PENNSYLVANIA
STATE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
§








Wqzndém'ngl Heal/L ‘



WORKS BY
Q.
WANDERING HEATH .
FAIRY TALES, FAR AND NEAR .
THE SPLENDID SPUR. . .
DEAD MAN’s Rocx .
THE BLUE PAVILIONS . . . .
THE ASTONISHING HISTORY OF TROY
Town . . . . . . .
“I SAW THREE SHIPS ” . . . .
NOUGHTS AND CRossEs . . . .
THE DELEcmBLE DUCHY. . . .

CABBELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED,
London, Paris ‘2 Melbourne.

60
36
50
50
50
50
50
50


Q ." :CYUJQIRJ'

Wandering Heath
Slorzles, Sz‘udz'és, and Shez‘ches
by
Q
T hey catt my ftant the Wandering Hmth ;
It wander: only in the West.‘
So flower the pun”e thoughts beneath
The saitor's, miner’s, mother‘: breast.
0 heart: of exz'tet—stz'l/ at home,
A nd ever turning white ye roam 1
LONDON
CASSELL AND COMPANY
LIMITED
1895




THE PENNSYLVANM 8T“!
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY


The stories in this volume made their
first appearance in England as follows: “The
Roll-Call of the Reef” in The Idler; “The
Looe Die-hards ” in The Illustrated London
News, where it was entitled “The Power
o’ Music”; “ J etsom ” and “ The Bishop of
Eucalyptus” in The Pall Mall Magazine ;
“Visitors at the Gunnel Rock” in The Strand
Magazine; "Flowing Source” in The Woman
at Home; and the rest, with one exception,
in the friendly pages of The Speaker.





CONTENTS
_.°._
PAGE
Pnonocma . . . . . . . . . 1
THE ROLL-CALL or THE REEF . . . . . 5
THE LOOE DIE-HARDS . . . . . . . 39
MY GRANDFATBER, HENDRY WATTY . 79
Jmsou. . . . . . 9l
WRESTLERS . . . . . . . . l0l
THE BISHOP 0F EUCALYPTUS . . . . . l1l
Wmnnnsnms . . . . . . . . l63
VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK . . . . . 177
Lz'rnms FROM TROY——
I. THE FIns'r PARISH MEETING . . . 20l
II. THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD . . . . . 2l3
LEGENDS—
I. THE Lmmu) 0F Sm DINAR . . . . 229
II. “ FLOWING SOURCE ” . . . . 239
EXPERIMENTS—
I. A Yomw MAx’s DIARY . . . 269
II. THE CAPTAIN PROM BATH . . . . 27





WAN DERING HEATH

PROLOGUE
“WHAT is the use of it?” the Poet demanded
peevishly—it was New Year’s Day in the morn-
ing. “People don’t read my poetry when I have
gone to the trouble of writing it ! ”
“The more shame to them,” said his wife.
“But, my dear, you know you never read it
yourself.”
“Oh, that is altogether different. Besides
you are improving, are you not?” She asked
it a trifle anxiously, but the question set him
off at once.
“ In twenty years’ time——” he began
eagerly.
“—the boy will be at college’? She laid
down her needle and embroidery and, gazing
into the fire, let her hands lie idle in her lap.
B


4 WA NDERING Hh'A TH


With birds he'll comfort us,
With blossoms, balms, and bees,
W'lth brooks, and odorous
Wild breath 0’ the breeze.
Come then, 0 festal prime !
With sweets thy bosom fill,
And dance it, dripping thyme,
On Lant'lck hill.
West wind, awake! and comb
Our garden, blade from blade—
We, in our little home,
Sit unafraid.
—“ Why, I quite like it ! ” said she.


THE ROLL-(JALL OF THE REEF
“YES, sir,” said my host the quarryman, reach
ing down the relics from their hook in the wall
over the chimney-piece; “ they've hung there all
my time, and most of my father’s. The women
won’t touch ’em; they ’re afraid of the story.
So here they ’ll dangle, and gather dust and
smoke, till another tenant comes and tosses ’em
out o’ doors for rubbish. VVhew! ’t is coarse
weather.”
He went to the door, opened it, and stood
studying the gale that beat upon his cottage-front,
straight from the Manacle Reef. The rain drove
past him into the kitchen, aslant like threads of
gold silk in the shine of the wreckwood fire.
Meanwhile by the same firelight I examined the
relies on my knee. The metal of each was
tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet
was evidently an old cavalry trumpet, and the
threads of its parti-coloured sling, though frayed
and dusty, still hung together. Around the side-


6 WA NDERING HEATH
drum, beneath its cracked brown varnish, I could
hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms, and a legend
running—Per Mare per Terram—the motto of
the Marines. Its parchment, though coloured
and scented with wood-smoke, was limp and
mildewed; and I began to tighten up the
straps—under which the drumsticks had been
loosely thrust—with the idle purpose of trying
if some music might be got out of the old
drum yet.
But as I turned it on my knee, I found the
drum attached to the trumpet-sling by a curious
barrel-shaped padlock, and paused to examine
this. The body of the lock was composed of
half a dozen brass rings, set accurately edge to
edge; and, rubbing the brass with my thumb, I
saw that each of the six had a series of letters
engraved around it.
I knew the trick of it, I thought. Here was
one of those word padlocks, once so common;
only to be opened by getting the rings to spell
a certain word, which the dealer confides to you.
My host shut and barred the door, and came
back to the hearth.


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 7

“T was just such a wind—east by south—
that brought in what you ’ve got between your
hands. Back in the year ’nine it was ; my father
has told me the tale a score o’ times. You ’re
twisting rounds the rings, I see. But you ’ll
never guess the word. Parson Kendall, he made
the word, and locked down a couple o’ ghosts in
their graves with it; and when his time came,
he went to his own grave and took the word
with him.”
“ Whose ghosts, Matthew ? ”
“ You want the story, I see, sir. My father
could tell it better than I can. He was a young
man in the year ’nine, unmarried at the time,
and living in this very cottage just as I be.
That ’s how he came to get mixed up with the
tale.”
He took a chair, lit a short pipe, and un-
folded the story in a low musing voice, with his
eyes fixed on the dancing violet flames.
“ Yes, he ’d ha’ been about thirty year old in
January, of the year ‘nine. The storm got up in
the night o’ the twenty-first o’ that month. My
father was dressed and out long before daylight ;


8 WANDERING BEA T”
he never was one to 'bide in bed, let be that the
gale by this time was pretty near lifting the
thatch over his head. Besides which, he’d
fenced a small 'taty-patch that winter, down by
Lowland Point, and he wanted to see if it stood
the night’s work. He took the path across Gun-
ner’s Meadow—where they buried most of the
bodies afterwards. The wind was right in his
teeth at the time, and once on the way (he ’s
told me this often) a great strip of ore—weed
came flying through the darkness and fetched
him a slap on the cheek like a cold hand. But
he made shift pretty ~well till he got to Lowland,
and then had to drop upon his hands and knees
and crawl, digging his fingers every now and
then into the shingle to hold on, for he declared
to me that the stones, some of them as big as a
man’s head, kept rolling and driving past till it
seemed the whole foreshore wasmoving west-
ward under him. The fence was gone, of course;
not a stick left to show where it stood; so that,
when first he came to the place, he thought he
must have missed his bearings. My father, sir,
was a very religious man; and if he reckoned


10 WANDERING HEA TH

trying to force her nose to the sea with the help
of her small bower anchor and the scrap or two
of canvas that hadn’t yet been blown out of her.
But while he looked, she fell off, giving her
broadside to it foot by foot, and drifting back
on the breakers around Car n do and the Varses.
The rocks lie so thick thereabouts, that ’t was
a toss up which she struck first; at any rate,
my father couldn’t tell at the time, for just then
the flare died down and went out.
“Well, sir, he turned then in the dark and
started back for Coverack to cry the dismal
tidings—though well knowing ship and crew to
be past any hope; and as he turned, the wind
lifted him and tossed him forward ‘like a ball,’
as he ‘d been saying, and homeward along the
foreshore. As you know, ’t is ugly work, even
by daylight, picking your way among the stones
there, and my father was prettily knocked about
at first in the dark. But by this ’t was nearer
seven than six o'clock, and the day spreading.
By the time he reached North Corner, a man
could see to read print; hows’ever, he looked
neither out to sea nor towards Coverack, but


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 11
headed straight for the first cottage—the same
that stands above North Corner to-day. A man
named Billy Ede lived there then, and when my
father burst into the kitchen bawling, ‘Wreck!
wreck !’ he saw Billy Ede’s wife, Ann, standing
there in her clogs, with a shawl over her head,
and her clothes wringing wet.
“‘ Save the chap! ’ says Billy Ede’s wife, Ann.
‘What d’ ’ec mean by crying stale fish at that
rate?’
“ ‘ But ’t is a wreck, I tell ’ee. I ’ve a-zeed’n !’
“ ‘ Why, so ’t is,’ says she, ‘ and I ’ve a-zeed ’n
too; and so has everyone with an eye in his
head.’
“And with that she pointed straight over
my father’s shoulder, and he turned ; and there,
close under Dolor Point, at the end of Coverack
town, he saw another wreck washing, and the
point black with people, like emmets, running
to and fro in the morning light. While we
stood staring at her, he heard a trumpet
sounded on board, the notes coming in little
jerks, like a bird rising against the wind; but
faintly, of course, because of the distance and


12 WANDERING HEA TH
the gale blowing—though this had dropped a
little.
“‘She’s a transport,” said Billy Ede’s wife,
Ann, ‘and full of horse soldiers, fine long men.
When she struck they must ha’ pitched the
hosses over first to lighten the ship, for a score
of dead hosses had washed in afore Ileft, half
an hour back. An’ three or four soldiers, too—
fine long corpses in white brecches and jackets
of blue and gold. I held the lantern to one.
Such a straight young man.’
“My father asked her about the trumpet-
ing.
“‘That’s the queerest bit of all. She was
burnin’ a light when me an’ my man joined the
crowd down there. All her masts had gone;
whether they carried away, or were cut away to
case her, I don’t rightly know. Anyway, there
she lay 'pon the rocks with her decks bare.
Her keelson was broke under her and her
bottom sagged and stove, and she had just
settled down like a sitting hen—just the leastest
list to starboard; but a man could stand there
easy. They had rigged up ropes across her,


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 13

from bulwark to bulwark, an’ beside these the
men were mustered, holding on like grim death
whenever the sea made a clean breach over
them, an’ standing up like heroes as soon as it
passed. The captain an’ the oflicers were cling-
ing to the rail of the quarter-deck, all in their
golden uniforms, waiting for the end as if ’t was
King George they expected. There was no way
to help, for she lay right beyond cast of line,
though our folk tried it fifty times. And beside
them clung a trumpeter, a whacking big man,
an’ between the heavy seas he would lift his
trumpet with one hand, and blow a call; and
every time he blew, the men gave a cheer.
There (she says)—hark ’ee now—there he goes
agen! But you won’t hear no cheering any
more, for few are left to cheer, and their voices
weak . Bitter cold the wind is, and I reckon it
numbs their grip o’ the ropes, for they were
dropping off fast with every sea when my man
sent me home to get his breakfast. Another
wreck, you say? Well, there ’s no hope for the
tender dears, if ’t is the Manacles. You ’d better
run down and help yonder; though ’t is little


14 WANDERING HEATH
help that any man can give. Not one came in
alive while I was there. The tide ’s flowing,
an’ she won’t hold together another hour, they
say.’
“Well, sure enough, the end was coming fast
when my father got down to the point. Six
men had been cast up alive, or just breathing—-
a seaman and five troopers. The seaman was
the only one that had breath to speak; and
while they were carrying him into the town, the
word went round that the ship’s name was the
Despatch, transport, homeward bound from
Corunna, with a detachment of the 7th Hussars,
that had been fighting out there with Sir John
Moore. The seas had rolled her further over by
this time, and given her dccks a pretty sharp
slope; but a dozen men still held on, seven by
the ropes near the ship’s waist, a couple near the
break of the poop, and three on the quarter-
deck. Of these three my father made out one
to be the skipper ; close by him clung an officer
in full regimentals—his name, they heard after,
was Captain Duncanfield; and last came_ the
tall trumpeter; and if you'll believe me, the


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 15


fellow was making shift there, at the very last,
to blow ‘ God save the King.’ What ’s more, he
got to ‘Send ’ltS victorious’ before an extra big
sea came bursting across and washed them off
the deck—every man but one of the pair be-
neath the poop—and he dropped his hold before
the next wave; being stunned, I reckon. The
others went out of sight at once, but the trum-
peter—being, as I said, a powerful man as well
as a tough swimmer—rose like a duck, rode out
a couple of breakers, and came in on the crest
of the third. The folks looked to see him broke
like an egg at their feet ; but when the smother
cleared, there he was, lying face downward on
a ledge below them; and one of the men that
happened to have a rope round him—I forget
the fellow’s name, if I ever heard it—jumped
down and grabbed him by the ankle as he
began to slip back. Before the next big sea,
the pair were hauled high enough to be out of
harm, and another heave brought them up to
grass. Quick work; but master trumpeter
wasn’t quite dead; nothing worse than a
cracked head and three staved ribs. In twenty


l6 WANDERING HEATH
minutes or so they had him in bed, with the
doctor to tend him.
“ \Iow was the time—nothing being left alive
upon the transport—for my father to tell of
the sloop he ’d seen driving upon the Manacles.
And when he got a hearing, though the most
were set upon salvage, and believed a wreck in
the hand, so to say, to be worth half a dozen
they couldn’t see, a good few volunteered to
start off with him and have a look. They
crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on
the Manacles, nor anywhere upon the sea.
One or two was for calling my father a liar.
‘Wait till we come to Dean Point,’ said he.
Sure enough, on the far side of Dean Point,
they found the sloop’s mainmast washing about
with half a dozen men lashed to it—men in
red jackets—every mother’s son drowned and
staring; and a little farther on, just under the
Dean, three or four bodies cast ‘up on the
shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-
drum and all; and, near by, part of a ship’s
gig, with ‘H.M.S. Primrose’ cut on the stem-


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 17
board. From this point on, the shore was
littered thick with wreckage and dead bodies
— the most of them Marines in uniform; and
in Godrevy Cove, in particular, a heap of fur-
niture from the captain’s cabin, and amongst
it a water-tight box, not much damaged, and
full of papers, by which, when it came to be
examined next day, the wreck was easily made
out to be the Primrose, of eighteen guns, out-
ward bound from Portsmouth, with a fleet of
transports for the Spanish War—thirty sail,
I’ve heard, but I’ve never heard what became
of them. Being handled by merchant skippers,
no doubt they rode out the gale and reached
the Tagus safe and sound. Not but what the
captain of the Primrose (Mein was his name)
did quite right to try and club-haul his vessel
when he found himself under the land:
only he never ought to have got there if
he took proper soundings. But it ’s easy
talking.
“The Primrose, sir, was a handsome vessel
—for her size, one of the handsomest in the
King’s service—and newly fitted out at Ply-
c


18 WA NDERING HE'A TH

mouth Dock. So the boys had brave pickings
from her in the way of brass-work, ship’s
instruments, and the like, let alone some bar-
rels of stores not much spoiled. They loaded
themselves with as much as they could carry,
and started for home, meaning to make a
second journey before the preventive men got
wind of their doings and came to spoil the
fun. But as my father was passing back under
the Dean, he happened to take a look over his
shoulder at the bodies there. ‘Hullo,’ says he,
and dropped his gear, ‘I do believe there ’s a
leg moving!’ And, running fore, he stooped
over the small drummer-boy that I told you
about. The poor little chap was lying there,
with his face a mass of bruises and his eyes
closed: but he had shifted one leg an inch or
two, and was still breathing. So my father
pulled out a knife and cut him free from his
drum—that was lashed on to him with a double
turn of Manilla rope—and took him up and
carried him along here, to this very room that
we ’re sitting in. He lost a good deal by this,
for when he went back to fetch his bundle the


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 19

preventive men had got hold of it, and were
thick as thieves along the foreshore; so that
’t was only by paying one or two to look the
other way that he picked up anything worth
carrying off: which you ’ll allow to be hard
seeing that he was the first man to give news
of the wreck.
“Well, the inquiry was held, of course, and
my father gave evidence; and for the rest they
had to trust to the sloop’s papers, for not a
soul was saved besides the drummer-boy, and
he was raving in a fever, brought on by the
cold and the fright. And the seamen and the
five troopers gave evidence about the loss of
the Despatch. The tall trumpeter, too, whose
ribs were healing, came forward and kissed the
Book; but somehow his head had been hurt
in coming ashore, and he talked foolish-like,
and ’t was easy seen he would never be a
proper man again. The others were taken up
to Plymouth, and so went their ways ; but the
trumpeter stayed on in Coverack; and King
George, finding he was fit for nothing, sent him
down a trifle of a pension after a while—enough
c 2


20 WANDERING HEA TH
to keep him in board and lodging, with a bit
of tobacco over.
“Now the first time that this man—William
Tallifer, he called himself—met with the drum-
mer-boy, was about a fortnight after the little
chap had better-ed enough to be allowed a
short walk out of doors, which he took, if you
please, in full regimentals. There never was a
soldier so proud of his dress. His own suit
had shrunk a brave bit with the salt water;
but into ordinary frock an’ corduroys he de-
clared he would not get—not if he had to go
naked the rest of his life; so my father, being
a good-natured man and handy with the needle,
turned to and repaired damages with a piece
or two of scarlet cloth cut from the jacket of
one of the drowned Marines. Well, the poor
little chap chanced to be standing, in this rig-
out, down by the gate of Gunner’s Meadow,
where they had buried two score and over
of his comrades. The morning was a fine
one, early in March month; and along
came the cracked trumpeter, likewise taking
a stroll.


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 2|.

“‘Hullo !’ says he; ‘good mornin’! And
what might you be doin’ here?’
“‘I was a-wishin’,’ says the boy, ‘I had
a pair o’ drum-sticks. Our lads were buried
yonder without so much as a drum tapped or
a musket fired; and that’s not Christian burial
for British soldiers.’
“‘Phut!’ says the trumpeter, and spat on
the ground; ‘a parcel of Marines!’
“The boy eyed him a second or so, and
answered up: ‘If I ’d a tab of turf handy, I’d
bung it at your mouth, you greasy cavalryman,
and learn you to speak respectful of your
betters. The Marines are the handiest body
of men in the service.’
“The trumpeter looked down on him from
the height of six foot two, and asked: ‘Did
they die well?’
“’They died very well. There was a lot of
running to and fro at first, and some of the
men began to cry, and a few to strip off their
clothes. But when the ship fell off for the last
time, Captain Mein turned and said something
to Major Grifiiths, the commanding ofliccr on


THE ROLL»CALL OF THE REEF 23

“ ‘John Christian.’
“ ‘ Mine is William George Talljfer, trumpeter,
of the 7th Light Dragoons—the Queen’s Own.
I played “ God Save the King” while our men
were drowning. Captain Duncanfield told me
to sound a call or two, to put them in heart;
but that matter of “God Save the King” was
a notion of my own. I won’t say anything to
hurt the feelings of a Marine, even if he ’s not
much over five-foot tall; but the Queen’s Own
Hussars is a tearin’ fine regiment. As between
horse and foot, ’t is a question o’ which gets
the chance. All the way from Sahagun to
Corunna ’t was we that took and gave the
knocks—at Mayorga and Rueda, and Benny-
venty.’ (The reason, sir, I can speak the names
so pat is that my father learnt ’em by heart
afterwards from the trumpeter, who was always
talking about Mayorga and Rueda and Benny-
venty.) ‘We made the rear-guard, under
General Paget, and drove the French every
time; and all the infantry did was to sit about
in wine-shops till we whipped ’em out, an’
steal an’ straggle an’ play the tom-fool in


24 IVANDERING HEA1H
general. And when it came to a stand-up
fight at Corunna, 't was the horse, or the best
part of it, that had to stay sea-sick aboard
the transports, an’ watch the infantry in the
thick o’ the caper. Very well they behaved,
too; ’specially the 4th Regiment, an’ the
42nd Highlanders an’ the Dirty Half-Hundred.
Oh, ay; they're decent regiments, all three.
But the Queen’s Own Hussars is a tearin’
fine regiment. So you played on your drum
when the ship was goin’ down? Drummer
John Christian, I ’ll have to get you a new
pair o’ drum-sticks for that.’
“Well, sir, it appears that the very next day
the trumpeter marched into Helston, and got a
carpenter there to turn him a pair of box-wood
drum-sticks for the boy. And this was the
beginning of one of the most curious friendships
you ever heard tell of. Nothing delighted the
pair more than to borrow a boat off my father
and pull out to the rocks where the Primrose
and the Despatch had struck and sunk; and on
still days ’t was pretty to hear them out there
off the Manacles, the drummer playing his


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 25

tattoo—for they always took their music with
them—and the trumpeter practising calls, and
making his trumpet speak like an angel. But
if the weather turned roughish, they ’d be walk-
ing together and talking; leastwise, the youngster
listened while the other discoursed about Sir
John’s campaign in Spain and Portugal, telling
how each little skirmish befell; and of Sir John
himself, and General Baird and General Paget,
and Colonel Vivian, his own commanding officer,
and what kind of men they were; and of the
last bloody stand-up at Corunna, and so forth,
as if neither could have enough.
“But all this had to come to an end in
the late summer; for the boy, John Christian,
being now well and strong again, must go up
to Plymouth to report himself. ’T was his own
wish (for I believe King George had forgotten
all about him), but his friend wouldn’t hold
him back. As for the trumpeter, my father
had made an arrangement to take him on as
a lodger as soon as the boy left; and on the
morning fixed for the start, he was up at the
door here by five o’clock, with his trumpet


26 WA NDERIA'G H EA TH

slung by his side, and all the rest of his kit
in a small valise. A Monday morning it was,
and after breakfast he had fixed to walk with
the boy some way on the road towards Hclston,
where the coach started. My father left them
at breakfast together, and went out to meat the
pig, and do a few odd morning jobs of that sort.
When he came back, the boy was still at table,
and the trumpeter standing here by the chimney-
place with the drum and trumpet in his hands,
hitched together just as they be at this moment.
“ ‘ Look at this,’ he says to my father,
showing him the lock; ‘I picked it up off a
starving brass-worker in Lisbon, and it is not
one of your common locks that one word of
six letters will open at any time. There ’s
jwnius in this lock; for you ’ve only to make
the rings spell any six-letter word you please,
and snap down the lock upon that, and never
a soul can open it—not the maker, even—-
until somebody comes along that knows the
word you snapped it on. Now, Johnny here’s
goin’, and he leaves his drum behind him;
for, though he can make pretty music on it,


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 27

the parchment sags in wet weather, by reason
of the sea-water getting at it; an’ if he carries
it to Plymouth, they ’ll only condemn it and
give him another. And, as for me, I shan’t
have the heart to put lip to the trumpet any
more when Johnny ’s gone. So we ’ve chosen
a word together, and locked ’em together upon
that; and, by your leave, I ’ll hang ’em here
together on the hook over your fireplace. Maybe
Johnny ’ll come back; maybe not. Maybe, if he
comes, I ‘ll be dead an’ gone, an’ he ’ll take ’em
apartan’ try their music for old sake’s sake.
But if he never comes, nobody can separate ’em;
for nobody beside knows the word. And if you
marry and have sons, you can tell ’em that here
are tied together the souls of Johnny Christian,
drummer of the Marines, and William George
Tallifer, once trumpeter of the Queen’s Own
Hussars. Amen.’
“ With that he hung the two instruments
’pon the hook there; and the boy stood up
and thanked my father and shook hands; and
the pair went forth of the door, towards
Helston.


28 WA NDERING HEATH
“ Somewhere on the road they took leave of
one another; but nobody saw the parting, nor
heard what was said between them. About
three in the afternoon the trumpeter came
walking back over the hill; and by the time my
father came home from the fishing, the cottage
was tidied up and the tea ready, and the whole
place shining like a new pin. From that time
for five years he lodged here with my father,
looking after the house and tilling the garden;
and all the while he was steadily failing, the
hurt in his head spreading, in a manner, to his
limbs. My father watched the feebleness grow-
ing on him, but said nothing. And from first
to last neither spake a word about the drummer,
John Christian; nor did any letter reach them,
nor word of his doings.
“ The rest of the tale you 'm free to believe,
sir, or not, as you please. It stands upon my
father’s words, and he always declared he was
ready to kiss the Book upon it before judge and
jury. He said, too, that he never had the wit
to make up such a yarn; and he defied anyone


30 WANDERING HEATH

“The drummer walked past my father as if
he never saw him, and stood by the elbow-chair
and said :
“Trumpeter, trumpeter, are you one with
me?’
“And the trumpeter just lifted the lids of
his eyes, and answered, ‘How should I not be
one with you, drummer Johnny—Johnny boy?
The men are patient. ’Ti]l you come, I count;
while you march, I mark time; until the
discharge comes.’
“‘The discharge has come to-night,’ said the
drummer, ‘ and the word is Corunna no longer’;
and stepping to the chimney-place, he unhooked
the drum and trumpet, and began to twist the
brass rings of the lock, spelling the word aloud,
so—C-O-R-U-N-A. When he had fixed the
last letter, the padlock opened in his hand.
“‘Did you know, trumpeter, that when I
came to Plymouth they put me into a line
regiment?’
“‘The 38th, is a good regiment,’ answered
the old Hussar, still in his dull voice. “ I
went back with them from Sahagun to


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 31

Corunna. At Corunna they stood in General
F raser’s division, on the right. They behaved
well.’
“ ‘But I ’d fain see the Marines again,’
says the drummer, handing him the trumpet;
‘and you—you shall call once more for the
Queen’s Own. Matthew,’ he says, suddenly,
turning on my father—and when he turned,
my father saw for the first time that his
scarlet jacket had a round hole by the breast-
bone, and that the blood was Welling there-
‘Matthew, we shall want your boat.’
"Then my father rose on his legs like a
man in a dream, while they two slung on, the
one his drum, and t’ other his trumpet. He
took the lantern, and went quaking before them
down to the shore, and they breathed heavily
behind him; and they stepped into his boat,
and my father ‘pushed off.
“‘ Row you first for Dolor Point,’ says the
drummer. So my father rowed them out past
the white houses of Coverack to Dolor Point,
and there, at a word, lay on his oars. And the
trumpeter, William Tallifer, put his trumpet to


32 WANDERING HEA TH
his mouth and sounded the Revelly. The
music of it was like rivers running.
“They will follow,’ said the drummer.
‘ Matthew, pull you now for the Manacles.’
“ So my father pulled for the Manacles, and
came to an easy close outside Carn dfi. And the
drummer took his sticks and beat a tattoo, there
by the edge of the reef; and the music of it was
like a rolling chariot.
“ ‘ That will do,’ says he, breaking off; ‘ they
will follow. Pull now for the shore under
Gunner’s Meadow.’
“Then my father pulled for the shore, and
ran his boat in under Gimner’s Meadow. And
they stepped out, all three, and walked up to
the meadow. By the gate the drummer halted
and began his tattoo again, looking out towards
the darkness over the sea.
“And while the drum beat, and my father
held his breath, there came up out of the sea

and the darkness a troop of many men, horse
and foot, and formed up among the graves; and
others rose out of the graves and formed up—
drowned Marines with bleached faces, and pale


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 33


Hussars riding their horses, all lean and
shadowy. There was no clatter of hoofs or
accoutrements, my father said, but a soft sound
all the while, like the beating of a bird’s wing,
and a black shadow lying like a pool about the
feet of all. The drummer stood upon a little
knoll just inside the gate, and beside him the
tall trumpeter, with hand on hip, watching them
gather; and behind them both my father,
clinging to the gate. When no more came, the
drummer stopped playing, and said, ‘Call the
roll.’
“Then the trumpeter stepped towards the
end man of the rank and called, ‘Troop-
Sergeant-Major Thomas Irons !’ and the man in
a thin voice answered, ‘Here !’
“‘Troop-Sergeant-Major Thomas Irons, how

is it with you? ’
“The man ‘answered, ‘How should it be
with me? When I was young, I betrayed
a girl; and when I was grown, 1 betrayed a
friend, and for these things I must pay._ But
I died as a man ought. God save the King!’
“ The trumpeter called to the next man,
1)


34 WANDE'BING HEA TH

‘Trooper Henry Buckingham !' and the next
man answered, ‘ Here !'
“ ‘Trooper Henry Buckingham, how is it
with you ?’
“‘How should it be with me? I was a
drunkard, and I stole, and in Lugo, in a wine-
shop, I knifed a man. But I died as a man
should. God save the King! ’
“So the trumpeter went down the line; and
when he had finished, the drummer took it up,
hailing the dead Marines in their order. Each
man answered to his name, and each man ended
with ‘ God save the King!’ When all were
hailed, the drummer stepped back to his mound,
and called:
“‘It is welL You are content, and we are
content to join you. Wait yet a little while.’
“ With this he turned and ordered my father
to pick up the lantern, and lead the way back
.
As my father picked it up, he heard the ranks
of dead men cheer and call, ‘God save the
King!’ all together, and saw them waver and
fade back into the dark, like a breath fading off
a pane.


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 35

“But when they came back here to the
kitchen, and my father set the lantern down,
it seemed they ’d both forgot about him. For
the drummer turned in the lantern-light—and
my father could see the blood still Welling out of
the hole in his breast—and took the trumpet-
sling from around the other’s neck, and locked
drum and trumpet together again, choosing the
letters on the lock very carefully. While he did
this he said:
“‘The word is no more Corunna, but
Bayonne. As you left out an “n” in Corunna,
so must I leave out an “n” in Bayonne.’ And
before snapping the padlock, he spelt out the
word slowly—‘B-A-Y-O-N-E.’ After that, he
used no more speech ; but turned and hung the
two instruments back on the hook; and then
took the trumpeter by the arm; and the pair
walked out into the darkness, glancing neither
to right nor left.
“My father was on the point of following,
when he heard a sort of sigh behind him; and
there, sitting in the elbow-chair, was the very
trumpeter he had just seen walk out by the
D 2


36 WANDE'RIIVG‘ HL‘A TH
door! If my father’s heart jumped before, you
may believe it jumped quicker now. But after
a bit, he went up to the man asleep in the chair,
and put a hand upon him. It was the trum-
peter in flesh and blood that he touched; but
though the flesh was warm, the trumpeter was
dead.
“Well, sir, they buried him three days after;
and at first my father was minded to say nothing
about his dream (as he thought it). But the
day after the funeral, he met Parson Kendall
coming from Helston market: and the parson
called out: ‘ Have 'ee heard the‘ news the coach
brought down this mornin’ ?’ ‘What news?’
says my father. ‘Why, that peace is agreed
upon.’ ‘None too soon,’ says my father. ‘Not
soon enough for our poor lads at Bayonne,’ the
parson answered. ‘ Bayonne!’ cries my father,
with a jump. ‘ Why, yes’; and the parson told
him all about a great sally the French had made
on the night of April 13th. ‘Do you happen to
know if the 38th Regiment was engaged?’ my
father asked. ‘ Come, now,’ said Parson Kendall,


THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 37

‘ I didn’t know you was so well up in the cam-
paign. But, as it happens, I do know that the
38th was engaged, for ’t was they that held a
cottage and stopped the French advance.’
“ Still my father held his tongue ; and when,
a week later, he walked into Helston and bought
a Mercury off the Sherborne rider, and got the
landlord of the ‘ Angel’ to spell out the list of
killed and wounded, sure enough, there among
the killed was Drummer John Christian, of the
38th Foot.
“ After this, there was nothing for a religious
man but to make a clean breast. So my father
went up to Parson Kendall and told the whole
story. The parson listened, and put a question
or two, and then asked : ,
“‘Have you tried to open the lock since
that night?’
“ ‘I han’t dared to touch it,’ says my father.
“‘Then come along and try.’ When the
parson came to the cottage here, he took the
things off the hook and tried the lock. ‘Did
he say “Bayonne”? The word has seven
letters.’


38 WANDERING HEATH

“ ‘ Not if you spell it with one “ n ” as he did,’
says my father.
“The parson spelt it out—B-A-Y-O-N-E.
‘ Whew!’ says he, for the lock had fallen open
in his hand.
“He stood considering it a moment, and then
he says, ‘ I tell you what. I shouldn’t blab this
all round the parish, if I was you. You won’t
get no credit for truth-telling, and a miracle ’s
wasted on a set of fools. But if you like, I’ll
shut down the lock again upon a holy word that
no one but me shall know, and neither drummer
nor trumpeter, dead nor alive, shall frighten the
secret out of me.’
“ ‘ I wish to gracious you would, parson,’ said
my father.
“The parson chose the holy word there and
then, and shut the lock back upon it, and hung
the drum and trumpet back in their place. He
is gone long since, taking the word with him.
And till the lock is broken by force, nobody will
ever separate those twain.”
/


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS
CAPTAIN POND, of the East and West Looe
Volunteer Artillery (familiarly known as the
Looe Die-hards), put his air-cushion to his lips
and blew. This gave his face a very choleric
and martial expression.
Nevertheless, above his suffused and dis;
tended cheeks his eyes preserved a pensive
melancholy as they dwelt upon his Diehards
gathered in the rain below him on the long-shore,
or Church-end, wall. At this date (November
3, 1809) the company numbered seventy, besides
Captain Pond and his two subalterns; and of
this force four were out in the boat just now,
mooring the practice-mark—a barrel with a
small red flag stuck on top; one, the bugler,
had been sent up the hill to the nine-pounder
battery, to watch and sound a call as soon as
the target was ready; a sixth, Sergeant Fugler,
lay at home in bed, with the senior lieutenant
(who happened also to be the local doctor) in


40 WA NDERIA'I; HL'A TH

attendance. Captain Pond clapped a thumb
over the orifice of his air-cushion, and heaved
a sigh as he thought of Sergeant F ugler. The
remaining sixty-four Die-hards, with their fire-
locks under their greatcoats, and their collars
turned up against the rain, lounged by the
embrasures of the shore-wall, and gossiped de-
jcctedly, or eyed in silence the blurred boat
bobbing up and down in the grey blur of the
sea.
“ Such coarse weather I hardly remember to
have met with for years,” said Uncle Israel
Spettigew, a cheerful sexagenarian who ranked
as eflicient on the strength of his remarkable
eyesight, which was keener than most boys’.
“The sweep from over to Polperro was cleanin’
my ehimbley this mornin’, and he told me in
his humorous way that with all this rain ’t is so
much as he can do to keep his face dirty—
hee-hee!”
Nobody smiled. “If you let yourself give
way to the enjoyment of little things like that,”
observed a younger gunner gloomily, “one o’
these days you ’ll find yourself in a better land


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 41

like the snuff of a candle. ’T is a year since
the Company ’s been allowed to move in double
time, and all because you can’t manage a step
o’ thirty-six inches ’ithout getting the palpita-
tions.” .
“ Well-a-well, ’t is but for a brief while longer
—a few fleeting weeks, an’ us Die-hards shall be
as though we had never been. So why not be
cheerful? For my part, I mind back in ’seventy-
nine, when the fleets o’ France an’ Spain assem-
bled an’ come up agen’ us—sixty-six sail o’ the
line, my sonnies, besides frigates an’ corvettes to
the amount o’ twenty-five or thirty, all as plain
as the nose on your face: an’ the alarm guns
goin’, up to Plymouth, an’ the signals hoisted
at Maker Tower—a bloody flag at the pole an’
two blue ’uns at the Outriggers. Four days
they laid to, an’ I mind the first time I seed
mun, from this very place as it might be where
we ’m standin’ at this moment, I said ‘Well, ’t is
all over with East Looe this time!’ I said:
‘ an’ when ’t is over, ’t is over, as Joan said by her
weddin’.’ An’ then I "spoke them verses by
royal Solomon—Wisdom two, six to nine. ‘Let


42 WA NDE'RING HE'A TH

us fill oursel’s wi' costly wine an’ ointments,’I
said: ‘ an’ let no flower o’ the spring pass by us.
Let us crown oursel’s wi’ rosebuds, afore they be
withered: let none of us go without his due
part of our voluptuousness ’——"
“ Why, you old adage, that ’s what Solomon
makes th’ ungodly say!" interrupted young
Gunner Oke, who had recently been appointed
parish clerk, and happened to know.
“ As it happens,” Uncle Issy retorted, with
sudden dignity—“as it happens, I was ungodly
in them days. The time I ’m talkin’ about was
August ’seventy-nine; an’ if I don’t mistake,
your father an’ mother, John Oke, were courtin’
just then, an’ ’most too shy to confide in
each other about havin’ a parish clerk for a
son.”
“Times hev’ marvellously altered in the
meanwhile, to be sure,” put in Sergeant Pengelly
of the Sloop Inn.
“ \Vell, then,” Uncle Issy continued, without
pressing his triumph, “"Tis all over with East’
Looe,’ I said, ‘an’ this is a black day for King
Gearge,’ an’ then I spoke them verses o’ Solomon.


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 43

‘Let none of us,’ I said, ‘go without his due
part of our voluptuousness’; and with that I
went home and dined on tatties an’ bacon. It
hardly seems a thing to be believed at this
distance o’ time, but I never relished tatties an’
bacon better in my life than that day—an’ yet
not meanin’ the laste disrespect to King Gearge.
Disrespect? If. his Majesty only knew it, he ’ve
no better friend in the world than Israel Spetti-
gew. God save the King!”
And with this Uncle Issy pulled off his cap
and waved it round his‘ head, thereby shedding
a moalinet of raindrops full in the faces of his
comrades around. ‘
This was observed by Captain Pond, standing
on the platform above, beside Thundering Meg,
the big 24-pounder, which with four 18-pounders
on the shore-wall formed the lower defences of
the haven. -
“Mr. Clogg,” he called to his junior lieu-
tenant, “tell Gunner Spettigew to put on his hat
at once. Ask him what he means by taking his
death and disgracing the company.”
The junior lieutenant—a small farmer from


44 WA NDERING HEATH
T alland parish—touched his cap, spread his hand
suddenly over his face and sneezed.
“ Hullo! You ’ve got a cold.”
“No, sir. I often sneezes like that, and no
reason for it whatever.”
“ I ’ve never noticed it before.”
“ No, sir. I keeps it under so well as I can.
A great deal can be done sometimes by pressing
your thumb on the upper lip.”
“Ah, well! So long as it ’s not a cold—”
returned the Captain, and broke off to arrange
his air-cushion over the depressed muzzle of
Thundering Meg. Hereupon he took his seat,
spread the lappels of his great-coat over his
knees, and gave way to gloomy reflection.
Sergeant F ugler was at the bottom of it.
Sergeant Fugler, the best marksman in the
Company, was a hard drinker, with a hobnailed
liver. He lay now in bed with that hobnailed
liver, and the Doctor said it was only a question
of days. But why should this so extraordinarily
diseompose Captain Pond,.who had no particular
affection for Fugler, and' knew, besides, that all
men—and especially hard drinkers—are mortal ?


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 45
The answer is that the East and West Looe
Volunteer Artillery was no ordinary Company.
When, on the 16th of May, 1803, King George
told his faithful subjects, who had been expect-
ing the announcement for some time, that the
Treaty of Amiens was no better than waste

paper, public feeling in the two Looes rose to
a very painful pitch. The inhabitants used to
assemble before the post-oflice, to hear the
French bulletins read out; and though it was
generally concluded that they held much falsc-
hood, yet everybody felt misfortune in the air.
Rumours flew about that a diversion would be
made by sending an army into the Duchy to
draw the troops thither while the invaders di-
rected their main strength upon London. Quiet
villagers, therefore, dwelt for the while in a
constant apprehension, fearing to go to bed lest
they should awake at the sound of the trumpet,
or in the midst of the French troops; scarcely
venturing beyond sight of home lest, returning,
they should find the-homestead smoking and
desolate. Each man‘hadlaid down the plan he
should pursue. Some were to drive off the cattle,


46 WANDERING HEATH

others to fire the corn. While the men worked
in the fields, their womankind—young maids
and grandmothers, and all that could be spared
from domestic work—encamped above the cliffs,
wearing red cloaks to scare the Frenchmen, and
by night kept big bonfires burning continually.
Amid this painful disquietude of the public
mind “ the great and united Spirit of the British
People armed itself for the support of their
ancient Glory and Independence against the
unprincipled Ambition of the French Govern-
ment.” In other words, the Volunteer movement
began. In the Duchy alone no less than 8,362
men enrolled themselves in thirty Companies of
foot, horse, and artillery, as well out of enthu-
siasm as to escape the general levy that seemed
probable—so mixed are all human actions.
Of these the Looe Company was neither the
greatest nor the least. It had neither the nu-
merical strength of the Royal Stannary Artillery
(1,115 men and oflieers) nor the numerical
eccentricity of the St. German’s Cavalry, which
consisted of forty troopers, all told, and eleven
officers, and hunted the fox thrice a week during


THE LOOE DI E-H ABDS 47

the winter months under Lord Eliot, Captain
and M.F.H. The Looe Volunteers, however,
started well in the matter of dress, which con-
sisted of a dark-blue coat and pantaloons, with
red facingsand yellow wings and tassels, and a
white waistcoat. The officers’ sword-hilts were
adorned with prodigious red and blue tassels,
and the blade of Captain Pond’s, in particular,
bore the inscription, “My Life's Blood for the
Two Looes! ”—a legend which we must admit
to be touching, even while we reflect that the
purpose of the weapon was not to draw its
owner’s life-blood.
‘As a matter of mere history, this devoted
blade had drawn nobody’s blood; since, in the
six years that followed their enlistment, the Looe
Die-hards had never been given an opportunity
for a brush with their country’s hereditary foes.
How, then, did they acquire their proud title ?
It was the Doctor‘s discovery; and perhaps,
in the beginning, professional pride may have
had something to do with it; but his enthusiasm
was quickly caught up by Captain Pond and
communicated to the entire Company.


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 49
continued, with perfect seriousness, “especially
in time of war, the death-rate will be enormously
heightened. But ”—with a flourish of the hand
—“I waive that. I waive even the real, if
uncertainly estimated, risk of handling, twice
or thrice a week and without timidity or par-
ticular caution, the combustibles and explosives
supplied us by Government. And still I say
that we might with equanimity have beheld our
ranks thinned during these five years by the
loss of fifteen men. And we have not lost a
single one ! It is wonderful!”
“War is a fearful thing,” commented Captain
Pond, whose mind moved less nimbly than the
Doctor’s.
“Dash it all, Pond! Can’t you see that I ’m
putting the argument on a peace footing? I
tell you that in five years of peace any ordinary
Company of the same size would have lost at
least fifteen men.”

“Then all I can say is that peace is a fearful
thing, too.”
“But don’t you see that at this moment
you ’re commanding the most remarkable
E


50 WANDIRING 854 TH
Company in the Duchy, if not in the whole of
England?”
“I do,” answered Captain Pond, flushing.
“ It ’s a responsibility, though. It makes a man
feel proud; but, all the same, I almost wish you
hadn’t told me.”
Indeed at first the weight of his responsibility
counteracted the Captain’s natural elation It
lifted, however, at the next Corporation dinner,
when the Doctor made public announcement of
his discovery in a glowing speech, supporting
his rhetoric by extracts from a handful of
statistics and calculations, and ending, “ Gentle-
men, we know the motto of the East and West
Looe Volunteer Artillery to be ‘ Never Say Die ! ’
but seeing, after five years’ trial of them, that
they never do die, what man (I ask) will not
rejoice to belong to such a Company? What
man would not be proud to command it .7 ”
After this, could Captain Pond lag behind?
His health was drunk amid thunders of ap-
plause. He rose: he cast timidity to the winds:
he spoke, and while he spoke, wondered at his
own enthusiasm. Scarcely had he made an end


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 51

before his fellow-townsmen caught him off his
feet and carried him shoulder high through the
town by the light of torches. There were many
aching heads in the two Looes next morning;
but nobody died: and from that night Captain
Pond’s Company wore the name of “The Die-
hards.”
All went well at first ; for the autumn closed
mildly. But with November came a spell of
north-easterly gales, breeding bronchial discom-
fort among the aged; and Black Care began to
dog the Commander. He caught himself re-
gretting the admission of so many gunners of
riper years, although the majority of these had
served in His Majesty’s Navy, and were by con-
sequence the best marksmen. They weathered
the winter, however; and a slight epidemic of
whooping-cough, which broke out in the early
spring, affected none of the Die-hards except
the small bugler, and he took it in the mildest
form. The men, following the Doctor’s lead,
began to talk more boastfully than ever. Only
the Captain shook his head, and his eyes wore
a wistful look, as though he listened continually
E 2


52 WA NDERING HEA TH

for the footstep of Nemesis—as, indeed, he did.
The strain was breaking him. And in August,

when word came from headquarters that, all
danger of invasion being now at an end, the
Looc Volunteer Artillery would be disbanded at
the close of the year, he tried in vain to grieve.
A year ago he would have wept in secret over
the news. Now he went about with a solemn
face and a bounding heart. A few months more
and then ‘
And then, almost within sight of goal, Ser-
geant F ugler had broken down. Everyone knew
that Fugler drank prodigiously; but so had his
father and grandfather, and each of them had
reached eighty. The fellow had always carried

his liquor well enough, too. Captain Pond looked
upon it almost as a betrayal.
“I don’t know what folks’ constitutions are
coming to in these days,” he kept muttering, on
this morning of November the 3rd, as he sat on
the muzzle of Thundering Meg and dangled
his legs.
And then, glancing up, he saw the Doctor
coming from the town along the shore-wall, and


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS . 53
read evil news at once. For many of the Die-hards
stopped the Doctor to question him, and stood
gloomy as he passed on. It was popularly said
in the two Looes, that “if the Doctor gave a man
up, that man might as well curl up his toes then
and there.” -
Catching sight of his Captain on the plat-
form, the Doctor bent his steps thither, and they
were slow and inelastic.
“ Tell me the worst,” said Captain Pond.
“The worst is that he ’s no better; no, the
worst of all is that he knows he ’s no better. My
friend, between ourselves, it ’s only a question of
a day or two.”
Silence followed for half a minute, the two
officers avoiding each other’s eyes. I
“ He has a curious wish,” the Doctor resumed,
still with his face averted and his gaze directed
on the dull outline of Looe Island, a mile away.
“ He says he knows he ’s disgracing the Com-
pany, but he ’s anxious, all the same, to have a
military funeral: says if you can promise this,
he ’ll feel in a way that he ’s forgiven.”
“He shall have it, of course.”


54 WA NDERING EBA Tll
“Ah, but that ’s not all. You remember, a
couple of years back, when they had us down to
Pendennis Castle for a week’s drill, there was a
funeral of a Sergeant-Major in the Loyal Menc-
agc; and how the band played a sort of burial
tune ahead of the body? Well, Fugler asked
me if you couldn’t manage this Dead March, as
he calls it, as well. He can whistle the tune if
you want to know it. It seems it made a great
impression on him."
“Then the man must be wandering! How
the dickens can we manage a Dead March with-
out a band ?—and we haven’t even a fife and
drum.”
“ That ’s what I told him. I suppose we
couldn’t do anything with the church mu-
sicians.”
“ There ’s only one man in the Company who
belongs to the gallery, and that ’s Uncle Issy
Spettigew: and he plays the bass-viol. I doubt
if you can play the Dead March on a bass-viol,
_and I’m morally certain you can’t play it and
walk with it too. I suppose we can’t borrow a
band from another Company?”


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 55

“What, and be the mock of the Duchy 1.’—
aftcr all our pride! I fancy I see you going
over to Troy and asking Browne for the loan of
his band. ‘ Hullo!’ he ’d say, ‘I thought you
never had such a thing as a funeral over at
Looe!’ I can hear the fellow chuckle. But I
wish something could be done, all the same. A
trifle of pomp would draw folks’ attention off
our disappointment”
Captain Pond sighed and rose from the gun;
for the bugle was sounding from the upper
battery. -
“Fall in, gentlemen, if you please!” he
shouted. His politeness in addressing his
Company might be envied even by the
“Blues.”
The Doctor formed them up and told them
off along the sea-wall, as if for inspection.
“ Or-der arms!” “ Fix bayonets ! ” “ Shoul-der
arms!” Then with a glance of inquiry at his
Captain, who had fallen into a brown study.
“Rear rank, take open order!”
“ No, no,” interposed the Captain, waking up
and taking a guess at the sun’s altitude in the


56 WANDERING HEATH

grey heavens. “ We ’re late this morning: better
march ’cm up to the battery at once."
Then, quickly rc-forming them, he gave the
word, “By the left! Quick march!” and the
Die-hards swung steadily up the hill towards
the platform where the four nine-pounders
grinned defiance to the ships of France.
As a matter of fact, this battery stood out
of reach of harm, with the compensating disad-
vantage of being able to inflict none. The reef
below would infallibly wreck any ship that
tried to approach within the point-blank range
of some 270 yards, and its extreme range of
ten times that distance was no protection to
the haven, which lay round a sharp corner of
the cliff. But the engineer’s blunder was never
a check upon the alacrity of the Die-hards,
who cleaned, loaded, rammed home, primed,
sighted, and blazed away with the precision of
clockwork and the ardour of Britons, as though
aware that the true strength of a nation lay
not so much in the construction of her fortresses
as in the spirit of her sons.
Captain Pond halted, re-formed his men


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 57

upon the platform, and, drawing a key from
his pocket, ordered Lieutenant Clogg to the
store-hut, with Uncle Issy in attendance, to
serve out the ammunition, rammers, sponges,
water-buckets, etc.
“But the door’s unlocked, sir,” announced
the lieutenant, with something like dismay.
“Unlocked!” echoed the Doctor.
The Captain blushed.
“I could have sworn, Doctor, I turned the
key in the lock before leaving last Thursday. I
think my head must be going. I ’ve been sleep-
ing badly of late—it’s this worry about Fugler.
However, I don’t suppose anybody——”
A yell interrupted him. It came from Uncle
Issy, who had entered the store-hut, and now
emerged from it as if projected from a gun.
“THE FRENCH! THE FRENCH!”
For two terrible seconds the Die-hards eyed
one another. Then someone in the rear rank
whispered, “An ambush!” The two ranks
began to waver—to melt. Uncle Issy, with
head down and shoulders arched, was already
stumbling down the slope towards the town. In


THE LOOE DIE'HARDS 59

these things was the very last in my thoughts.
Uncle Issy rolls aside the powder-cask, and what
do I behold but a man ducking down behind
it! ‘He ’s firing the powder,’ thinks I, ‘and
here endeth William George Clogg!’ So I
shut my eyes, not willing to see my gay life
whisked away in little portions ; though I feared
it must come. And then I felt Uncle Issy flee
past me like the wind. But I kept my eyes
tight till I heard the Doctor here saying there
wasn’t anybody inside. If you ask me what I
think about the whole matter, I say, putting
one thing with another, that ’t is most likely
some poor chap taking shelter from the rain.”
Captain Pond unsheathed his sword and
advanced to the door of the hut. “Whoever
you be," he called aloud and firmly, “you ’ve
got no business there; so come out of it, in the
name of King George ! ”
At once there appeared in the doorway a
little round-headed man in tattered and mud-
soiled garments of blue cloth. His hair and
beard were alike short, black, and stubbly; his
eyes large and feverish, his features smeared


60 WANDERING HEATH

with powder and a trifle pinched and pale. In
his left hand he carried a small bundle, wrapped
in a knotted blue kerchief: his right he waved
submissively towards Captain Pond.
“ See now,” he began, “I give up. I am taken.
Look you.”
“I think you must be a Frenchman,” said
Captain Pond.
“Right. It is war: you have taken a
Frenchman. Yes?”
“A spy?” the Captain demanded more
severely.
“An escaped prisoner, more like,” suggested
the Doctor; “broken out of Dartmoor, and
hiding here for a chance to slip across.”
“Monsieur le Lieutenant has guessed,” the
little man answered, turning aifably to the
Doctor. “A spy? No. It is not on purpose
that I find me near your fortifications—oh, not
a bit! A prisoner more like, as Monsieur says.
It is three days that I was a prisoner, and now
look here, a prisoner again. Alas ! will Monsieur
le Capitaine do me the honour to confide the
name of his corps so gallant?”


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 61

“ The Two Looes.”
“La Toulouse! But it is singular that we
also have a Toulouse——”
“Hey?” broke in Second Lieutenant Clogg.
“ I assure Monsieur that I say the truth.”
“Well, go on; only it don’t sound natural,”
“Not that I have seen it ”—(“ Ha!” com-
mented Mr. Clogg)—“ for it lies in the south,
and I am from the north : Jean Alphonse Marie
Trinquier, instructor of music, Rue de la Made-
leine quatr’-vingt-neuf, Dieppe.”
“ Instructor of music?” echoed Captain Pond
and the Doctor quickly and simultaneously, and
their eyes met.
“And Directeur des F e‘tes Pe'riodiques to the
Municipality of Dieppe. All the Sundays, you
comprehend, upon the sands—poum poum!
while the citizens se prolmenent sur la plage.
But all is not gay in this world. Last winter a
terrible misfortune befell me. I lost my wife-—
my adored Philomene. I was dcsolated, incon-
solable. For two months I could not take up
my cornet-d-piston. Always when I blew—
pouf !—the tears came also. Ah, what memories!


62 WANDERING HEA TH
HT

Hippolyte, my—what you call it—my beau-frére
came to me and said, ‘Jean Alphonse, you must
forget.’ I say, ‘ Hippolyte, you ask that which
is impossible.’ ‘ I will teach you,’ says Hippolyte:
‘To-morrow night I sail for Jersey, and from
Jersey I cross to Dartmouth, in England, and
you shall come with me.’ Hippolyte made his
living by what you call the Free Trade. This
was far down the coast for him, but he said the
business with Eye and Deal was too dangerous
for a time. Next night we sailed. It was his
last voyage. With the morning the wind
changed, and we drove into a fog. When we
could see again, paste .'—there was an English
frigate. She sent down her cutter and took the
rest of us; but not Hippolyte—poor Hippolyte
was shot in the spine of his back. Him they
cast into the sea, but the rest of us they take to
Plymouth, and then the War Prison on the
moor. This was in May, and there I rest until
three days ago. Then I break out—je me sauce.
How? It is my affair: for I foresee, Messieurs,
I shall now have to do it over again. I am sot.
I gain the coast here at night. I am weary, je


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 63

n’en pm's plus. I find this cassine here: the
door is open: I enter pour faire un petit sommc.
Before dayI will creep down to the shore. A
comrade in the prison said to me, ‘Go to Looe.
I know a good Cornishman there—J ”
“And you overslept yourself,” Captain Paul
briskly interrupted, alert as ever to protect the
credit of his Company. He was aware that
several of the Die-hards, in extra-military hours,
took an occasional trip across to Guernsey: and
Guernsey is a good deal more than half-way to
France.
“The point is,” observed the Doctor, “that
you play the cornet.”
“It is certain that I do so, monsieur; but
how that can be the point——”
“And instruct in music ?”
“ Decidedly !”
“ Do you know the Dead March ?”
M. Trinquier was unfeignedly bewildered.
Said Captain Pond: “Listen while I explain.
You are my prisoner, and it becomes my duty to
send you back to Dartmoor under escort. But
you are exhausted ; and notwithstanding my


6-! ‘ WANDERING HEATH

detestation of that infernal tyrant, your master,
I am a humane man. At all events, I ’m not
going to expose two of my Die-hards to the risks
of a tramp to Dartmoor just now—I wouldn’t
turn out a dog in such weather. It remains a
question what I am to do with you in the mean-
while. I propose that you give me your parole
that you will make no attempt to escape, let us
say, for a month: and on receiving it I will at
once escort you to my house, and see that you
are suitably clothed, fed, and entertained.”
“I give it willingly, M. le Capitaine. But
how am I to thank you ? ” I
“By playing the Dead March upon the
cornet-d-piston and teaching others to do the
same.”
“ That seems a singular way of showing one’s
gratitude. But why the Dead March, monsieur?
And, excuse me, there is more than one Dead
March. I myself, pm" example, composed one to
the memory of my adored Philoméne but a
week before Hippolyte came‘ with his so sad
proposition.”
“ I doubt if that will do. You see,” said


THE LOOE DI E-HARDS 65

Captain Pond, lifting his voice for the benefit of
the Die-hards, who by this time were quite as
sorely puzzled as their prisoner, “we are about
to bury one of our Company, Sergeant
F ugler ”
“Ah! he is dead?”
“He is dying,” Captain Pond pursued, the
more quickly since he now guessed, not without
reason, that F ugler was the “good Cornishman ”
to whose door M. Trinquier had been directed.
“He is dying of a hobnailed liver. It is his
wish to have the Dead March played at his
burying.”
“ He whistled the tune over to me,” said the
Doctor; “ but plague take me if I can whistle it
to you. I ’ve no car, but I ’d know it again if I
heard it. Dismal isn’t the word for it.”
“It will be Handel. I am sure it will be
Handel—the Dead March in his Saul.”
“ In his what ?”
“In his oratorio of Saul. Listen—gooum,
mum, prrr, poum——”
“Be dashed, but you ’ve got it!” cried the
Doctor, delighted; “ though you do give it a sort
r

t


66 WA N DERI N G HEA TH
of foreign accent. But I daresay that won’t-be
so noticeable on the key-bugle.”
“But about this key-bugle, monsieur? And
the other instruments ?—not to mention the
players.”
“I ’ve been thinking of that,” said Captain
Pond. “There ’s Butcher Tregaskis has a key-
bugle. He plays ‘Rule Britannia’ upon it when
he goes round with the suet. He ’ll lend you
that till we can get one down from Plymouth.
A drum, too, you shall have. Hockaday’s trader
calls here to-morrow on her way to Plymouth;
she shall bring both instruments back with her.
Then we have the church musicians—Peter
Tweedy, first fiddle; Matthew John Ede, second
77
ditto ; Thomas Tripconey, scorpion
“ Serpent,” the Doctor corrected.
“Well, it ’s a filthy thing to look at, anyway.
Israel Spettigew, bass-viol ; William Henry
Phippin, flute; and William Henry Phippin’s
eldest boy Archelaus to tap the triangle at the
right moment. That boy, sir, will play the
triangle almost as well as a man grown.”
"Then, monsieur, take me to your house.


THE LOOE’ DIE-HARDS 67
Give me a little food and drink, pen, ink, and
paper, and in three hours you shall have la,
partition.”
Said the Doctor, “ That ’s all very well, Pond,
but the church musicianers can’t march with
their music, as you told me just now.”
“ I ’ve thought of that, too. We ’ll have
Miller Penrose’s covered three-horse waggon to
march ahead of the coffin. Hang it in black
and go slow, and all the musicianers can sit
around inside and play away as merry as grigs.”
“The cover ’ll give the music a sort of
mufily sound; but that,” Lieutenant Clogg
suggested, “ will be all the more fitty for a
funeral.”
“So it will, Clogg, so it will. But we ’re
wasting time. I suppose you won’t object, sir,
to be marched down to my house by the
Company ? It ’s the regular thing in case of
taking a prisoner, and you ’ll be left to yourself
as soon as you get to my door.”
“Not at all,” said M. Trinquier amiably.
“Then, gentlemen, form in. The practice is
put off. And when you get home, mind you
F 2


68 WANDERING HEATH

change your stockings, all of you. We ’re in
luck’s way this morning, but that ’s no reason
for recklessness.”
So M. Trinquier, sometime Director of Peri-
odical Festivities to the Municipality of Dieppe,
was marched down into East Looe, to the won-
der and delight of the inhabitants, who had just
recovered from the shock of Gunner Spettigew’s
false alarm, and were in a condition to be pleased
with trifles. As the Company tramped along the
street, Captain Pond pointed out the Town Hall
to his prisoner.
“That will be the most convenient place to
hold your practices. And that is Fugler’s house,
just opposite.”
“But we cannot practise without making a
noise.”
“I hope not, indeed. Didn’t I promise you a
big drum?”
“But in that case the sick man will hear.
It will disturb his last moments.”
“Confound the fellow, he can’t have every-
thing! If he ’d asked for peace and quiet, he
should have had it. But he didn’t: he asked


THE LOOE DIE-HARDS 69

for a Dead March. Don’t you trouble about
Fugler. He ’s not an unreasonable man. The
only question is, if the Doctor here can keep
him going until you're perfect with the tune.”
And this was the question upon which the
men of Looe, and especially the Die-hards,
hung breathless for the next few days. M. Trin-
quier produced his score; the musicianers came
forward eagerly; Miller Penrose promised his
w‘aggon; the big drum arrived from Plymouth in
the trader Good Intent, and was discharged upon
the quay amid enthusiasm. The same afternoon,
at four o’clock, M. Trinquier opened his‘first
practice in the Town Hall, by playing over the
air of the “Dead Marching Soul ”—(to this the
popular mouth had converted the name)—upon
his cornet, just to give his pupils a general notion
of it. .
The day had been a fine one, with just that
suspicion of frost in the air which indicates
winter on the warm south-western coast. While
the musicians were assembling the Doctor step-
ped across the street to see how the invalid
would take it. Fugler—a sharp-featured man of


70 WANDERING HEA TH

about fifty, good-looking, with blue eyes and a
tinge of red in his hair—lay on his bed with his
mouth firmly set and his eyes resting, wistfully
almost, on the last wintry sunbeam that floated
in by the geraniums on the window-ledge. He
had not heard the news. For five days now he
expected nothing but the end, and lay and waited
for it stoically and with calm good temper.
The Doctor took a seat by the bed-side, and
put a question or two. They were answered by
Mrs. Fugler, who moved about the small room
quietly, removing, dusting and replacing the
china ornaments on the chimneypiece. The
sick man lay still, with his eyes upon the sun-
beam. -
And then very quietly and distinctly the
notes of M. Trinquier’s key-bugle rose outside on
the frosty air.
‘The sick man started, and made as if to raise
himself on his elbow, but quickly sank back
again—perhaps from weakness, perhaps because
he caught the Doctor’s eye and the Doctor’s
reassuring nod. While he lay back and listened,
a faint flush crept into his face, as though the


THE LOOE DJE-HARDS ‘ 71

blood ran quicker in his weak limbs; and his
blue eyes took a new light altogether.
“ That ’s the tune, hey ? ” the Doctor asked.
“ That ’s the tune.”
“Dismal, ain’t it? ”
“Ay, it ’s that.” His fingers were beating
time on the counterpane.
“ That ’s our new bandmaster. He’s got to
teach it to the rest, and you ’ve got to hold out
till they pick it up. Whew! I ’d no idea music
could be so dismal.”
“Hush ’ee, Doctor, do! till he ’ve a-done.
’T is like rain on blossom.” The last notes fell.
“Go you down, Doctor, and say my duty and
will he please play it over once more, and
F ugler ’ll gi’e ’em a run for their money.”
The Doctor went back to the Town Hall and
delivered this encore, and M. Trinquier played
his solo again; and in the middle of it Mr.
F ugler dropped off into an easy sleep.
After this the musicians met every evening,
Sundays and weekdays, and by the third even-
ing the Doctor was able to predict with confidence
that Fugler would last out. Indeed, the patient


72 WANDERING HEATH -
was strong enough to be propped up into a sitting
posture during the hour of practice, and not only
listened with pleasure to the concerted piece, but
beat time with his fingers while each separate
instrument went over its part, delivering, at the
close of each performance, his opinion of it to
Mrs. F ugler or the Doctor : “Tripconey’s breath ’s
failin’. He don’t do no sort o’ justice by that
sarpint.” Or: “ There ’s Uncle Issy agen! He
always do come to grief juss there! I reckon a
man of sixty-odd ought to give up the bass-viol.
He ha’n’t got the agility.”
On the fifth evening Mrs. Fugler was sent
across to the Town Hall to ask why the triangle
had as yet no share in the performance, and to
suggest that William Henry Phippin’s eldest boy,
Archelaus, played that instrument “ to the life.”
M. Trinquier replied that it was unusual to seek
the aid of the triangle in rendering the Dead
March in Saul. Mr. Fugler sent back word
that, “if you came to that, the whole thing was
unusual, from start to finish.” To this M. Trin-
quier discovered no answer ; and the triangle was
included, to the extreme delight of Archelaus


THE LOOE DIE—HARIJS 73

Phippin, whose young life had been clouded for
a week past.
On the sixth evening, Mr. Fugler announced ,
a sudden fancy to “ touch pipe.”
" Hey?” said the Doctor, opening his eyes.
“ I ’d like to tetch pipe. An’ let me light the
brimstone mysel’. I likes to see the little blue
flame turn yellow, a-dancin’ on the baccy.”
“Get ’n his pipe and bacey, missis,” the
Doctor commanded. “He may kill himself
clean-off now: the band ’ll be ready by the
funeral, anyway.”
On the three following evenings Mr. F ugler
sat up and smoked during band practice, the
Doctor observing him with a new interest. The
tenth day, the Doctor was called away to attend
a child-birth at Downderry. At the conclusion
of the cornet solo, with which M. Trinquier
regularly opened practice, the sick man said—
“Wife, get me out my clothes.”
“WHAT!”
“Get me out my clothes.”
“You ’re mad ! It ’ll be your death.”
“I don’t care : the band ’s ready. Uncle


74 WANDERING HEA TH

Issy got his part perfect las’ night, an’ that ’s
more ’n I ever prayed to hear. Get me out my
clothes an’ help me downstairs.”
The Doctor was far away. Mrs. Fugler was
forced to give in. Weeping, and with shaking
hands, she dressed him and helped him to the
foot of the stairs, where she threw open the
parlour door.
“ No,” he said, “I ’m not goin’ in there. I’ll
be steppin’ across to the Town Hall. Gie me
your arm.”
Thomas Tripconey was rehearsing upon the
serpent when the door of the Town Hall opened:
and the music he made died away in a wail, as of
a dog whose foot has been trodden on. William
Henry Phippin’s eldest son Archelaus cast his
triangle down and shrieked “Ghosts, ghosts!”
Uncle Issy cowered behind his bass-viol and put
a hand over his eyes. M. Trinquier spun round
to face the intruder, baton in one hand, cornet
in the other.
“Thank ’ee, friends,” said Mr. Fugler, dropping
into a seat by the door, and catching breath:
"' you ’ve got it very suent. ’T is a beautiful tune:


THE LOOE DIE-HA RDS 75
an’ I’m ha’f ashamed to tell ’ee that I bain’t
a-goin’ to die, this time.”
Nor did he.
The East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery
was disbanded a few weeks later, on the last day
of the year 1809. The Corporations of the Two
Boroughs entertained the heroes that evening
to a complimentary banquet in the East Looe
Town Hall, and Sergeant F ugler had recovered
sufiiciently to attend, though not to partake.
The Doctor made a speech over him, proving him
by statistics to be the most wonderful member
of the most wonderful corps in the world. The
Doctor granted, however—at such a moment the
Company could make concessions—that the Die-
hards had been singularly fortunate in the one
foeman whom they had been called upon to face.
Had it not been for a gentleman of France
. the death-roll of the company had assuredly
not stood at zero. He, their surgeon, readily
admitted this, and gave them a toast, “ The
Power of Music,” associating with this the name
of Monsieur Jean Alphonse Marie Trinquier,


76 WANDERING HEATH

Director of Periodic Festivities to the Munici-
pality of Dieppe. The toast was drunk with
acclamation. M. Trinquier responded, expressing
his confident belief that two so gallant nations
as England and France could not long be re-
strained from flinging down their own arms and
rushing into each other’s. And then followed
Captain Pond, who, having moved his audience
to tears, pronounced the Looe Die-hards dis-
banded. Thereupon, with a gesture full of tragic
inspiration, he cast his naked blade upon the
board. As it elanged amid the dishes and
glasses, M. Trinquier lifted his arms, and the
band crashed out the “Dead Marching Soul,”
following it with “God save the King” as
the clock announced midnight and the birth
of the New Year. '
“But hullo ?” exclaimed Captain Pond, sink-
ing back in his chair, and turning towards M.
Trinquier. “ I had clean forgot that you are our
prisoner, and should be sent back to Dartmoor!
And now the ‘Company is disbanded, and I have
no one to send as escort.”
“Monsieur also forgets that my parole


THE LOOE DI E-HARDS 77

expired a fortnight since, and that my service
In
from that hour has been a service of love :
M. Trinquier did not return to Dartmoor.
For it happened, one dark night early in the fol-
lowing February, that Mr. Fugler (now restored
to health) set sail for the island of Guernsey
upon a matter of business. And on the morrow
the music-master of Dieppe had become but
a pleasing memory to the inhabitants of the
Two Looes.
And now, should you take up Mr. Thomas
Bond’s “History of East and West Looe,” and
read of the Looe Volunteers that “ not a single
man of the Company died during the six years,
which is certainly very remarkable,” you will be
not utterly incredulous ; for you will know how
it came about. Still, when one comes to reflect,
it does seem an odd boast for a company of
warriors.





MY GRANDFATHER, HENDRY WATTY
A DROLL
’T Is the nicest miss in the world that I was
born grandson of my own father’s father, and
not of another man altogether. Hendry Watty
was the name of my grandfather that might
have been; and he always maintained that to
all intents and purposes he was my grandfather,
and made me call him so—Jt was such a narrow
shave. I don’t mind telling you about it. ’T is
a curious tale, too.
My grandfather, Hendry Watty, bet four
gallons of eggy-hot that he would row out to
the Shivering Grounds, all in the dead waste of
the night, and haul a trammel there. To find
the Shivering Grounds by night, you get the
Gull Rock in a line with Tregamenna and pull
out till you open the light on St. Anthony’s
Point; but everybody gives the place a wide


80 WANDERING HEATH
berth because Archelaus Rowett’s lugger foun-
dered there, one time, with six hands on board ;
and they say that at night you can hear the
drowned men hailing their names. But my
grandfather was the boldest man in Port Loe,
and said he didn’t care. So one Christmas Eve
by daylight he and his mates went out and
tilled the trammel; and then they came back
and spent the fore-part of the evening over the
eggy-hot, down to Oliver’s tiddly-wink,‘ to keep
my grandfather’s spirits up and also to show
that the bet was made in earnest.
’T was past eleven o’clock when they left
Oliver’s and walked down to the cove to see my
grandfather off. He has told me since that he
didn’t feel afraid at all, but very friendly in
mind, especially towards William John Dunn,
who was walking on his right hand. This
puzzled him at the first, for as a rule he didn’t
think much of William John Dunn. But now
he shook hands with him several times, and just
as he was stepping into the boat he says,
“ You ’ll take care of Mary Polly, while I’m
* Beer-house.


MY GRANDFATHER, HENDRY WATTY 81

away.” Mary Polly Polsue was my grandfather’s
sweetheart at that time. But why he should
have spoken as if he was bound on a long
voyage he never could tell; he used to set it
down to fate.
“ I will,” said William John Dunn ; and then
they gave a cheer and pushed my grandfather
off, and he lit his pipe and away he rowed all
into the dead waste of the night. He rowed
and rowed, all in the dead waste of the night;
and he got the Gull Rock in a line with
Tregamenna windows; and still he was rowing,
when to his great surprise he heard a voice
calling:
"Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty !”
I told you my grandfather was the boldest
man in Port Loe. But he dropped his two cars
now, and made the five signs of Penitence. For
who could it be calling him out here in the dead
waste and middle of the night?
“HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY! drop
me a line.”
My grandfather kept his fishing-lines in a
little skivet under the stern-sheets. But not a
e


MY GRANDFATHER, HENDRY WATTY 83

came two white hands, like a washerwoman’s,
and gripped hold of the stern-board ; and on
the left of these two hands, on the little finger,
was a silver ring, sunk very deep in the flesh.
If this was bad, worse was the face that followed
—a great white parboiled face, with the hair and
whiskers all stuck with chips of wood and sea-
weed. And if this was bad for anybody, it was
worse for my grandfather, who had known
Archelaus Rowett before he was drowned out on
the Shivering Grounds, six years before.
Archelaus Rowett climbed in over the stern,
pulled the hook with the bit of pipe-stem out of
his cheek, sat down in the stern-sheets, shook a
small crayfish out of his whiskers, and said very
coolly—
“ If you should come across my wife——
That was all my grandfather stayed to hear.
At the sound of Archelaus’s voice he fetched a
yell, jumped clean over the side of the boat and
swam for dear life. He swam and swam, till by
the bit of the moon he saw the Gull Rock close
ahead. There were lashin’s of rats on the Gull
Bock, as he knew : but he was a good deal
n
0 2


84 WANDE'RING HEATH

surprised at the way they were behaving: for they
sat in a row at the water’s edge and fished, with
their tails let down into the sea for fishing-lines:
and their eyes were like garnets burning as they
looked at my grandfather over their shoulders.
“ Hendry Watty ! Hendry Watty! You can’t
land here—you ’re disturbing the pollack.”
“ Bejimbers! I wouldn’ do that for the
world,” says my grandfather: so off he pushes
and swims for the mainland. This was a long
job, and ’t was as much as he could do to reach
Kibberick beach, where he fell on his face and
hands among the stones, and there‘ lay, taking
breath.
The breath was hardly back in his body,
before he heard footsteps, and along the beach
came a woman, and passed close by to him. He
lay very quiet, and as she came near he saw
’t was Sarah Rowett, that used to be Archelaus’s
wife, but had married another man since. She
was knitting as she went by, and did not seem
to notice my grandfather : but he heard her say
to herself, “The hour is come, and the man is
come.”


86 WANDERING HEA TH

It wasn’t Sarah calling, but a voice far away
out to sea.
“ HENDRY WATTY l HENDRY
WATTY! send me a line.”
My grandfather was wondering what to do,
when Sarah speaks down very sharp to him, out
of the dark :
“ Hendry Watty! Where ’s the rocket
apparatus? Can ’t you hear the poor fellow
asking for a line?”
“I do,” says my grandfather, who was be-
ginning to lose his temper; “and do you think,
ma’am, that I carry a Boxer’s rocket in my
trousers pocket ?”
“I think you have a ball of worsted in your
hand,” says she. “ Throw it as far as you can.”
So my grandfather threw the ball out into
the dead waste and middle of the night. He
didn’t see where it pitched, or how far it went.
“ Right it is,” says the woman aloft. “ ’T is
easy seen you ’re a hurler. But what shall us
do for a cradle? Hendry Watty! Hendry
Watty ! ”
“ Ma’am to you,” says my grandfather.


MY GRANDFATHER, HENDRY WATTY 87

“If you ’ve the common feelings of a gentle-
man, I ’ll ask you kindly to turn your back ; I ’m
going to take off my stocking.”
So my grandfather stared the other way very
politely; and when he was told he might look
again, he saw she had tied the stocking to the
line and was running it out like a cradle into the
dead waste of the night.
“ Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! Look
out below!”
Before he could answer, plump l a. man’s leg
came tumbling past his ear and scattered the
ashes right and left.
“ Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! Look
out below !”
This time ’t was a great white arm and hand,
with a silver ring sunk tight in the flesh of the
little finger.
“Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! Warm
them limbs ! ”
My grandfather picked them up and was
warming them before the fire, when down came
tumbling a great round head and bounced
twice and lay in the firelight, staring up at


88 WANDERING HEA TH

him. And whose head was it but Archelaus
Rowett’s, that he ’d run away from once
already, that night?
“Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! Look
out below !”
This time ’t was another leg, and my grand-
father was just about to lay hands on it, when
the woman called down:
“ Hendry Watty! catch it quick! It s my
Own leg I ’ve thrown down by mistake ! ”
The leg struck the ground and bounced high,
and Hendry Watty made a leap after it.
* * * * *
And I reckon it ’s asleep he must have
been: for what he caught was not Mrs. Rowett’s
leg, but the jib-boom of a deep-laden brigantine
that was running him down in the dark. And
as he sprang for it, his boat was crushed by the
brigantine’s fore-foot and went down under his
very boot-soles. At the same time he let out a
yell, and two or three of the crew ran forward
and hoisted him up to the bowsprit and in on
deck, safe and sound.


MY GRANDFATHER, HENDRY WATTY 89

But the brigantine happened to be outward-
bound for the River Plate; so that, what with
one thing and another, ’t was eleven good months
before my grandfather landed again at Port Loe.
And who should be the first man he sees stand-
ing above the cove but William John Dunn?
“ I’m very glad to see you,” says William
John Dunn.
“Thank you kindly,” answers my grand-
father; “ and how ’s Mary Polly ?”
“Why, as for that,” he says, “she took so
much looking after, that I couldn’t feel I was
keeping her properly under my eye till I married
her, last June month.”
“ You was always one to over-do things,”
said my grandfather.
“But if you was alive an’ well, why didn’
you drop us a line?”
Now when it came to talk about “dropping
a line” my grandfather fairly lost his temper.
So he struck William John Dunn on the nose
—a thing he had never been known to do before
—and William John Dunn hit him back, and
the neighbours had to separate them. And next


90 WANDERUVG HEATH

day, William John Dunn took out a summons
against him.
Well, the case was tried before the magis-
trates: and my grandfather told his story from
the beginning, quite straightforward, just as I ’ve
told it to you. And the magistrates decided that,
taking one thing with another, he ’d had a great
deal of provocation, and fined him five shillings.
And there the matter ended. But now you
know the reason why I ’m William John Dunn’s
grandson instead of Hendry Watty’s.


J ETSOM
WHERE Gerennius’ beacon stands
High above Pendower sands ;
Where, about the windy Nare,
Foxes breed and falcons pair ;
Where the gannet dries a wing
Wet with fishy harvesting,
And the cormorants resort,
Flapping slowly from their sport
With the fat Atlantic shoal,
Homeward to Tregeagle’s Hole—
Walking there, the other day,
In a bight within a bay,
I espied amid the rocks,
Bruis’d and jamrn’d, the daintiest box,
That the waves had flung and left
High upon an ivied cleft.
Striped it was with white and red,
Satin-lined and carpeted,
Hung with bells, and shaped withal
Like the queer, fantastical


92
WANDE'RING HEATH

Chinese temples you ’ll have seen
Pictured upon white N ankin,
Where, assembled in effective
Head-dresses and odd perspective,
Tiny dames and mandarins
Expiate their egg-shell sins
By reclining on their drumsticks,
Waving fans and burning gum-sticks.
Land of poppy and pekoe!
Could thy sacred artists know—
Could they possibly conjecture
How we use their architecture,
Ousting the indignant J oss
For a pampered Flirt or Floss,
Poodle, Blenheim, Skye, Maltese,
Lapped in purple and proud ease—
They might read their god’s reproof
Here on blister’d wall and roof;
Sealing lacquer, dinted bells,
Floor befouled of weed and shells,
Where, as erst the tabid Curse
Brooded over Pelops’ hearse,
Squats the sea-cow, keeping house,
Sibylline, gelatinous.


WANDERING HEATH

Widen swiftly and deposit
Him in homeless night ?
Or was it,
Not when wave or wind assailed,
But in waters dumb and veiled,
That a looming shape uprist
Sudden from the Channel mist,
And with crashing, rending bows
Woke him, in his padded house,
To a world of altered features?
Were these panic-ridden creatures
They who, but an hour agone,
Ran with biscuit, ran with bone,
Ran with meats in lordly dishes,
To anticipate his wishes ?
But an hour agone ! And now how
Vain his once compelling bow-wow!
Little dogs are highly treasured,
Petted, patted, pampered, pleasured:
But when ships go down in fogs,
No one thinks of little dogs.
Ah, but how dost fare, I wonder,
Now thine Argo splits asunder,
’


JETS Oil! 95

Pouring on the wasteful sea
All her precious bales, and thee?
Little use is now to rave,
Calling god or saint to save ;
Little use, if choked with salt, a
Prayer to holy John of Malta.
Patron John, he hears thee not.
Or, perchance, in dusky grot
Pale Persephone, repining
For the fields that still are shining,
Shining in her sleepless brain,
Calling “Back ! come back again ! ”
Fain of playmate, fain of pet—
Any drug to slay regret,
Hath from hell upcast an eye
On thy fatal symmetry ;
And beguiled her sooty lord
With his brother to accord
For this black betrayal. Else
Nereus in his car of shells
Long ago had cleft the waters
With his natatory daughters
To the rescue: or Poseidon
Sent a fish for thee to ride on—


96
WANDERING HEA TH

Such a steed as erst Arion
Reached the mainland high and dry on.
Steed appeareth none, nor pilot !
Little dog, if it be thy lot
To essay the dismal track
Where Odysseus half hung back,
How wilt thou conciliate
That grim mastiff by the gate?
Sure, ’t will puzzle thee to fawn
On his muzzles three that yawn
Antrous ; or to find, poor dunce,
Grace in his six eyes at once—
Those red eyes of Cerberus.
Daughters of Oceanus,
Save our darling from this hap !
Arethusa, spread thy lap,
Catch him, and with pinky hands
Bear him to the coral sands,
Where thy sisters sit in school
Carding the Milesian wool :—
Clio, Spio, Beroe,
Opis and Phyllodoee,—
Pass by these, and also pass


J E TSOJI 97

Yellow-haired Lycorias;
Pass Ligea, shrill of song—
All the dear surrounding throng;
Lay him at Cyrcne‘s feet
There, where all the rivers meet:
In their waters crystalline
Bathe him clean of weed and brine,
Comb him, wipe his pretty eyes,
Then to Zeus who rules the skies
Call, assembling in a round
Every fish that can be found—
Whale and merman, lobster, cod,
Tittlebat and demigod :—
“Lord of all the Universe,
We, thy finny pensioners,
Sue thee for the little life
I-Iurried hence by Hades’ wife.
Sooner than she call him her dog,
Change, O change him to a mer-dog!
Re-inspire the vital spark;
Bid him wag his tail and bark,
Bark for joy to wag a tail
Bright with many a flashing scale ;
Bid his locks refulgent twine,
H


WANDERING HEA TH

Hyacinthe, hyaline;
Bid him gambol, bid him follow
Blithely to the mermen’s ‘holloa l ’
When they call the deep-sea calves
Home with wreathéd univalves.
Softly shall he sleep to-night,
Curled on couch of stalagmite,
Soft and sound, if slightly moister
Than the shell-protected oyster.
Grant us this, Omnipotent,
And to Hera shall be sent
One black pearl, but of a size
That shall turn her rivals’ eyes
Greener than the greenest snake
Fed in meadow-grass, and make
All Olympus run agog—
Grant for this our darling dog!”
Musing thus, the other day,
In a bight within a bay,
I ’d a sudden thought that yet some
Purpose for this piece of jetsom
Might be found, and straight supplied it.
On the turf I knelt beside it,


J L'TSOM 99

Disengaged it from the boulders,
Hoisted it upon my shoulders,
Bore it home, and, with a few
Tin-tacks and a pot of glue,
Mended it, affixed a ledge ;
Set it by the elder-hedge;
And in May, with horn and kettle,
Coax’d a swarm of bees to settle.
Here around me now they hum;
And in autumn should you come
Westward to my Cornish home,
There ’ll be honey in the comb—
Honey that, with clotted cream
(Though I win not your esteem
As a bard), will prove me wise,
In that, of the double prize
Sent by Hermes from the sea, I’ve
Sold the song and kept the bee-hive.
H2


WRESTLERS
As Boutigo’s Van (officially styled the “ Vivid”)
slackened its already inconsiderable pace at the
top of the street, to slide precipitately down
into Troy upon a heated skid, the one outside
passenger began to stare about him with the air
of a man who compares present impressions
with old memories. His eyes travelled down
the inclined plane of slate roofs, glistening in a
bright interval between two showers, to the
masts which rocked slowly by the quays, and
from thence to the silver bar of sea beyond the
harbour’s mouth, where the outline of Battery
Point wavered unsteadily in the dazzle of sky
and water. He sniffed the fragrance of pilchards
cooking and the fumes of pitch blown from the
ship-builders’ yards; and scanned with some
curiosity the men and women who drew aside
into doorways to let the van pass.
He was a powerfully made man of about
sixty-five, with a solemn, hard-set face. The


102 WANDERING HEATH

upper lip was clean-shaven and the chin deco-
rated with a square, grizzled beard—a mode of
wearing the hair that gave prominence to the
ugly lines of the mouth. He wore a Sunday-
best suit and a silk hat. He carried a blue
band-box on his knees, and his enormous hands
were spread over the cover. Boutigo, who held
the reins beside him, seemed, in comparison with
this mighty passenger, but a trivial accessory of
his own vehicle.
“Where did you say William Dendle lives?”
asked the big man, as the van swung round a
sharp corner and came to a halt under the sign_
board of “The Lugger.”
“Straight on for maybe quarter of a mile—
turn down a court to the right, facin’ the toll-
house. You ’ll see his sign, ‘ W. Dendle, Block
and Pump Manufacturer.’ There ’s a flight o’
steps leadin’ ’ee slap into his workshop.”
The passenger set his band-box down on
the cobbles between his ankles and counted out
the fare.
“I’ll be goin’ back to-night. Is there any
reduction on a return journey?”


WRESTLERS 103

“No, sir; ’t isn’ the rule, an’ us can’t begin
to cheapen the fee wi’ a man o’ your inches.”
The stranger apparently disliked levity. He
stared at Boutigo, picked ‘up his band-box, and
strode down the street without more words.
By the red and yellow board opposite the
toll-house he paused for a moment or two in
the sunshine, as if to rehearse the speech with
which he meant to open his business. A woman
passed him with a child in her arms, and turned
her head to stare. The stranger looked up and
caught her eye.
-“ That ’s Dendle’s shop down the steps,” she
said, somewhat confused at being caught.
“ Thank you : I know.”
He turned in at the doorway and began to
descend. The noise of persistent hammering
echoed within the Workshop at his feet. A
workman came out into the yard, carrying a
plank.
“ Is William Dendle here ?”
The man looked up and pointed at the quay-
door, which stood open, with threads of light

\_~__. .____\.-._._. I-..... _ __ W _ ,__


104 WANDERING HEATH

wavering over its surface. Beyond it, against an
oblong of green water, rocked a small yacht’s
mast.
“He ’s down on the yacht there. Shall I say
you want on ? ”
“ N o.” The stranger stepped to the quay-
door and looked down the ladder. On the deck
below him stood a man about his own age and
proportions, fitting a block . His flannel shirt
hung loosely about a magnificent pair of
shoulders, and was tucked up at the sleeves,
about the bulge of his huge fore-arms. He
wore no cap, and as he stooped the light wind
puffed back his hair, which was grey and fine.
“ Hi, there—William Dendle ! ”
“ Hullo !” The man looked up quickly.
“Can you spare a word? Don’t trouble to
come up—I ’ll climb down to you.”
He went down the ladder carefully, hugging
the band-box in his left arm.
“You disremember me, I dessay,” he began,
as he stood on the yacht’s deck.
“ Well, I do, to be sure. Oughtn’t to, though,
come to look on your size.”


WRESTLERS 105

"Samuel Badgery’s my name. You an’ me
had a hitch to wrestlin’, once, over to Tregarrick
feast.”
“Why, o’ course. I mind your features now,
though ’t is forty years since. We was standards
there an’ met i’ the last round, an’ I got the
wust o’t. Terrible hard you pitched me, to be
sure: but your sweetheart was a-watchin”ee—
hey ?-—wi’ her blue eyes.”
Samuel Badgery sat down on deck, with a
leg on either side of the band-box.
“ Iss: she was there, as you say. An’ she
married me that day month. How do you know
her eyes were blue? ”
“ Oh, I dunno. Young men takes notice o’
these trifles.”
“ She died last week.”
“Indeed? Pore soul!”
“An’ she left you this by her will. ’T was
hers to leave, for I gave it to her, mysel’, when
that day’s wrestlin’ was over.”
He removed the lid of the band-box and
pulled out two parcels wrapped in a pile of
tissue-paper. After removing sheet upon sheet


106 WANDERING HEA TH

of this paper he held up two glittering objects
in the sunshine. The one was a silver mug:
the other a leather belt with an elaborate silver
buckle.
William Dendle wore a puzzled and some-
what uneasy look.
“ I reckon she saw how disapp’inted I was
that day,” he said. After a pause he added,
“ Women brood over such things, I b’lieve: for
years, I’m told. ’T is their unsearchable
natur’.”
“ William Dendle, I wish you ’d speak truth.”
“ What have I said that ’s false?”
“Nuthin: an’ you ’ve said nuthin’ that ’s
true. I charge ’ee to tell me the facts about
that hitch of our’n.”
“ You ’re a hard man, Sam Badgery. I hope,
though, you ’ve been soft to your wife. I mind
—if you must have the tale—how you played
very rough that day. There was a slim young
chap—Nathan Oke, his name was—that stood
up to you i’ the second round. He wasn’ ha’f
your match: you might ha’ pitched en flat-
handed. An’ yet you must needs give en the


WR ESTLERS 107

‘ flyin’ mare.’ Your maid’s face turned lily-white
as he dropped. Two of his ribs went cr-rlcl—
and his collar-bone—You could hear it right
across the ring. I looked at her—she was close
beside me—an’ saw the tears come: that’s how
I know the colour of her eyes. Then there was
that small blacksmith-~you dropped en slap on
the tail of his spine. I wondered if you knew
the mortal pain o’ bein’ flung that way, an’ I
swore to mysel’ that if we met i’ the last round,
you should taste it.
“Well, we met, as you know. When I was
stripped, an’ the folks made way for me to step
into the ring, I saw her face again. ’T was
whiter than ever, an’ her eyes went over me in
a kind 0’ terror. I reckon it dawned on her
that I might hurt you: but I didn’ pay her
much heed at the time, for I lusted after the
prize, an’ I got savage. You was standin’ ready
for me, wi’ the sticklers about you, an’ I looked
you up an’ down—a brave figure of a man.
You ’d longer arms than me, an’ two inches to
spare in height: prettier shoulders, too, I’d
never clapp’d eyes on. But I guessed myself a


108 WANDERING HEATH

trifle the deeper, an’ a trifle the cleaner i’ the
matter o’ loins an’ quarters: an’ I promised that
I ’d outlast ’ee.
“You got the sun an’ the best hitch, an’
after a rough an’ tumble piece o’ work, we
went down togither, you remember—no fair
back. The second hitch was just about equal;
an’ I gripped up the saekin’ round your shoul-
ders, an’ creamed it into the back o’ your neck,
an’ held you off, an’ meant to keep you off till
you was weak. Ten good minnits I laboured
with ’ee by the stickler’s watch, an’ you heaved
an’ levered in vain, till I heard your breath alter
its pace, an’ felt the strength tricklin’ out o’ you,
an’ knew ’ee for a done man. ‘Now,’ thinks I,
‘half a minnit more, an’ you shall learn how
the blacksmith felt.’ I glanced up over your
shoulder for a moment at the folks i’ the ring:
an’ who should my eye light on but your
girl? ‘
“I hadn’t got a sweetheart then, an’ Ive
never had one since-never saw another woman
who could ha’ looked what she looked. I was
condemned a single man there on the spot: an”


110 WANDE'RI N G HEATH

an’ since then we ’ve been preachers of the Word
togither for nigh on forty years. If our work
had lain in Cornwall, I’d have sought you out
an’ wrestled with you again—not in the flesh,
but in the spirit. Man, I ’d have shown you the
Kingdom of Heaven!”
“Thank ’ee,” answered Dendle; “but I got a
glimpse o’t once—from your wife.”
The other stared, failing to understand this
speech. What puzzled him always annoyed
him. He set down the cup and belt on the
yacht’s deck, shook hands abruptly, and hurried
back to the inn, where already Boutigo was
harnessing for the return journey.


THE BISHOP OF EUOALYPTUS
A Doc'roa’s STORY
“ 0 toiling hands of mortals .I' O‘ unwearieel feet,
travelling ye know not whither ./ Soon, soon, it seems
to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hill-
top, and but a little way further, against the setting
sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye
know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully
is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success
is to labour.”—R. L. STEvENSON.
“EUOALYPTUS lies on the eastern slope of the
Rockies. It will be fourteen years back this
autumn that the coach dropped me there, some-
where about nine in the evening, and Hewson,
who was waiting, took me straight to his red-
pine house, high up among the foot-hills. The
front of it hung over the edge of a waterfall,
down which Hewson sent his logs with a pleas-
ing certainty of their reaching Eucalyptus sooner
or later; and right at the back the pines climbed
away up to the snow-line. You remember the


112 WANDERING HE'A ’I'H
"\

story of Daniel O’Rourke; how an eagle carried
him up to the moon, and how he found it as
smooth as an egg-plum, with just a reaping-
hook sticking out of its side to grip hold of?
Hewson’s verandah reminded me of . that
reaping-hook ; and, as a matter of fact, the
cliff was so deeply undercut that a plummet,
if it could be let through between your heels.
would drop clean into the basin below the fall.
-“ The house was none of Hewson’s building.
Hewson was a bachelor, and could have made
shift with a two-roomed cabin for himself and
his men. He had taken the place over from
a New Englander, who had made his pile by
running the lumbering business up here and a
saw-mill down in the valley at the same time.
The place seemed dog-cheap at the time; but
after a while it began to dawn upon Hewson
that the Yankee had the better of the deal,
Eucalyptus had not come up to early promise.
In fact, it was slipping back and down the hill
with a run. Already five out of its seven big saw-
mills were idle and rotting. Its original archi-
tect had sunk to a blue-faced and lachrymose


THE BISHOP 0F EUOALYPTUS 113

bar-loafer, and the roll of plans which he
carried about with him—with their unrealised
boulevards, churches, municipal buildings, and
band-kiosks—had passed into a dismal stand—
ing joke. Hewson was even now deliberating
whether to throw up the game or toss good
money after bad by buying up a saw-mill and
running it as his predecessor had done.
“‘It’s like a curse,’ he explained to me at
breakfast next morning. ‘ The place is afllictéd
like one of those unfortunate South Sea
potentates, who flourish up to the age of
fourteen and then cypher out, and not a
soul to know why. First of all, there ’s the
lumbering. Well, here’s the timber all right;
only Bellefont, farther down the valley, has cut
us out. Then we had the cinnabar mines—you
may see them along the slope to northward,
right over the west end of the town. They
went well for about sixteen months; and then
came the stampede. A joker in the Bellefont
Sentinel wrote that the miners up in Euca-
lyptus were complaining of the “insufficiency
of exits”; and he wasn’t far out. Last
I


114 WA NDERING HEA TH

there were the “ Temperate _ Airs and Re-
invigorating Pine-odours of America’s Peerless
Sanatorium. Come and behold: Come and be
healed ! ” The promoters billed that last cursed
jingle up and down the States till as far south
as Mexico it became the pet formula for
an invitation to drink. Well, for three years
we averaged something like a couple of hundred
invalids, and doctors in fair proportion; and I
never heard that either did badly. It was an
error of judgment, perhaps, to start our muni-
cipal works with a costly Nccropolis, or rather
the gateway of one; two marble pillars, if you
please—the only stonework in Eucalyptus to
this day—with “Campo ” on one side and
“ Santo ” on the other. No healthy-minded
person would be scared by this. But the inva-
lids complained that we’d made the feature too
salient; and the architect has gone ever since
by the name of “ Huz and Buz,” bestowed on
him by some wag who meant “ Jachin and
Boaz,” but hadn’t Scripture enough to know it.
Anyhow the temperate airs and pine-odours are
a frost. There ’s nobody, I fancy, living at Euca-


THE’ BISHOP OF EUCALYPTUS 115

lyptus just now_ for the benefit of his health,
and I believe that at this moment you ’re the
only doctor within twenty miles of the place.’
“ ‘ Well,’ said I, ‘I ’ll step down this morning
anyway, and take a look.’
“ ‘You can saddle the brown horse when-
ever you like. You were too sleepy to take
note of it last night, but you came up here by
a track fit for a lady’s pony-carriage. My pre-
decessor engineered it to connect his two places
of business. In its way, it ’s the most palatial
thing in the Rockies— two long legs with a short
tack between, gentle all the way—and it brings
you out by the Necropolis gate. You can hitch
the horse up there.’
“By ten o'clock I had saddled the brown
horse, and was walking him down the track at
an easy pace. Hewson had omitted to praise
its beauty. Pine-needles lay underfoot as thick
and soft as a Persian carpet; and what with
the pine-tops arching and almost meeting over-
head, and the red trunks raying out left and
right into aisles as I went by, and the shafts
12


116 WANDERING HEATH

of light breaking the greenish gloom here and
there with glimpses of aching white snowfields
high above, ’t was like walking in a big cathedral
with bits of the real heaven shining through the
roof. The river ran west-for a while from
Cornice House, and then tacked north-east with
a sudden bend round the base of the foot-hills;
and since my track formed a sort of rough
hypotenuse to this angle, I heard the voice of
the rapids die away and almost cease, and then
begin again to whisper and murmur, until, as
I came within a mile or so of Eucalyptus, they
were loud at my feet, though still unseen. I’
am not a devout man, but I can take off my
hat now and then; and all the way that morn-
ing a couple of sentences were ring-dinging in
my head: ‘ Lift up your hearts! We lift them
up unto the Lord!’ You know where they
come from, I dare say.
“ By-and-by the track took a sharp and steep
trend down hill, then a curve; the trees on
my right seemed to drop away; and we found
ourselves on the edge of a steep bluff overhang-
ing the valley, the whole eastern slope of which


THE BISHOP OF EUOALYPTUS 117

broke full into sight in that instant, from the
river_tumbling below—by sticking out a leg _I
could see it shining through my stirrup—to
the rocky arétes and smoothed-out snowfi‘elds
around the peaks. _It made a big spectacle, and
I suppose I must have stared at it till my eyes
were dazzled, for, on turning again to follow the
track, which at once dived among the pines
and into the dusk again, I did not observe,
until quite close upon her, a woman coming
towards me.
“And yet she was not rigged out to escape
notice. She had on a scarlet Garibaldi, a striped
red-and-white skirt, bunched up behind into an
immense polonaise, and high-heeled shoes that
tilted her far forward. She wore no hat, ‘but
carried a scarlet sunshade over her shoulder. Her
hair, in a towsled chignon, was golden, or rather
had been dyed to that colour; her face was
painted ; and she was glaringly drunk.
“This sudden apparition shook me down
with a jerk; and I suppose the sight of me
had something of the same effect on the
woman, who staggered to the side of the


118 WANDERING HEATH

track, and, Plumping down amid her flounces,
beckoned me feebly with her sunshade. I pulled
up, and asked what I could do for her?
“ ‘ You're the doctor?’ she said slowly, with
a tight hold on her pronunciation.
“ ‘ That ’s so.’
“ ‘ From Cornice House?’
“ I nodded.
“ She nodded back. ‘ That ’s so. Oh, dear,
dear! you said that. I can’t help it. I ’m drunk,
and it ’s no use pretending !’
“She fell to wringing her hands, and the
tears began to run from her bistred eyes.
“ ‘Now, see here, Mrs—Miss ’

“ ‘ Floncemorency.’
“ ‘Miss Florence Montmorency?’ I hazarded
as a translation.
“‘That’s so. Formerly of the Haughty
Coal.’
“‘I beg your pardon? Ah! . . . of the
Haute Ecole ? ’
“ ‘ That ’s so: ’questrie.lme.’ I
“‘Well, you ’ll take my advice, and return
home at once and put yourself to bed’


THE BISHOP OF EUC'AL YPTUS 119

“‘Don’t you worry about me. It ’s the
Bishop you ’ve got to prescribe for. I allowed
I’d reach Cornice House and fetch you down,
if it took my last breath. Pete Stroebel at
the drug store told me this morning that
Mr. Hewson had a doctor come to stop with
him, so I started right along.’
“ ‘And how far did you calculate to reach
in those shoes ?’
“‘I didn’t calculate at all; I just started
along. If the shoes hurt, I ’d have kicked them
off and gone without, or maybe crawled.’
“‘Very good,’ said I. ‘Now, before we go
any farther, will you kindly tell me who the
Bishop is ?’
“ ‘ He ’s a young man, and he boards with me.
See, here, mister,’ she went on, pulling herself
together and speaking low and earnest, ‘he ’s
good; he ’s good right through: you ’ve got to
make up your mind to that. And he’s powerful
sick. But what you ’ve got to lay hold of is
that he’s good. The house is No. 67, West
Fifteenth Street, which is pretty easy to find,
seeing it ’s the only street in Eucalyptus. The


THE BISHOP 0F EUC'ALYPTUS 121

“ ‘ Hullo I ’ she cried, breaking off sharply.
“‘ Yes,’ I answered, ‘you had forgotten that.
But another‘wash will take it all off, and, if
you ’ll forgive my saying so, you won’t look
any the worse. After ‘that you shall soak my
handkerchief and bandage it round your fore-
head till you feel better. Here, let me help.’
“‘Thank you,’ she said, as I tied the knot.
‘And now hurry along, please. Sixty-seven,
West Fifteenth Street. I ’ll be waiting here
with your handkerchief.’
“I mounted and rode on. At the end of
half a mile the track began to dip more steeply,
and finally emerged by a big clearing and the
two marble pillars of which Hewson had spoken;
and here I tethered the brown horse, and had a
look around before walking down into Euca-
lyptus. Within the clearing a few groups
of Norfolk pines had been left to stand,
and between these were burial lots marked
out and numbered, with here and there a
painted wooden cross; but the inhabitants of
this acre were few enough. Behind and above
the ‘Necropolis’ the hill rose steeply; and


THE BISHOP OF EUC'AL YPTUS 123

a banjo player. I never heard anything like it. ‘
I should say, if you divided the population into
four parts, that two of these were playing
billiards, one tum-trimming ‘Hey, Juliana’ on
the banjo, and the remaining fourth looking on
and drinking whiskey, and occasionally taking
part in the chorus. All the way down the side-
walk I had these two sounds—the click, click of
the balls and the thrum, thrum, tinlcle, tinkle of
‘Juliana ’—ahead of me; and left silence in my
wake, as the inhabitants dropped their occupa-
tions and sauntered out to stare at ‘the Last
Invalid,’ which was the name promptly coined
for me by the disheartened but still humorous
promoters of America’s Peerless Sanatorium.
“You don’t know ‘Juliana ’—neither tune
nor words? Nor did I when I set foot in
Eucalyptus; but I lived on pretty close terms
with it for the next two months, and it ended by
clearing me out of the neighbourhood. It was
a sort of nigger camp-meeting song, and a
hybrid at that. It went something like this:
“‘ O, ole lost ell-an’-yard is a-huntin’ fer
ole morn ’-—- ‘


12-! WA NDERI 1W 1' H EA TH

The lost ell-and-yard is Orion’s sword and belt,
I may tell you—
“ ‘ Hey, Juliana, Juli-he-hi-holy!
An’ my soul ‘a done sicken fer de Hallelu-
jah horn, ‘
Hey, Juliana, Juli-he-hi-ho!
Was it weary there,
In ole wilderness?
Was it weary-y-y, ’way down in Goshen?
'“ ‘ 0, de children shibber by de Jordan’s
flow—
H e? , Juliana, Juli-he-hi-holy/
An’ as time fer Gaberl to shake itself an’
blow, ‘ I
Hey, Juliana, Juli-he-hi-ho I
For it ‘a weary here
In ole wilderness;
Oh, it’s weary-y-y, ’way down in Goshen! ’
That was the sort of stuff, and it had any
number of verses. I never heard the end of
them. Also there were variants—most of them
unfit for publication. The tune had swept up


THE BISHOP OF EUCALYPTUS 125

the valley like an epidemic disease : and, after a
while, it astonished no dweller in Eucalyptus to
find his waking thoughts and his whole daily
converse jigging to it. But the new-comer was
naturally a bit startled to hear the same strain
put up from a score of houses as he walked
down the street.
“I found the house, No. 67, easily; and
knocked. It looked neat enough, with a fence
in front and some pots ‘ of flowers in a little
balcony over the porch, and clean muslin cur-
tains to the windows. The fence and house-
front were painted a bright blue, but not en-
tirely; for here and there appeared patches of
green daubed over the blue, much as if a child
had been around experimenting with apaint-pot.
“‘Open the door and come upstairs, please,’
said an English voice right overhead. And,
looking up, I saw a slim young man in a
minister’s black suit standing among the flower-
pots and smiling down at me. I saw, of course,
that this must be my patient; and I knew his
complaint too. Even at that distance anyone
could see he was pretty far gone in consumption.


126 WANDERING HEATH

“As I climbed the stairs he came in from
the porch and met me on the landing, at the
door of Miss Montmorency’s best parlour—a
spick-and-span apartment containing a cottage
piano, some gilded furniture of the Second
Empire fashion, a gaudy lithograph or two,
and a carpet that had to be seen to be
believed.
“ ‘ I had better explain,’ said I, ‘that this is a
professional visit. I met Miss Montmorency just
outside the town, and have her orders to call. I
am a medical man.’
“Still smiling pleasantly, he took my hand
and shook it.
“‘Miss Montmoreney is so very thoughtful,’
he said; then, touching his chest lightly, ‘it ’s
true I have some trouble here—constitutional,
I’m afraid; but I have suffered from it, more or
less, ever since I was fourteen, and it does n’t
frighten me. There is really no call for your
kind offices; nothing beyond a general weak-
ness, which has detained me here in Eucalyptus
longer than I intended. But Miss Montmorency,
Seeing my impatience, has jumped to the belief


THE BISHOP OF EUCALYPTUS 127

that I am seriously ill.’ Here he smiled again.
‘ She is the soul of kindness,’ he added.
“I looked into his prominent and rather
nervous eyes. They were as innocent as a child’s.
Of course there was nothing unusual in his
hopefulness, which is common enough in cases
of phthisis—symptomatic, in fact; and, of course,
I did not discourage him.
“‘You have work waiting for you? Some
definite post?’ I asked.
“He answered with remarkable dignity; he
looked a mere boy too.
" ‘ I am a minister of the gospel, as you guess
by my coat: to be precise, a Congregational
minister. At least, I passed through a Congre-
gational training college in England. But nice
distinctions of doctrine will be of little moment
in the work before me. No, I have no definite
post awaiting me—that is, I have not received a
call from any particular congregation, nor do I
expect one. The harvest is over there, across
the mountains; and the labourers are never too
many.’
“ It was singular in my experience; but this


128 WANDERING HEA TH
young man contrived to speak like a book with-
out being at all offensive.
“‘I was sent out to America,’ he went on,
‘mainly for my health’s sake; and the voyage
did wonders for me. Of course I picked up a lot
of information on the way and in New York . It
was there I first heard of the awful wickedness
of the Pacific Slope, the utter, abandoned god-
lessness of the mining camps throughout the
golden and silver states. I had letters of intro-
duction to one or two New England families
—sober, religious people—and the stories they
told of the Far West were simply appalling. It
was then that my call came to me. It came one
night— But all this has nothing to do with
my health.’
“‘ It interests me,’ said I.
“ ‘ It does one good to talk, if you’re sure you
mean that,’ he went on, with a happy laugh.
Then, with sudden gravity: ‘It came one night
—the clear voice of God calling me. I was
asleep; but it woke me, and I sat up in bed with
the voice still ringing in my ears like a bugle
calling. I knew from that moment that my


THE BISHOP OF E UOAL YPT US 129

work lay out West. I saw that my very illness
had been, in God’s hands, a means to lead me
nearer to it. As soon as ever I was strong
enough, I started; and you may think me
fanciful, sir, but I can tell you that, as sure as
I sit here, every step of the way has been
smoothed for me by the Divine hand. The
people have been so kind all the way ( for I am
a poor man); and I have other signs—other
assurances-—’
“He broke off, hesitated, and resumed his
sentence at the beginning :
“‘The people have been so kind. I think
the Americans must be the kindest people in the
world; and good too. I cannot believe that all
the wickedness they talk of out yonder can come
from anything but ignorance of the Word. I
am certain it cannot. And that encourages me
, mightily. Why, down in Bellefont they told
me that Eucalyptus here was a little nest of
‘iniquity; they spoke of it as of some City of the
Plain. And what have I found? Well, the
people are indeed as sheep without a shepherd ;-
and who can wonder, seeing that there is not a
J


130 WA NDERIN G HEATH

single House of Prayer kept open in the munici-
pality? There is a great deal of coarse levity,
and even profanity of speech, and, I fear, much
immoderate drinking; but these are the effects
of blindness rather than of wickedness. From
the heavier sins—from what I may call actual,
conscious vice—Eucalyptus is singularly free.
Miss Montmorency, indeed, tells me that in her
experience (which, of course, is that of a single
lady, and therefore restricted) the moral tone of
the town is surprisingly healthy. You under-
stand that I give her judgment no more than
its due weight. Still, Miss Montmorency has
lived here three years; and for a single
lady (and, I may add, the only lady in the
place) to pass three years in it entirely un-
molested——’
“ This was too much ; and I interrupted him
almost at random—-
“ ‘ You remind me of the purpose of my call.
I hope, if only to satisfy Miss Montmorency, you
won’t mind my sounding your chest and putting
a few questions to you.’
“Seeing that I had already pulled out my


182 WA NDERING HEATH

pretty often, and have a talk—I’m an English-
man, you know, and an English voice is good to
7
hear
“ His face lit up at once. ‘Ah, if you would!’
said he; and we shook hands.
“As I closed the front door and stepped out
upon the sidewalk, a tall man lounged across to
me from the doorway of a saloon across the road
—a lumberer, by his dress. He wore a large
soft hat, a striped flannel shirt open at the
neck, a broad leathern belt, and muddy trousers
tucked into muddy wading-boots. His appear-
ance was picturesque enough without help from
his dress. He had a mighty length of arm and
breadth of shoulders; a handsome, but thin and
almost delicately fair, face, with blue eyes, and
a surprisingly well-kept beard. The colour of
this beard and of his hair—which he wore
pretty long—was a light auburn. Just now the
folds of his raiment were full of moist sawdust;
and as he came he brought the scent of the
pine-woods with him.
“ ‘ How ’s the Bishop?’ asked this giant,


THE BISHOP OF EL'CALYI’TUS 133

jerking his head towards the little balcony of
No 67.
“Before I could hit on a discreet answer, he
followed the question up with another:
“ ‘ What ’ll you take ?’
“I saw that he had something to say, and
allowed him to lead the way to a saloon a little
way down the road. ‘Simpson’s Pioneers’ Sym-
posium ’ was the legend above the door. A
small, pimply-faced man in seedy black—whom
I guessed at once, and correctly, to be ‘ Huz-and-
Buz ’—lounged by the bar inside; and across
the counter the bar-keeper had his banjo slung,
and was gently strumming the accompaniment
of ‘Hey, Juliana!’
“‘ Put that down,’ commanded my new
acquaintance; and then, turning to Huz-and-
Buz, ‘ Git l’ I
“ The architect raised the brim of his hat to
me, bowed servilely, and left.
“ ‘ Short or long I ’
“ I said I would take a short drink.
“ ‘ A brandy sour? ’
“ ‘A “brandy sour ” will suit me.’


134 WANDERING HEATH

“He kept his eye for a moment on the bar-
tender, who began to bustle around with the
bottles and glasses; then turned upon me.
“‘ Now, then.’
“ ‘ About the Bishop, as you call him ?’
“ He nodded.
“ ‘ Well, you ’re not to tell him so; but he ’s
going to die.’
“ ‘ Quick ?’
“‘I think so.’
“He nodded. ‘I knew that,’ he said, and
was silent for a minute; then resumed, ‘No;
he won’t be told. We take an interest in that
young man.’
“ ‘ Meaning by “ we ” ?’
“ ‘ The citizens of Eucalyptus as a body. My
name’s William Anderson: Captain Bill they
call me. I was one of the first settlers in
Eucalyptus. I ’ve seen it high, and I ’ve seen it
low. And I’m going to be the last man to quit;
that ’s the captain’s place. And when I say this
or that is public opinion in Eucalyptus, it ’s got
to be. I drink to your health, Doctor.’
“‘Thank you,’ said I. ‘Then I may count


THE BISHOP 0F EUG'ALYPTUS 135

on your silence? The poor chap is so power-
fully set on crossing the Rockies and getting to
close quarters with some real wickedness, that
to tell him the truth might shorten the few
days he has left.’
“ Captain Bill smiled grimly.
“ ‘Wickedness? Lord love you! He couldn’t
see any. He ’d go through ’Frisco, and out at
the far end, without so much as guessing the
place had a seamy side to it. His innocence,’
pursued the captain, ‘is unusual. I guess
that ’s why we ’re taking so much care of him.
But I must say you ’ve been spry.’
“‘Upon my word, I can’t at this moment
make head or tail of the business. I met Miss
7
Montmorency on the road
“‘I guess she was looking like a Mont-
morency, too. F lyheel Flo is her name here-
abouts; alluding to her former profession of
circus-rider. Perhaps I’d better put the facts
straight for you.’
“ ‘ I wish you would.’
“‘ Well, it ’ll be about two months back that
the Bishop came to Eucalyptus. We were most


THE BISHOP OF EUC'ALYPTUS 137

arrived by the coach; and it would be a real
kindness to direct me to a comfortable lodging.”
By this time he ’d unwound the muffler about
his neck and unbuttoned his outer wraps gener-
ally, and we saw he was rigged out in genuine
sky-pilot’s uniform. We hadn’t seen one of that
profession in Eucalyptus for more ’n two years.
“ I’m afraid, your reverence,” says one of the
boys, mimicking the poor lad’s talk, “ I’m afraid
the accommodation of this camp will hardly reach
up to your style. I guess what you, want is a
cosy little nook with a brass knocker and a nice
motherly woman to look after you. You
oughter have sent the municipality word you
was coming.” “Thank you,” answers the poor
boy, as serious as can be; “of course I shall be
glad of such comforts, but I assure you they are
not indispensable. I ’m an old campaigner,” he
says, drawing himself up to his poor little
height and smiling proud-like. I tell you, that
knocked the wind out of our sails. It was too
big to laugh at. We just stuck for half a
minute and looked at him, till the mischief put
it into old Huz-and-Buz’s head to cackle out,


138 WANDERING' HEA TH

“Better send him right along to F lyheel Flo!”
This put up a laugh, and I saw in half a minute
that the proposition had caught on. It struck
me as sort of funny, too, at the time. So
I steps forward and says, “I know a lady
who ’d likely take you in and fix you up
comfortable. This kind of thing ain’t exactly
in her line; but no doubt she ’ll put herself
out to oblige a minister, specially if you take
her a letter of introduction from me. Miss
Florence Montmorency’s her name, and she
lives at No. 67 along the street here. Here,
pass along the ink-bottle and a pen,” I says (for,
barring Huz-and-Buz, I was about the only
sinner present that hadn’t forgotten how to
spell); and inside of five minutes I’d fixed up
the letter to Flo, and a dandy document it was !
He took it and thanked me like as if it was a
school prize; and I guess ’t was then it began to
break in on me that we ’d been playing it pretty
low on the innocent. However, Pete caught up
his valise, and two or three of us saw him along
to Flo’s door, and waited out on the side-walk
while he knocked. At the second knock Flo


THE BISHOP 0111 EUCALYPTUS 139

came down and let him in. I saw him lift his
hat, and heard him begin with “I believe I am
addressing Miss Montmorency;” and what Flo
was making ready to say in answer I’d give a
dollar at this moment to know. But she looked
over his shoulder, and with the tail of her
eye glimpsed us outside, and wasn’t going to
show her hand before the boys. So quick as
thought she ‘pulls the youngster in, with his
valise, and shuts the door.
“‘ Well, sir, we cooled our heels outside there
for a spell, but nothing occurred. So at last we
made tracks back here to the saloon, owning to
ourselves that Flo didn’t need to be taught how
to receive a surprise party. “But,” says I,
“ you’ll have the minister back here before long;
and I anticipate he ’ll ask questions.” I ’d hardly
said the words before the door flung open behind
me. It was n’t the youngster, though, but Flo
herself; and a flaming rage she was in. “See
here, boys,” she begins, “this is a dirty game,
and you ’d better be ashamed of yourselves!
I ’m ashamed of you, Bill, anyway,” she says,
tossing me back my letter; and then, turning


140 WANDERING HEATH

short round on Huz-and-Buz, “ If old Iniquity,
here, started the racket, it ‘s nateral to him: he
had a decent woman once for his wife, and beat
her. But there ’s others of you oughter know
that your same reasons for thinking light of a
woman are reasons against driving the joke too
hard.” “You ’re right, Flo,” says I, “and I beg
your pardon.” “I dunno that I ’ll grant it,” she
says. “ Lord knows,” she says, “It ain’t for any
of us here to be heaving dirt at each other; but
I will say you oughter be feeling mean, the way
you ’ve served that young man. Why, boys,’
she says, opening her eyes wide, like as if ’t was
a thing unheard of, “ he ’s good ./ And oh, boys,
he ’s sick, too!” “Is he so ?” I says; “I feel
cheap.” “You oughter,” says she. “ What ’s to
be done?” says I. “Well, the first thing,” she
says, “that you ’ve got to do is to come right
along and paint my fence ;” then, seeing I looked
a bit puzzled-—“ Some of you boys have taken
the liberty to write up some pretty free com-
pliments about my premises; and as the most of
you was born before spelling-bees came in fashion,
I don’t want my new boarder to come down


THE BISHOP OF EUCALYPTUS 141

to-morrow and form his own opinion about your
education.” Well, sir, we went off in a party
and knocked up old Peter, and got a pot of paint,
and titivated No. 67 by the light of a couple of
lanterns; and the Bishop—as we came to call
him—sleeping the sleep of the just upstairs all
the time. Unfortunately, Peter- had made a
mistake and given us green paint instead of blue,
and by that light none of us could tell the
difference; so I guess the Bishop next morning
allowed that Miss Montmorency had ideas of her
own on “mural decoration,” as Huz-and-Buz
calls it. When we got the job fixed, Flo steps
inside the gate, and says she, looking over it,
“Boys, I ’m grateful. And now I ’m going to
play a lone hand, and I look’ to you not to inter-
fere. Good night." From that day to this, sir,
she’s kept straight, and held off the drink in a
manner you would n’t credit. The Bishop, he
thinks her an angel on earth; and to see them
promenading down the sidewalk arm-in-arm of
an afternoon is as good as a dime exhibition.
I’m bound to own the boys act up. You wait
till you see her pass, and the way the hats fly off.


142 WANDERING' HEATH

Old Huz-and-Buz came pretty near to getting
lynched the first week, for playing the smarty
and drawling out as they went by, “ Miss Mont-
morency, I believe?” to imitate the wayin which
the Bishop introduced himself. I guess he won’t
be humorous again for a considerable spell.
And now, Doctor, I hope I ’ve put the facts
straight for you ? ’
“‘ You have,’ I answered, draining my glass ;
‘ and they do several people credit.’
“ ‘ Wait a bit. You have n’t heard what I’m
coming to. That young man is poor.’
“ ‘ So I gather.’
“ ‘ And I ’m speaking now in the name of the
boys. There was a meeting held just now, while
you was dropping your card on the Bishop; and
I ’m to tell you, as deputy, that trouble ain’t to
be spared over him. It ’s a hopeless case; but
you hear—trouble ain’t to be spared; and the
municipality foots the—— ’
“ ‘Hold hard, there,’ I broke in ; and told
him how the land lay. When I ’d done he held
out a huge but well-shaped hand, palm upwards.
“ ‘ Put it there,’ he said.


THE BISHOP OF EUCALYPTUS 143

“ We shook hands, and walked together (still
to the strain of ‘ Juliana ’) as far as the Necropolis
gate. I observed that several citizens appeared
at the doors of the saloons along our route, and
looked inquiringly at Captain Bill, who answered
in each case with a wink.
“ ‘That passes you,’ he explained, ‘ for the
freedom of Eucalyptus City, as you ’d say at
home. When you want it, you ’ve only to
come and fetch it—in a pail. You ’re among
friends.’
“ He backed up this assurance by shaking my
hand a second time, and with great fervour. And
so we parted.
“As I neared the spring on my horneward
road I saw Miss Montmorency standing beside
the track, awaiting me. She looked decidedly
better, and handed me back my handkerchief,
almost dry and neatly folded.
“ ‘ And how did you find him?’ she asked.
“ I told her.
“‘We allowed it was that—the boys and I.
We allowed he would n’t last out the fall. Did
you meet any of the boys ?’


144 IVANDERIKG HEATH

“ ‘I ’ve been having a short drink and a long
talk with Captain Bill.’
“She nodded her head, breaking off to clap
both palms to her temples.
“‘My! It does ache! I ’m powerful glad
you seen Bill. Now you know the worst o’ me
and we can start fair. I allowed,first along, that
I play this hand alone; but now you ’ve got to
help. Now and then I catch myself weakening.
It ’s dreadful choky, sitting by the hour and
filling up that poor innocent with lies. And the
eyes of him I’ (she stamped her foot): ‘I could
whip his father and mother for having no more
sense than to let him start. Doctor, you 'll have
to help.’
“ I rode down to Eucalyptus again next
morning and found the Bishop seated and talking
with Miss Montmoreney in the gaudy little
parlour. ‘
“ ‘We were just going out for a walk together,’
he explained, as we shook hands.
“ ‘ And now you ’ll just have to walk out with
the Doctor instead; ‘ and serve you right for


THE BISHOP 0F EUCALYPTUS 147
mountains but the cemetery gate lay in the
direction of his nod, and that the gate lay nearer
—‘ if you could speak to her now and then—ah,
you can hardly guess how it would rejoice me
some day when I return, bearing ’—and his voice
sank, here—‘ bearing, please God, my sheaves
with me !’
“ ‘ But why,’ I urged, ‘go farther, when work
like this lies at your hand?’
“‘I have thought of that; but only for a
moment. It may sound presumptuous to you;
I am very young; but there is, bigger work for
me ahead, and I am called. I cannot argue
about this. I know. _ I have a sign. Look up
at the mountain, yonder—high up, above the
quicksilver mines. Do you see those bright
lights flashing?’
“ Sure enough, above the disused works a line
of sparkling lights led the eye upwards to the
snowfields, as if traced in diamonds. The
phenomenon was certainly astonishing, and I
could n’t account for it.
“‘ You see it? Ah! but you did n’t observe
it till I spoke. Nobody does. Miss Mont-

K 2


150 WANDERING HEA TH
only heard me called “the Bishop.” Yes, you ’re
quite right. I come from the north of Cornwall
—from Port Isaac; and my name’s Penno—
John Penno. I used to be laughed at for it
at the Training College, and for my Cornish
talk. They said it would be a hindrance to
me in the ministry, so I worked hard to over-
come it.’
“ ‘ I know Port Isaac. At least, I once spent
a couple of days there.’
“‘ Ah ?’ He turned on me eagerly—with
a sob, almost. ‘You will have seen my folks,
maybe? My father’s a fisherman there—Heze-
kiah I’enno—Old Ki, he ’s always called: every-
one knows him.’
“I shook my head. ‘The only fisherman
I knew at all was called Tregay. He took me
out after the pollack one day in his boat, the
Little Mercy.’
“‘That will be my mother’s brother Israel.
He named the boat after a sister of mine. Shc’s
grown up now and married, and settled at St.
Columb. This is wonderful! And how was
Israel wearing when you saw him ? ’


THE BISHOP 0F EUO'ALYPTUS 151

“‘You have later news of him than I can
give. I am speaking of ten years ago.’
“His face fell pathetically; but he contrived
a rueful little laugh as he answered: ‘and I
must have been a boy of nine at the time, and
playing about Portissick Street, no doubt!
Never mind. It ’s good, anyway, to speak of
home to you ; for you ’ve seen it, you know.’
“He said this with his eyes fixed on the
flashing mountain; and, as he finished, he
sighed.
“During the next three or four days—for
a relapse followed his rally, and he had to give
up all thought of departing immediately—I
talked much with the Bishop; and I think that
each talk added to my respect and wonder.
In the first place, though I had read in a good
many poetry books of maidens who walked
through all manner of deadliness unhurt—Una
and the lion, you know, and the rest of them
—I had n’t imagined that kind or amount of
innocence in a young man. But what startled
me even more was the size of his ambitions.


152 WA NDERING HEA TH

‘Bishop ’—in partibus infidelium with a ven-
geance—was too small a title for him. ’Twas
a Peter the Hermit’s part, or a Savonarola’s,
or Whitefield’s at least, he was going to play
all along the Pacific Slope; and his outfit no
more than a small Bible and the strength
of a mouse. And with all this the‘ poor boy
was just wearying for home, and every small
fibre in his sick heart pulling him back while
he fixed his eyes on the lights up the moun-
tain and stiffened his back and talked about
putting a hand to the plough and not turning
back.
“‘Hewson,’ I said one morning, as we were
breakfasting at the Cornice House, ‘what’s the
cause of those curious lights up by the cinnabar
mines, over Eucalyptus?’
“‘Lights?’ said he, ‘ what lights? I never
heard of any.’
“‘ Well, it ‘s something that flashes, anyway
—a regular line of it.’
“ ‘ I’ll tell you what it ’s not; and that ’s
quicksilver,’ Hewson answered.
“ On my way down to Eucalyptus early that


THE BISHOP OF EUCALYPTUS 153

morning, I hitched my horse up to the Necro-
polis gate and determined to explore the secret
of the lights before visiting the Bishop. The
track towards the cinnabar works was pretty
easy to follow, first along; but when I had
climbed some four or five hundred feet it grew
fainter, and was lost at length under the pine-
needles. Luckily some hand had notched a
tree here and there, and these guided me to
the dry bed of a torrent, on the far side of which
the track reappeared, and continued pretty
plain for the rest of the journey, though broken
in several places by the rains. I had missed
my way three times at the most; but it took
me three-quarters of an hour to reach the
lowest of the works, and another twenty minutes
to get into anything like clear country. At
length, on the edge of a steep depression that
widened and shallowed as it neared the valley,
I got a fair look up the slope. So far I had
met nothing to account for the lights—nothing
at all, in fact, but the broken spade-handles,
old boots, empty meat-cans, and other refuse
of the miners’ camps; but every now and then


154 WANDE'RING HEA TH

I would catch a glimpse of the hillside high
overhead: and always those lights were flashing
there, though in varying numbers. Now, hav-
ing a clear view, I found to my dismay that
they had shrunk to one. It was like a story
in the Arabian Nights. I swore, though, that
I would not be cheated of this last chance. The
flashing object, whatever it was, lay some two
hundred yards above me on the slope; and I
approached cautiously, with my eyes fixed on
it, much like a child hunting grasshoppers in
a hayfield. I was less than ten paces from it
when the light suddenly vanished, and five
paces more knocked the bottom out of the
mystery. The object was a battered and empty
meat-can. ’
“I had passed a hundred such, at least, on
my way. The camps had lain pretty close to
the track, and the rains descending upon their
refuse heaps had washed the labels off these
cans, that now, as sun and moon rose and
passed over the mountain side, flashed moving
signals down to Eucalyptus in the valley—-
signals of failure and desolation. And these


THE BISHOP OF’ EUCALYPTUS 155

had been the Bishop’s pillar of fire in the
wilderness.
“‘ Was it weary, then,
In the wilderness? ’
“ I turned and went down the track.
“At the Necropolis gate I found Captain
Bill standing, with a heavy and puzzled face,
beside my horse.
“‘I was stepping up to Cornice House; but
found your nag here, and concluded to wait.
I’ve been waiting the best part of an hour.
What in thunder have you been doing with
yourself?’
“‘Prospecting,’ said I. ‘What ’s the news?
Anything wrong with the Bishop ?’
“‘There’s nothing wrong with him; and
won’t be, any more. He broke a bloodvessel in
the night. Flo looked in early this morning,
and found him sleeping, as she thought. An
hour later she took him a cup of tea, and was
putting it down on the table by the bed, when
she saw blood on the pillow. She ’s powerful
upset.’


156 WA N DERI N G HEA TH

“Two days later—the morning of the funeral
—I met Captain Bill at the entrance of the town.
He held the Bishop’s small morocco-bound
Bible in his hand; but for excellent reasons had
made no change in his work-day attire.
“ ‘ You ’re attending, of course?’ was his
greeting. ‘Say, would you like to conduct? It
lay between me and Huz- ’n-Buz, and he was
for tossing up; but I allowed he was altogether
too hoary a sinner. So we made him chief
mourner instead, along with Flo—the more by
token that he ’s the only citizen with a black
coat to his back. As for Flo, she ‘s got to
attend in colours, having cut up her only black
gown to nail on the casket for a covering.
Foolishness, of course; but she was set on it.
But see here, you ’ve only to say the word, and
I ’ll resign to you.’
“ I declined, and suggested that for two
reasons he was the man to conduct the service :
first, as the most prominent inhabitant of Euca—
lyptus; and secondly, as having made himself
in a way responsible for the Bishop from the
first.


THE BISHOP OF EUCALYPTUS 157

“‘As you like,’ said he. ‘I told him, that
first night, that I ’d see him through; and I
will.’
“He eyed the Bible dubiously. ‘It ’s pretty
small print,’ he added. ‘ I suppose it ’s all good,
now ?’
“If you mean that you ’re going to open the
book and read away from the first full-stop you
happen to light on ’ \
“ ‘ That ’s what I ’d planned. You don’t
suppose, do you, I ’ve had time since Tuesday to
read all this through and skim off the cream ? ’

“ “ Then you ’d better let me pick out a
chapter for you.’
“As I took the Bible something fluttered
from it to the ground. Captain Bill stooped and
picked it up.
“ ‘ That ’s pretty, too,’ he said, handing it
to me.
“It was a little bookmarker, worked in silk,
with one pink rose, the initials M. P. (for Mercy
Penno, no doubt), and under these the favourite
lines that small west-country children in England
embroider on their samplers:


158 WA NDERING H EA TH

“‘Rose leaves smell
When roses thrive:
Here's my work
When I ’m alive.
Rose leaves smell
When shrunk and shred.-
Here’s my work
When I ’m dead.’
I turned to the fifteenth chapter of the first
Epistle to the Corinthians; showed the captain
where to begin; and laid the bookmarker oppo-
site the place.
“We walked a few paces together as far as
the green knoll that I have described as over-
hanging Eucalyptus, and there I halted to wait
for the funeral, while Captain Bill went on to the
Necropolis to make sure that the grave was ready
and all arrangements complete. The procession
was not due to start for another quarter of an
hour, so I found a comfortable boulder and sat
down to smoke a pipe. Right under me
stretched the deserted main street, and in the
hush of the morning—it was just the middle of


THE BISHOP 0F EUCALYPTUS 159

the Indian summer, and the air all sunny and
soft—I could hear the billiard balls click-click-
clicking as usual, and the players voices breaking
in at intervals, and the banjoes tinkling away
down the street from saloon to saloon. These
and the distant chatter of the river were all the
sounds; and the river's chatter seemed hardly
so persistent and monotonous as the voices of
the saloons and the unceasing question—
“‘ Was 'it weary there
In the wilderness?
Was it weary-y-y, ’way down in Goshen?
“Suddenly, far down the street, there was a
stir, and from the door of No.67 half a dozen
men came staggering out into the sunshine
under a black coffin, which they carried shoulder
high; and behind came two figures only—those
of Miss Montmorency and the architect—arm in
arm. The bearers wheeled round, got into step
after one or two attempts, and the procession
advanced.
“ And I observed, as it advanced, that a hush
came slowly with it, closing on the click of the


THE BISHOP OF EUC’ALYPTUS 161

standing, with bent heads, and Captain Bill
towering beside the grave; at times I heard his
voice lifted, but could not catch the words.
Down in the town for a while all was silent as
death. Then in a saloon below some boy—left
behind, no doubt, to look after the house—took
up a banjo and began to pick out slowly and
with one finger the tune of "Way down upon
the Suwanee River,’ and as it went I fitted the
words to it:
“‘All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam,
Oh, brndders, how my heart grows weary. .’
“The tune ceased. The only sound now
came from a robin, hunting about the turf and
now and then breaking out into an impatient
twitter.
“The silence was broken _at length by the
footsteps of the mourners returning. They went
down the hill almost as decorously as they had
gone up. Flo stepped aside and came towards me.
“ ‘ Let me stay beside you for a bit. I can’t
go back there—yet.’
L


162 WA NDERI N G H EA TH

“This was all she said; and we stood there‘
side by side for minutes. Soon the tinkle of a
banjo came up to us, and a‘pair of billiard balls
clicked; then a second banjo joined in; and
gradually, as the stream of citizens trickled back ,
and spread, so like a stream the sound of click_
ing billiard balls and tinkling banjoes trickled
back and spread along the main street of Euca-
lyptus City.
“‘ Was it weary there,
r
In de wilderness?
“Flo looked at me and put out a hand;
but drew it back before I could take it.
And so, without another word, she went down
the hill.”


WIDDERSHINS
A DROLL
ONCE upon a time there was a small farmer
living in Wendron parish, not far from the
church-town. ’Thaniel Teague was his name.
This Teague happened to walk into Helston on
a Furry-day,* when the Mayor and townspeople
dance through the streets to the Furry-tune.
In the evening there was a grand ball given at
the Angel Hotel, and the landlord very kindly
allowed Teague—who had stopped too late as it
was—to look in through the door and watch the
gentry dance the Lancers.
Teague thought he had never seen anything
so heavenly. What with one hindrance and
another ’twas past midnight before he reached
home, and then nothing would do for him but
he must have his wife and six children out upon
the floor in their night-clothes, practising the
Grand Chain while he sang—
* Floia-day, May 8th.
L 2


164 WANDERING HEATH

“ Out of my stony griefs
Bethel I’ll raise /”
The seventh child, the babby, they set down
in the middle of the floor, like a nine-pin. And
the worst of it was, the poor mite twisted his
eyes so, trying to follow his mammy round and
round, that he grew up with a cast from that
houn
’Tis of this child—Joby he was called—that
I am going to tell you. Barring the cast, he
grew up a very straight lad, and in due time
began to think upon marrying. His father’s
house faced south, and as it came easier to him
to look north-west than any other direction, he
chose a wife from Gwinear parish. His elder
brothers had gone off to sea for their living, and
his sister had married a mine-captain: so
when the old people died, Joby took over the
farm and worked it, and did very well.
J oby’s wife was very fond of him, though of
course she didn’t like that cast in his looks: and
in many ways ’twas inconvenient too. If the


WIDDERSHINS 165

poor man ever put hand on plough to draw a
straight furrow, round to the north ’twould work
as sure as a compass-needle. She consulted the
doctors about it, and they did no good. Then
she thought about consulting a conjurer; but
being a timorous woman as well as not over-wise,
she put it off for a while.
Now, there was a little fellow living over to
Penryn in those times, Tommy Warne by name,
that gave out he knew how to conjure. Folks
believed in him more than he did- himself: for,
to tell truth, he was a lazy shammick, who liked
most ways of getting a living better than hard
work. Still, he was generally made pretty
welcome at the farm-houses round, for he could
turn a hand to anything and always kept the
maids laughing in the kitchen. One morning
he dropped in on Farmer Joby and asked for a
job to earn his dinner; and Joby gave him some
straw to spin for thatching. By dinner-time Tom
had spun two bundles of such very large size
that the farmer rubbed his chin when he looked
at them.
“Why,” says he, “I always thought you a


166 WANDERING HEATH

liar—I did indeed. But now I believe you can
conjure, sure enough.”
As for Mrs. Joby, she was so much pleased
that, though she felt certain the devil must have
had a hand in it, she gave Tom an extra helping
of pudding for dinner.
Some time after this, Farmer Joby missed a
pair of pack-saddles. Search and ask as he
might, he couldn’t find out who had stolen
them, or what had become of them.
“ Tommy Warne’s a clever fellow,” he said at
last. “I must see if he can tell me anything.”
So he walked over to Penryn on purpose.
Tommy was in his doorway smoking when
Farmer Joby came down the street. “ So you’m
after they pack-saddles," said he.
“Why, how ever did you know ?”
“ That’s my business. Will it do if you find
’em after harvest?” _
“ To be sure ’twill. I only want to know
where they be.” ‘
“Very well, then ; after harvest they’ll be
found.”
Home the farmer went. Sure enough, after


WIDDERSHINS 167

harvest, he went to unwind Tomniy’s two big
bundles of straw-rope for thatching the mow,
and in the middle of each was one of his missing
pack-saddles.
“Well, now,” said Joby’s wife, “that fellow
must have a real gift of conjurin’! I wonder,
my dear, you don’t go and consult him about
that there cross eye of yours.”
“I will, then,” said Joby; and he walked
over to Penryn again the very next market-day.
“‘Cure your eyes,’ is it?” said Tommy
Warne. “ Why, to be sure I can. Why didn’t
you ax me afore? I thought you liked
squintin’.”
“I don’t, then ; I hate it.”
“Very well; you shall see straight this very
night if you do what I tell you. Go home and
tell your wife to make your bed on the roof of
the four-poster; and she must make it widder_
shins,* turnin’ bed-tie and all against the sun,
and puttin’ the pillow where the feet come as a
rule. That’s all.”
“Fancy my never thinkin’ of anything so
" From S. to N., through E.


168 WANDERIN G H IL'A TH

simple as that!” said Joby. He went home and
told his wife. She made his bed on the roof of
the four-poster, and widdershins, as he ordered ;
and they slept that night, the wife as usual, and
Joby up close to the rafters.
But scarcely had Joby closed an eye before
there came a rousing knock at the door, and in
walked J oby’s eldest brother, the sea-captain,
that he hadn’t seen for years.
“Get up, Joby, and come along with me if
you want that eye of yours mended.”
“Thank you, Sam, it’s eurin’ very easy and
nice, and I hope you won’t disturb me.”
“If ’tis Tommy Warne’s cure you’re trying,
why then I’m part of it; so you’d best get up
quickly.”
“ Aw, that’s another matter, though you
might have said so at first. I’d no notion you
and Tommy was hand-’n-glove.”
Joby rose up'and followed his brother out of
doors. He had nothing on but his night-shirt,
but his brother seemed in a hurry, and he didn’t
like to object.
They set their faces to the road and they


WIDDERS H I NS 169

walked and walked, neither saying a word, till
they came to Penryn. There was a fair going
on in the town; swing-boats and shooting-
galleries and lillybanger standings, and naphtha
lamps flaming, and in the middle of all, a great
whirly-goround, with striped horses and boats,
and a steam-organ playing “Yankee Doodle.”
As soon as they started Joby saw that the whole
thing was going around widdershins; and his
brother stood up under the naphtha-lamp and
pulled out a sextant and began to take obser-
vations.
“ What’s the latitude?” asked Joby. He felt
that he ought to say something to his brother,
after being parted all these years.
“Decimal nothing to speak of,” answered
Sanr
“Then we ought to be nearing the Line,”
said Joby. He hadn’t noticed the change, but
now he saw that the boat they sat in was floating
on the sea, and that Sam had stuck his walking-
stick out over the stern and was steering.
“What’s the longitude ?” asked Joby.
“That doesn’t concern us.”


170 WANDERING HEA TH

“ ’Tis west o’ Grinnidge, I suppose?” Joby
knew very little about navigation, and wanted to
make the most of it.
“West o' Penryn,” said Sam, very sharp and
short. " ’Twasn’ Grinnidge Fair we started
from.”
But presently he sings out “Here we are!”
and Joby saw a white line, like a popping-crease,
painted across the blue sea ahead of them.
First he thought ’twas paint, and then he
thought ’twas catgut, for when the keel of their
boat scraped over it, it sang like a bird.
“That was the Equator,” said Sam. “Now
let’s see if your eyes be any better.”
But when Joby tried them, what was his
disappointment to find the east as bad as ever ?
—only now they were slewing right the other
way, towards the South Pole.
“I never thought well of this cure from the
first,” declared Sam. “ For my part, I’m sick
and tired of the whole business!” And with
that he bounced up from the thwart and hailed
a passing shark and walked down its throat in a
huff, leaving Joby all alone on the wide sea.


WI DDERSH I N S 171


“There’s nice brotherly behaviour for you
said Joby to himself. “Lucky he left his
walking-stick behind. The best thing I can do
is to steer along close to the Equator, and then
I know where I am.”
So he steered along close to the Line, and
by-and-by he saw something shining in the
distance. When he came nearer, ’twas a great
gilt fowl stuck there with its beak to the Line
and its wings sprawled out. And when he came
close, ’twas no other than the cock belonging to
the tower of his own parish church of Wendron!
“Well!” said Joby, “one has to travel to
find out how small the world is. And what
might you be doin’ here, naybour ? "
“Is that you, Joby Teague? Then I’ll
thank you to do me a good turn. I came here
in a witch-ship last night, and the crew put this
spell upon me because I wouldn’t pay my footing
to cross the Line. A nice lot, to try and steal
the gilt off a church weather-cock ! ’Tis ridicu-
lous,” said he, “ but I can’t get loose for the life
0’ me ! ”
“Why, that’s as easy as A B C,” said Joby.


172 WA NDERING H EA TH

“ You'll find it in any book of parlour amuse-
ments You take a fowl, put its beak to the
floor, and draw a chalk line away from it, right
and left——” ‘
Joby wetted his thumb, smudged out a bit
of the Equator on each side of the cock’s nose,
and the bird stood up and shook himself.
“And now is there anything I can do for
you, Joby Teague ? ”
“To be sure there is. I’m getting com-
pletely tired of this boat: and if you can give
me a lift, I ’ll take it as a favour.”
“ No favour at all. Where shall we go
visit ?—the Antipodes ? ”
“No thank you,” said Toby. “I’ve heard
tell they get up an’ do their business when
we honest folks be in our beds: and that
kind o’ person I never could trust. Squint or
no squint, Wendron’s Wendron, and that ’s
where I ’m comfortable.”
“Well, it ’s no use loitering here, or we
may get into trouble for what we ’ve done to
the Equator. Climb on my back,” said the
bird, “and home we go!”


174 WA NDERING' HEA TH
wife come stepping towards the church, leaning
on a man’s arm. And who should that man be
but Tommy Warne ?
“And to think I’ve lived fifteen years with
that woman, and never lifted my hand to her! ”
Said the bird, “ The wedding is fixed for
eleven o’clock, and ’tis on the stroke now. If I
was you, Joby, I’d climb down and put back the
church clock.”
“ And so I would, if I knew how to get to it.’
“ You’ve but to slide down my leg to the
parapet: and from the parapet you can jump
right on to the string-course under the clock.”
Joby slid down the bird’s leg, and jumped
on to the ledge. He had never before noticed
a clock in Wendron Church tower; but there
one was, staring him in the face.
“Now,” cried his friend, “catch hold of the
minute-hand and turn !” Joby did so—“Wid-
dershins!” screamed the bird: “faster ! faster!”
Joby whizzed back the minute-hand with all his
might.
. “ Aié, ul—ul—oo ! Lemme go ! ’Tis my arm


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL BOOK
A LIGHTSHIP IDYLL
WHEN first the Trinity Brothers put a light
out yonder by the Gunnel Rocks, it was just a
trifling makeshift affair for the time—none of
your proper lightships with a crew of twelve or
fourteen hands; and my father and I used to tend
it, taking turn and turn with two other fellows
from the Islands. I’m talking of old days.
The rule then—they have altered it since—was
two months afloat and two ashore; and all
the time we tossed out there on duty, not a
soul would we see to speak to except when the
Trinity boat put off with stores for us and news
of what was doing in the world. This would be
about once a fortnight in fair weather; but
through the winter time it was oftener a month,
and provisions ran low enough, now and then,
to make us anxious. “Was the life dreary?”
Well, you couldn’t call it gay; but, you see, it
didn’t kill me.
M


178 WANDERING HEATH
For the first week I thought the motion
would drive me crazy—up and down, up and

down, in that everlasting ground-swell—although
I had been at the fishing all my life, and knew
what it meant to lie-to in any ordinary sea. But
after ten days or so I got not to mind it. And
then there was the open air. It was different
with the poor fellows on the Lighthouse, eighteen
miles to seaward of us, to the south-west. They
drew better pay than ours, by a trifle; but they
were landsmen, to start with; and cooped in
that narrow tower at night, with the shutters
closed and the whole building rocking like a
tree, it ’s no wonder their nerves wore out. Four
or five days of it have been known to finish a
man; and in those times a lighthouse-keeper
had three months of duty straight away, and
only a fortnight on shore. Now he gets only a
fortnight out there, and six weeks to recover it.
With all that, they ’re mostly fit to start at their
own shadow when the boat takes them off.
But on the lightship we fared tolerably. To
begin with, we had the lantern to attend to.
You ’d be surprised how much employment that


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK 179

gives a man—cleaning, polishing, and trimming.
And my father, though particular to a scratch
on the reflector, or the smallest crust of salt on
the glass, was a restful, cheerful sort of a man to
bide with. Not talkative, you understand—no
light-keeper in the world was ever talkative—-
but with a power of silence that was more
comforting than speech. And out there, too,
we found all sorts of little friendly things to
watch and think over. Sometimes a school of
porpoises; or a line of little murrs flying; or
a sail far to the south, making for the Channel.
And sometimes, towards evening, the fishing-
boats would come out and drop anchor a mile
and a half to south’ard, down sail, and hang out
their riding lights; and we knew that they took
their mark from us, and that gave a sociable
feeling.
On clear afternoons, too, by swarming up the
mast ust beneath the cage, I could see the Islands
away in the east, with the sun on their cliffs;
and home wasn’t so far off, after all The town
itself, which lay low down on the shore, we could
never spy, but glimpsed the lights of it now
M2


180 WANDERING HE'A TH

and then, after sunset. These always flickered a
great deal, because of the waves, like little hills
of water, bobbing between them and us. And
always we had the Lighthouse for company. In
daytime, through the glass, we could watch the
keepers walking about in the iron gallery round
the top: and all night through there it was
beckoning to us with its three white flashes
every minute. No, we weren’t exactly gay out
there, and sometimes we made wild weather of
it. Yet we did pretty well; except for the fogs,
when our arms ached with keeping the gong
going.
But if we were comfortable then, you should
have seen us at the end of our two months,
when the boat came off with the relief, and took
us on shore. John and Robert Pendlurian were
the names of the relief; brothers they were,
oldsters of about fifty-five and fifty; and John
Pendlurian, the elder, a widow-man same as my
father, but with a daughter at home. Living in
the Islands, of course I'd known Bathsheba
ever since we ’d sat in infant-school ; and what
more natural than to ask after her health, along


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK 181

with the other news? But Old John got to look
sly and wink at my father when we came to this
question, out of the hundred others. And the
other two would take it up and wink back
solemn as mummers. I never lost my temper
with the old idiots: ’t wasn’t worth while.
But the treat of all was to set foot on the
quay-steps, and the people crowding round and
shaking your hand and chattering; and every-
thing ashore going on just as you ’d left it, and you
not wishing it other, and everybody glad to see
you all the same; and the smell of the gardens
and the stinking fish at the quay-corner—you
might choose between them, but home was in
both; and the nets drying; and to be out of
oilskins and walking to meeting-house on the
Sunday, and standing up there with the congre-
gation, all singing in company, and the women
taking stock of you till the newness wore off;
and the tea-drinking, and Band of Hopes, and
courants, and dances? We had all the luck of
these; for the two Pendlurians, being up in
years and easily satisfied so long as they were
left quiet, were willing to take their holidays in


182 WANDERING HEATH

the dull months, beginning with February and
March. And so I had April and May, when a
man can always be happy ashore; and August
and September, which is the best of the fishing
and all the harvest and harvest games; and
again, December and January, with the courants
and geesy-dancing, and carols and wassail-sing-
ing. Early one December, when he came to
relieve us, Old John said to me in a hap-hazard
way, “ It ’s all very well for me and Robert, my
lad; for us two can take equal comfort in singin’
‘ Star 0’ Bethl’em’ ashore or afloat; but I reckon
’t is somebody’s place to see that Bathsheba
don’t miss any of the season’s joy an’ dancin’ on
our account.”
Now, Bathsheba had an unmarried aunt—
‘Aunt Hessy Pendlurian we called her—that
used to take her to all the parties and courants
when Old John was away at sea. So she wasn’t
likely to miss any of the fun, bein’ able to foot
it as clever as any girl in the Islands She had
the love of it, too—foot and waist and eyes all
a-dancing, and body and blood all a-tingle as
soon as ever the fiddle spoke. Maybe this, same


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK 183

speech of Old John’s set me thinking. Or,
maybe I’d been thinking already—what with
their May-game hints and the loneliness out
there. Anyway, I dangled pretty close on
Bathsheba’s heels all that Christmas. She
was comely—you understand—very comely and
tall, with dark blood, and eyes that put you in
mind of a light shining steady upon dark water.
And good as gold. She ’s dead and gone these
twelve years—rest her soul. But (praise God
for her!) I’ve never married another woman
nor wanted to.
There, I’ve as good as told you already.
When the time came and I asked her if she
liked me, she said she liked no man half so well :
and that being as it should be, the next thing
was to put up the banns. There wasn’t time
that holiday : like a fool, I had been dilly-dally-
ing too long, though I believe now I might have
asked her a month before. So the wedding was
held in the April following, my father going out
to the Gunnel for a couple of days, so that Old
John might be ashore to give his daughter away.
The most I mind of the wedding was the wonder


184 WANDERING HEATH

of beholding the old chap there in a long-tailed
coat, having never seen him for years but in his
oilskins.
Well, the rest of that year seemed pretty
much like all the others, except that coming
home was better than ever. But when Christ-
mas went by, and February came and our turn
to be out again on the Gunnel, I went with a
dismal feeling I hadn’t known before. For
Bathsheba was drawing near her time, and the
sorrow was that she must go through it without
me. She had walked down to the quay with us,
to see us off; and all the way she chatted and
laughed with my father as cheerful as cheerful
—but never letting her eyes rest on me, I
noticed, and I saw what that meant; and when
it came to good-bye, there was more in the
tightening of her arms about me than I ’d ever
read in it before.
The old man, I reckon, had a wisht time
with me, the next two or three weeks; but, by
the mercy of God, the weather behaved furious
all the while, leaving a man no time to mope.
’T was busy all, and busy enough, to keep a clear


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK 185
light inside the lantern, and warm souls inside
our bodies. All through February it blew hard
and cold from the north and north-west, and
though we lay in the very mouth of the Gulf
Stream, for ten days together there wasn’t a
halliard we could touch with the naked hand,
nor a cloth nor handful of cotton-waste but had
to be thawed at the stove before using. Then,
with the beginning of March, the wind tacked
round to south-west, and stuck there, blowing
big guns, and raising a swell that was something
cruel. It was one of these gales that tore away
the bell from the lighthouse, though hung just
over a hundred feet above water-level. As for
us, I wonder now how the little boat held by
its two-ton anchors, even with three hundred
fathom of chain cable to bear the strain and
jerk of it; but with the spindrift whipping our
faces, and the hail cutting them, we didn’t seem
to have time to think of that. Bathsheba
thought of it, though, in her bed at home—as
I ’ve heard since—and lay awake more than one
night thinking of it.
But the third week in March the weather


186 WANDERING‘ HE'A TH

moderated; and soon the sun came out and I
began to think. On the second afternoon of
the fair weather I climbed up under the cage
and saw the Islands for the first time; and
coming down, I said to my father :—
“ Suppose that Bathsheba is dead ! ”
We hadn’t said more than a word or two to
each other for a week; indeed, till yesterday we
had to shout in each other’s ear to be heard at
all. My father filled a pipe and said, “ Don’t be
a fool.”
“ I see your hand shaking,” said I.
Said he, “ That ’s with the cold. At my age
the cold takes a while to leave a man’s ex-
tremities.”
“But,” I went on in an obstinate way, “ sup-
pose she is dead ?”
My father answered, “She is a well-built
woman. The Lord is good.”
Not another word than this could I get from
him. That evening— the wind now coming easy
from the south, and the swell gone down in a
wonderful way—as I was boiling water for the
tea, we saw a dozen fishing-boats standing out


188 WA ND! RING BEA TH
all the while; but we said no word to each
other, not even at meals.
It was the eighth day after the fishing-boats
left us, and about four in the afternoon, that we
saw a brown sail standing towards us from the
Islands, and my father set down the glass, rest-
ing it on the gunwale, and said :—
“ That‘s Old J ohn’s boat.”
I took the glass from him, and was putting
it to my eye; but had to set it down and turn
my back. I couldn’t wait there with my eye
on the boat; so I crossed to the other side of
the ship and stood staring at the Lighthouse
away on the sky-line, and whispered: “Come
quickly !” But the wind had moved a couple of
points to the west and then fallen very light,
and the boat must creep towards us close-hauled.
After a long while my father spoke again :—
“That will be Old John steerin’ her. I
reckoned so: he ’ve got her jib shakin’—that’s
it: sail her close till she strikes the tide-race,
and that’ll fetch her down, wind or no wind.
Halloa!-— Lad, lad! ’t is all right! See there,
Y”
that bit o’ red ensign run up to the gaff


VISITORS AZ’ THE GUNNEL ROOK 189

“ Why should that mean aught ? ” asked I.
“Would he trouble to hoist bunting if he
had no news? Would it be there, close under
the peak, if the news was bad ?—and she his own
daughter, his only flesh ! ”
It may have been twenty minutes later that
Old John felt the Gunnel current, and, staying
the cutter round, came down fast on us with the
wind behind his beam. My father hailed to him
once and twice, and the second time he must
have heard. But, without answering, he ran
forward and took in his foresail. And then I saw
an arm and a little hand reached up to take
hold of the tiller; and my heart gave a great
jump.
It was she, my wife Bathsheba, laid there by
the stern-sheets on a spare-sail, with a bundle of
oilskins to cushion her. With one hand she
steered the boat up into the wind as Old John
lowered sail and they fell alongside: and with
the other she held a small bundle close against
her breast.
“ Such a whackin’ boy I never see in my life ! ”
—these were Old J ohn’s first words, and he


190 WANDERING H EA TH
shouted them. “Born only yestiddy week, an’
she ought to be abed: an’ so I’ve been tellin’ her
ever since she dragged me out ’pon this wildygo
errand!”
But Bathsheba, as I lifted her over the light-
ship’s side, said no more than “ O, Tom !”—and
let me hold her, with her forehead pressed close
against me. And the others kept very quiet,
and everything was quiet about us, until she
jumped back on a sudden and found all her
speech in a flood.
“Tom,” she said, “you ’re crushin’ him, you
_ great, awkward man!” And she turned back
the shawl and snatched the handkerchief off the
baby’s face—a queer-looking face it was, too,
“Be all babies as queer as that?” thought I.
Lucky I didn’t say it, though. “There, my
blessed, my handsome! Look, my tender! Eh,
Tom, but he kicks my side all to bruises; my
merryun, my giant! Look up at your father,
and you his very image!” That was pretty
stiff “I declare,” she says, “ he ’s lookin’ about
an’ takin’ stock of everything ”—and that was
pretty stiff, too. “So like a man; all for the sea


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK 191

and the boats! Tom, dear, father will tell you
that all the way on the water he was as good as
gold; and, on shore before that, kicking and
fisting—all for the sea and the boats; the man
of him! Hold him, dear, but be careful! A
Sunday’s child, too—
‘ Sunday’s child is full of grace. . . .’
and—the awkward you are! Here, give him
back to me: but feel how far down in his
clothes the feet of him reach. Extraordinar’!
Aun’ Hessy mounted a chair and climbed ’pon
the chest o’ drawers with him, before takin’ him
downstairs; so that he ’ll go up in the world,
an’ not down.”
“If he wants to try both,” said I, “he ’d best
follow his father and grandfathers, and live ’pon
a lightship.”
“So this is how you live, Tom; and you,
I”
father; and you, father-in-law She moved
about examining everything—the lantern, the
fog-signals and life-buoys, the cooking-stove,
bunks and store-cupboards. “ To'think that here
you live, all the menkind belongin’ to me, and I


192 WANDERING HEATH
never to have seen it! All the menkind did I
say, my rogue! And was I forgettin’ you—you
—you?” Kisses here, of course: and then she
held the youngster up to look at his face in the
light. “Ah, heart of me, will you grow up too
to live in a lightship and leave a poor woman at
home to weary for you in her trouble ? Rogue,
rogue, what poor woman have I done this to,
bringing you into the world to be her torture
and her joy ? ”
“ Dear,” says I, “you ’re weak yet. Sit down
by me and rest awhile before the time comes to
go back.”
“ But I ’m not going back yet awhile. Your
son, sir, and I are goin’ to spend the night
aboard.”
“Halloa!” I said, and looked towards Old
John, who had made fast astern of us and run a
line out to one of the anchor-buoys.
“’T isn’t allowed, o’ course," he muttered,
looking in turn and rather sheepishly towards
my father. “But once in a way—’t is all Bath-
sheba’s notion, and you mustn’ ask me,” he
wound up.


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK 193
“ ‘ Once in a way ! ’ ” cried Bathsheba. “And
is it twice in a way that a woman comes to a
man and lays his first child in his arms?”
My father had been studying the sunset and
the sky to windward; and now he answered Old
John :— _
“ ’T is once in a way, sure enough, that a boat
can lay alongside the Gunnel. But the wind ’s
falling, and the night ’ll be warm. I reckon if
you stay in the boat, Old John, she ’ll ride pretty
comfortable; and I’ll give the word to cast off
at the leastest sign.”
“ Once in a way ”—ah, sirs, it isn’t twice in a
way there comes such a night as that was! We
lit the light at sunset, and hoisted it, and made
tea, talking like children all the while; and my
father the biggest child of all. Old John had
his share passed out to him, and ate it alone out
there in the boat; and, there being a lack of
cups, Bathsheba and I drank out of the same,
and scalded our lips, and must kiss to make
them well. Foolishness? Dear, dear, I suppose
so. And the jokes we had, calling out to Old
John as the darkness fell, and wishing him
it


194 WANDERING HEATH
“Good-night!” “ Ou, aye; lhear ’ee,” was all
he answered After we ’d eaten our tea and
washed up, I showed Bathsheba how to crawl
into her bunk, and passed in the baby and laid
it in her arms, and so left her, telling her to rest
and sleep. But by-and-by, as I was keeping
watch, she came out, declaring the place stifled
her. So I pulled out a mattress and blankets
and strewed a bed for her out under the sky,
and sat down beside her, watching while she
suekled the child. She had him wrapped up so
that the two dark eyes of him only could be
seen, staring up from the breast to the great
bright lantern above him. The moon was in
her last quarter, and would not rise till close
upon dawn; and the night pitchy dark around
us, with a very few stars. In less than a minute
Bathsheba gave a start and laid a hand on my
arm.
“ Oh, Tom, what was that?”
“Look up,” said I. “’T is the birds flying
about the light.”
For, of course, our light always drew the
sea-birds, especially on dull nights, and ’t was


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROCK 195
long since we had grown used to the sound of
their beating and flapping, and took no notice
of it. A moment after I spoke one came dash-
ing against the rigging, and we heard him
tumble into the sea; and then one broke his
neck against the cage overhead and tumbled
dead at our feet. Bathsheba shivered as I tossed
him overboard.
“ Is it always like this?” she whispered.
“I thought ’t was only at the cost of a silly
woman’s fears that you saved men’s lives out
here.”
“ Well,” said I, “this is something more than
usual, to be sure.”
For, looking up into the circle of light, we
could see now at least a hundred birds flying
round and round, and in half an hour’s time
there must have been many hundreds. Their
white breasts were like a snowstorm; and soon
they began to fall thick upon deck. They were
not all sea-birds, either.
“Halloa!” said I, “ what ’s the day of the
month ?”
“ The nineteenth of March.”
N 2


196 WA NDERING BEA TH
“Here‘s a wheat-ear, then,” I said. “In a
couple of weeks we shall have the swallows; and,
a couple of weeks after, a cuckoo, maybe. So
you see that even out here by the Gunnel we
know when spring comes along.”
And I began to hum the old song that
children sang in the Islands :—
“ The cuckoo is a pretty bird,
He sings as he flies:
He brings us good tidings,
He tells us no lies:
He sucks the sweet flowers
To make his voice clear,
And when he says ‘Cuckoo!’
The summer is near.”
Bathsheba’s eyes were wet for the poor birds,
but she took up the song, crooning it soft-like,
and persuading the child to sleep :—
“0, meeting is a pleasure,
But parting is grief,
An inconstant lover
Is worse than a thief;


VISITORS AT THE GUNNEL ROC'K 197

For a thief at the worst
Will take all that I have ,'
But an tnconstant lover
Sends me to my grave.”
Her hand stole into mine as the boy’s eyes
closed, and clasped my fingers, entreating me in
silence to look and admire him. Our own eyes
met over him, and I saw by the lantern-light
the happy blush rise and spread over neck and
chin and forehead. The flapping of the birds
overhead had almost died away, and we lay
still, watching the lighthouse flash, far down in
the empty darkness.
By-and-by the clasp of her hand slackened.
A star shot down the sky, and I turned. Her
eyelids, too, had drooped, and her breath came
and went as softly and regularly as the Atlantic
swell around us. And my child slept in her
arms.
Day was breaking before the first cry awoke
her. My father had the breakfast ready, and
Old John sang out to hurry. A fair wind went
with them to the Islands—a light south-wester.


LETTERS FROM TROY
Addressed to Rasselas, Prince
of Abyssin'la,


202 WANDERING HEATH

near approach of the sacred season had a sensibly
pacific influence upon the counsels of our neigh-
bours at Treneglos. The parishioners there are
mostly dairy-farmers, and party feeling runs
high. But while eggs fetch 2d. apiece (as they
do, towards Christmas) there will always be a
disposition to give even the most unmarketable
specimens the benefit of any doubt.
We were at first a good deal annoyed on
finding that the Act allowed Troy but eleven
Parish Councillors. We have never had less
than sixty-five on our Regatta Committee, and
we had believed Local Self-Government to be at
least as important as a Regatta. We argued
this out at some length last night, and the
Chairman—Lawyer Thoms—admitted that we
had reason on our side. But his instructions
were definite, and he could not (as he vivaciously
put it) fly in the face of the Queen and two
Houses of Parliament. We saw that his regret
was sincere, and so contented ourselves with
handing in seventy-two nomination papers for
the eleven places, just to mark our sense of the
iniquity of the thing.


THE FIRST PARISH IIIEETING 203

In another matter we worked round the
intention of the Act more successfully. We
have never been able to understand why the
Liberal party in the House of Commons should
object to Local Self-Government taking place in
public-houses. The objection implies a distrust
of the people. And it so happens that down
here we always take a glass of grog before in-
augurating an era; we would as soon think of
praetermitting this as of launching a ship without
cracking a bottle on her stem. So we asked the
Chairman, and finding there was no law to
prevent us, we ordered in half-a-dozen trays
from the “King of Prussia,” across the way.
The Vicar, who is a particular man about his
food and drink, pulled out a pocket vesuvius
and a bottle of methylated spirit, and boiled his
kettle in the ante-room.
Well, there we were sitting in the Town Hall,
as merry as grigs, each man with his pipe and
glass, and ready for any amount of Self-Govern-
ment. And the Chairman stood up and briefly
explained the business of the meeting. He said
the Parish Councils Act was the logical result of


‘."H WANDERING HEATH

Magna Charta, and would have the effect of
making us all citizens of our own parish; and
that as the expense of this would come upon the
rates, we should endeavour to use our hardly-
won enfranchisement with moderation. “ We
had met to choose eleven good men and true to
administer the parish business for the coming
year, or to nominate as many good men and true
as we pleased. If more than eleven were nom-
inated”—this was foolishness, for he could see
there was hardly a man in the room that hadn’t
a nomination paper inhis hand—“ he would ask
for a show of hands, and any candidate defeated
upon this might demand a poll. He hoped we
would vote in no spirit of sectarian or partisan
bitterness, but as impartial citizens jealous only
for the common weal; at the same time he was
not in favour of letting down the Squire, Sir
Felix Felix-Williams, too easily.”
So we handed up our nomination papers, and
while the Chairman and Overseers were checking
them off by the register, Old Pilot James got
upon his legs.
He said that as long as he could remember—


THE FIRST PARISH MEETING 205

man and boy—he had always practised carols in
that very Town Hall upon the first Tuesday in
December. The Vicar—as soon as he had done
boiling the kettle in the next room—would come
in and confirm his words. The practices were
held on the first Tuesday in December, and on
each successive Tuesday until St. Thomas’s Day,
when they had one extra. If St. Thomas’s Day
fell on a Tuesday, then the extra practice would
be on Wednesday. He had received no notice
of the change.
Thomas Rabling rose and explained that at a
meeting held last Saturday, the singers had
agreed to postpone the first practice in view of
Local Self-Government. Mr. James had been
present and had not objected.
George William Oke—a blockmaker, who
had never sung a carol or attended a practice in
his life—stood up and said, rather unnecessarily,
that this was the first he’d heard of it.
Old Pilot James, answering Mr. Rabling,
admitted that he might have been present at
the meeting on Saturday. But he was deaf, as
everybody knew—and Mr. Rabling no less than


206 WANDERINH HEATH

the rest—and hadn’t heard a word of what was
said. If he had, he should have objected. But,
deaf or not deaf, he still took a delight in sing-
ing; and, if only as a matter of principle, he was
going to sing, “ God rest you, merry gentlemen,”
then and there. He was an old man, and they
might turn him out if they liked; but he warned
them it would be brutal, and might lead to a
summons.
Well, the Chairman was making a long busi-
ness of the nomination papers, so just to pass
the time we let the old man sing. It seemed
churlish, too, not to join in the chorus; and by-
and-by the whole meeting was singing with a
will. We sang “ Tidings of Comfort and Joy,”
and “I saw Three Ships," and the Cherry-tree
Carol, and “ Divas and Lazarus.” We had come
to that verse where Dives is carried off to sit on
the serpent’s knee, when the Chairman rose and
said that only five of the nomination papers were
spoilt, and he declared sixty-seven ladies and
gentlemen to be duly nominated.
We all pricked up our ears at the word
“ladies.” However, there turned out to be one


THE FIRST PARISH MEETING 207

lady only; and when the Chairman read out her
name, her husband—a naval pensioner, William
Carclew—stood up and explained that he had
only meant it for a joke upon the old woman,
just to give her a start, and he hoped it- would
go no further. This seemed fair and natural
enough; but the Chairman said if Mrs. Car-
clew wished to withdraw her name she had
better do so at once by word of mouth. So
Carclew had to run home and fetch her. While
he was gone we finished “ Dives and Lazarus.”
In five minutes’ time back came Carclew,
followed by Mrs. Carclew, who announced—in
a rich brogue—that since her man had conspired
to put this fool’s trick upon her, why now she
would stand, begob ! “ Arrah now, people, people,
and a gay man he’ll look houlding the babby,
while I'm afther superinthendin’ the Parush ! ”
So the Chairman declared her duly nominated.
It will surprise me if she does not head the poll
on the 17th.
The Chairman now invited us to interrogate
the candidates, if we wished. By this time we
were getting pretty well into the way of self-


208 WANDE'RING HEATH

government, and all enjoying it amazingly. Of
course our lady candidate, Mrs. Oarclew, had
the first few questions; but these were mostly
jocular and domestic, and I am bound to say the
lady gave as good as was brought. The only
sensible question came from Old Pilot James,
who asked if she believed in the ballot. For his
part he had never given a vote for anybody since
Forster brought in the ballot in ’seventy-one.
He favoured peace and quiet; and he liked to
walk up to the hustings and give his vote, and
hear ’em say, “ Well_ done ! ” or “ You —— old
Scoundrel!” as the case might be. He didn’t
mind being called “a —— old Scoundrel,” pro-
vided it was said _to him by a gentleman who
weighed his words. Since Forster brought in
ballot he had always gone to the poll regular.
He always took his paper and wrote opposite the
names: “ Shun’t say a word. Got my living to
get. Yours obediently, Matthias Jdmes”—and
would advise everybody else to do the same. -
After him, Renatus Hansombody, carpenter,
rose at the back of the hall and announced that
he had a question to put to the Doctor. The


THE FIRST PARISH MEETING 209

Doctor, by the way, is one of the most popular of
the candidates.
“ I should like,” said Mr. Hansombody, “ to
ask the Doctor if he will kindly explain to
the company Clauses 5, 6, and 13 of the new
Act ? ”
The Chairman protested that this would
occupy more time than the meeting had to
spare.
“ In that case,” said Mr. Hansombody, “ I will
confine myself to a test question. The Act pro-
vides that the Chairman of a Parish Meeting is
to be elected by the Meeting. Now suppose the
votes for two gentlemen are equal. In such a
case what would the Doctor advise ? For until
you have a Chairman elected, there is no Chair-
man to give a casting vote.”
The Doctor thought that, since we had long
ago elected a Chairman by acclamation, the
question was superfluous.
“ And you call him a straightforward man !”
Mr. Hansombody exclaimed, turning round on
the Meeting. “What I say is, are we to have
pusillanimity in our first Parish Council ? What
0


THE FIRST PARISH MEETING 211
ask a question, I will now take a show of hands :
but I warn you all it’ll be a dreary business.”
At this, the first hint of tedium, the company
rose, drained their glasses, and made for the
door, leaving the sixty-six remaining candidates
to vote for themselves.
“Well,” Mr. Rabling‘ said to me, as we stood
in the street; “so far, this here Parish Meeting
might be like any other Parish Meeting in the
Kingdom!”
- I doubted, but did not contradict him.
“ There’s one thing,” he added ; “ Ironmonger
Loveday has laid in a whole stock of sixpenny
fire-balloons for tonight: and there isn’t a
breath of wind. His boy’s very clever with the
scissors and paste: and he’ve a-stuck a tissue-
paper text on each—‘ Success to the Charter of
our Liberties,’ and ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God
Speed the Plough ’ ; and nothing more than the
sixpence charged.”
Simple, egregious, delectable town! As I
leaned out last night, watching the young moon
o 2


212 WA N DER] N G H EA TH

and smoking the last pipe before bed-time, a
dozen of these gay balloons rose from the water-
side and drifted on the faint north wind, seaward,
past my window. Another dozen followed, and
another, until from one point and another of the
dark shore a hundred balloons soared over the
water, challenging the stars.


II.-THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD
TROY TOWN,
Jan. 29th, 1895.
“AND then, as he set the bowl of goat’s milk
on the board, that simple Tyrolean turned to
me with a magnificent sweep of the hand, and
exclaimed——”
Ah, my dear Prince, if you could only tell
me what he exclaimed, you would restore a
whole parish to its natural slumbers. For indeed
he is playing the deuce with our nights, here
in Troy, that guileless Tyrolean.
How trivial are the immediate causes of
great events ! On New Year’s Day our excellent
Vicar, having bought himself a Whitaker’s
Almanack for 1895, presented his last year’s copy
to the Working Men’s Reading Room. In itself
you would have thought this action of the Vicar’s
signified no more than a generous desire to keep
his parishioners abreast of the times. In effect
it inaugurated the Great Temperance Movement


2H WANDE'RING HEATH
in Troy—a social revolution of which we are
only now, after four long weeks, beginning to see
the end.
You must not, of course, suppose that we
had never heard of temperance before. No,
Prince, we do not live so far from Abyssinia as
all that. In a general way we understood it to-
be a good thing, and upon that ground (optimists
that we are) believed its ultimate success to be
but a question of time. But I think I may say
we never regarded it as a pressing question—
such as the reform of the House of Lords, for
instance. The general impression (I call it no
more) was that we should all be temperate
sooner or later; possibly as the next step after
espousing our Deceased Wife’s Sister.
Well, our Vicar laid his copy of the 1894
almanack on the reading-room table at 11.30 am,
or thereabouts, looked over the local papers for
a few minutes, and left the building at ten
minutes to noon. I get this information from
Matthias James, our respected pilot, who hap
pened to be in the room, reading the Shipping
Gazette. It is confirmed by Mr. Hansombody and


THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD 215

four or five other members. At noon precisely,
Mr. Rabling (our gasman and an earnest
Methodist) came in. His eye, as it wandered
round in search of an unoccupied newspaper,
was arrested by the scarlet and green binding of
Whitaker. He picked the book up, opened it
casually, and read-
“The proof gallons of spirits distilled during
the year ending March 31st, 1893, were 10,691,576
in England, 20,107,077 in Scotland,and 13,615,668
in Ireland. ”
He tells me he was on the point of closing
the book as a voluptuous work of fiction, when a
a second and even more dazzling paragraph took
his eye.
“The beer charged with dutyin the United
Kingdom was 32,104,320 barrels, 532,047 barrels
of which were exported on drawback, leaving
31,572,283 barrels for home consumption. There
were also 38,580 barrels of beer, and ‘1,653 barrels
of spruce imported from abroad.”
And again :—
“ The spirits ‘retained for home consump-
tion’ in the year were :—rum, 4,268,438 gallons ;


216 WANDERING HEATH

brandy, 2,668,499 gallons; ‘other sorts,’ 824,07 8
gallons. The home consumption of tobacco in
the year reached the total of 63,765,053 lbs.
Though the tobacco duty was reduced by 4d. a
lb. in 1887-8, the annual yield averages £1,336,240
more than it was ten years ago. Smuggling still
continues. ”
Mr. Rabling was declaiming aloud ‘by this
time, and when he read out about the smuggling,
one or two of his audience gazed up at the
ceiling and agreed that the fellow had some of
his facts right. Old Pilot James added that the
book could hardly be a work of fiction, since the
Vicar had left it on the table, and the Vicar
was not one to scatter lies except upon due
deliberation.
Mr. Rabling left the room and walked straight
up to the Vicarage, and the Vicar assured him
that the Customs Returns were almost as ac-
curate as if they had been prepared under a
Conservative Government. You must excuse
these details, Prince. They are really essential
to the story.
At 12.55 Mr. Rabling (after a hasty dinner)


THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD 2L7

handed across the counter of the post-office a
telegram addressed to his religious superinten-
dent at Plymouth. The message ran—
“ Here an'aal consumption of beer over three
milion barls. Greatly distresd, Rabling.’
The telegraph clerk kindly corrected all ,
the errors of spelling in the above, save one,
which escaped him. By “here” Mr. Rabling
had intended “hear” (scilicet “I hear,” or
“ we hear).” The answer arrived from Plymouth
within an hour.
“Am sending missionary newt train.” I
Thus our temperance movement began.
The missionary arrived before set of sun,
borrowed a chair from Mr. Rabling, carried it
down to the town quay and mounted it. A
number of children at once gathered round, in
the belief that the stranger intended a tumbling
performance. The missionary eyed them and
began, “ Ah, if I can once get hold of you tender
little ones——” an infelicitous opening, which
scattered them yelling, convinced that the Bogey-
man had come for them at last. Upon this he
changed his tone and called “O Gomorrah!”


218 WA N DERI 1V (1' H EA TH

aloud several times in a rich baritone voice,
which fetched quite a little crowd of elders
around him from the reading-room, the fish-
market, the “King of Prussia” inn, and other
purlieus of the quay.
Then the missionary gave us a most
eloquent and inspiriting address, in the course
of which he mentioned that if all the beer
‘annually consumed in England were placed in
bottles, and the bottles piled on one another, it
would reach within five hundred miles of the
moon.- He asked us if this were not an in-
tolerable state of things and a disgrace to our
boasted civilisation? Of course, there could be
no two questions about it. We are not un-
reasonable, down in Troy. We only want a
truth to be brought home to us. The mis-
sionary said that if only a man would deny
himself his morning glass, in eight months
he could buy himself a harmonium, besides
being better in mind and body. And he wound
up by inviting us to attend a meeting in the
Town Hall that evening.
Well, at the evening performance he made


220 WANDERING HEA TH

talk, too, of a juvenile fife-and-drum band; and
the mothers had already begun stitching banners
for the processions. I tell you it was pleasant,
over a pipe and glass, to watch all these pre-
parations, and think how much better the world
would be when the rising generation came to
take our places.
But, of course, no popular movement ever
took root in our town without a “ tea-drink” or
some such public function. And you may judge
of our delight when, on applying to the Vicar,
.we heard that he had been talking to the Squire,
Sir ‘Felix F elix-Williams, and Sir Felix would
gladly preside. Sir Felix suggested the following
programme—(1) A Public Lecture in the Town
Hall, with a Magic Lantern to exhibit the results
of excessive drinking. The missionary would
lecture, and Sir Felix would take the‘ chair.
(2) The lecture over, the children were to form
outside in procession and march up behind the
Town Band to Sir Felix’s great covered tennis-
court, where tea would be spread.
I have mentioned the Magic Lantern and the
Town Band, and must say a word here on each.


THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD 221

When the late Government set aside a sum of
money for Technical Instruction throughout the
country, Sir Felix, who, as our chief landlord,
may be supposed to know best what we need,
decided that we needed to learn drawing. His
idea was, by means of a magic lantern, to throw
the model upon a screen for the class to copy;
and in the heat of his enthusiasm he purchased
two magic lanterns at £25 apiece before con-
sulting the drawing-master, who pointed out
that a drawing-lesson, to be thorough, must be
conducted in a certain amount of light, whereas
a magic lantern is only effective in a dark room.
So Sir Felix was left with two very handsome
lanterns on his hands, and burned for an
opportunity of turning them to account: hence
his alacrity in suggesting a lecture.
As for the Town Band, it was started last
autumn with a view to rendering our little town
more attractive than ever to summer visitors.
The bandsmen have practised sedulously
through the winter, and are making great
strides; but—if fault must be found—I am
sorry that our bandmaster, Mr. Patrick Sullivan


222 WANDERING HEATH
(an Irishman), left the purchase and selection
of the music to his brother, who lives in London
and plays the piccolo at one of the music-halls.
The result—but you shall hear.
Punctually at 3.30 pm. last Wednesday, Sir
Felix drove down to the Town Hall in his
brougham. The body of the Hall was already
packed, and the missionary busy on the platform
with his lanterns and white sheet. Mr. Rabling
and an assistant stood ready to close the shutters
and turn up the gas at the proper moment. The
band waited outside; and as Sir Felix alighted,
mounted the steps and entered the hall, bowing
to right and left with the air of a real patriarch,
the musicians crashed out the tune of—
“They all take after me,
Take whiskey in the/in‘ tea. . . .
n
Fortunately no one associated the tune with
its words. Sir Felix mounted the platform ; and
after sipping a little water (such was our
thoroughness that a glassful stood ready for
each speaker), began to introduce the lecturer,
whose name he mispronounced. The missionary


THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD 223

was called Stubbs; and by what mnemonic
process Sir Felix turned this into Westmacott
I have never been able to guess. However, for
purposes of introduction that afternoon West-
macott he was and Westmacott he remained.
N ow Sir Felix, though not a very old man, has
a rambling habit of speech, and tends in public
discourse to forget alike the thread of his
argument and the lapse of time. Conceive
then our delight on his announcing that he
would confine himself to a brief anecdote.
“The beauty of temperance,” said Sir Felix,
“ was once brought home to me very forcibly in
rather peculiar circumstances. Many years ago
I was travelling afoot in the Tyrol, and chancing
to pass by a shepherd’s cottage, turned aside to
inquire my way. The good people of the house,
with native hospitality, pressed me to tarry an
hour and partake of their mid-day meal. I
acceded. The fare, as you may suppose, was
simple. There was no intoxicating liquor. But
never shall I forget the gesture or the words of
that simple shepherd as he placed a bowl of
goat’s milk before me on the board. His words


THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD 225

reposed in his musical cabinet at home. He
leaned forward, screened his mouth with one
hand and whispered—
“ Sir Felix ”
“Hey?” Sir Felix whipped round.
“ Did a’ say” (with sudden and piercing odel)
“Lul-ul-i-e-tee! L‘ul-ul-i-ee! Lul-ul ”
Sir Felix stamped his foot; and I think we
all felt glad for Rabling at that moment that he
held his cottage on a ninety-nine years’ lease.
But the lecture was spoilt before it began. The


missionary piled his statistics to the moon, and
turned down the gas, and showed us“ The Child:
What will he become ? ” But we took no interest
in that question. The question for us was, What
exactly did that simple Tyrolese shepherd say to
Sir Felix? And that is just what we have been
asking each other for a week past.
Sir Felix recovered himself towards the close
of the address, and at the close acknowledged
our vote of thanks in a pleasant little speech—-
in which, however, his Tyrolean friend was not
so much as alluded to. It was pretty, too, to see
the Little Knights of Abstinence afterwards, with
P


226 WA N DERI N G H EA TH

their sashes and banners, marching uphill after
the band, like so many children of Hamelin after
the Pied Piper. Only, my dear Prince, what
tune do you think the band was playing?
Why—
“ Come where the booze is cheaper,
Come where fhe pints hold more . . l”
The missionary, I am told, is already begin-
ning to talk as if we disappointed him. But this
was certain. to befall a man of one idea in a place
of so many varied interests.


LEGENDS





I.—THE LEGEND OF SIR DINAR
A PUFF of north-east wind shot over the hill,
detached a late December leaf from the sycamore
on its summit, and swooped like a wave upon
the roofs and chimney-stacks below. It caught
the smoke midway in the chimneys, drove it
back with showers of soot and wood-ash, and set
the townsmen sneezing who lingered by their
hearths to read the morning newspaper. Its
strength broken, it fell prone upon the main
street, scattering its fine dust into fan-shaped
figures, then died away in eddies towards the
south. Among these eddies the sycamore leaf
danced and twirled, now running along the
ground upon its edge, now whisked up to the
level of the first storey windows. A nurse
holding up a three-year-old child behind the
pane, pointed after the leaf—
“ Look—there goes Sir Dinar I”
Sir Dinar was the youngest son and comeliest


230 WANDERING HEATH

of King Geraint, who had left Arthur’s Court for
his own western castle of Dingerein in Roseland,
where Portscatho now stands; and was buried,
when his time came, over the Nare, in his golden
boat with his silver oars beside him. To fill his
siege at the Round Table he sent, in the lad’s
sixteenth year, this Dinar, who in two years
was made knight by King Arthur, and in the
third was turned into an old man before he had
achieved a single deed of note.
For on the fifth day after he was made
knight, and upon the Feast of Pentecost, there
began the great quest of the Sancgrael, which
took Sir Lancelot from the Court, Sir Perceval,
Sir Bors, Sir Gawaine, Sir Galahad, and all the
flower of the famous brotherhood. And because,
after their going, it was all sad cheer at Camelot,
and heavy, empty days, Sir Dinar took two of
his best friends aside, both young knights, Sir
Galhaltin and Sir Ozanna le Coeur Hardi, and
spoke to them of riding from the Court by
stealth. “For,” he said, “we have many days
before us, and no villainy upon our consciences,
and besides are eager. Who knows, then, but


THE LEGEND OF SIR DINAR 231
we may achieve this adventure of the Sa'ncgrael?”
These listened and imparted it to another, Sir

Sentrail: and the four rode forth secretly one
morning before the dawn, and set their faces
towards the north-east wind.
The day of their departure was that next after
Christmas, the same’ being the Feast of Saint
Stephen the Martyr. And as they rode through
a thick wood, it came into Sir Dinar’s mind that
upon this day it was right to kill any bird that
flew, in remembrance that when Saint Stephen
had all but escaped from the soldiers- who
guarded him, a small bird had sung in their ears
and awakened them. By this, the sky was
growing white with the morning, but nothing
yet clear to the sight: and while they pressed
forward under the naked boughs, their horses’
hoofs crackling the frosted undergrowth, Sir
Dinar was aware of a bird’s wing ruffling ahead,
and let fly a bolt without warning his com-
panions; who had forgotten what morning it was,
and drew rein for a moment. But pressing
forward again, they came upon a gerfalcon lying,
with long lunes tangled about his feet and


232 WA N DERI N G HEA TH
through his breast the hole that Sir Dinar’s bolt
had made. While they stooped over this bird
the sun rose and shone between the tree-trunks,
and lifting their heads they saw- a green glade
before them, and in the midst of the glade three
pavilions set, each of red sendal, that shone in
the morning. In the first pavilion slept seven
knights, and in the second a score of damsels,
but by the door of the third stood a lady, fair
and tall, in a robe of samite, who, as they drew
near to accost her, inquired of them—
“Which of you has slain my gerfalcon ?”
And when Sir Dinar confessed and began to
make his excuse, “ Silly knight!” said she, “ who
couldst not guess that my falcon, too, was abroad
to avenge the blessed Stephen. Or dost think
that it was a hawk, of all birds, that sang a
melody in the ears of his guards? ”
With that she laughed, as if pacified, and
asked of their affairs; and being told that they
rode in search of the Sancgrael, she laughed
again, saying—
“Silly knights all, that seek it before you be
bearded! For three of you must faint and die


THE LEG/5ND OF SIR DINAR 233

on the quest, and you, sir,” turning to Sir Dinar,
“must many times long to die, yet never reach
nearer by a foot.”
“Let it be as God will,” answered Sir Dinar.
“But hast thou any tidings, to guide us ? ”
“I have heard,” said she, “that it was seen
latest in the land of Gore, beyond Trent Water.”
And with her white finger she pointed down a
narrow glade that led to the north-west. So
they thanked her and pricked on, none guessing
that she herself was King Urience’ wife, of Gore,
and none other than Queen Morgan le Fay, the
famous cnchantress, who for loss of her gerfalcon
was lightly sending Sir Dinar to his ruin.
So all that day they rode, two and two, in
the strait alley that she had pointed out; and by
her enchantments she made the winter trees to
move with them, serried close on either hand, so
that, though the four knights wist nothing of it,
they advanced not a furlong for all their, haste.
But towards nightfall there appeared close ahead
a blaze of windows lit and then a tall castle with
dim towers soaring up and shaking to the din of
minstrelsy. And finding a great company about


23 WANDERING HEA TH


the doors, they lit down from their horses and
stepped into the great hall, Sir Dinar leading
them. For a while their eyes were dazed, seeing
that sconces flared along the walls and the
place was full of knights and damsels brightly
clad, and the'floor shone. But while they were
yet blinking, a band of maidens came and un-
buckled their arms and cast a shining cloak
upon each ; which was hardly done when a lady
came towards them out of the throng, and
though she was truly the Queen Morgan le Fay,
they knew her not at all, for by her necromancy
she had altered her countenance.
"Come, dance,” said she, “for in an instant
the musicians will begin.”
The other three knights tarried awhile, being
weary with riding; but Sir Dinar stepped forward
and caught the hand of a damsel, and she, as she
gave it, looked in his eyes and laughed. She was
dressed all in scarlet, with scarlet shoes, and her
hair lay on her shoulders like waves of burnished
gold. As Sir Dinar set his arm about her, with
a crash the merry music began; and floating
out with him into the dance, her scarlet shoes


THE LEGEND OF SIR DINAR 235

twinkling and her tossed hair shaking spices
under his nostrils, she leaned back a little on his
arm and laughed again.
Sir Galhaltin was leaning by the doorway,
and he heard her laugh and saw her feet twinkle
like blood-red moths, and he called to Sir Dinar.
But Sir Dinar heard only the brassy music, nor
did any of the dancers turn their heads, though
Sir Galhaltin called a second time and more
loudly. Then Sir Sentrail and Sir Ozanna also
began to call, fearing they knew not what for
their comrade. But the guests still drifted by
as they were clouds, and Sir Dinar, with the red
I blood showing beneath the down on his cheeks,
smiled always and whirled with the woman upon
his arm.
By-and-by he began to pant, and would have
rested: but she denied him.
“For a moment only,” he said, “because I
have ridden far to-day.”
But “No ” she said, and hung a little more
heavily upon his arm, and still the music went
on. And now, gazing upon her, he was frightened;
for it seemed she was growing older under his


“FLO WING SOURCE ” 243
up to auction and sold by the Lord of the
Manor—who happened to be High Sheriff—
nobody inquired very closely where the money
went. It is more to the point that the timber
of them was bought by one Master Blaise-
never mind the surname; he was an ancestor
of Master Simon’s, and a well-to-do wool-comber
of Ponteglos. _ ,
This Master Blaise already rented the ferry-
rights by Flowing Source, and certain rights
of fishery above and below; and having a
younger son to provide for, he conceived the
happy notion of this hostelry beside the river.
For ground-rent he agreed to carry each
Michaelmas to the Lord of the Manor one
penny in a silk purse; and the lords bailiff, on
bringing the receipt, was to take annually of
Master Blaise and his heirs one jack of ale of
the October brewing and one smoke-cured
salmon of not less than fifteen pounds’ weight.
These conditions having been duly signed, in
the year 1606 Master Blaise laid the foundations
of his inn upon the timbers of one galleon and
set up the elm keelson of the other for his roof-
Q 2


246 IVANDERING HEATH

sketched the old inn, and sometimes stayed for
a week, having tasted the salmon. Pigeon-
breeders dropped in and smoked long pipes in
the kitchen with Master Simon, and slowly
matured bets and matches. And once or twice
in the summer months a company of pilgrims
would arrive—queer literary men in velveteen
coats, who examined all the rooms and furniture
as though they meant to make a bid for the
inn complete; who talked with outlandish
tongues and ordered expensive dinners, and
usually paid for them next morning, rather to
Master Simon’s surprise. It appeared that there
had been once, in the time of Master Simon’s
grandfather, a certain pot-boy at the “Flowing
Source” who ran off into the world and became
a great poet; and these pilgrimages were made
in his honour. Master Simon found this story
somehow very creditable to himself, and came
in time to take almost as much pride in it as
in his pigeons and broiled salmon. Regularly
after dinner on these occasions he would exhibit
an old pewter pint-pot to the pilgrims, and draw
their attention to the following verse, scratched


242-! WA NDERING HEATH

walls of his parlour were lined with charts of
such very remote parts of the globe, and his
shelves with such a quantity of foreign china
and marine curiosities, and he spoke so fami-
liarly of Gallapagos, Batavia, Cape Verde, the
Horn, the Straits of Magellan, and so forth, and
would bring his telescope so knowingly to bear
on the ‘gilt weathercock over Ponteglos church
tower, that until you knew the truth you would
have sworn half his life had been spent on the
quarterdeck. And while the sea-captains—
serious men, attired in blue cloth, wearing rings
in their ears—sat and smoked eanaster and
other queer tobaccos in painted china pipes, and
talked of countries whose very names conjured
up visions of parrots, and carved idols, and
sharks, and brown natives in flashing canoes,
Master Simon would put a shrewd question or
two and wag his head over the answers as a
man who hears just what he expected. And
sometimes towards the close of the sitting, if he
knew his company very well, he would reward
them with his favourite and only song, “The
Golden Vanitee ”:


250 WANDERING HEATH

His was a happy life or had been, but for
two crumpled rose-leaves.
To begin with, there were those confounded
pot-boys. It puzzled Master Simon almost as
much as it annoyed him; he paid fair wages and
passed for a good employer; but he could not
keep a pot-boy for twelve months. As a matter
of fact,I know the river to have been the bottom
of the mischief—the river, and perhaps the talk
of the ship-captains. It might satisfy Master
Simon to sit and watch the salmon passing up
in autumn towards their spawning beds, and
rubbing, as they went, their scales against his
landing-stage to clear them of the sea-lice; to
watch them and their young passing seaward
in the early spring; to watch and wait and
spread his nets in the due season. But for the
youngsters this running water was a constant
lure—the song of it and the dimple on it. It
coaxed them, as it coaxed the old galleon, to
lean over and listen. And the moment that
listening became intolerable, they were off. Only
one of them—the poet before mentioned—had
ever expressed any desire to return and revisit—


“FLOWING SOURCE ” 251

“ The shining levels and the dazzled wave
‘ Emerging from his covert, errant long,
_In solitude descending by a vale
Lost between uplands, where the harvesters
Pause in the swathe, shading their eyes to watch
Some barge or schooner stealing up from sea ;
Themselves in sunset, she a twilit ghost
Parting the twilit woods . . .
Ah, loving God !
I Grant, in the end, this world may slip away
With whisper of that water by the bows
Of such a bark, bearing me home—thy stars
Breaking the gloom like kingfishers, thy heights
Golden with wheat, thy waiting angels there
Wearing the dear rough faces of my kin! ”
I doubt if he meant it, any more than Virgil
_meant his “flumina amem silvasque inglorius."
At any rate, the public knew what was due to
itself, and when the time came, gave the man a
handsome funeral in Westminster Abbey. Among
his Pall-bearers walked the Prime Minister, the
Commander-in-Chief, the President of the Royal


252 WANDERING HEATH

Academy of Arts, and (as representing rural life)
the Chief Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
What else disturbed the placid current of
Master Simon’s cogitations? Why, this: he
was the last of his race, and unmarried.
For himself, he had no inclination to marry.
But sometimes, as he shaved his chin of a
morning, the reflection in his round mirror
would suggest another. Was he not neglecting
a public duty ?
Now there dwelt down at Ponteglos a Mis-
tress Prudenee Waddilove, a widow, who kept
the “Pandora’s Box Inn” on the quay—a very
tidy business. Master Simon had known her
long before she married the late Waddilove; had
indeed sat on the same form with her in in-
fants’ school—she being by two years his junior,
but always a trifle quicker of wit. He attended
her husband’s funeral in a neighbourly way,
and, a week later, put on his black suit again
and went down—still in a neighbourly way—to
offer his condolence. Mistress Prudence received
him in the best parlour, which smelt damp and
chilly in comparison with the little room behind


256 WANDERING HEA TH

two days after his wont; the only observable
difference being the position of his garden chair.
It stood as a rule lmder the shadow of the broad
eaves, but now Master Simon ordered the tap-
boy to carry it out and set it by a rustic table
close to the river’s brink, whence, as he smoked,
he could keep comfortable watch upon the
pigeon-cote.
“ You ’ll catch a sunstroke,” said Ann the
cook. “I hope you ’re not beginning to forget
how to take care of yourself.”
“Well, I hope so too,” Master Simon an-
swered ; but did not budge.
On the morning of the third day, however,
he saw that which made him step indoors and
mount to the attic under the cote. Having
opened with much caution a trap-door in the
roof, he slipped an arm out and captured a
carrier pigeon.
The bird carried a note folded small and
bound under its wing with a thread of silk.
Master Simon opened the note and read :
“If you loves me as I loves you,
No knife can cut our loves in two.”


“ FLO WING SOURCE” 259

fore she spent the greater part of the following
afternoon at her window, gazing westward in no
small perturbation of spirit. -
It wanted a few minutes to five when a
carrier pigeon came travelling across the zenith,
shot downwards suddenly, and alighted on the
roof. Ann climbed to the trap-door and put out
a hand. The bird was preening his feathers, and
allowed himself to be taken easily.
In circumstances less agitating Ann had not
failed to observe that the thread about the
messenger’s wing was not of the kind that Master
Simon used. But her eyes opened wide as they
fell on the handwriting, and still wider as she
. read:
“It is all for the best, perhaps. If only
people have not begun to tal/a—PRUDENCE.”
A second messenger arrived towards evening
with word of Harmony’s success. But the news
hardly relaxed Ann’s brow, which kept a pensive
contraction even when her master arrived next
evening and poured out her winnings on the
table from the silver challenge cup.
R 2


260 WANDERING HEATH
She wore this frown at intervals for a fort-
night, and all the while maintained an unusual
silence which puzzled Master Simon. Then one
morning he heard her in the kitchen scolding
the tap-boy with all her pristine heartiness.
That night, after mulling her master’s ale, she
turned at the door, saucepan in hand, and
coughed to attract attention.
“ Well, Ann ; what is it ? ”
“ You ’ve been philanderin’.”
“ Hey ! Upon my Word, Ann—— ”
Ann produced the Widow Waddilove’s note
and flattened it out under Master Simon’s eyes.
And Master Simon blushed painfully.
“Are you goin’ to marry the woman ? ” Ann
demanded.
“ I think not.”
“ I reckon you will.”
“Well, you see, there has been a hitch.
She won’t leave the ‘Pandora’s Box,’ and
I ’m not going to budge from ‘Flowing
Source.’ If a woman won’t put herself out
to that extent—besides, she cooks no better
than you.’ ‘


264 WA NDERING H EA TH

like your pluck. If I saw you setting off for sea
in earnest, I would run out and give you a chance
to steer a woman instead of a ship. You would
find her safer.”
Master Simon emptied his glass, rose, and
wound his great comforter about his neck. The
widow saw him to the door.
“ You ’re a very obstinate woman,” he said.
And with this he unmoored his boat and
rowed resolutely homewards. A strong wind
came piping down on the back of a strong tide,
and Master Simon arched his shoulders against it.
“Married man or mariner!” it piped, as he
rounded the first bend.
“I know my own mind, I believe,” said
Master Simon to himself; “ there’s as good fish
in the sea as ever came out of it; and for
salmon, ‘ Flowing Source’ will beat Christchurch
any day, I ’ve always maintained.”
"‘ Married man or mariner!” piped the wind
in the words of Ann the cook.
Master Simon pulled his left paddle hard
and rounded the second bend.
7
“ Married man or mar——’


“FLOWING SOURCE” 265

Crash!
His heels flew up and his head struck the
bottom boards. Then, in a moment, the boat
was gone, and a rush of water sang in his ears
and choked him. He saw a black shadow over-
hanging, and clutched at it.
Mistress Prudence stood in her doorway on
the quay, as Master Simon had left her. In the
room above, the waitress blew out her candle,
drew up the blind, and opened her window to
the moonlight.
“Selina !” the mistress called.
Selina thrust out her head.
“ What ’s that coming down the river ? ”
A black, unshapely mass was moving swiftly
down towards the quay.
“I think ’tis a haystack,” Selina whispered,
and then, “Lord save us all, there ’s a man
on it !”
“A man?” cried the widow, shrilly. “What
man ? ”
A voice answered the question, calling for
help out of the river—a voice that she knew.


272 WANDERING HEA TH

morrow to practise walking. It seems a
necessary step towards acquainting myself with
the inner life of these toiling millions, which
must be well worth knowing. Papa, on arriving
at our door, plunged into an altercation with a
cab-tout. What a man! And yet sometimes
I could find it in my heart to envy his robust-
ness, his buoyancy. A Huntley and Palmer’s
Nursery Biscuit in a little hot water has some-
what quieted my nerves, which suffered cruelly
during the scene. I believe I shall sleep-
to-night.
Tuesday, 8th. The beginning of St'umm 'mzd
Drang ; I am learning to walk. Moreover I
have surprised in myself, during the day, a
tendency to fall in love with my nurse. On the
pretence that walking might give me bandy legs
she caught me up and pressed me to her bosom.
We have no affinities ; indeed beyond cleanliness
and a certain unreasoning honesty, she can be
said to possess no attributes at all. I am con-
vinced that a serious affection for her could only
flourish on an intellectual atrophy; and yet for a
while I abandoned myself. We went out into


274 WANDERING HEATH

“Gemgie-Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them crg. . . .”
W'hy pudding? Why pie? Why—if you
ask this—why (my realism? These concrete
accidents solidify a thin and abstract love-story
for our human comprehension. Or are they,
perchance, symbolical? Georgie-Porgie’s prom-
ises, like pie-crust, were made to be broken.
He—
“ K issed the girls and made them cry.
When the girls came out to play,
Georgie-Porg’le ran away.”
—Simple solution of the difficulty! And I am
already learning to walk ! Poor woman !
Wednesday, 9th. I am troubled whenever I
reflect on the subject of heredity. It terrifies
me to think that I may grow up to resemble
papa. Mamma, too, is hardly less a savage : she
wore diamonds in her hair when she came up to
the nursery, late last night, to look at me. She
believed that I was asleep; but I wasn’t, and I
never in my life felt so sorry that I couldn’t
speak. The appalling barbarism of those trinkets!


A YOUNG MAN’S DIARY 275

It is raining this afternoon—the sky weep-
ing like a Corot—and I am forced to stay
indoors and affect an interest in Noah and
his ark! Nurse’s father came up and accosted
her in the Gardens this morning. He is
one of the Submerged Tenth, and extremely
interesting. On the threat of running off with
me and pitching me neck and crop into the
Round Pond, he extracted half-a-crown from
her. She gave him the coin docilely. I found
myself almost hoping that he would raise his
price, that I might discover how much the poor
creature was ready to sacrifice for my sake. She
is looking pale this afternoon; but this may be
because I cried half the night and kept her
awake. The fact is, I was cutting a tooth. I
have given up learning to walk; but have some
idea of trying somnambulism instead.
Thursday, 10th. To-day I was spanked for
the first time. When I have stopped crying, I
mean to analyse my sensations.
s2


THE CAPTAIN FROM’ BATH 279

entrance upstairs by ‘the long window at the end
of the picture gallery, or corridor—whichever
you choose to call it-~descend the back-stairs,
remove the pane of glass from the wall, and
gain the strong-room through the opening.
The house was dark from end to end, and the
stable clock had just chimed the quarter after
midnight, when I went up the ladder. I never
looked for much carefulness in this honest
country household, but I did expect to spend
twenty minutes on the heavy lead-work of the
lower panes, and it seemed as good as a miracle
to find the lattice unlatched and opening to the
first gentle pull. I pressed it back; hitched it
under a stem of ivy that the wind might not
slam it after me; and, signalling down to Jimmy
at the foot of the ladder to wait for my report,
pulled myself over the sill and dropped softly
into the gallery.
And then somebody stepped quickly from
behind the heavy window curtain, reached out
and shut the lattice smartly behind me, and said—
“Show a light, Jenkins, and let us have a
look at the gentleman.” ’


282 WANDE'RING HEATH
“ Well, upon my soul !” cried Sir Harry, with
something between a laugh and a snifl' of dis-
gust; and the footman on the other side of me
echoed it with a silly cackle. “He certainly
doesn’t look as if he came from Bath!”
‘ “ Sir,” I expostulated—for when events seem
likely to prove overwhelming, I usually find
myself clutching at my original respectability—
“Sir, although the force of circumstances has
brought me thus low,_ I am by birth and educa-
tion a gentleman. Having told you this, I trust
that you will remember it, even in the heat of
your natural resentment.”
“ You speak almost as prettily as you write,”
he answered scornfully, pulling a letter from his
pocket.
“This is beyond me,” thought I; for of
course I knew it could be no letter of mine.
Besides, a glance told me that I had never set
eyes on the paper or handwriting before. I
think my next remark showed self-possession.
“Would you be kind enough to explain?” I
asked.
“ I rather think that should be your business,”


284 WAN DERI N G H EA TH

I caught over his shoulder, or fancied I caught,
a glance from Miss Kate that was at once a
warning and an appeal. The next moment
her eyes were bent shamefast upon the floor.
I began to divine.
Said I, “ If that’s a sample of your manner
towards your daughter, even you, in your cooler
moments, can hardly wonder that she chooses
another protector.”
“Protector!” he repeated, lifting his eye-
brows; and that infernal footman cackled again.
“If you can’t behave with common polite-
ness to a lady,” I put in smartly, “ you might
at least exhibit enough of rude intelligence to
lay hold of an argument that’s as plain as the
nose on your face ! ”
“Gently, my good sir!” said he. “Do you
know that, if I choose, I can march you off
to gaol for a common housebreaker ? ”
I should think I did know it—a plaguy
sight better than he!
“ To begin with,” he went on, “you look like
one, for all the world.”
This was sailing too close for my liking.


28‘; WA .VDER I N G H EA TH
Will you take your ladder away with you, sir, or
will you call for it to-morrow ? ”
“ To-morrow will do,” I said, airily, and step-
ping across to Mistress Kate I took ‘her hand
and raised it as if for a kiss. Her fingers gave
mine an appreciative squeeze.
“ But who in the world are you ? ” she whis-
pered.
“ I think,” said I, bending over her hand, “ I
have fairly earned the right to withhold that.”
Sir Harry bowed a stiff good-night to me,
and William, the footman, took a candle and led
the way along the gallery and down the great
staircase to the front door. While he undid the
chain and bolts I was thinking that he would be
all the better for a kick ; and as he drew aside to
let me pass I took him quickly by the collar,
spun him round, and gave him one. A flight of
a dozen steps led down from the front door, and
he pitched clean to the bottom. Running down
after, I skipped over his prostrate body and
walked briskly away in the darkness, whistling
and feeling better.
I went round the end of the gallery wing,


292 WANDERING HEATH

boy has a sneaking good-will towards me. I
can’t answer for the girl; but I can answer that
she’ll hold her tongue for a while at all events.
This life doesn’t become a man of my education
and natural ability. And the risk is worth
running.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” says he, very
drily.
“And why not ?”
“ Well, you see, when I heard the noise last
night, and all the place .grew light as it did, I
was just starting to run for dear life, till it
struck me that if the folks meant to go
searching for me they wouldn’t begin by light-
ing the picture-gallery from end to end. So I
drew close under shadow of the wall and waited,
ready to run at any moment. But after a while,
finding that nothing happened, I grew curious
and crept up after you and looked in through
the window, very cautious. A nice fix you
seemed to be in; but old Jenkins was there.
And while Jenkins was ther ”
“Well?”
“Well, I should have thought you might


THE CAPTAIN FROJI BATH 293

have guessed. The bolt of his bedroom window
wasn’t hard to force, nor the lock of the small
room. Being single-handed, I had to pick and
choose what to carry off. But if you’ll look
under the bracken yonder you’ll own I know
my way among silver-ware.”
I looked at him for a moment, and then lay
gently back on the turf and laughed till I was
tired of laughing.
THE END












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