness. It was plainly one of those great structures in which you might easily lose yourself. And with a pleasing terror, it reminded me of that delightful old abbey in Mrs. Radcliffe's romance, among whose silent staircases, dim passages, and long suites of lordly but forsaken chambers, begirt without by somber forest, the family of Lemote secured a gloomy asylum. My cousin Millie and I, however, were bent upon an open-air ramble, and traversing several passages, she conducted me to a door which led us out upon a terrace overgrown with weeds, and by a broad flight of steps, we descended to the level of the grounds beneath. Then on, over the short grass, under the noble trees, we walked. Millie in a high good humor, and talking away volubly in her short garment, navvy boots, and a weather-beaten hat, she carried a stick in her gloveless hand. Her conversation was quite new to me, and resembled very much what I would have fancied the holiday recollections of a schoolboy, and the language in which it was sustained was sometimes so outlandish that I was forced to laugh outright, a demonstration which she plainly did not like. Her talk was about the great jumps she had made, how she snowballed the chaps in winter, how she could slide twice the length of her stick beyond bridles the cowboy. With this and similar conversation, she entertained me. The grounds were delightfully wild and neglected, but we had now passed into a vast park beautifully varied with hollows and uplands, and such glorious old timber, massed and scattered over its slopes and levels. Among these we got at last into a picturesque dingle. The gray rocks peeped from among the ferns and wildflowers, and the steps of soft sward among the sides were dark in the shadows of silver-stemmed birch, and russet-thorn and oak, under which, in the vaporous night, the Earl-king and his daughter might glide on their aerial horses. In the lap of this pleasant dell were the finest blackberry bushes I think I ever saw, bearing fruit quite fabulous, and plucking these and chatting we rambled on very pleasantly. I had first thought of Millie's absurdities, to which in description I cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance of time, escaped my recollection. But her ways and her talk were so indescribably grotesque that she made me again and again quiver with suppressed laughter. But there was a pitiable and even a melancholy meaning underlying the burlesque. This creature, with no more education than a dairymaid, I gradually discovered had fine natural aptitudes for accomplishment, a very sweet voice, a wonderfully delicate ear, and a talent for drawing, which quite threw mine into the shade. It was really astonishing. Four Millie in all her life had never read three books and hated to think of them. One, over which she was wont to yawn and sigh and stare fatiguedly for an hour every Sunday by command of the governor, was astowed volume of sermons of the earlier school of George III and a drier collection you can't fancy. I don't think she read anything else, but she had not withstanding 10 times the cleverness of half the circulating library misses one meets with. Besides all this, I had a long sojourn before me at Bartram Hof, and I had learned from Millie, as I had heard before, what a perennial solitude it was with a ludicrous fear of learning Millie's preposterous dialect and turning at last into something like her. So I resolved to do all I could for her, teach her whatever I knew if she would allow me, and gradually, if possible, effect some civilizing changes in her language, and as they term it in boarding schools, her demeanor. But I must pursue at present our first day's ramble in what was called Bartram Chase. People can't go on eating blackberries always, so after a while, we resumed our walks along this pretty dell, which gradually expanded into a wooded valley, level beneath and enclosed by irregular uplands, receding, as it were, in mimic bays and harbors at some points, and running out at others into broken promontories ending in clumps of forest trees. Just where the glen, which we had been traversing, expanded into this broad but wooded valley, it was traversed by a high and close pailing, which, although it looked decayed, was still very strong. In this there was a wooden gate, rudely but strongly constructed, and at the side we were approaching, stood a girl who was leaning against the post with one arm resting on top of the gate. This girl was neither tall nor short, taller than she looked at a distance. She had not a slight waist, sooty black was her hair, with a broad forehead, perpendicular but low. She had a pair of very fine, dark, lustrous eyes and no other good feature, unless I may so call her teeth, which were very white and even. Her face was rather short and swarthy as a gypsy's, observant and sullen too, and she did not move, only eyed us negligently from under her dark lashes as we drew near. Altogether a not unpicturesque figure with a dusky red petticoat of drugit and tattered jacket of bottle-green stuff, with short sleeves, which showed her brown arms from the elbow. That's Peg Top's daughter, said Millie. Who is Peg Top, I asked. He's the miller, see yonder it is, and she pointed to a very pretty feature in the landscape, a windmill, crowning the summit of a hillock which rose suddenly above the level of the treetops, like an island in the center of the valley. The mill not going to day, beauty, bawled Millie. No, a beauty it banked, replied the girl, lowering Lee and without stirring. And what's gone with the style, demanded Millie aghast. It's tore away from the pailing. Well, so it be, replied the wooden impf in the red petticoat, showing her fine teeth with a lazy grin. Those have been and done all that, demanded Millie. Not you nor me lass, said the girl. Twas Peg Top, your old father did it, cried Millie in rising wrath. Oppin it were, she replied. And the gate locked? That's it, the gates locked, she repeated, silkily with a defiant side glance at Millie. And where's Peg Top? At the other side somewhere, how should I know where he'd be? She replied. Who's got the key? Here it be, lass. She answered, striking her hand on her pocket. And how durst you stay us here? Unlock it, Huzzy, this minute, cried Millie with a stamp. Her answer was a silent smile. Open the gate this instant, bawled Millie. Well, I won't. I expected that Millie would have flown into a frenzy at this direct defiance, but she looked instead puzzled and curious. The girl's unexpected audacity bewildered her. Why, you fool, I could get over the pailing as soon as look at you, but I won't. What's come over you? Open the gate, I say, or I'll make you. Do let her alone, dear, I entreated, fearing a mutual assault. She has been ordered, maybe, not to open it. Is it so, my good girl? Well, thou are not the biggest fool of the two. She observed commendatively. Thou'st hid it, lass. And who ordered you? exclaimed Millie. Father, old Pegtop, well, that's something to laugh at, it is. Our servant is shutting us out of our own grounds. No servant to yarn. Come, lass, what do you mean? E.B. Olssylus' miller, and what's that to thee? With these words, the girl made a spring on the hasp of the padlock, and then got easily over the gate. Can't you do that, cousin? whispered Millie to me with an impatient nudge. I wish you'd try. No, dear, come away, Millie. And I began to withdraw. Lookie, lass, twill be an ills day work for thee when I tell the governor, said Millie, addressing the girl who stood on a log of timber at the other side, regarding us with a sullen composure. We'll be over in spite of you, cried Millie. You lie, answered she. And why not, Huzzy? demanded my cousin, who was less incensed at the affront than I expected. And all this time I was urging Millie in vain to come away. Yon lass is no wildcat like thee, that's why, said the sturdy fortress. Vycross, I'll give you a knock, said Millie, and I'll give thee another. She answered with a vicious wag of the head. Come, Millie, I'll go if you don't, I said. But we must not be beat, whispered she vehemently, catching my arm, and ye shall get over and see what I will give her. I'll not get over. Then I'll break the door for ye shall come through, exclaimed Millie, kicking the stout pailing with her ponderous boot. Pair it, pair it, pair it, cried the lass in the red petticoat with a grin. Do you know who this lady is? cried Millie, suddenly. She is a prettier lass than thou, answered Beauty. She's my cousin Maud, Miss Rithon of Knoll, and she's a deal richer than the Queen, and the governors taking care of her and hill-make old peg-top bring you to reason. The girl eyed me with a sulky listlessness, a little inquisitively, I thought. See if he don't, threatened Millie. You positively must come, I said, drawing her away with me. Well, shall we come in? cried Millie, trying a last summons. You'll not come in that much, she answered surly, measuring an infinitesimal distance on her finger with her thumb, which she pinched against it, the gesture ending with a snap of defiance, and a smile that showed her fine teeth. I've a mind as shy as stone at you, shouted Millie. Fare away, and I'll shy with ye as long as ye like, lass, take heed of yourself. And Beauty picked up a round stone as large as a cricket-ball. With difficulty I got Millie away without an exchange of missiles and much disgusted at my want of zeal and agility. Well, come along, cousin, I know an easy way by the river when it's low, answered Millie. She's a brute, is not she? As we receded, we saw the girl slowly winding her way towards the old thatched cottage, which showed its gable from the side of a little rugged eminence, embowered in spreading trees, and dangling and twirling from its string on the end of her finger, the key for which a battle had so nearly been fought. The stream was low enough to make our flank movement round the end of the pailing next to it, quite easy. And so we pursued our way, and Millie's equanimity returned, and our ramble grew very pleasant again. Our path lay by the riverbank, and as we proceeded, the dwarf timber was succeeded by grander trees, which crowded closer and taller and, at last, the scenery deepened into solemn forest, and a sudden sweep in the river revealed the beautiful ruin of a steep old bridge, with the fragments of a gate-house on the farther side. —Oh, Millie, darling! —I exclaimed. —What a beautiful drawing this would make! I should so like to make a sketch of it. —So it would. Make a picture, do! Here's a stone that's pure and flat to sit upon, and you look very tired. Do make it, and I'll sit by you. —Yes, Millie, I am tired a little, and I will sit down. But we must wait for another day to make the picture, for we have neither pencil nor paper. But it is much too pretty to be lost, so let us come again tomorrow. —Tomorrow be hanged! You'll do it today, burry me wick, but you shall. I'm worrying to see you make a picture, and I'll fetch your conundrums out of your drawer, for do it, you shall. End of chapter 33, chapter 34 of Uncle Silas. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Uncle Silas, by J. Sheridan Le Fenu. Chapter 34 Zam Yel It was all in vain my remonstrating. She vowed that by crossing the stepping-stones close by, she could, by a shortcut, reach the house and return with my pencils and block-book in a quarter of an hour. Away then, with many a jump and fling, scampered Millie's queer white stockings and navvy boots, across the irregular and precarious stepping-stones, over which I dared not follow her. So I was feigned to return to the stone so, pure and flat, on which I sat, enjoying the grand Silvian solitude, the dark background and the gray bridge midway, so tall and slim, across whose ruins a sunbeam glimmered, and the gigantic forest trees that slumbered round, opening here and there in dusky vistas and breaking in front into detached and solemn groups. It was the setting of a dream of romance. It would have been the very spot in which to read a volume of German folklore and the darkening colonnades and silent nooks of the forest seemed already haunted with the voices and shadows of those charming elves and goblins. As I sat here enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing and saw a squat broad figure in a stained and tattered military coat and loose short trousers, one limb of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His face was rugged and wrinkled and tanned to the tint of old oak. His eyes black, bead-like and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under his battered wide awake, nearly to his shoulders. This forbidding-looking person came stumping and jerking along toward me, whisking his stick now and then viciously in the air and giving his fell of hair a short shake, like a wild bull preparing to attack. I stood up involuntarily with a sense of fear and surprise, almost fancying I saw in that wooden-legged old soldier the forest demon who haunted their frieshoots. So he approached, shouting, Hello, you! How came you here? Dosteer! And he drew near, panting, and sometimes tugging angrily in his haste at his wooden leg, which sunk now and then deeper than was convenient in the sod. This exertion helped to anger him, and when he halted before me, his dark face smirched with smoke and dust, and the nostrils of his flat droopy nose expanded and quivered as he panted, like the gills of a fish. An angrier or uglier face it would not be easy to fancy. Y'all come when you like, will ye, and do not but what pleases yourself, won't you? And whore thou, Dosteer, who are ye, I say, and what the deal seek ye in the woods here? Come, bestur thee! If his wide mouth and great tobacco-stained teeth, his scowl and loud discordant tones were intimidating, they were also extremely irritating. The moment my spirit was roused, my courage came. I am Miss Rithyn of Knoll, and Mr. Silas Rithyn, your master, is my uncle. Oh! he exclaimed more gently. And if Silas be thy uncle, thou till be come to live with him, and thou are she as come overnight, eh? I made no answer, but I believe I looked both angrily and disdainfully. And what make ye alone here? And how was I to know it, and merely not with ye, nor no one? But mod or no mod, I wouldn't let the duke his self set foot inside the palan without Silas said let him, and you may tell Silas, dims the words, oh, dick and hawks, and I'll stick to him. And what's more, I'll tell him myself, I will. I'll tell him there be no use o' my striving and straining he, day and night and night and day, watchin' again poacher and thieves and gypsies, and they robbin' lads if rules won't be kept, and folk do just as they please. Dang it, Lass, thou are in luck, I didn't heave a brick at thee when I saw thee first. I'll complain of you to my uncle, I replied. So do, and happen thou find thyself in the wrong box, Lass. Thou can't not say I set the dogs out of thee, nor cod thee so much as a rye name, nor heave a stone at thee, did I? Well, and where's the complaint in? I simply answered, rather fiercely. Be good enough to leave me. Well, I make no objections, mind, I'm takin' thy word, thou art mod rithin', appen thou beast and appen thou banked. I'm not aware on it, but I take thy word, and all I want to knows just this. Didn't Meg open the gate to thee? I made him no answer, and to my great relief, I saw Millie striding and skipping across the unequal stepping stones. Hello, Peg Top, and what are you after now? She cried as she drew nearer. This man has been extremely impertinent. You know him, Millie, I said. Why, that's Peg Top Dickens, dirty old hawks that never was washed. I tell you, lad, you'll see what the governor thinks it. Aha, he'll talk to you. I done or said not, not but I should, and there's the fact. She can't tonight. She hadn't a hard word for my, and I don't care the top of that thistle what no one says, not I. But I tell thee, Millie, I stop some of thy pranks, and I'll stop more. You'll be shying no more stones at the cow. Tell your tales and welcome, cried Millie. I wish I was here when you jawed cousin. If Winnie was here, she'd catch you by the timber-toe and put you on your back. I shall be a goodon yet if she takes out her D, retorted the old man with a fierce sneer. Drop it and get away with ye, cried she. Or maybe I'll call Winnie to smash your timber leg for you. Aha, there's more on it. She's a sweeton, isn't she? He replied sardonically. You did not like it last Easter when Winnie broke it with a kick. Twas the kick of a horse, he growled with a glance at me. Twas no such thing, twas Winnie did it, and he laid on his back for a week while Carpenter made him a new one. And Millie laughed hilariously. Oh, no more fool with ye losing my time, I won't. But mind ye, I'll speak with Silas. And going away he put his hand to his crumpled wide awake and said to me with a surly difference, Good evening, Miss Riffin, good evening, ma'am, and ye please remember I did not mean not to vex thee. And so he swaggered away, jerking and waddling over the sword, and was soon lost in the wood. It's well he's a little bit frightened. I never saw him so angry, I think. He is awful mad. Perhaps he really is not aware of how very rude he is, I suggested. I hate him. We were twice as pleasant with poor Tom Driver. He never meddled with anyone, and was always in liquor. Old Jinn was the name he went by. But this brute I do hate him. He comes from Wigan, I think, and he's always spoiling sport, and he whops mag. That's beauty, you know, and I don't think she'd be half as bad only for him. Listen to him whistling. I did hear whistling at some distance among the trees. I declare, if he isn't calling the dogs, climb up here, I tell ye. And we climbed up the slanting trunk of a great walnut tree, and strained our eyes in the direction from which we expected the onset of Peg Top's vicious pack. But it was a false alarm. Well, I don't think he would do that after all, hardly, but he is a brute, sure. And that dark girl who would not let us through is his daughter, is she? Yes, that's Meg, beauty, I christened her, when I called him beast. But I call him Peg Top now, and she's beauty still, and that's the way it. Come, sit down now, and make your picture. She resumed, so soon as we had dismounted from our position of security. I'm afraid I'm hardly in the vein. I don't think I could draw a straight line. My hand trembles. I wish you could, Maude. I said, Millie, with a look so wistful and intriguing, that, considering the excursion she had made for the pencils, I could not bear to disappoint her. Well, Millie, we must only try, and if we fail we can't help it. Sit you down beside me, and I'll tell you why I begin with one part and not another, and you'll see how I make trees in the river and—yes, that pencil. It is hard and answers for the fine light lines, but we must begin at the beginning, and learn to copy drawings before we attempt real views like this. And if you wish it, Millie, I'm resolved to teach you everything I know, which, after all, is not a great deal, and we shall have such fun making sketches of the same landscapes and then comparing. And so on, Millie quite delighted, and longing to begin her course of instruction, sat down beside me in a rapture, and hugged and kissed me so heartily, that we were very near rolling together off the stone on which we were seated. Her boisterous delight and good nature helped to restore me, and both laughing heartily together, I commenced my task. Dear me, who's that? I exclaimed suddenly, as looking up from my block-book I saw the figure of a slight man in the careless morning-dress of a gentleman, crossing the ruinous bridge, in our direction, with considerable caution upon the precarious footing of the battlement, which alone offered an unbroken passage. This was the day of apparitions. Millie recognized him instantly. The gentleman was Mr. Carey's brook. He had taken the Grange only for a year, he lived quite to himself, and was very good to the poor, and was the only gentleman for ever so long who had visited at Bartram, and oddly enough nowhere else. But he wanted leave to cross through the grounds, and having obtained it, had repeated his visit, partly induced, no doubt, by the fact that Bartram boasted no hospitalities, and that there was no risk of meeting the country folk there. With a stout walking-stick in his hand, and a short shooting-coat, and a wide-away cat in much better trim than Zamiel's, he emerged from the cops that covered the bridge, walking at a quick but easy pace. "'Easy going to see old snottles, I guess,' said Millie, looking a little frightened and curious. For Millie, I need not say, was a bumpkin, and stood in awe of this gentleman's good breeding, though she was as brave as a lion and would have fought the Philistines at any odds with the jawbone of an ass. "'Apony won't see us,' whispered Millie, hopefully. But he did, and raising his hat with a cheerful smile that showed very white teeth, he paused. "'Jaw mean day, Miss Rithon?' I raised my head suddenly, as he spoke, from habit appropriating the address. It was so marked that he raised his hat respectfully to me, and then continued to Millie. "'Mr. Rithon, I hope quite well. But I need hardly ask. You seem so happy. Will you kindly tell him that I expect the book I mentioned in a day or two, and when it comes I'll either send or bring it to him immediately?' Millie and I were standing by this time, but she only stared at him, tongue-tied, her cheeks rather flushed, and her eyes very round, and to facilitate the dialogue as I suppose. He said again, "'He's quite well, I hope.' Still no response from Millie. And I, provoked, though myself a little shy, made answer, "'My uncle, Mr. Rithon, is very well. Thank you.' And I felt that I blushed as I spoke. "'Ah, pray, excuse me. May I take a great liberty. You are Miss Rithon of Knoll. Will you think me very impertinent, I'm afraid you will, if I venture to introduce myself? My name is Carriesbrook, and I had the honor of knowing poor Mr. Rithon when I was quite a little boy, and he has shown a kindness for me since, and I hope you will pardon the liberty I fear I've taken. I think my friend, Lady Nullis, too, is a relation of yours. What a charming person she is! "'Oh, is not she such a darling?' I said, and then blushed at my outspoken affection. But he smiled kindly, as if he liked me for it, and he said, "'You know, whatever I think, I dare not quite say that. But frankly I can quite understand it. She preserves her youth so wonderfully, and her fun and her good nature are so entirely girlish. What a sweet view you have selected!' he continued, changing all at once. I've stood just at this point so often to look back at the exquisite old bridge. "'Do you observe, you're an artist, I see, something very peculiar in the tint of the gray, with those odd cross stains of faded red and yellow? I do indeed. I was just remarking the peculiar beauty of the coloring was not I, Millie?' Millie stared at me, and uttered an alarmed, yes, and looked as if she had been caught in a robbery. "'Yes, and you have so very peculiar a background,' he resumed. "'It was better before the storm, though, but it is very good still.' Then a little pause, and... "'Do you know this country at all?' Rather suddenly. "'No, not in the least. That is, I've only had the drive to this place, but what I see interested me very much.' You will be charmed with it when you know it's better, the very place for an artist. I am a wretched scribbler myself, and I carry this little book in my pocket.' And he laughed deprecatingly while he drew forth a thin fishing-book as it looked. "'They are mere memoranda, you see. I walk around so much and come unexpectedly on such pretty nooks and studies. I just try to make a note of them. But it is really more writing than sketching. My sister says it is a cipher which nobody but myself understands. However, I'll try to explain just to, because you really ought to go and see the places.' "'Oh, no, not that,' he laughed, as accidentally the page blew over. "'That's the cat and fiddle, a curious little pot-house, where they gave me some very good ale one day. Milly, at this, exhibited some uneasy tokens of being about to speak. But not knowing what might be coming, I hasten to observe on the spirited little sketch to which he meant to draw my attention. "'I want to show you only the places within easy reach, a short ride or drive.' So he proceeded to turn over two or three in addition to the two he had first proposed, and then another, then a little sketch just tinted, and really quite a charming little gem of Cousin Monica's pretty gabled old house, and every subject had its little criticism or its narrative or adventure. As he was about returning this little sketchbook to his pocket, still chatting to me, he suddenly recollected poor Milly, who was looking rather lowering, but she brightened a good deal as he presented it to her, with a little speech which she palpably misunderstood, for she made one of her odd courtesies, and was about, I thought, to put it into her large pocket and accept it as a present. "'Look at the drawings, Milly, and then return it,' I whispered. At his request I allowed him to look at my unfinished sketch of the bridge, and while he was measuring distances and proportions with his eye, Milly whispered rather angrily to me, and why should I? Because he wants it back, and only meant to lend it to you,' whispered I. "'Lend it to me, and after you, bring me wick if I look at a leaf of it,' she retorted in high dudgeon. "'Take it last, give it him yourself, all not.' And she popped it into my hand, and made a sulky step back. "'My cousin is very much obliged,' I said, returning the book and smiling for her, and he took it, smiling also, and said, "'I think if I had known how very well you draw, Miss Rithon, I should have hesitated about showing you my poor scrawls. But these are not my best, you know. Lady Nullis will tell you that I can really do better—a great deal better, I think. And then, with more apologies for what he called his impertinence, he took his leave, and I felt altogether very much pleased and flattered. He could not be more than twenty-nine or thirty, I thought, and he was decidedly handsome, that is, his eyes and teeth and clear brown complexion were, and there was something distinguished and graceful in his figure and gesture. And altogether there was the indescribable attraction of intelligence, and I fancied, though this, of course, was a secret, that the moment he spoke to us he felt an interest in me. I am not going to be vain, it was a grave interest, but still an interest. For I could see him studying my features while I was turning over his sketches, and he thought I saw nothing else. It was flattering, too, his anxiety that I should think well of his drawing, and referring me to Lady Nullis. Carries Brooke. Had I ever heard my dear father mention that name? I could not recollect it. But then he was habitually so silent, that his not doing so argued nothing. CHAPTER 35. We visit a room in the second story. Mr. Carries Brooke amused my fancy sufficiently to prevent my observing Millie's silence till we had begun our return homeward. The Grange must be a pretty house, if that little sketch be true. Is it far from this? Till be too mild. Are you vexed, Millie? I asked, for both her tone and her looks were angry. Yes, I am vexed, and why not, lass? What has happened? Well now, that is rich. Why, look at that fellow Carries Brooke. He took no more notice to me than a dog, and kept talking to you all the time of his pictures, and his walks and his people. Why, a pig's better manners than that. But Millie dear, you forget, he tried to talk to you and you would not answer him. I expostulated. And is not that just what I say? I can't talk like other folk, ladies I mean. Everyone laughs at me, and I'm dressed like a show I am. It's a shame. I saw Polly Shives, what a lady she is, my eyes, laughing at me in church last Sunday. I was minded to give her a bit of my mind, and I know I'm queer. It's a shame it is. Why should I be so rum? It is a shame. I don't want to be so, nor it isn't my fault. And poor Millie broke into a flood of tears, and stamped on the ground and buried her face in her short frock, which she whisked up to her eyes, and an odder figure of grief I never beheld. And I could not make head or tail of what he was saying, cried poor Millie through her buff cotton with a stamp. And you twigged every word it, and why am I so? It's a shame, a shame, oh, it's a shame. And my dear Millie, we are talking of drawing, and you have not learned yet, but you shall, I'll teach you, and then you'll understand all about it. And everyone laughs at me, even you, though you try, Maude, you can scarce keep from laughing sometimes. I don't blame you, for I know I'm queer, but I can't help it, and it's a shame. Well, my dear Millie, listen to me. If you'll allow me, I assure you, I'll teach you all the music and drawing I know. You have lived very much alone, and as you say, ladies have a way of speaking of their own that is different from the talk of other people. Yes, that they have, in gentlemen too, like the governor, and that Kerry's brook, and a precious lingo it is, dang it, why, the devil himself could not understand it, and I'm like a fool among you. I could most drown myself, it's a shame, it is, you know it is, it's a shame. But I'll teach you that lingo too, if you wish it, Millie, and you shall know everything that I know, and I'll manage to have your dresses better made. By this time she was looking very roofily, but attentively, in my face, her round eyes and nose swelled, and her cheeks all wet. I think if they were a little longer, yours is longer, you know, and the sentence was interrupted by a sob. Now, Millie, you must not be crying, if you choose you may be just the same as any other lady, and you shall, and you will be very much admired, I can tell you. If only you will take the trouble to quite unlearn all your odd words and ways and dress yourself like other people, and I will take care of that if you let me. I think you are very clever, Millie, and I know you are very pretty. Poor Millie's blubbered face expanded into a smile in spite of herself. But she shook her head, looking down. No, no, Maude, I fear it won't be. And indeed it seemed I had proposed to myself a labour of Hercules. But Millie was really a clever creature, could see quickly, and when her ungainly dialect was mastered, described very pleasantly. And if only she would endure the restraint and possessed the industry requisite, I did not despair, and was resolved at least to do my part. Poor Millie. She was really very grateful, and entered into the project of her education with great zeal, and with a strange mixture of humility and insubordination. Millie was in favour of again attacking Beauty's position on her return, and forcing a passage from this side. But I insisted on following the route by which we had arrived, and so we got round the pailing by the river, and were treated to a provoked grin of defiance by Beauty, who was talking across the gate, to a slim young man, a raiden fustion, and with an odd-looking cap of rabbit skin on his head, which, on seeing us, he pulled sheepishly to the side of his face next to us, as he lounged, with his arm under his chin, on the top bar of the gate. After our encounter of today, indeed it was Miss Beauty's won't to exhibit the kind of jeering disdain in her countenance whenever we passed. I think Millie would have engaged her again had I not reminded her of her undertaking, and exerted my new authority. Look at that sneak peg-top there, going up the path to the mill. He makes belief now he does not see us, but he does, though only he is afraid he will tell the Governor, and he thinks the Governor won't give him his way with you. I hate that peg-top. He stopped me of riding the cows a year ago, he did. I thought peg-top might have done worse. Indeed it was plain that a total reformation was needed here, and I was glad to find that poor Millie seemed herself conscious of it, and that her resolution to become more like other people of her station was not a mere spasm of mortification and jealousy, but a genuine and very zealous resolve. I had not half seen this old house of Bartram Hof yet. At first, indeed, I had but an imperfect idea of its extent. There was a range of rooms along one side of the Great Gallery, with closed window shutters, and the doors generally locked. Old LeMore grew cross when we went into them, although we could see nothing, and Millie was afraid to open the windows, not that any blue-beard revelations were apprehended, but simply because she knew that Uncle Silas's order was that things should be left undisturbed. And this boisterous spirit stood in awe of him to a degree which his gentle manners and apparent quietude rendered quite surprising. There were in this house what certainly did not exist at Noel, and what I have never observed, though they may possibly be found in other old houses, I mean here and there very high hatches, which we could only peep over by jumping in the air. They crossed the long corridors and Great Galleries, and several of them were turned across and locked, so as to intercept the passage and interrupt our explorations. Millie, however, knew a queer little, very steep and dark backstair which reached the upper floor, so she and I mounted and made a long ramble through rooms much lower and ruder in finish than the lordly chambers we had left below. These commanded various views of the beautiful though neglected grounds, but on crossing a gallery we entered suddenly a chamber which looked into a small and dismal quadrangle formed by the inner walls of this great house, and of course designed only by the architect to afford the needful light and air to portions of the structure. I rubbed the window pane with my handkerchief and looked out. The surrounding roof was steep and high, the walls looked soiled and dark, the windows lined with dust and dirt and the window stones were, in places, toughed with moss and grass and ground-soul. An arched doorway had opened from the house into this darkened square, but it was soiled and dusty and the damp weeds that overgrew the quadrangle drooped undisturbed against it. It was plain that human footsteps tracked it little, and I gazed into that blind and sinister area with a strange thrill and sinking. This is the second floor. There is the enclosed courtyard, I, as it were, soliloquized. What are you afraid of, Maud? You look as he had seen a ghost, exclaimed Millie, who came to the window and peeped over my shoulder. It reminded me suddenly, Millie, of that frightful business. What business, Maud? What a plague are you thinking on? demanded Millie, rather amused. It was in one of these rooms, maybe this. Yes, it certainly was this, for see the paneling has been pulled off the wall. That Mr. Charke killed himself. I was staring ruefully round the dim chamber, in whose corners the shadows of night were already gathering. Charke? What about him? Who's Charke? asked Millie. Why, you must have heard of him, said I. Not as I'm aware on, she answered, and he killed himself, did he, hanged himself, or blowed his brains out? He cut his throat in one of these rooms, this one, I'm sure, for your papa had the wainscotting stripped from the wall to ascertain whether there was any second door, through which a murderer could have come. And you see these walls are stripped, and bear the marks of the woodwork that has been removed, I answered. Well, that was awful. I don't know how they have plucked to cut their throats. If I was doing it, I'd best to put a pistol to my head and fire, like the young gentleman did, they say in Dead Man's Hollow. But the fellows that cut their throats, they must be awful game lads, I'm thinking, for it's a long slice, you know. Don't, don't, Millie, dear. Suppose we come away, I said, for evening was deepening rapidly into night. Hey, and bury me, Wick, but here's the blood. Don't you see a big black cloud all spread over the floor hereabout? Don't you see? Millie was stooping over the spot, and tracing the outline of this, perhaps, imaginary mapping, in the air with her finger. No, Millie, you could not see it. The floor is too dark, and it's all in shadow. It must be fancy, and perhaps, after all, this is not the room. Well, I think I'm sure it is. Stand, just look. We'll come in the morning, and if you are right, we can see it better then. Come away, I said, growing frightened. And just as we stood up to depart, the white, high-called cap and large sallow features of old Lamor peeped in at the door. Lock, what brings you here? cried Millie, nearly as much startled as I at the intrusion. What brings you here, Mish? whistled Lamor through her gums. We're looking where Charke cut his throat, replied Millie. Charke, the devil, said the old woman with an odd mixture of scorn and fury. Tissant his room. Come ye out of it, please. Master won't like it when he hears how you keep pulling Miss Maud from one room to another all through the house up and down. She was gabbling sternly enough, but dropped a low curtsy as I passed her, and with a peek it and nodding stare round the room, the old woman clapped the door sharply and locked it. And who here has been talking about Charke? A pack of lies I warrant. I suppose you want to frighten Miss Maud here, another crippled curtsy, which ghost and like nonscience. You're out there, to as she told me, and much about it. Ghosts indeed. I don't valley them, not I. If I did, I know who'd frighten me. And Millie laughed. The old woman stuffed the key in her pocket, and her wrinkled mouth pouted and receded with a grim uneasiness. A harmless brat. And kind she is, but wild, wild. She will be wild. So whispered Lamor in my ear, during the silence that followed, nodding shakily towards Millie over the banister. And she curtsied again, as we departed, and shuffled off toward Uncle Silas's room. The governor is queerish this evening, said Millie, when we were seated at our tea. You never saw him queerish, did you? Well, you must say what you mean more plainly, Millie. You don't mean ill, I hope. Well, I don't know what it is, but he grows very queer sometimes. You'd think he was dead almost. Maybe two or three days and nights together, he sits all the time like an old woman in a swooned. Well, it is awful. Is he insensible when in that state? I asked, a good deal alarmed. I don't know, but it never signifies anything. It won't kill him, I do believe, but old Lamor knows all about it. I hardly ever go into the room when he's so, only when I'm sent for. And he sometimes wakes up and takes a fancy to call for this one or that. One day he sent for pegtop all the way to the mill, and when he came, he only stared at him for a minute or two and ordered him out of the room. He's like a child the most when he's in one of them daisies. I always knew when Uncle Silas was queerish, by the injunctions of old Lamor whistled and spluttered over the banister as we came upstairs, to mind how he made a noise passing Master's door, and by the sound of mysterious two-ings and fro-ings about his room. I saw very little of him. He sometimes took a whim to have us breakfast with him, which lasted perhaps for a week, and then the order of our living would relapse into its old routine. I must not forget two kind letters from Lady Nullis, who was detained away and delighted to hear that I enjoyed my quiet life, and promised to apply in person to Uncle Silas for permission to visit me. She was to be for the Christmas at Elverston, and that was only six miles away from Bartram Hof, so I had the excitement of a pleasant look forward. She also said that she would include poor Millie in her invitation, and a vision of Captain Oakley rose before me, with his handsome gaze turned in wonder on poor Millie, for whom I had begun to feel myself responsible.