UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
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ROLF HOFFMANN |


UN1 v ERSITY of CALIFORNie
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LOS ANGELRS
LEBRARY -





The Threshing-Floor
Unwin's Library


BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.,
G R AND RELATIONS.
A Comedy of Rustic Life.
LONDON : T. FISHER UN WIN.


Threshing-Floor
The
BY
J. S. FLETCHER
T. FIS HER UN WIN
LONDON LEIPZig
II PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS INSELSTRASSE 2.0
PARIS TORINO
174 BOULEVARD ST. GERMAIN VIA Po II
I 9 o'S
13.3384


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To
R O S A M O N D L A N G B R ID GE
WITH SINCERE AFFECTION





THE THRESHING-FLOOR
PART THE FIRST
CH A PTER I
MARRIOT entered upon his duties as road-surveyor
to the Normancaster Highway Board on the first
day of June 1893. He arrived in the town during
the previous afternoon, and bestowed his belong-
ings in rooms which had been recommended to
him by his predecessor, who had lodged in them
for five years and had spoken in high terms of
their comfort, and of the capabilities of the land-
lady, Mrs. Marshall. Then, being a young man
of an active and work-loving temperament, he
visited his office and made the acquaintance of
his clerk, with whom he discussed the necessities
and character of the district. He fell into actual
work the next morning, when, having received
an urgent letter from one Gabriel Challenger, of
Abbotsholme, who wrote to the effect that a
landslip had occurred on a hillside road in the
neighbourhood of his farm, he hired a horse from
the livery stables at the Queen's Head and rode
I


2 The Threshing-Floor
out to inspect the damage of which his corre-
spondent complained. It was in the course of
this ride that Marriot met Brigit Challenger for
the first time, and fell in love with her.
Marriot was at that time a man of twenty-five,
a fine, lusty, strapping fellow who looked full of
life and spirits and of a rare capacity for work.
He was tall, well-built, and muscular; his move-
ments were quick and decided ; you could not
spend five minutes in his company without seeing
for yourself that he was ready of thought and
prompt of action; there was something of the
military man who is also a martinet about him.
This much had been noticed by those members of
the Highway Board who had formed a deputation
to wait upon him and to examine his work at his
former post in the Midlands; one or two of them,
men of greater discernment than their fellows,
had seen still more deeply into the character of
their new surveyor, and had informed themselves
that he was a young man of great personal
ambition. To them it was evident that Marriot
would only remain at Normancaster until a still
better appointment offered itself, but they were
glad to have his services, if only for a year or two,
and confident that he would prove a valuable
Servant.
Marriot's first notion on finding himself in any
new place was to arrive as quickly as possible at
an accurate geographical sense of its position, and
so soon as he had ridden outside Normancaster
that morning, he drew rein at an advantageous


The Threshing-Floor 3
spot and carefully examined his surroundings.
He had something of the artist's eye for the
effective in scenery, and he said to himself that
here were subjects for pictures on every hand.
He sat still for some moments, slowly turning
his head this way and that, with a keen, relishing,
simple enjoyment of the view, and he smiled, as
a child might smile at some attractive prospect or
object which it saw for the first time.
“It's beautiful!” he said aloud, “just beautiful!
That's the right word—beautifull"
At the head of the richly-wooded valley in
which he lingered stood Normancaster, set high
on a steep and rocky hill, the quaint outline of its
old-world towers and gables dominated by the
square and massive keep of its great castle,
Round the foot of the hill ran the silver windings
of the Swirl, its gleam changing from silver to
gold as it drew nearer the bridge on which Marriot
had drawn rein; the gold was transformed to
silver again as it passed on from him into the
recesses of the woods through which his road lay.
High overhead the blue of the June sky was
broken by the figure of a hawk which hung
motionless above a mass of grey rock; in the
narrow meadows on either side the river and the
road flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were
grazing; down the long sloping highway from
Normancaster which he had just traversed a carter
and his team came slowly, the jingle of the
horses' bells sounding musically above the ripple
and murmur of the river. Marriot sighed with


4 The Threshing-Floor
pleasure as he shook his horse's bridle and rode
briskly forward.
“There's no doubt that it's a fine country,” he
said. Then, the professional instinct asserting
itself in him, he murmured, “I shall have plenty
of bother about keeping this road clear of snow
in winter, though; it will drift deeply in this
narrow valley.”
For the next three miles his route lay through
the woods and coppices. All the way the river
ran between shelving banks at his side, sometimes
breaking into creamy showers of foam and spray
as it flung itself over dark masses of shining rock,
sometimes widening out into placid stretches of
golden-brown wherein the trout lurked lazily
under the edge of stones worn smooth by the
rolling of autumnal water. Everywhere road and
river was flecked by points of sunlight bursting
through the thick leafage overhead; here and
there on river and road lay broad patches of
unchecked light; here and there were wide, cool
expanses of shade; in some places the tracery of
the overarching leaves and twigs was silhouetted
on the whiteness of the road like the pattern on a
cloth of fine diaper. All through the woods and
over the river hung the atmosphere of a rich and
generous springtide. Marriot felt it in the warmth
of the sun, the luxuriance of wood and leaf and
flower, in the songs of the birds and the never-
ceasing hum of insects which came from the
undergrowth. The spirit of the morning filled
him, and as he rode gaily forward he sang or


The Threshing-Floor 5
whistled as merrily as the linnets and thrushes
that trilled and piped on every side.
The road suddenly turned sharply away from
the river and rose steeply up the hillside through
a thicker growth of trees. Marriot heard the
voice of the Swirl grow fainter and fainter behind
him ; as it faded into silence he turned in his
saddle, and looking back caught a last glimpse of
the river winding silvery bright beneath the over-
hanging alders. The ascent grew more marked
and his horse's quick walk slackened. A cool
wind stole through the trees as he rose higher and
higher, and soon he caught the scent of gorse and
heather and bracken. And suddenly the woods
came to an end, and he found himself on the edge
of moors, high above the valley, with the Swirl
flashing in the sun far below him.
Marriot now perceived that the character of
the scenery had changed. He could follow the
winding of the valley for several miles, and he
saw that from this point it was wild and lonely.
Its sides were steep, and in places precipitous;
out of them here and there cropped great oddly-
shaped masses of grey stone; from the brow of
each slope stretched away moorlands which gradu-
ally approached distant hills. In the far distance
the valley appeared to be closed in by a chain of
mountains; a small town, of hazy and indefinite
outline, lay on rising ground at its head; its
distance from him, Marriot decided, must be at
least seven miles. Between it and himself he
saw but two signs of human life in the valley.


6 The Threshing-Floor
Some three or four miles away, clustering around
a bridge which he made out to be of five arches,
stood a village with a church—he saw the sun-
light strike clearly on its gilded vane. A mile
nearer him, but on the opposite side of the river,
was a solitary dwelling, a great grey pile of
buildings surrounding a high, partly ruinous tower.
The road, to the highest altitude of which he had
now climbed by the steep ascent through the
woods, fell again to the river from this point—he
traced it all the way to the village which stood
near the five-arched bridge, and noticed that no
byway turned off it in the direction of the soli-
tary mass of buildings on the other side of the
river. So far as he could see from that point,
there was no other way of reaching this lonely-
looking place than by going round by the village
and bridge which lay some miles beyond it.
He trotted sharply down the winding road
until he was almost abreast of the solitary house
which had chiefly attracted his attention. Seen
from a nearer point, he perceived that it was a
farmstead of considerable size, which had evidently
been built out of the ruins of some religious house,
parts of which, indeed, were still plainly visible. A
high square tower remained perfect save for its
battlemented parapet, which had been broken
down on two sides of the ruins, and tracery of a
great arch rose above the bank of the river; masses
of masonry lay in confusion about the house and
the orchard. It was not difficult to Marriot, who
had some knowledge of archaeology, to trace the


The Threshing-Floor 7
original ground plan of church and cloister. He
perceived that the house and farm buildings had
been built up out of the original edifice by adapt-
ing the latter as far as it was possible to secular
requirements; part of the house, in fact, had been
brought into existence by a transformation of the
choir, and he judged, by the presence of white
blinds in the lower storeys of the house, that they
were put to use by the modern occupants. The
whole place was picturesque and striking, but the
loneliness of its situation at the foot of one of
the most precipitous cliffs of the valley, its semi-
ruinous condition, and the absence of overhanging
wood or forest, communicated to it a certain sense
of solitude and desolation which struck Marriot
strongly.
“That should be Abbotsholme,” he said
musingly. “The thing is how to reach it from
this side P”
He perceived, as he rode slowly along the road,
that at a point immediately opposite the farmstead
the ground on his side of the valley fell almost
precipitously from the highway to the river, which
thereabouts seemed to be in a more agitated state
than usual. There was no sign of path or ford and
none of any bridge; it became evident to him that
he would have to go round by the distant village.
He measured the distance at a glance, and frowned
to think that he must travel at least six miles in
order to reach a place into which it seemed possible
to throw a stone.
Stirring his horse into a trot, Marriot pressed


8 The Threshing-Floor
forward towards the village. But he had not
ridden many yards further when, turning a sudden
corner in the road, he came upon a sight which
made him tighten the reins with an involuntary
jerk that pulled the horse to a standstill. At the
corner of a narrow lane, which descended between
high gorse-clad banks from the moors above him
and cut at a sharp angle into the highway, stood
the remains of a wayside cross—a high, broken
grey stump, weather - worn and defaced of its
original carvings, rising out of a massive block of
limestone grit, the corners of which had once been
rudely worked and ornamented. At the foot of
this relic of a long-dead age sat a figure clothed
from head to foot in shapeless black garments,
motionless and fixed as the cross which rose
above it.
For a moment Marriot thought of the tales he
had heard in boyhood of the apparitions of monks
and friars who came back to revisit the houses out
of which they had been unceremoniously turned,
for the figure might have been that of a Dominican
absorbed in meditation. But a second glance told
him that this was the figure of a woman; and
third, of a poor woman, for he noticed the torn and
frayed edges of the long black gown and of the
thin black shawl which enveloped her shoulders,
head, and face, as in a cowl. Marriot wondered at
the fixed, rigid attitude of this strange person.
The horse, wondering too, snuffed the air with
curiosity and stamped a ringing hoof on the hard
road, but the woman remained motionless. Marriot


The Threshing-Floor 9
forced the horse nearer; he wished to see the face
hidden under the cowl-like shawl.
As he stopped in front of her the woman lifted
her head, which until that moment had been bent
towards the ground as if in prayer or reflection.
Marriot saw that this was a woman prematurely
aged; in her grey hair there still remained strands
of raven blackness; there were still traces of a past
beauty in her colourless face; her eyes, deeply
sunken beneath black brows, were alive with a
dull fire. She betrayed no surprise or astonish-
ment at Marriot's presence; his gaze was returned
steadily and without resentment or embarrassment.
And as he gazed Marriot saw what it was at which
the woman had been looking with downcast head
when he first caught sight of her—on her lap,
clutched tightly in her long, wasted fingers, lay a
great coil of shining human hair; as the woman
moved, the sun caught it and turned it into a mass
of gold.
For a moment these two continued to stare
at each other—the young man wondering and
curious, the woman apathetic. Marriot felt that
he ought to ride on, that he had no right to stare
so insistently at a stranger; but he remained fixed
in his saddle, and he soon found himself restrain-
ing the horse, which was growing impatient. And
without wishing to do so he spoke.
“Are—are you ill, mistress?” he asked.
The woman stared at him, half-vacantly. It
seemed a long time before her lips moved.
“No,” she answered.


IO The Threshing-Floor
There was a note in her voice which seemed to
imply that she wondered why anyone should ask
such a question, and Marriot tried in a lame fashion
to explain.
“I thought you might have been overcome by
the heat,” he said. “These hillside roads are
trying on a hot day. There's—there's nothing I
can do for you?” -
She laughed—hard laughter that made Marriot
feel uncomfortable.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing.”
“Well, perhaps you might do something for
me,” he said pleasantly, turning in his saddle and
pointing across the valley with his whip. “Can
you tell me if that is Abbotsholme?”
The woman's eyes blazed up with a sudden
illumination; she rose quickly from her seat at the
foot of the ancient cross, and stood, a tall, thin
black figure, looking down upon the sunlit valley
below. It seemed to Marriot, regarding her with
fresh wonder, that she might be about to lift her
hand and utter some curse. But she sat down as
suddenly as she had risen, and became as rigid as
before.
“That is Abbotsholme,” she answered dully.
“Thank you,” said Marriot. “That's the place
I want, so"—
Before he could bid her good-morning and move
away, she rose swiftly from her seat again, and
coming close to him laid her hand on his knee and
looked earnestly into his face. Marriot felt sure
that he was being gazed at by a madwoman ; he


The Threshing-Floor I I
grew uneasy, uncomfortable, but he could not
withdraw his eyes. The horse fretted and uttered
a faint note of uneasiness.
“What is it, mistress P” asked Marriot, curbing
the animal and trying to preserve his own
equanimity. “What do you look for or see?”
The woman's hand dropped away from his knee
like a dead thing—heavily. Her eyes and face, keen
and eager a moment before, grew dull and listless.
“If it had been any good,” she said, speaking
to herself more than to her hearer, “I’d have
laboured with him while there was time, but it's
written that naught and nobody can turn the
masterful man from his purpose, and we must all
go our own ways, rich and poor, high and low, and
one thread must twist with another.”
She broke off suddenly and turned away up the
narrow, high-banked by-lane, walking with swift
steps towards a crest of pine trees, into which she
disappeared through a gap in the hedge. Marriot,
held to the spot against his will, heard her begin
to sing; his ears strained themselves for the
words—
“This a nighte, this a nighte,
Every nighte and alle;
Fire and fleet and candlelight,
And Christ receive thy saule !
When thou away”—
The sharp, steady beat of a horse's hoofs on the
road behind him broke in upon the weird, dirge-
like chanting, and Marriot turned with a sense of
relief to look at the approaching rider, who was


I 2 The Threshing-Floor
coming from the direction of Normancaster at a
quick pace. On catching sight of a horseman in
the road, the new-comer seemed to slacken his
speed involuntarily, and by the time he came up
to the wayside cross his horse was advancing at a
walking pace. The rider looked at Marriot with
some curiosity; the questioning glance called the
road-surveyor back to material things and reminded
him that there was a chance of acquiring some
practical information.
“I beg your pardon,” he said politely. “Can
you tell me if there is no other way from this point
to Abbotsholme yonder than by going round by
that bridge which I see in the distance? Is there
no ford, or anything of that sort?”
He was asking these questions of a handsome,
well-grown lad of eighteen or nineteen years, who
rode a smart horse, wore a fashionable riding-suit,
and appeared to be full of self-confidence and
assurance. He steadied his horse, eyeing Marriot
over with a glance in which a certain youthful
superciliousness was mingled with equally youth-
ful curiosity.
“Abbotsholme?” he repeated. “Are you going
there? To see Mr. Challenger?”
Marriot nodded — these questions seemed
superfluous.
“You will have to go round by Granton bridge,”
answered the lad, “but if you have business with
Challenger you are not likely to find him at home
at this time—he is much more likely to be found
at Highdale.”


The Threshing-Floor I 3
“Highdale?” said Marriot. “Where is that?”
The lad lifted his hunting-crop and pointed to
the little town lying on the hillside at the head of
the valley.
“He is almost certain to be there,” he said. “He
usually is there in the morning—at the White
Hart. But they could tell you at Granton yonder
if he has ridden that way—he would be bound to
pass through on his way to Highdale.”
“Thank you,” said Marriot, “I’m much obliged.”
“Oh, that's all right,” said the lad cheerfully.
“It's little use going round to the farm if Challenger
is away in the opposite direction. You're the new
surveyor, aren't you—Mr. Marriot?”
“I am,” answered Marriot, wondering at the
question.
“I thought so. I’ve heard of you from my
father—Mr. Warrington.”
Marriot recognised the name as that of a
prominent townsman of Normancaster, who was
Chairman of the Highway Board and a person of
consequence. He nodded his head.
“Oh yes!” he said. “Well, Mr. Warrington,
I'm obliged to you again. Are you riding my
way?”
The lad shook his head and smiled.
“No,” he said, “I’m not going further. Good-
morning.”
Marriot felt that he was dismissed. He replied
quietly to the salutation, shook his horse's reins,
and rode away towards the village, reflecting upon
his morning's adventures. He decided that the


CHAPTER II
WITHIN the farmhouse, in a stone-flagged, stone-
vaulted dairy, which had once been a part of the
monastic buildings, Brigit Challenger was making
butter. She stood at a white table placed beneath
the mullioned window, her arms bare to the elbow,
her strong young figure gowned in cool white linen.
At the opposite end of the table a strapping maid-
servant was busily engaged in the same task—
pounding and moulding the butter into shape,
marking it in fancy patterns with wooden rollers,
setting it aside on wooden slats as each pound
was finished. In the centre of the dairy a rosy-
cheeked, red-armed girl was resolutely turning the
handle of a barrel churn ; the exercise made her
catch her breath sharply from time to time, and at
periodical intervals she transferred the handle from
one hand to the other. In the wide stone porch
which opened out into the fold an old sheep-dog
lay curled up, asleep.
The three women were all absorbed in their
task: none of them spoke. Brigit and the elder
maid-servant slapped and smacked the butter into
shape zealously as it lay a golden mass in the
wooden bowls and on the wooden platters; each
smack sounded through the dairy like a pistol-shot.
15


The Threshing-Floor 17
“Thereabouts,” replied Hannah laconically.
She gave the handle a few more steady turns;
within the churn the butter fell lumpily from one
side to another, and she presently let the handle
go. “I think it's done now, Miss Brigit,” she said,
breathing hard from her exercise. “But we'll
soon see.”
She drew out the wooden pegs which held the
valve of the churn in place, lifted off the linen
cloths beneath it, and looked into the cavity.
Brigit approached the churn and peered in also:
the younger maid hovered near, hands on hips.
It was at this moment that young Warrington
came up to the open porch and looked into the
dairy. He had found no one in the other parts of
the house, and had gone round the buildings until
he caught the sound of voices. He stopped on the
threshold, staring admiringly at Brigit. He had
seen her a thousand times before, but he thought
her handsomer every time he saw her.
Brigit was then nearly twenty-one. She was
tall, well-proportioned, generously developed, full
of activity; the picture of sound, vigorous health.
Her thin linen dress revealed alike the grace and
the strength of her figure; her bare arms were
supple and muscular, but her wrists and hands
were slim and pretty, her waist was small, her
feet delicately fashioned. She moved gracefully,
trod firmly; her glance was quick and direct.
Most folk in those regions called her red-headed;
her hair, in strict truth, was of a very deep shade
of red, and in certain lights it shone like burnished
2


18 The Threshing-Floor
copper. She had great masses of it, long, thick,
luxuriant, and she wore them piled and coiled
above her head in a somewhat quaint fashion
which she had invented for herself. However red
her hair might be, it went very well with her clear
skin, grey eyes, and warm mouth, in all of which
there were as many evidences of good spirits and
sound health as in her active figure.
The lad standing at the door made an involun-
tary comparison between Brigit's ripe young
beauty and the looks of the two women between
whom she stood. The elder maid-servant, a
woman of thirty-six or forty, was a hard-featured,
shrewd, practical-looking person, who, from her
manipulation of the churn and its contents, might
be trusted to attend to her business and her own
affairs with promptitude and thoroughness. The
younger, a country lass of twenty, was not without
some rustic charms of a substantial sort, but there
were evidences of Slyness, pertness, and forwardness
about her, and the way in which she hung around
her mistress and the elder servant, her hands
planted on her plump hips, showed that she was
more interested in watching others work than in
working herself.
Young Warrington stepped over the sleeping
dog into the dairy as Brigit and Hannah finished
their inspection of the churn. Brigit's colour
deepened as she caught sight of him; Hannah
showed no perception of his presence; the
younger maid, making pretence of turning aside
for a wooden pail, smiled broadly and restrained


The Threshing-Floor I 9
with some difficulty a strong inclination to laugh.
The cause of her amusement advanced boldly to
the churn and looked into it.
“Finished?” he said easily. “I thought you
must all be very busy with something or other
—there wasn't a sign of life in any other part of
the house. See here, Bid, I've brought you the
sitting of bantam's eggs that I promised—I hope
they're not smashed.”
He produced a cardboard box which he had
carried behind him and handed it to Brigit.
“I’d hard work to persuade them into letting me
have a sitting,” he said.
Brigit laid the box on the dresser and lifted the
lid.
“Thank you, Dimmy,” she said. “No, they're
all right. I'll set the hen with them this morning,
when we've finished making up the butter.”
“I can make this lot up myself, Miss Brigit,”
said Hannah, who had already cleared the churn
of the second mass of butter. “There's not as
much as there was in the first churning.”
“No,” said Brigit, “I’ll help.”
“Let me do the rolling,” said Dimsdale, seizing
one of the wooden rollers. “I know how to do it
—all you've got to do is to dip this thing into the
water and run it over the top of the butter.”
“More than that,” said Brigit. “You mustn't
press too heavily, nor too lightly, or the pound will
have to be made over again. We pride ourselves
on our butter, don't we, Hannah P”
“Hannah prides herself on everything she


2O The Threshing-Floor
does,” said Dimsdale gallantly. “Isn't that so,
Hannah P”
“I like to see a thing well done, Mr. Dimsdale,”
said Hannah. “It’s no use doing anything unless
you do it thoroughly.”
“That's so,” said Dimsdale, running his roller
over a pound of butter which Brigit had just
placed on the slat. “There !—isn't that a ripper ?
Hannah herself couldn't beat that—anybody would
be glad to buy that pound of butter just for the
marking, and they'd keep it in a glass case to look
at.”
The younger maid thought this an excellent
piece of wit, and giggled loudly into the cavernous
depths of the churn, which she was now washing
out. Hannah gave her a half-glance of stern
disapproval; Dimsdale, taking the giggle as a
tribute to his powers, waxed more facetious, and
expressed a desire to ornament the sides as well as
the tops of the pounds of butter.
“Why not?” he asked, in answer to Brigit's
expostulations. “It won't make any difference in
the weight, and they'll look all the better.”
“Yes, but we never do it that way,” said Brigit.
“Time you began, then,” retorted Dimsdale, and
began to ornament one of the pounds of butter in
the fashion suggested. “There, that's a great im-
provement, isn't it, Hannah P”
“You’d best let me finish, Miss Brigit,” said
Hannah, eyeing the improvement with much dis-
favour. “Off you go and set the eggs—I can soon
finish this lot.”


The Threshing-Floor 2 I
Brigit dipped her fingers in the pan of water,
dried them on her apron, and taking the latter off
hung it on a peg at the end of the dresser. She
picked up the box of bantam's eggs.
“They'd better be marked,” she said, looking at
them speculatively. “Come into the parlour and
mark them for me, Dimmy.”
Dimsdale followed her out of the dairy by a
door that led into the great kitchen. When they
were gone Hannah possessed herself of the pound
of butter which the lad had ornamented on top and
sides and began to remake it.
“Young gentlemen,” she said, “are always up
to mischief. A pretty lot we should look to send
butter marked in that way to Normancaster
market !—they'd think we'd taken leave of our
senses.”
“Why, I'm sure it looks prettier than the other,”
said the younger girl.
Hannah sniffed loudly.
“A deal you know about it,” she remarked.
“Get on with your churn, Lizzie, and don't giggle
when a young gentleman comes into the dairy.”
“Perhaps I do and perhaps I don't,” pertly re-
torted Lizzie, ignoring the last half of Hannah's
remark. “And p'raps I know a good deal more
than some folk think I know.”
“Oh, indeed, and what might that be?” asked
Hannah, with some acerbity. “How to make geese
into swans, no doubt.”
“Never mind l’” said Lizzie, tossing her head.
“But I’m neither blind nor deaf. And I don't


22 The Threshing-Floor
pretend, as some folks do, to neither see nor
hear.”
The elder woman turned from her butter-making
and looked at the younger with some anxiety and
a not unkindly expression.
“You’re only a young thing, my lass,” she said,
“and you've only been in this place a month—take
my advice, and mind your own business. Keep
your eyes and your ears for what concerns yourself.”
Lizzie made a face at the churn and then put out
her tongue at it.
“It never does any good to see too much or to
hear too much,” said Hannah sententiously. “You
mark my words.”
Brigit and Dimsdale went past the open window,
laughing and talking merrily. Lizzie put her hands
on her hips and nodded her head.
“It would be a blind and a deaf man that couldn't
see or hear what was going on there, Hannah
Coulson l’ she said. “And that you're aware of,
as well as I am.”
“It's no concern of mine,” replied Hannah. “And
it's none of yours, my lass. While you're in this
house, Lizzie Braithwaite, keep your eyes closed
and your mouth shut—it’ll be the worse for you if
you don't.”
Lizzie Braithwaite made no reply. She con-
tinued to clean out the churn, and Hannah rapidly
finished her work with the butter. When she had
set the last pound aside on its slat she went into
the great kitchen, remarking that she must arrange
about dinner. The younger maid, left alone, made


The Threshing-Floor 23
another face at the closed kitchen door, and then,
as if carrying out some notion which she had
recently formed, she whipped off her apron, threw
it aside, and ran out through the porch into the
fold. The old sheep-dog, roused by her rapid exit,
rose to his feet, looked after her, yawned, wagged
his tail feebly, and lay down to sleep again.


CHAPTER III
THE hen to whose care the bantam eggs were to
be confided had been sitting on a pot egg for three
days in a lonely corner of the hayloft. Brigit and
Dimsdale turned her out of her nest unceremoni-
ously and placed the eggs in it, the marked side
uppermost. The hen went back, spread her
feathers, and settled herself with a chuckle of
satisfaction.
“She’ll do now,” said Brigit, regarding her
with meditative eyes. “She was just mad to
sit.”
“Yes,” said Dimsdale. He slipped his arm
round Brigit's waist and drew her to him caress-
ingly. She turned her face to him readily; they
kissed each other, laughing between the kisses.
Within a moment Brigit's laughter had a note of
teasing merriment in it. She had conceived a rare
notion of playing a practical joke on Dimsdale.
She started away from his arm and pointed a
finger to the arch of the roof above them. “Look,
Dimmy,” she said, “there's a house-martin's nest
on the beam there—do you see it?”
Dimsdale looked up, and saw nothing. He
shook his head.
“I see nothing but cobwebs" he said. “Where?”
4


The Threshing-Floor 25
“There—don't you see? Crane your neck more.”
Dimsdale tilted his head back as far as he could
—his throat, loosely confined in a hunting scarf,
stretched until a convenient hollow appeared in it.
With the speed of a monkey Brigit snatched up a
handful of the loose hay-seed lying on the floor at
their feet and thrust it into the opening between
Dimsdale's neck and his scarf. He screamed as if
a hundred needles had been forced into his skin.
Brigit clapped her hands and laughed.
“Confound you, Bid ' " said Dimsdale, trying to
tear the irritating particles out of his throat.
“I’ll pay you out for that—I’ll roll you head first
into the hay now!”
Brigit shrieked and started for the door. Dims-
dale, with an adroit movement, tripped her up.
They fell, rolling over each other, into the loosely
piled hay, struggling like a couple of young tigers.
Suddenly Brigit, with a vigorous thrust of her
muscular arms, flung Dimsdale aside and jumped
to her feet. He too rose, slowly.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I heard somebody laugh,” she answered.
“Nonsense ! Couldn't have been,” he said.
“I did, all the same.”
They looked at each other questioningly.
She began to pick the loose bits of hay out of
her dress.
“What a mess to be in l’” she said at last. “Here,
let's get out of this. Go into the orchard, Dimmy,
and I'll bring you some ale. I’m going into the
house.”


CHA PTER IV
LIzzIE BRAITHWAITE dashed back into the dairy
as suddenly as she had dashed out of it. Hannah,
who had gone back there to give her younger
assistant an order, glanced sharply at her as she
entered. The girl's face was flushed, her eyes
bright with excitement; she was laughing half
hysterically. She dropped into a chair, panting,
and she looked at Hannah with a glance in which
defiance and cunning were mingled.
“Where have you been, Lizzie P” said Hannah
sharply. “Where have you been, I say?”
Lizzie nodded her head two or three times. She
got up and put on her apron. Hannah noticed
that her fingers were trembling. She seized the
girl by the shoulder and shook her.
“Where have you been P” she said again. “Do
you hear, girl?”
“Never you mind, Hannah Coulson,” said
Lizzie, shaking herself free, “and keep your hands
to yourself. I know where I've been, and what I've
seen too.”
Hannah caught her breath; her right hand went
suddenly to her side as if a sudden pain had struck
her.
“Seen P” she said. “Seen P”
27


28 The Threshing-Floor
Lizzie jerked her head.
“They're ready enough to say anything if a
poor girl has a bit of fun,” she said sneeringly,
“but they're no better themselves, these fine young
madams, when it comes to it. Not they !”
“Hold your tongue !” said Hannah, in a fierce
whisper, as she looked fearfully at the open doors
and windows. “Hold your tongue, girl | "
“Hold yours!” retorted Lizzie impudently.
Hannah stood, hands on hips, watching the
girl's flushed face. She was as certain of what
had happened as that she stood in the dairy; her
brain was whirling with the possibilities of what
might result from Lizzie's newly-acquired know-
ledge. She drew a long breath and tried to
speak.
“Lizzie,” she began, “listen to"—
A quick step in the great kitchen interrupted
her. Brigit's voice sounded.
“Hannah l’”
“Yes, Miss Brigit.”
“Where's the key of the cellar P I want a glass
of ale for Mr. Dimsdale.”
Hannah drew a key from her pocket and went
slowly into the great kitchen with it. Brigit,
calm and composed, was taking a jug from the
china cupboard. Hannah looked at her steadily
as she took the key and wondered at her self-
possession.
“Shall I get it for you, Miss Brigit?” she said.
“No, thank you, Hannah,” Brigit replied. “I’ll
get it myself.”


The Threshing-Floor 29
She turned out of the kitchen into a long stone
passage, and walked steadily towards the beer-
cellar at its farther extremity. Hannah gazed
after her until Brigit had placed the key in the
lock; then, suddenly making up her mind, she
followed her and stepped into the cellar as her
young mistress placed the jug under the tap of
one of the ale casks.
“Miss Brigit,” she said.
Brigit looked up in the gloom of the cellar. She
saw that Hannah knew, and she felt the blood
rush hotly to her cheeks. But she gazed unflinch-
ingly and frankly into the old servant's face, and
her voice was clear and steady when she spoke.
“Yes, Hannah P” she said.
“Miss Brigit, Lizzie's been watching you and
Mr. Dimsdale. She slipped out when my back
was turned.”
Brigit turned the tap of the barrel: the ale ran
out into the jug with a musical tinkling.
“I thought so,” she said quietly.
Hannah waited a second or two, thinking.
“She’ll not keep her tongue still, Miss Brigit,”
she said. “She'll talk.”
“Will she?” said Brigit.
She stood there watching the ale run into the
jug, and to the elder woman, eyeing her anxiously,
it seemed that she might be thinking of some plan
of action. But she suddenly turned to Hannah
and fixed a look of deep scrutiny upon the
woman's troubled face.
“Hannah,” she said.


3O The Threshing-Floor
“Yes, Miss Brigit.”
“Did you know of it?”
Hannah shook her head slowly.
“No, miss, but "-
“You suspected it?”
“Yes, miss, this long time. But it—it was not
my business. And—no one that knows them
dares to interfere with a Challenger.”
Brigit turned the key and picked up the jug.
“No,” she said. “Well—it is so : I thought
you knew. It-it's in the blood: it's in all of us.
That with the women—and this,” she glanced at
the jug, “this with the men. Do you think I
don't know what they say of us—that there never
was a woman amongst us that was virtuous or a
man that was sober P”
Hannah made no reply. They moved out of
the cellar together. Brigit locked the door and
gave Hannah the key.
“She'll talk, Miss Brigit,” said Hannah hope-
lessly. “She's that sort.”
“I’ll speak to her,” said Brigit.
She set the jug of ale down on the kitchen table
and walked into the dairy. Lizzie Braithwaite was
washing out the churn ; at her young mistress's
entrance she looked up, and at Brigit's direct
glance her eyes shifted away uneasily.
“Lizzie,” said Brigit, “you've been following
and watching me.”
Lizzie made no reply, Hannah, standing by in
great anxiety, saw Brigit's eyes suddenly flash and
her lips assume a straight line, and she began


The Threshing-Floor 3 I
to tremble, for she knew the hot Challenger
temper well by long and bitter experience.
“Answer,” said Brigit, more calmly than ever.
Lizzie maintained an obstinate silence, affecting
to be very busy with the churn. The signs of a
coming storm increased quickly in Brigit's face.
“Do you hear me?” she said. “Answer.”
Lizzie frowned.
“There's no call for me to say aught,” she
murmured. “I shall say what I like and when I
like.”
“Listen,” said Brigit. “Say one word about
me to anyone, and I'll thrash you till you can't
stand.”
“No, you won't!” retorted Lizzie. “The law's
as much for me as it is for you, and I’ll dare you to
lay a finger on me. And I’ll say what I please for
you or anybody else. You dare to touch me!”
“Take care, now, and hold your tongue—it’ll be
the worse for you if you don't,” said Brigit, still
watching her intently.
“I’ll not hold my tongue for you or anybody,”
answered the girl. “I didn't come here to be made
a slave of and ordered about. I’m as good as you
are any day—and a deal better, for that matter.”
“So you won’t hold your tongue?” asked Brigit,
very quietly.
“I shall do as I like,” answered Lizzie, with a
sneer. “It’s my own.” -
Brigit drew a deep breath. Hannah, seeing that
the storm was about to burst, murmured some
entreaty and laid her hand on Brigit's arm. Brigit


The Threshing-Floor 33
by the deadly passion in her eyes. She began to
dance, first on one leg, then on the other.
“Five,” said Brigit. “Now then, you shall have
it.”
The long, lithe whip came curling round the
girl's arms and shoulders like a sudden flame of
bitterly-biting fire, and the crack of it mingled with
the first scream of rage and pain which Lizzie set
up. A second lash made her leap wildly in the
air; at the third she howled like a wild beast and
made a desperate dash at her assailant. Brigit
laughed. As the girl came on she caught her
adroitly by the throat, and holding her at arm's
length, thrashed her to her heart's content.


CHA PTER V
DIMSDALE, lounging, hands in pockets and
cigarette in mouth, in an old arbour in the garden,
thought Brigit a long time in coming to him.
When she at last appeared, carrying the ale and a
glass, he looked at her interrogatively. In spite of
her recent outburst she was calm again, save for a
slight flush on her cheeks and a dangerous sparkle
in her eyes. Her hand, as she poured out the ale,
was steady enough.
“Well?” said Dimsdale. “Did you find any-
thing out?”
Brigit produced a stick of chocolate from her
pocket, stripped the silver paper from it, and
bit a large piece off with her strong white teeth.
With the sweetmeat bulging out her cheek she
nodded.
“Um,” she said. “It was that little beast, Lizzie
Braithwaite. I thought she was sly—she looked
it.”
“Damn !” said Dimsdale. He took a sip
at the ale, and holding the glass up to the light,
looked critically at the colour. “That's in grand
condition, Bid,” he observed, with the air of a
connoisseur.
34 *


The Threshing-Floor 35
Brigit laughed—there was something like a sneer
in the laugh.
“Anything in the way of drink is always in
grand condition at Abbotsholme,” she said. “If
we were without meat we should never be without
drink.”
“Well,” said Dimsdale, ignoring this observation,
“what did you do?”
“Do P’’
“About the girl?”
“I gave her a sound thrashing with Denys's
dog-whip,” answered Brigit. “She’ll not forget it
as long as she lives.”
“What a devil you are, Bid ' " he exclaimed.
“Now she'll go and tell it all over.”
“Naturally,” said Brigit. “That was just why I
thrashed her in advance. And I don't care. We
care for nothing, we Challengers—neither God, nor
devil, nor man. It's our way—it's in us.”
“That's all very well,” said Dimsdale. “But
what about me? Where does the girl come from ?
—she'll be telling her friends.”
“She's gone off to do that now,” said Brigit, with
calm unconcern. “She's running across the fields
towards Granton, bent on telling everybody. Of
course, it's all up.”
Dimsdale started to his feet. His expression
was one of fear and anxiety.
“If my people get to know of it,” he said, “I
don't know what'll happen — they're so awfully
particular. Hang it, Bid, couldn't you have talked
the girl over, bribed her, or something?”


36 The Threshing-Floor
Brigit bit off more chocolate, stowed the lump
in her cheek, and looked at Dimsdale with
speculative eyes. And presently she laughed.
“What do you laugh like that for?” the lad
said, half-angrily, half-suspiciously. “And what
are you looking at me in that way for with your
eyes half shut?”
“I was thinking,” said Brigit. “Thinking what
a brave little boy you are Also that you are just
like the little boy who, if he does get a tart given
to him, likes to run away and hide while he is
eating it. What will happen when your mamma
hears of your naughtiness—will you be put to bed
—or will she whip you?”
“Damn it, shut up!” he snapped out. “It’s no
laughing matter.”
Brigit yawned.
“I wish I knew a real man,” she said. “I’m
wasted on mere boys.”
Dimsdale gave her a queer look. He drank his
ale, got up, and fidgeted.
“Which way did you say that confounded girl
had gone?” he asked.
“I said to Granton,” replied Brigit.
“Then I'm going after her,” he said. “If I can't
do anything else I'll bribe her to silence. She
mustn't be allowed to blab all that—I’d be ruined.
I’m off.”
“Go, little baby boy,” said Brigit taunt-
ingly.
He went away towards his horse without another
word, and Brigit remained sitting in the arbour,


The Threshing-Floor 37
munching the chocolate. Suddenly her cheeks
grew hot and scarlet, and a dull glow stole into
her eyes—she had remembered that Lizzie had
mentioned old Jacob as having knowledge of his
young mistress's goings-on.
* ~ * * * * *
“is * * 3-#.


CHAPTER VI
AS Brigit sat there, thinking, an image of the past
came up before her, conjured into existence by the
thought of old Jacob. She remembered herself as
a very young girl, motherless, almost companion-
less, living a strange life with her self-willed,
violent - natured, heavy-drinking father and her
already degenerate brother, and with none to turn
to but Hannah Coulson and Jacob Garthen. She
remembered how she used to follow Jacob all over
the farm ; how he used to show her where the birds'
nests were in spring and tell her tales by the
kitchen fire in winter; how, when she was still
younger, he used to carry her in his arms or on his
shoulder when she felt tired on some longer excur-
sion than usual; how he made simple toys for her
to play with, and ashen whistles wherewith to
summon the sheep-dogs. They had been close
companions, she as a child and he as an old man.
She remembered, with a strange feeling of regret
and longing which almost frightened her, that when
they went walking in the woods to look for birds
or squirrels she used to slip her hand in his, and
liked—she could remember the feeling still—to
feel the hard, toil-worn palm that closed over hers
so gently. And all that seemed very far away.
38


The Threshing-Floor 39
Of late she had given way to the impulses of her
nature, and the old, simple pleasures had slipped
from her. Her cheeks grew hotter as she thought
of what Lizzie had blurted out in her rage.
“I wish — I wish Jacob hadn't known l’ she
said.
She got up presently, and passing through the
garden and the house entered the fold and made
her way to the byre, where Jacob Garthen spent
the greater part of his time. There was a little
outhouse close by it furnished with a grindstone
whereat he ground various tools and implements
in use on the farm, and she expected to find him
there now. She wanted to see him, to speak to
him there and then, but she did not know why—it
was some impulse.
She heard no sound as she drew near to the little
outhouse, though she knew that Jacob usually
whistled or sang when he was there—the top half
of its divided door was open, and she crept up to
it on tiptoe and looked in. Jacob was kneeling
behind the grindstone, his eyes closed, his hands
tightly clasped before him, and his uplifted face
was strenuous and worn with inward striving.
And on his rugged, weather-beaten cheeks Brigit
SaW tears.
A great wave of feeling, that seemed to well up
from some hitherto untouched spring in her heart,
suddenly broke loose and flooded the girl's whole
being. With something between a sob and a
laugh she burst in upon the old man, flung herself
on her knees at his side, and throwing her arms


4O The Threshing-Floor
round his neck, drew his head against her breast
and passionately kissed away the tears from his
cheeks.
“Oh, Jacob l’ she cried. “”Tis I—I who've
made you cry. Isn't it—isn't it? Oh, Jacob, and
I wouldn't hurt you for worlds.”
She strained him to her as fiercely as if he had
been a fondly-cherished lover, and she shook him
in her vehemence, still kissing away the tears.
“It was I,” she repeated. “I’ve hurt you—I
Oh 1”
The old man got up from his knees—Brigit
remained kneeling, clinging to one of his hands and
looking earnestly into his face. The hot flush had
almost gone from her own, but her eyes were
troubled and full of tears and her mouth trembled
as if she were about to break into passionate weep-
ing. Jacob laid his free hand gently on her head,
and looked down at her with eyes full of sorrowful
tenderness.
“Ay, my little gell,” he said, “but it's not the
first time thee's made old Jacob cry.”
Brigit uttered a little moan ; her eyes fell before
his, and she dropped her head and leaned it
against him. The old man's hand stroked her
hair tremblingly.
“I was praying to the Lord for thee, bairn,” he
said simply. “Thee's giving thyself up to bad
ways—thee's in danger of becoming a light woman.
And if thee goes on in that way thee'll be ruined,
soul and body.”
The old man's voice was very grave in spite of


The Threshing-Floor 4 I
its kindness, and there was a note of dignity and
authority in it which cut Brigit like a knife.
“Don’t have no more to do with yon wicked
lad,” Jacob went on. “He’s bad and worthless.
Send him away, bairn—never speak to him more.
He's bad.”
Brigit's eyes swept his face in a flash of childlike
candour.
“But I'm bad too,” she said. “We’re a bad lot,
we Challengers. Everybody knows it—everybody
says it. It's in us, it's in our blood—it's fate or
a curse, or something. Look at father—look at
Denys. It's hopeless, I’m not good—I’ve never
been good since I was seventeen.”
“Hush, bairn, hush! It's blasphemy before the
Lord to say that His creatures are bad through
fate or curses. It's in man's and woman's own
power to save their souls or ruin them,” said Jacob
sternly. “Pull up, bairn, pull up before it's too late
—thee's young yet, and repentance is easier in the
young than in the old. Be a brave lass and face the
truth, and make up thy mind to be a good woman.”
“But they say that's impossible in a Challenger,”
she sighed. The sigh changed suddenly to a laugh.
“I should be the first,” she said half-whimsically.
“And I’m not good.”
Jacob dropped with a weary sigh into an old
chair which stood near the bench on which the
tools and implements were set out. He put his
arm round the girl's shoulder, and lifting her face
with his hand looked steadily into her eyes. Brigit
looked back at him fearlessly, candidly.


42 The Threshing-Floor
“My poor lass,” he said, “thee's had little
chance, for it's a wild, lawless, proud family is
thine, and there's been naught but bad examples
set before thee. But thee wert a loving child in
the days when old Jacob used to take thee with
him up and down, and thee'st got a warm heart.
Don't throw away thy womanhood on badness |
Doesn't thee want to be a good woman, my
pretty P an’ thee so bonny and handsome !”
Brigit looked down at the old man's hand, and
began to stroke it with the tips of her fingers.
Her eyes wandered from his fingers to his face;
once or twice her lips parted as if she were going
to speak, but no words came. A strange look, as
of a hungry soul, came into her eyes, and the old
man saw and understood it. He laid his hand
gently on her head. -
“The Lord help thee, my bairn,” he said
fervently. -
Brigit rose from her knees. She pushed the hair
away from her forehead with a gesture peculiar to
herself, and then, without further remark, she bent
down and kissed the old man's cheek and pressed
his hand. Turning abruptly away, she left the
outhouse and recrossed the fold. As she emerged
from it she saw Marriot ride into the paddock and
approach the farmstead.


CHAPT ER VII
MARRIOT and Brigit met at the porch which gave
entrance to the front part of the house. She had
paused there, looking expectantly at the stranger.
He rode slowly up the paddock, dismounted at a
few yards distance from her, and came forward,
lifting his hat. The two gazed at each other
steadily, narrowly. Brigit's eyes were still moist
and bright, her cheeks still flushed from the
memories of the morning. As Marriot gazed at
her her colour rose, and he, noting her beauty and
the ripe strength of her womanhood as quick eyes
note the dominant features of a fine picture that is
suddenly thrust before them, felt a sharp impelling
thrill of admiration flash through him. She,
observing him as shrewdly, was conscious of his
physical and mental strength—she gazed, at his
athletic figure, determined face, and steady eyes
with an instinctive appreciation of their meaning.
Brigit spoke first.
“Mr. Marriot P” she said inquiringly.
“Yes,” answered Marriot, surprised to find
himself known. “Miss Challenger, I presume?”
Brigit nodded, still examining him closely.
“Yes,” she said. “My father left a message for
you. He has gone over the hills, and will be home
43


44 The Threshing-Floor
again at one o'clock, when dinner will be ready.
You are to stay until then and dine with us. After
that he will show you the landslip.”
Marriot smiled at the peremptory fashion in
which Brigit delivered this message. She might
have been an aide-de-camp announcing a briga-
dier's orders to the commanding officer of a
battalion. He drew out his watch.
“That's very kind of your father, Miss
Challenger,” he said. “But it's now only twelve
o'clock, and my time is valuable. Couldn't I ride
after your father? I've already spent all the
morning in searching for him. Young Mr.
Warrington, whom I met on the high road up
there, nearly two hours ago, told me that I should
be sure to find Mr. Challenger at the White Hart
at Highdale, and I rode there, but got no news of
him.”
Brigit laughed.
“You can’t ride after him,” she said, “because I
couldn't possibly give you any precise direction—
he's on the fells. And, beside, he said you must
stop.”
Marriot laughed pleasantly.
“Must, eh?” he said. “Is—is Mr. Challenger's
word law in these parts?”
“It is at Abbotsholme, at any rate,” replied Brigit.
Marriot looked at her narrowly, and smiled.
“And suppose—suppose I wouldn't stop?” he
said.
“In that case,” answered Brigit resignedly, “I
should have to pay for it.”


The Threshing-Floor 45
“You ! ”
“Yes, I. Because, you see, he intrusted me
with the order, and therefore naturally expects me
to see it carried out.”
Marriot's eyebrows went up.
“And—and if you didn't carry out the order?”
he asked. “What then P. "
Brigit shrugged her shoulders.
“It depends upon his mood,” she answered.
“It's never wise to cross a Challenger. Perhaps
he would box my ears, perhaps give me a cut with
his riding-whip. Who can tell ?”
Marriot nodded his head.
“In that case,” he said slowly, “I had better
comply with Mr. Challenger's wishes.”
“Much better,” said Brigit. “Give me your
horse.”
She seized the horse's bridle as she spoke, and
Marriot, mechanically releasing it, watched her
firm steps and graceful movements as she led the
animal across the paddock to the door of the fold.
Then she called loudly—
“Jacob! Here! Quickl"
The old man, hearing this urgent summons, came
hurrying from his little outhouse across the fold.
Brigit handed the horse to him.
“Put this gentleman's horse up, Jacob, and give
it a feed,” she commanded. Turning back to
Marriot, she motioned him towards the porch.
“Come in, Mr. Marriot,” she said. “You must be
tired after riding so long.”
Marriot followed her through the porch into a


46 The Threshing-Floor
great stone hall which had originally been the
refectory of the abbey and was now converted into
use as a family living-room. Brigit pointed him to
a Seat.
“What will you drink?” she asked in a casual,
off-hand fashion which showed him that the
question was one which was constantly on her lips.
“Ale—gin—whisky—brandy—which P”
“None of them, thank you,” answered Marriot,
smiling. “I’m a teetotaller.”
Brigit, who had been glancing at the spirit
decanters on the sideboard, faced sharply round
on him. Her eyebrows drew together and her lips
parted in astonishment.
“A teetotaller P’’ she said. “You don't drink
anything?”
“None of those things, at any rate,” he replied,
still smiling. “Is that so very wonderful, Miss
Challenger ?”
“It is to me,” answered Brigit. “I never met a
man who didn't drink—good heavens, no | They
all do who come here. And you look such a strong
man too.”
Marriot laughed heartily.
“Strong ' " he said. “Ah—and so I am. I'm a
bit foolishly vain of my strength—I'm afraid I
rather boast of it sometimes. I’ve won—oh, I
don't know how many prizes at athletic meetings
for running, jumping, hammer-throwing, and I'm a
bit of a hand at boxing too. Strong ! Oh yes,
I'm strong enough—it's just because I don't drink
that I am strong.”


The Threshing-Floor 47
“All the same,” said Brigit, “you're the first man
I ever met who didn't. Our men—my father and
brother—oh ”
Marriot made no reply to this burst of confi-
dence. He looked away from her while it was being
made, but presently he looked back and smiled.
“I didn't say I don't drink anything,” he said.
“I should be very glad indeed of a glass of milk.”
Brigit hastened out of the stone hall towards the
kitchen. Marriot, who had looked at nothing but
her while she remained in his presence, now turned
his attention to his surroundings, which he ex-
amined with great interest and curiosity. The
stone hall was of considerable size—his experienced
eye estimated it to measure forty by twenty feet.
To his great surprise, it still retained many features
of its original arrangement and condition. The
vaulted and decorated roof remained as in ancient
times; the wainscoting, dark with age, was still
in excellent preservation; at the east end, above
the site where the mensa major, or high table for
the superior, had stood, the Majestas, or picture
of our Lord in glory, faded in colour, but plainly
discernible, still decorated the wall; while at the
other end were still placed the three great presses,
stoutly clamped with iron, wherein the plate, linen,
salt-cellars, and table requirements had been kept
by the refectorarian and his assistants. On the
side opposite to the great entrance was a gallery,
set high in the wall, and reached by steep flights
of stairs at either end. Its stout oaken balusters
and railings, like the wainscoting below, were


48 The Threshing-Floor
black with age, but they were still apparently as
sound and strong as ever, and Marriot formed the
opinion, after a critical inspection of the whole
place, that there had been no interval of any
appreciable extent between the expulsion of the
monks and the incoming of lay tenants.
Of the modern furnishing of this ancient apart-
ment Marriot made a less careful examination,
but he perceived, with the quick eye of a man who
has trained himself to see things at a glance, that
there was little about it that was not quaint and
old-fashioned. There were oak chests, oak tables,
oak benches and chairs; the upholstery of the
chairs was faded, worn, much darned and patched.
In an old press there were many old books in
leather and parchment bindings—of new books,
newspapers, magazines, he saw no sign. Here and
there on the panelling of the wainscot hung family
portraits, chiefly of men with red beards, high
foreheads, and blue eyes set close together; there
were also two or three of women, and in one he
fancied that he detected some resemblance to
Brigit. Over the great fireplace there were rows
upon rows of heavy brass candlesticks, highly
burnished and polished—indeed, everything in the
hall was in that scrupulous condition of cleanliness
which suggests house-proudness carried to almost
too great an extent. And that someone possessed
a love of flowers was evidenced by the presence
here and there of china vases filled with roses of
many varieties whose odour hung thick and heavy
in the summer air.


The Threshing-Floor 49
Brigit came back carrying a pitcher and a glass.
She pulled a little table near Marriot's chair and
set them at his side.
“It is good milk,” she said; “the best, they
say, in these parts. We send a lot of it into
Normancaster every night and morning.”
Marriot thanked her, and drank. She watched
him with amused eyes.
“It's funny to see a big strong man drinking
milk l’” she said.
“I wonder if you imitate Queen Elizabeth's
example,” he said, looking at her with some
speculation. “She drank ale for breakfast.”
“I?” said Brigit. “No, I'm like you—I never
drink anything of that sort. Not I, indeed—I see
too much of that in my folk.”
“This is a fine old hall,” said Marriot, steering
away from personal subjects. “And there is so
much in it that really is old. More than old—
ancient.”
Brigit glanced almost indifferently at the familiar
surroundings thus warmly praised by a stranger.
“Yes,” she said. “There's not much, if any-
thing, that's new in the house. I never remember
anything new being brought into it—except a new
patent churn, or a cream separator, or something
of that sort. It's an old house, and old things, and
an old family—we've been here ever since they
turned the monks out.”
“That,” said Marriot, looking around him, “I
can quite believe.”
“They say,” she went on, “that this room is
4


5o The Threshing-Floor
haunted. I’ve never seen or heard anything, and
I don't think I believe in it. But my father does.
And Denys too—my brother. They believe it,
like children.”
Marriot looked at her questioningly.
“What is it?” he asked. “An apparition?”
Brigit nodded and pointed to a cross cut in the
stone floor at the foot of one of the steep stairways
which led up to the gallery.
“Do you see that cross?” she said. “Well,
this is how the story goes: when the monks were
turned out by—Henry the Eighth, wasn't it?—their
house and lands were given to an ancestor of ours,
Rufus Challenger. I think he must have been
like the rest of us—very bad-tempered, and not
very fond of being contradicted or thwarted. The
last abbot, and one or two of his monks, wouldn't
turn out, so Rufus Challenger came here himself
to turn them out with his own hands. He came
across the old abbot at the end of the gallery
there, and he seized him by the throat and flung
him down the stairs. You see how steep they are P
—well, the old man fell on his head, just where the
cross is cut, and broke his neck. It is his ghost,
they say, that haunts the place. It's said that he
appears to every Challenger who is going to diea
violent death. And if that's true,” she concluded,
with an enigmatical smile which puzzled Marriot,
“he must have made a good many appear-
ances.”
“Are there so many violent deaths in the family
record, then P” Marriot inquired.


The Threshing-Floor 5 I
“Pretty middling,” she answered carelessly.
“They say that the family has been under a
curse ever since Rufus Challenger threw the abbot
downstairs and killed him, and it's certain that all
the men have lived wildly and recklessly. Some
have died in duels, some have broken their necks
in riding like madmen over the fells, some have
been drowned, one at least was hanged at York
for murder. A nice lot, weren't they?”
“It's a weird story, certainly,” said Marriot,
without directly replying to Brigit's question. He
rose and walked over to one of the windows which
commanded a view of the valley and the Swirl.
“But this is a weird country, I think—full of romance
and so on. When I was coming along the high
road up there this morning, I heard a woman
singing what I took to be some old countryside
ballad, and it made my flesh creep. Let's see now
—how did it go. Something like this, I think—
‘This a nighte, this a nighte,
This a nighte and alle.’”
Brigit interrupted him with a quick gesture of
recognition. She had taken a seat at the table on
which the jug of milk stood, and had propped her
elbows on it and dropped her rounded chin upon
her folded hands. She nodded her head across
the hall at Marriot.
“Oh yes,” she said. “That's the Lyke Wake
Dirge—I’ve heard it sung more than once. It is
weird.”
“Can you sing it?” asked Marriot.


52 The Threshing-Floor
She shook her head.
“No,” she answered, “because I can't sing. But
I can say it. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” he said. “I would like to.”
He sat down opposite the table, with his back
to the light, and folding his arms watched her
intently. She, reciting the dirge, kept her eyes,
dreamy and inscrutable, fixed on his until she had
finished.
“This a nighte, this a nighte,
Every nighte and alle;
Fire and fleet and candle-light,
And Christe receive thy saule.
When thou from hence away art past,
Every nighte and alle;
To Whinny Moor thou comes at last,
And Christe receive thy saule.
If ever thou gave either hosen or shoon,
Every nighte and alle;
Sit thee down and put them on,
And Christe receive thy saule.
But if hosen or shoon thou never gave neean,
Every nighte and alle;
The Whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beean,
And Christe receive thy saule.
From Whinny Moor when thou may passe,
Every nighte and alle;
To Brig o' Dread thou comes at last,
And Christe receive thy saule.
From Brig o' Dread when thou art paste,
Every nighte and alle;
To Purgatory fire thou comes at laste,
And Christe receive thy Saule.


The Threshing-Floor 53
If ever thou gave either meat or drinke,
Every nighte and alle;
The fire shall never make thee shrinke,
And Christe receive thy saule.
But if meat nor drink thou never gave neean,
Every nighte and alle;
The fire shall burn thee to the bare beean,
And Christe receive thy saule.”
“Have you never heard that before?” asked
Brigit. “It is well known in the Dales and all
over the North Riding.”
“I am from the Midlands,” answered Marriot.
“I have never lived in Yorkshire. It's a ghostly,
weird thing; it—it suggests so much. Do you
know much more of that sort of thing, Miss
Challenger ?”
“Oh, I know lots of old weird tales, and ballads,
and country stories. Our cowman, old Jacob
Garthen, though he's a Quaker, and a very
religious man, knows a lot of countryside legends
and fairy tales, and he used to tell them to me
when I was little. He’—
Brigit suddenly stopped and rose to her feet in
an attitude of expectancy. She moved away to one
of the windows and looked out into the paddock.
“Here's my father,” she murmured. “And he's
got a tramp with him.”
Marriot stepped to her side. Looking out of
the window, he saw a tall man mounted on a stout
cob advancing towards the house. By his side
walked another man, poor, travel-stained, a man
out of work, or a tramp, as Brigit had said.


54 The Threshing-Floor
“Now there will be two guests to dinnerl" she
exclaimed, glancing at Marriot with one of the
enigmatical smiles which he could not understand.
“It is one of our ways to entertain any poor man
or tramp who comes begging, and they sit as
honoured guests at our table. But we are so out
of the way here that it is very seldom we are thus
visited. I thought I'd tell you that, so that you'd
understand. Now you will excuse me—I must see
that the dinner preparations are going forward, or
there will be a row.”
She left the hall quickly, and Marriot sat down
again, mystified by the events of the morning,
inwardly warmed by the charm and atmosphere
of Brigit, and not a little puzzled by the strange-
ness of his surroundings and the things that he
had heard and seen.


CHAPTER VIII
WHILE Marriot and Brigit were talking in the old
refectory, Dimsdale was riding hard across the
fields in the direction of Granton, intent on catch-
ing Lizzie Braithwaite up before she reached the
village. It happened luckily, he said to himself,
that he had money about him. That morning his
mother had given him twenty pounds wherewith to
buy a bicycle on which he had recently set his
heart, and it reposed in the form of four brand-
new five-pound notes in his waistcoat pocket.
Dimsdale at nineteen knew enough of the world
to feel sure that one of those notes would keep
Lizzie's tongue still for a time at any rate. And,
he reflected, the bicycle man would be quite con-
tent if he paid him fifteen pounds on account, and
would give him a long spell of credit for the
balance. Anyway, no news of his carryings-on
with Brigit Challenger must reach his father's
ears. A cold sweat burst over him at the mere
notion, and he pressed his horse faster in pursuit
of the fugitive.
Lizzie had run out of the house just as she was.
She was in a white heat of passion, fury, and a
desire for speedy vengeance. She had ceased
sobbing before Brigit had finished thrashing her,
55


56 The Threshing-Floor
and as she ran along the cart-track which crossed
the fields to Granton, her eyes were tearless and
her teeth set hard in her ecstasy of rage and
resentment. But after she had run a good mile
her breath gave out, she became exhausted, and
sinking down on a grass-covered bank, which shut
off a thick plantation of young fir and pine from
the track, she covered her face with her hands and
burst into bitter weeping.
It was here that Dimsdale found her. He saw
her before she saw him, and leaping from his horse,
he fastened its bridle to a tree, and went gently
towards her. Before she knew that he was there
he had dropped at her side and slipped one arm
round her waist.
“There—there !” he said soothingly. “Don’t
cry so, Lizzie. I'm sorry—upon my honour, I am.
I'd have stopped it if I could. I wish I'd known
what she was after. But she's such a temper.
Don't cry.”
The girl showed no recognition of the fact
that Dimsdale was embracing her. With a purely
feminine instinct she dropped her head on his
shoulder and cried the more. Dimsdale began
to stroke her face.
“It was a confounded shame !” he said. “I’ve
told her so—I’ve told her my mind, I can tell
you. Little devil | It's disgraceful.”
Lizzie suddenly burst into active life again.
With eyes flashing fire, and mouth quivering with
indignant passion, she sat up straight at his side
and tore off her print bodice, uncovering her


The Threshing-Floor 57
shoulders, her arms, and her bosom. In her
abandonment she would have stripped herself
with a sublime unconsciousness.
“Look there !” she said, utterly careless as to
whose ears she was addressing herself. “Look
there ! And I was never struck before—never !”
“By George l’” said Dimsdale. “She is a little
devil l’’
Lizzie's shoulders and arms bore all too plainly
the traces of the dog-whip. One lash had curled
right round shoulder and left a scarlet line across
her bosom, heightening its whiteness. Dimsdale
bent his head and kissed it.
“There !” he said. “Let's kiss it better. You
believe I’m sorry, don't you, Lizzie P”
Lizzie made no answer. She had no objection
at that emotional moment to being kissed and
fondled, and there was something of a vague
consolation in the fact that she was being kissed
by the enemy's lover. She let Dimsdale press his
lips to her bosom again, and when he transferred
his kisses to her lips she kissed him back.
Dimsdale's essentially wicked young intellect
suddenly saw more ways than one of buying
Lizzie's silence. He glanced round him—behind
them a little wicket gate gave entrance to the
thickly-branched plantation. There was no one
in sight along the track in either direction.
“See, Lizzie,” he said coaxingly. “I want to
talk to you—privately. Come into the plantation
—somebody might see us here. Come.”
Lizzie rose readily. Looking down, she caught


58. The Threshing-Floor
sight of her uncovered bosom and blushed.
Dimsdale affected to take no notice: he rose with
assumed unconcern, and strolled lazily towards the
gate of the little plantation.
“It wouldn't do for us to be seen talking there,’
he said over his shoulder. “Come in here under
the trees, Lizzie.”
He threw open the wicket gate as he spoke.
Lizzie, following him closely, slipped through.
They disappeared amongst the firs and pines.
When they came out of the plantation half an
hour later they paused at the wicket gate and
kissed each other.
“You’ll not say a word now, Liz P” said Dims-
dale.
“No,” answered Lizzie, “I shan't—now.”
“And you'll meet me on Friday night, at dusk,
at Dead Man's Copse?” he said, kissing her again.
“Ye-es,” answered Lizzie.
“Well, look—you wait here while I get my horse
and ride off to Granton, and then, if the coast's
clear, you cut off to the farm,” he said. “And
don't say a word, whatever she says. I'll make
it up to you.”
He left her then, and running back to his horse,
mounted it and presently rode past her. Lizzie
nodded and smiled, still blushing and conscious.
When he had gone she slipped out of the planta-
tion and returned slowly towards the farm. Half-
way there she drew a five-pound note out of her
pocket and looked it carefully over before re-
placing it.


The Threshing-Floor 59
“I’ll have a new best gown, and a new Sunday
hat, and gloves, and happen a parasol, out of that,”
she said. “And this isn't to be the last, neither.”
She walked on with slower steps, thinking, and
suddenly she laughed with malicious glee.
“I’ll pay you out, my fine lady 1" she said. “I’ll
pay you out !” Then she went on with quicker
steps in the direction of the farm.


CHAPTER IX
GABRIEL CHALLENGER brought his tramp into the
house by the front door. He pointed him to a
chair in the stone hall.
“There, my friend,” he said, “sit you down until
the dinner be ready. Then you can eat and drink,
and go on your way refreshed.”
He turned then to Marriot, who stood on the
hearth closely examining Brigit's father. Gabriel
Challenger was a tall man, over six feet in
height, sparely rather than heavily built, but of
a great breadth of shoulder and depth of chest.
His face struck Marriot as remarkable. He had
a high, very white forehead, and a thick thatch
of vivid red hair surmounting it, clipped close and
coming to a point in the centre; his eyes, small
and very blue, were set close together; his nose was
long, sharp, and slightly hooked; his teeth gleamed
brilliantly from beneath his moustache, and the
moustache and the forked beard which covered his
long chin were as red as his hair. Marriot glanced
involuntarily from Gabriel Challenger to the old
portraits on the wainscoting: between his host's
face and those pictured there the resemblance was
striking.
Challenger held out his hand.
60


The Threshing-Floor 6 I
“Mr. Marriot,” he said. “I am glad to see you
I hope I have not taxed your patience too long.
But I knew this was your first day in these parts,
and on a first day a man is little inclined for work,
and so I told my daughter to keep you to dinner.
After dinner we will talk of the landslip.”
Marriot made no direct reply to these remarks
—his own notion of what a new broom should do
was in direct contradiction to Challenger's. He
shook his host's hand, and observed that it had
been a pleasure to ride out into the country on
such a fine day.
“It is a fine day, and a warm day, and a thirsty
day,” said Challenger. “We will drink a glass of
ale before dinner—and I am old-fashioned enough,
Mr. Marriot, to brew my own ale, and there is no
better in England. Brigit—ale !”
But Brigit, from long experience, had anticipated
her father's wishes, and she now entered the stone
hall bearing a salver on which stood a foaming jug
of ale and two glasses. She set it on the table at
her father's side. Challenger glanced at it, and
then at her.
“What is this?” he said. “Two glasses and
three mouths. How now, Brigit?”
“Mr. Marriot,” said Brigit calmly, “does not
drink ale—he is a teetotaller.”
Challenger, unlike his daughter, betrayed no
surprise at this announcement. He bowed his
head with a species of resignation.
“Indeed,” he said. “Well, everyone to his own
liking.” He turned to the tramp, who sat, staring


62 The Threshing-Floor
around him, on the edge of the chair to which
Challenger had pointed him on their entrance.
“Are you also a teetotaller, my friend?”
The man's eyes fastened themselves on the
foaming jug and glistened greedily.
“No, sir,” he said. “I like a glass of ale—when
I can get it.”
“Then there is one of the finest you ever
tasted,” said Challenger, handing him a glass.
He poured out another glassful for himself, and
bowed to Marriot and the tramp with old-
fashioned courtesy, “Gentlemen—your health. I
am glad to see you under my roof.”
The tramp murmured a warm expression of
gratitude; Marriot replenished his glass with
milk and drank to Mr. Challenger.
“If your home-brewed ale is half as good as
your milk, Mr. Challenger,” he said laughingly,
“it must be good. But I should be no judge of
your ale, for, to tell you the truth, though I
daresay it sounds a strange thing, I’ve never
tasted anything of that sort in my life — I
haven’t even the remotest idea of what the
taste is.”
Challenger bowed his head. He placed the tips
of his long, well-shaped fingers together, and spoke
as if he were delivering a judgment.
“In all matters of meat and drink, Mr. Marriot,”
he said, “every man must suit his own inclinations.
If a man desires to abstain from drink—it is well.
If a man desires to drink freely—it is well. I love
a generous drinker so long as he can carry his


The Threshing-Floor 63
liquor. All the men of my family have been
hard drinkers, hard livers, hard fighters. Look
at my hand, sir—steady as the rock under
Normancaster Keep. And I am sixty years of
age. But in these days there is much degeneracy.
Young men of to-day have not the strong stomachs
and stout heads that we had in my day. Poor
things, most of them. You are a strong, healthy-
looking man—it is evident that abstention agrees
with you.”
“Perfectly,” said Marriot, smiling.
“By all means abide by it. What is one man's
meat may be another man's poison. As for me.”—
he drank off his ale and refilled his glass—“I
shall follow the traditions of my forefathers—those
worthy gentlemen some of whose counterfeit pre-
sentments look down upon us from the wall. We
are a very old family, Mr. Marriot; there are
none older in these parts. We can trace our
descent back to the time when William the
Norman gave vast tracts of land to Alan the
Red, from whom indeed we got the red hair
which is our distinguishing mark. It matters
not what coloured women we Challengers wed
with—blonde or brunette, black-haired or gold—
all our offspring have red hair. We have been a
strong, lusty race, hard to ”—
“Dinner is ready,” said Brigit, appearing at the
door which communicated with the kitchen.
“Come, gentlemen,” said Challenger. “Let us
dine.”
He led the way down a stone corridor into the


64 The Threshing-Floor
great kitchen, Marriot following him closely, and
the tramp, shy and nervous, hovering indefinitely
in their wake. At the door of the kitchen
Challenger turned and observed the man's
hesitancy, and he took him by the arm and drew
him forward.
“Come in, my friend, come in,” he said re-
assuringly. “You are welcome.”
Marriot, taking the seat which Challenger
assigned him at his left hand, looked around
him with interest. The kitchen, like the stone
hall, had been converted to its present use from
a different one—he came to the conclusion, after
a first examination of its architecture, that it had
once been the common-room or calefactory of
the abbey. Its furniture, like that of the old
refectory, was ancient—great wooden tables, flour-
bins, dressers, all scrubbed scrupulously white.
On each side of the wide fireplace stood a long
settle; in one corner was a tall clock; on the
walls hung old-fashioned brass warming-pans, old
muskets and fowling-pieces; the mantelpiece, like
that in the stone hall, was crowded with shining
brass. On the long window-shelf stood a row of
flower-pots, freshly coloured with bright red ruddle,
and in them bloomed fuchsias, geraniums, mignon-
ette—here again, as in the stone hall, Marriot
observed somebody's love of flowers,
But Marriot was more interested in the dinner-
table and its occupants than in the kitchen and
its appointments. The table stood in a clear
space immediately beneath the window, well away


The Threshing-Floor 65
from the fire; like the rest of the furniture, it was
of thick deal, scrubbed and scoured to whiteness.
No cloth was spread upon it; at one end, and
at regular intervals on each side, were laid covers
consisting of a knife, fork, spoon, a pewter measure,
a salt-dish of the same metal, a small loaf of
bread, and a coarse napkin. Marriot's thoughts
again reverted to the monastic life which had
once existed in the house, for the table was
spread as in a refectory.
Marriot quickly perceived that Gabriel Challenger
kept up the old English fashion of dining with all
his household, for there were two labourers and
a woman-servant waiting near the table, and as
soon as the master had taken his seat they took
their places. Marriot glanced at them as he sat
down—the old man he conjectured to be the
Jacob Garthen of whom Brigit had spoken; the
younger was evidently a shepherd; the woman
was presumably the general domestic of the house.
At the upper end of the table the tramp sat on
Challenger's right hand and Marriot on his left.
Brigit sat next to Marriot; opposite to her and
next to the tramp was a vacant seat. Lower
down the table, next to the shepherd, there was
another.
The fare set out on the table was good but
very plain. In front of Challenger stood a pile
of nine pewter plates of a size much larger than
modern dinner-plates; behind them, on a great
dish of the same material, appeared a mighty
joint of roast beef, around which was arranged
5


66 The Threshing-Floor
large squares of Yorkshire pudding. Before
Brigit stood a pewter bowl, heaped to the brim
with mashed potatoes and flanked by another
containing thick, rich-looking gravy. At each
end of the table stood a jug of the foaming ale
which Challenger had praised so highly.
Marriot soon perceived that his host's notion of
a healthy appetite was a generous one. Challenger
quickly filled each plate with substantial slices of
beef, added to each a square of the pudding,
and passed the plate to Brigit, whose notions of
quantity in furnishing the potatoes and gravy were
on the same scale as her father's in the matter of
beef and pudding.
“There, my friends,” said Challenger, looking up
from his carving. “Make good dinners, and when
your plates are empty come again. But what is
this?—here are two empty places at the board.
Where is Denys P-where is Lizzie P”
“Denys has not come back, and Lizzie is—out,”
answered Brigit.
Challenger filled the tramp's pewter measure
with ale and then filled his own. He again drank
the health of his guests and talked impartially
to both, asking the tramp — who proved to be
a mechanic out of work, making his way from
Preston to Darlington—about his journey and his
prospects, and telling Marriot of the difficulties he
had had with the last road-surveyor. Now and
then he asked a question of Jacob Garthen or of
the shepherd, but Marriot observed, that although
he talked a great deal, his host ate and drank very


The Threshing-Floor 67
heartily, with the healthy appetite of a man who
lives much out of doors.
There presently entered the kitchen a young
man whose resemblance to Challenger and to the
family portraits was so marked that Marriot in-
stinctively recognised him in his mind as the Denys
of whom Brigit had spoken. But upon looking at
him more closely he saw that Denys was but a
weak copy of his father. There was the same red
hair, small blue eyes set closely together, long nose,
and red moustache and beard; but instead of the
elder man's look of pride and strength, there was
vacillation and weakness of character and spirit
writ large all over the young man's face. He was
a much smaller man than his father, and though
fashioned in the same mould, he had not Gabriel's
firm step. He shambled rather than walked to
his seat, and his shifty eyes looked out of their
corners at the various people gathered round the
table, and glanced furtively and quickly away if
they encountered attention from other and steadier
eyes.
It was very plain to Marriot that Denys had
been drinking. His eyes were bloodshot and red,
his face was flushed; when he took the pewter
plate which Brigit passed across the table to him,
his hands shook and trembled. He said no word
to anyone, but bent over his dinner with lowered
head. Marriot saw that the food was distasteful,
even nauseous to him ; it was all that he could do
to swallow the first mouthful. Glancing around
the table, he saw that no one paid any attention to


68 The Threshing-Floor
the young man: the serving-folk were stolidly and
silently eating and drinking; Brigit, having eaten
as much as she desired, had pushed her plate away
from her, propped her elbows on the table and
dropped her chin upon a bridge made by her
interlaced fingers. She stared dreamily at the
flowers in the window, looking over her brother's
bent head. Challenger was steadily eating and
drinking; the man out of work, now warmed and
cheered by good food and drink, and settled into
the situation, was making the most of his oppor-
tunity; his plate had been lavishly refilled, his
pewter measure replenished, and he was enjoying
himself. His eyes glistened and his cheeks shone
with moisture.
Suddenly Challenger's voice rang out sharply—
“Once more, Denys, you have been making a
fool of yourself!” he said. “You have been drink-
ing brandy—probably all the morning. Fool
Drink what your head can carry. Brandy –you
are only fit for small ale. Look at your hands,
how they shake—you are rattling your knife and
fork against your plate as if you were a drummer
beating the kettle-drum.”
Denys made no reply. He cast a quick, furtive
look around him, opened his mouth, grinned feebly
and vacuously, and bent his head still lower over
his food. The rest of the folk present made no
sign, gave no evidence of having heard what the
master had said. Brigit, motionless as a stone
figure, still stared fixedly at the fuchsias and
geraniums,


The Threshing-Floor 69
Marriot, who possessed a keen and sensitive
dislike of personalities, felt the situation almost
unbearable. Hoping to divert Challenger's atten-
tion from his son, he bent across the table and
asked the man out of work if, in coming across
country, he had not met some curious and strange
characters. The man out of work, his cheeks
bulging with beef and pudding, looked up with
some surprise, and finally replied thoughtfully that
he believed he had, now and then.
“I came across a strange character myself on
my way here, Mr. Challenger,” said Marriot. “You
will know an old stone cross on the highway on the
other side of the river there, opposite your house”—
“The Abbot's Stone,” said Brigit, still staring
straight in front of her.
“Oh, is that it's name?” said Marriot. “That's
interesting. Well, when I came up to it this morn-
ing there was the strangest figure sitting there—
a tall, gaunt woman, all in black—I’m sure she was
not in her right mind, poor thing, and yet I don't
know. It was she that I heard singing that curious
ballad you repeated to me, Miss Challenger. A
strange woman l—on her knees lay a thick coil of
hair—a girl's hair, bright”—
“Look out !” exclaimed Brigit. “Denys 1."
Marriot, while he spoke, had been trifling with
the crumbs from his bread, moving them about
with his fingers and keeping his eyes upon them.
Startled by Brigit's sudden exclamation, he looked
up to find Denys, half-fallen over the table, staring
at him with eyes wide with terror, and the folk at


7o The Threshing-Floor
the lower end, roused out of their apathy, staring
at Denys. Marriot glanced sharply from Brigit to
her father. Gabriel Challenger's face expressed
nothing—it was as fixed as his daughter's gaze
had been a moment before. But it suddenly
changed—his eyes flashed fury on his son.
“Get out !” he snapped. “Get out—fool!”
Denys got slowly to his legs, still staring at
Marriot. Once he seemed about to speak, but
though his lips opened and shut, he said nothing.
His hands still grasped his knife and fork.
“I say, get out !” said Challenger again.
Denys suddenly laughed—the sound of it made
Marriot sick at heart. He flung his knife and fork
on the table and made for the door. Rounding the
table he lurched heavily. Brigit jumped to her
feet, ran round to him, and taking him by the arm
led him from the kitchen.
The serving-folk had dropped back into their
former apathetic indifference; the man out of
work, after one stare, went on eating and drink-
ing as calmly as if nothing were happening.
Challenger poured out another glass of ale and
drank it thoughtfully.
Presently Brigit came back. As she entered
by one door Marriot saw a girl—plump, pretty,
evidently a younger domestic—enter by another
and slip into the vacant place at the foot of the
table. Challenger saw her at the same time,
and took up his carving knife and fork.
“You’re late, my girl,” he said, looking down
the table. “Where have you been P”


The Threshing-Floor 7 I
Before Lizzie could reply to this question, Brigit
whipped up the pewter plate on which Challenger
was about to deposit a slice of beef.
“Stop, father,” she said. “That plate is quite
cold by this time. Lizzie, take this plate away
and make it hot for yourself.”
Lizzie said, “Yes, Miss Brigit,” with great
humility, and coming forward took the plate and
disappeared. Brigit turned to her father.
“As you've finished, and want to show Mr.
Marriot the landslip,” she said, “you needn't wait,
father. I’ll give Lizzie her dinner.”
“Very good,” said Challenger. He got up,
drank off his ale, and wiped his lips and beard
with his napkin.
Marriot and the man out of work rose too—the
serving-folk had already risen and left the kitchen.
The man out of work fumbled at his cap.
“Well, I thank you kindly, sir,” he said, looking
at Challenger. “You’ve treated me well and
handsome, and done me a power of good. And
now I'll be stepping.”
He and Challenger and Marriot walked out of
the kitchen together. Brigit, left alone, waited
until Lizzie came back with the hot plate. She
helped the girl to the beef, pudding, and potatoes
in silence, poured out a measure of ale for her,
and followed the men. Lizzie, left alone, turned in
the direction which Brigit had taken, placed her
thumb to her nose, and spread out her fingers.
Then, laughing, she began to eat and drink.


CHAPTER X
OUTSIDE the kitchen, Challenger put a shilling
into the workman's hand, wished him better luck,
and gave him a practical hint or two as to the
shortest way to Darlington. Then bidding
Marriot follow him, he led the way back to the
stone hall, where he produced a box of cigars.
He handed it to his guest.
“If you don't drink, perhaps you smoke, Mr.
Marriot?” he said inquiringly.
“Yes, I am a smoker,” answered Marriot, taking
a cigar. “Thank you.”
“Sit down, then, and let us have a peaceful ten
minutes before we do our business,” said
Challenger. He took a cigar himself, and
going over to the sideboard mixed a generous
glass of spirits and water, with which at his
elbow he established himself in a cosy chair
opposite Marriot. “One should never be in a
hurry to do business immediately after dinner,”
he said.
“I believe that is a sound rule,” said Marriot,
“so far as health is concerned. Unfortunately,
Mr. Challenger, I have so far been such a busy
man that I have rarely had ten minutes to spare
at any time, either before or after dinner.”
72


The Threshing-Floor 73
“Here,” said Challenger, “you will not be so
hard worked. Your duties, at any rate, will take
you out a good deal into the country. You will
often be passing this way. Whenever you are,
come in and eat your dinner with us.”
“Thank you,” said Marriot heartily. “It’s very
kind and hospitable of you.”
“A young man who looks and acts like a man,”
said Challenger, “is always welcome under my
roof. I am a bitterly disappointed man, Mr.
Marriot, in my one son—that boy Denys is the
first of my race who has ever shown signs of
weakness. You saw him P-bah, his nerves are
those of a kitten Look at me, a man of sixty—
straight, strong, clear of eye, steady of hand. I
can drink my gallon of ale during the morning
and my bottle of spirits before bedtime, and am
as good a man as ever. But he—bah, he makes
me sick by his effeminacyl ‘Drink what you
please, I have said to him times and again, “so
long as you can carry what you drink.” But he is
degenerate—it is the beginning of the end. My
race lies under a curse, Mr. Marriot, and the
curse is coming home.”
Marriot heard all this with mixed feelings. He
disliked personalities in any shape or form, but
there was something in Gabriel Challenger's
individuality, as in his daughter's, which had a
vague fascination for him. He stared at his
host's clouded face with speculative eyes.
“Do you really believe in curses, Mr. Chal-
lenger?” he asked.


The Threshing-Floor 75
seldom use. He could find no answer to them ;
he sat staring miserably at the end of his cigar.
Suddenly Challenger rose to his feet.
“But enough of that l” he exclaimed. “Come,
I forget myself—I break the laws of hospitality in
telling my sorrows to a guest. Pardon me, Mr.
Marriot.”
“No, no l’ exclaimed Marriot. “There is
nothing to pardon, sir, nothing indeed. I wish I
could say something that would— I’m sure you'll
understand? I'm afraid I startled your son by
Something I said at dinner about the strange-
looking woman whom I met this morning, though,
of course”—
Challenger's eyebrows drew together, and he
nodded his head.
“Ay!” he said, speaking more to himself than
to his guest. “Rachel—back again The end
may come that way—that way! Come, come ! we
will talk no more of this, Mr. Marriot—we will
go about our business and examine the land-
slip.”
He took down a fowling-piece that rested on
pegs driven into the wall, and slipping two
cartridges into the barrels, tucked it under his
arm and led the way through the porch into the
paddock. Marriot lingered a moment to search
for his cap, which he had laid aside on his first
entrance with Brigit. As he looked about the hall
he heard an angry exclamation from Challenger,
and snatching up the missing cap, which revealed
itself to him at that moment, and hurrying outside,


76 The Threshing-Floor
he came upon a scene which pulled him sharply
up to attention and observation.
Challenger stood outside the porch, the gun
under his arm, his hands thrust deep into the
pockets of his riding-breeches, as if he meant to
compel them to stay there. But his expression,
which a minute or two before had been calm, had
suddenly assumed a fury and anger such as Marriot
had never seen on a human countenance. His blue
eyes flashed, the red moustache bristled away from
the parted lips and strong white teeth beneath
them, and he snarled like a wild beast confronted
by its mortal enemy. It was plain to Marriot that
only a great effort of will kept him from handling
his gun.
The cause and object of this sudden outburst of
passion was evidently a young man who stood,
nervous and uneasy, and yet with a certain air of
dignified protest about him, a few yards away from
the porch. From his dress and bearing Marriot set
him down as a solicitor's clerk, and his suspicions
on this point were heightened when he perceived
that the young man carried a folded document
which had very much the appearance of a writ.
He tapped this nervously against his leg as he
stood gazing deprecatingly at the angry man who
confronted him.
“Mr. Challenger,” he said, “I”—
Challenger's snarl deepened into a growl. He
made a step forward to the young man: the young
man drew backwards.
“I told you,” said Challenger, in a low, hissing


The Threshing-Floor 77
voice, “I told you the last time you came here that
I would have no law-hounds, writ-mongers, process-
servers, summons-carriers on my land. Serve me
with your cursed papers on the high road, in the
market, in the street, in the inn—anywhere where
I'm obliged to go, and where you can catch me.
But, by God not on my own land. Be off!”
The young man made some show of resent-
ment.
“It's not my fault, Mr. Challenger,” he said
indignantly. “I’m only a clerk—I’m bound to
follow my principal's instructions. Serving a writ
is no pleasure to me, sir, I can assure you.”
“Master or man, I tell you,” said Challenger,
“I’ll have none of you cursed curs on my land.
Once upon a time if you'd come here with your
devil's work we'd have shot you or hanged you—
now we can do neither. But I’ve a dog-whip in-
side there, master attorney's clerk, that shall make
acquaintance with your skin in two minutes if you
aren't off. Get out !”
The young man hesitated and muttered some-
thing about unreasonable conduct and threats.
Challenger caught the last word, and with a sudden
bursting of temper that made Marriot jump he flung
his gun on the ground and rushed into the porch.
“Run—run l’” said Marriot. “Don’t provoke
him further—run l’”
The clerk hesitated. But when Challenger
suddenly burst forth again armed with a dog-whip
he lost his courage. He walked back a step or
two, protesting.


78 The Threshing-Floor
“You'll do it at your peril, Mr. Challenger,” he
said. “The law's on my side, sir.”
“Law l’ shouted Challenger, “I’ll give you law l’’
Then the clerk turned and ran. He ran for the
ford that crossed the river, and Challenger ran after
him, smacking the whip. When he had chased him
across the ford he stopped on the bank and shook
his fist at him. And that done he came slowly
back to Marriot, flung the whip into the house, and
picking up his gun, walked away as if nothing had
happened.
As they passed the door of the kitchen the old
sheep-dog, who had transferred himself to that side
of the house with the sun, got up and came slowly
and uncertainly towards them. His head wobbled
feebly as he walked, but he made some effort to
wag his tail. Challenger saw him and stopped.
“There's the faithfullest old friend and servant
I ever had, Mr. Marriot,” he said. “No man or
woman is ever as true as a dog can be. He's
nearly finished his course now, poor old fellow.”
He bent down and scratched the old dog's
wobbling head. The old dog's tail wagged feebly
and he uttered a wheezy sound of understanding
and pleasure. Then weakness overcame him, and
he lay down with the collapsing movement of a
worn-out thing.
The landslip had occurred on a byroad a mile
away on the fells at the back of the farmstead.
Challenger explained to Marriot the importance of
the road, and the necessity of its being kept in good
condition, and on arriving at the scene pointed out


The Threshing-Floor 79
to him that if his predecessor had only taken his
advice, and had made a thorough repair of the place
on the last occasion, all would have been well. He
suggested that a stone wall should be built as a
protection, and that it should be buttressed from
the embankment. Marriot agreed with these
notions, and promised to bring the matter before
the Highway Board at once. And having come to
an exact understanding on this matter, they re-
turned to the farm.
“And now I must get back to Normancaster as
quickly as possible,” said Marriot as they reached
the porch. “I have work to do before post-time.”
“I will order your horse,” said Challenger, going
towards the fold.
Brigit came out of the kitchen door.
“Father,” she said, “the old dog is dead. He
died just after you went out with Mr. Marriot.”
Challenger stopped in his progress towards the
fold. He stared at his daughter as if he scarcely
understood.
“He just died,” said Brigit. “Just as if he had
been going to sleep. And we have put him in the
little shed near the dairy door.”
Challenger walked very quickly round the corner
of the house. Brigit watched him disappear, and
then went up to Marriot.
“If you want to get away,” she said, “you had
better go. It is no use waiting now for my father.
He'll sit by the old dog for hours—most likely
he'll cry over it. It was the only thing in the
world that he cared for.”


8O The Threshing-Floor
Marriot looked at her wonderingly.
“Doesn't he-doesn't he care for you?” he said
involuntarily.
Brigit shrugged her shoulders with an expressive
gesture.
“Women are not of much consequence amongst
the Challengers, except for convenience and
pleasure,” she answered. “Shall I get your
horse?”
Marriot said that he would get it himself, and he
fetched it from the stable which she pointed out to
him, and came back to the paddock with the bridle
over his arm.
“I suppose there is no other way of getting on
to the high road than by going round by Granton,”
he said ruefully. “It’s a long way round.”
“Oh, but of course there is,” answered Brigit.
“Do you see that path running across the
meadow P Well, follow that, and it will bring you
to a ford across the Swirl. On the other side you
will see a track leading through the covert on the
hillside—that will bring you out by the Abbot's
Stone.”
Marriot looked puzzled.
“It was at the Abbot's Stone that I met
young Mr. Warrington this morning,” he said
reflectively. “He told me there was no other way
of reaching this place than by going round by
Granton.”
Brigit laughed. Marriot looked at her question-
ingly.
“Does he know of the ford, then P” he asked,


The Threshing-Floor 81
“He Of course,” she answered. “He came
across it himself this morning.”
“Here? "
“Yes—here. He brought me a sitting of prize
bantam's eggs.”
Marriot's eyes became dark and gloomy and his
brow knitted.
“Why did he send me miles out of my way P"
he said. “He said distinctly that that was the
only way.”
“Pure and simple mischief, I should think,” said
Brigit.
Marriot was still frowning.
“That's what I call a deliberate lie,” he said.
“Yes,” she assented. “So it was. But he is
rather a liar.”
Marriot held out his hand.
“Well, good-bye, Miss Challenger,” he said.
“Thank you for your hospitality—your father
has asked me to come again, and I shall. Tell
him, please, that I’m sorry about his poor old
dog.”
He mounted his horse and rode away across
the meadow towards the ford. Brigit remained in
the paddock watching him, and when he gained
the opposite bank of the river and turned to look
back at the house she waved her hand. When he
finally disappeared in the covert she went back
into the house, and leaning her arms across the
table at which she had sat down to sew, she
dropped her head on them and thought. The
house was very silent in the hush and heat of the
6


CHAPTER XI
MARRIOT had taken up his abode in Normancaster
in an old-fashioned house in the market-place,
tenanted by one Mrs. Marshall, widow of a farmer
of those parts. He had two rooms in this house,
one a sleeping chamber, the other a small parlour
wherein he had stored away his books and
arranged his writing materials and official papers
and documents. On taking these rooms, Mrs.
Marshall had given him the choice of having his
meals in his own parlour or with her in hers.
Marriot, as a sociable and companionable man, had
chosen an alternative which gave him the oppor-
tunity of talking and being talked to while he ate
and drank. Mrs. Marshall, he had observed on
his first introduction to her, was a woman of
shrewdness and intelligence, and he was disposed
to cultivate her acquaintance. He himself being
singularly frank and open in his manner and
conversation, they had at once placed themselves
on that friendly footing which so often exists
between an elderly woman and a young man, and
proves of inestimable value to the latter if he has
wisdom and perception enough to profit by what
he may gain from it.
During his ride back from Abbotsholme, Marriot
83


84 The Threshing-Floor
had thought much of his adventures during the
day, but still more of Brigit. He had never been
in love with a woman, had never, indeed, had time
to think of such things. But he was conscious
that this girl, with her ripe womanhood, her deep,
inscrutable eyes, her strong, dominating, appealing
femininity, had stirred his pulses and fired his
blood. As he rode through the slumbering woods
and by the brawling river the thought of what it
would mean to kiss her suddenly flashed into his
mind and illuminated his inner life as a lightning
flash illuminates a sleeping, sunless sky. The thrill
of this thought drove the blood from his heart in
one wild leap that left him sick and faint; the
equally wild leap with which it rushed back lifted
him out of commonplace life into a region of
intoxicating air and fire, and without a thought of
what he did or said, he stood up in his stirrups and
shouted at the top of his voice. The shout brought
him to his senses; he sat firmly in his saddle and
laughed at himself.
“But I’m in love!” he said. “In love I’’
Then he thought of the girl he had fallen in
love with. He saw her as he had seen her that
morning when she suddenly came before him—
her vivid colour, her moist eyes, her frank, direct
gaze, her strong, supple figure, the rich promise of
generous love that showed itself in every feature
and limb–truly, he said to himself, here was a
woman that a man of strength and determination
should thank God to mate with ! And then he
thought of her surroundings—of the strange, wild,


The Threshing-Floor 85
curiously contradictory - natured father; of the
besotted, drunken, degenerate brother; of the
evident intimate acquaintance which she had
with many sordid and repulsive things—and a
great wave of longing to take her away to a
brighter and cleaner life welled up in his heart
and possessed him. Utterly innocent of women,
and with a great ideal of womanhood inherent in
his soul, Marriot possessed the essentials of knight-
hood and chivalry, and he was all the more ready
to love Brigit because he pitied and longed to
protect her.
He found work awaiting him at his office, and
dismissing all other thoughts from his mind, he
plunged into it until evening. He took more
work home with him, and he was working until
Mrs. Marshall summoned him to supper at nine
o'clock. At that, considering that he had done
enough for the day, Marriot put his books and
papers aside and turned his thoughts in other
directions.
They naturally ran on the events of the day,
and were just as naturally communicated to Mrs.
Marshall over the supper-table. He told her of
his ride out to Abbotsholme in the early morning,
of his encounter with the strange woman at the
Abbot's Stone, of his experiences at the farm.
But of the adventure of the attorney's clerk he
said nothing.
“Mr. Challenger is a strange man,” he said
reflectively. “I don't think I ever met such a
strange man. But he is generous and hospitable—


86 The Threshing-Floor
he asked me to go there whenever I liked. Is
that a characteristic of the people in these parts,
Mrs. Marshall P’’
Mrs. Marshall had listened silently to much of
what Marriot had said. He now noticed that her
face was very grave, and that she seemed to be
thinking deeply. She made no reply to his
question, but presently, looking at him with serious
attention, she spoke in an earnest fashion which
showed Marriot that she had a sincere and grave
meaning in speaking at all.
“Mr. Marriot,” she said, “let me give you a
word of true, honest advice. Don't go to Abbots-
holme—don't have anything to do with the
Challengers. If you do, so sure as you are a
living man, you will repent it.”
She spoke with such conviction, such trans-
parent honesty of purpose, above all with such
apparent desire to say the right and just word,
that Marriot felt himself profoundly impressed.
He put down his knife and fork and looked across
the table at his landlady with a face instinct with
inquiry.
“I’m sure, certain, that you mean nothing but
my good, Mrs. Marshall,” he said. “But there
must be some reason for such emphatic advice.”
“Yes,” she said. “I wouldn't give you such
advice without reason, Mr. Marriot. And the
reason is one that is well known hereabout. The
Challengers are what is commonly known as a
bad lot.” -
Marriot stirred uneasily in his seat.


The Threshing-Floor 87
“That,” he said, “is a term that's applied
indiscriminately, Mrs. Marshall. I’ve heard it
applied where it couldn't be applied with justice.
It's so easy to say anything like that of people.
Of course, I believe that in this case you have
reasons for saying what you do say.”
“I shouldn't be an honest woman if I hadn't,
Mr. Marriot,” replied Mrs. Marshall calmly. “You
must bear in mind that you are a stranger here.
You are also a young man. Now I am an old
woman, or getting so, and I have lived in this
neighbourhood all my life—never been away from
it except for an occasional visit to friends or a
trip to the seaside. I know the Challengers, as
all the folk hereabouts know them. Until four
years ago, when my husband died, we lived at
the next farm to theirs, and naturally we saw
much of them. I am only telling you the plain
truth, sad as it is, when I say that they are bad—
utterly, irredeemably bad.”
“Mr. Challenger,” said Marriot, “admitted to
me that they are under a curse.”
“Curse !” exclaimed Mrs. Marshall. “Fiddle-
de-deel The only curse they are under is their
own inherent wickedness and depravity. Do you
know, Mr. Marriot, that it is a common saying
hereabouts of the Challenger family that there
never was a sober man or a virtuous woman
amongst them P”
Marriot felt his face grow hot—a sick, dull pain
began to gnaw at his heart. He looked down at
his plate,


88 The Threshing-Floor
“Surely, Mrs. Marshall,” he said, with some-
thing of an appeal in his voice which the woman's
ready perception was quick to notice, “surely
that's a very sweeping charge to make | You
—you wouldn't say, for instance, that Miss
Challenger came under it?”
“No,” said Mrs. Marshall, quickly and emphatic-
ally, “I couldn't. I don't know anything, and
I've never heard anything, against Brigit. But I
know the family history—I know that all the
women-folk of the Challengers that I have known
have followed the same path—every one of them,
without exception. This present Gabriel's aunts
—I knew them. Then his sisters, I knew them
too. All were alike—there was not a virtuous
woman amongst them. And I know Brigit's
surroundings. Poor girl, she was born to a herit-
age of shame and vice and sin . "
“There are people, Mrs. Marshall, who will
walk with clean feet through a sea of mud,” said
Marriot.
“That's beautiful in theory, Mr. Marriot, and
I don't deny that it's possible in practice, for I
know it is, but the instances of it are few,” said
Mrs. Marshall. “If you knew the long history
of absolute crime, wickedness, depravity, that hangs
round the Challengers, the slavery which the men
have served to drink, and to all the vices which
follow it, you wouldn't wonder that I speak with
such horror of any promising young man having
anything to do with them. You spoke of Denys
and of his agitation when you mentioned the


The Threshing-Floor 89
woman at the Abbot's Stone. Shall I tell you
what that means? You wouldn't understand his
agitation, but all the rest of the people—his father,
sister, the work-folk—would.”
“What was it?” said Marriot. His heart
throbbed and his nerves tingled—he was conscious
that Brigit had already claimed him, and he was
dreading to hear anything that might break or
damage the ideal of her which he had set up in
his mind.
“The woman that you saw,” said Mrs. Marshall,
“was Rachel Dene. Some years ago, before her
husband died, she lived at Granton, or rather,
near it, on the opposite side of the valley to
Abbotsholme. They were farmers in a small
way—I knew them well. They had one child, a
daughter—Letty—one of the prettiest girls I have
ever seen. Rachel Dene idolised that girl and
gave way to her in everything. The girl, after
her father's death, came in Denys Challenger's
way, and eventually she bore a child, a boy, to
him. Rachel was almost beside herself. She
went on her knees to Denys before the child was
born, begging him to marry Letty and save her
good name. He laughed at her. After the child
was born, she went to Gabriel Challenger and
begged him to use his influence with his son to do
the girl justice. Gabriel beat her from his door
with his riding-switch. And then Letty drowned
herself.”
“Drowned herself!”
“She drowned herself, Mr. Marriot, in the


90 The Threshing-Floor
Swirl, opposite Abbotsholme. When her body
was found they were for taking it into the farm-
stead–Gabriel Challenger came out with his gun
and threatened to fire on them if they dared to set
foot on his premises. They had to carry the dead
girl two miles to the inn at Granton.”
Marriot uttered an exclamation of horror and
disgust. He had stopped eating and drinking; he
sat back in his chair staring at Mrs. Marshall with
dilated eyes. The savagery of the story fascinated
him.
“After that,” continued Mrs. Marshall, “Rachel
Dene killed the poor child. She strangled it,
carried the body to Abbotsholme, and laid it on
Gabriel Challenger's doorstep. And now, Mr.
Marriot, I will tell you of the most dreadful of
all these dreadful things. The man whom you
spoke of just now as being so kindly-hearted and
generous to the tramp, and so affected by his old
dog's death, kicked that poor little dead body—
the body of his son's child—into the fold. Jacob
Garthen saw him do it—Hannah Coulson saw him
do it. That fact was got out of them at the
inquest, for a young farm lad had also seen it,
and he talked.”
“Horrible !” said Marriot.
“Then Rachel Dene was tried for the murder of
the child. She was found guilty and sentenced to
death, but public opinion was against any severe
punishment, and she was reprieved and the sentence
was commuted to one of three years' penal servi-
tude. She is now released and back in these parts


The Threshing-Floor 9 I
again. Her mind is slightly affected, but not
sufficiently so to warrant her detention. How
she will live I don't know, but she will wander
about the old scenes until she dies. Now do
you understand why Denys Challenger was so
agitated by your description of the woman in
black P "
“Yes,” answered Marriot. “But, Mrs. Marshall,
that is the most awful story I ever heard in my life.
That long strand of fair hair which I saw in Rachel
Dene's lap—was that her daughter's?”
“It would be,” said Mrs. Marshall. “Letty,
poor thing, had long golden hair — it was a pity
she was so pretty, for her prettiness ruined
her.”
“But as to Challenger's conduct,” said Marriot,
“why, I can scarcely credit it! I could not believe
that a man could so behave. It seems literally
incredible.”
“Mr. Marriot,” said Mrs. Marshall earnestly,
“a man like Gabriel Challenger, who has never
been sober, and therefore never in his right senses,
for forty years, is not a man, but a devil. He
prides himself on his ability to drink and to carry
his liquor—of that he boasts to everybody—but in
sheer truth he is perpetually intoxicated. He has
drunk himself sober—and that, they say, is the
worst form of drunkenness. He is most dangerous
when he is quietest and most polite. But he is
always on the edge, the extreme edge, of an out-
burst. They say that the slightest thing will
plunge him into a perfect passion of fury.”


92 The Threshing-Floor
Marriot thought of the white heat of rage into
which Challenger had fallen at the sight of the
lawyer's clerk.
“No,” continued Mrs. Marshall, with emphasis,
“it is impossible to deny that the Challengers are
naturally and entirely bad and vicious. They say
that Gabriel openly taunts and even curses his son
for his weakness in showing the usual effects of
drunkenness, which he himself does not show
because of his unusual strength and his iron con-
stitution. But who taught the lad to drink? No
Challenger ever set a good example. They are
bad, root and branch—cruel, insincere, depraved,
boastful. The men have no respect for women—
the women have no respect for themselves. But
the harvest is coming for them, Mr. Marriot.
Hundreds of years ago the Challengers were great
folk in these parts—they had lands far and wide,
and they were allied to some of the principal
families of this county. They have gone downhill,
slowly at first, then faster, then still faster, and now
they are rushing to destruction. All that is left to
Gabriel Challenger is that one farm which you
have seen, and it is well known that it is so heavily
mortgaged, and that he is so deeply in debt all
over, that he is a ruined man. And look at
Denys | What is he but a mass of utter cor-
ruption? No, the seeds have been freely sown
in that family, and the harvest is at hand. It was
bound to come.”
Marriot could eat no more supper. He pushed
his plate away from him.


The Threshing-Floor 93
“It is a dreadful thing for a girl to live amidst
such surroundings,” he said. “Dreadful l’”
“Brigit Challenger,” said Mrs. Marshall, “has
never known any other. Her mother died when
she was quite a child, and she has never had
any womanly influence exerted upon her, except
Hannah Coulson's. And Hannah is the sort of
woman who keeps herself to herself, and never
interferes. Indeed, no one could interfere in that
house.”
“It is all very sad,” said Marriot.
“Sad is no word for it,” said Mrs. Marshall. “It
is literally awful. When I think, as I do sometimes,
of the dreadful tragedy of that family—of all the
long, hideous record of sin and vice and depravity,
of the continual degeneracy, deepening and widen-
ing as one generation succeeds another—it turns
me so sick at heart, so despairing, that I am often
tempted to wonder why God permits such things.
And you can't wonder, Mr. Marriot, that, knowing
all that I do, I should warn you against going to
Abbotsholme.”
“No,” said Marriot. “No, I don't wonder at all.
But I knew it was for good reasons that you did
warn me. I felt that at first. No-I don't wonder
at all.”
Then, remarking that he would go for a short
walk before going to bed, he went out into the
market-place and turned towards the river. He
wanted to be alone and to think.
His feet carried him, almost involuntarily, to a
corner of the great rocky promontory caused by


94 The Threshing-Floor
the Keep of Normancaster. Far beneath him in
the valley the Swirl shone like silver in the faint
afterglow of the June night; above him rose the
mighty walls built by the Normans long centuries be-
fore. Far away in the distance, westward, stretched
the hills and fells which shut in the Dale into which
he had penetrated that morning. That morning !
It seemed as if years had passed since yesterday.
He leaned over the rampart wall and gazed
long and earnestly down the valley. In his
mind's eye he saw Abbotsholme and a long pro-
cession of its owners passing through it. It seemed
to him that they stood out from the dead past as
incarnations of sin, passion, debauchery, cruelty.
Mrs. Marshall's story gave life and colour to these
phantoms: he shuddered as he gazed upon the
savagery and brutality that rose, reeking foully,
from them. It was as if he looked upon some
festering mass of rottenness out of which perpetu-
ally came new forms of still fouler life to sink
back ever more corrupt and to generate still newer
and lower examples of degeneracy. And suddenly,
blotting this loathsome vision out, rose up the
vision of Brigit in all her splendid young woman-
hood, warm, glowing, appealing with subtle force
to the life-springs and vital force within him.
Marriot uttered a sharp cry. He looked round
him as if searching for something. His eye fell
on the great square Keep towering in silent
grandeur above him. More easily might one
haul down its walls with bare hands, he thought,
than beat back the resistless pressing forward


The Threshing-Floor 95
of the things that must be. And something
told him, had been telling him all day, that
amongst the things that must be in his life was a
deep, compelling love for Brigit. He had fallen
in love with her when he first looked at her.
He let his hands drop on the parapet with a
despairing gesture.
“To find her—there !” he said. “And yet—I
wouldn't believe a word against her. No woman
that wasn't honest could look a man so frankly
and candidly in the face as she does. And it's
useless to argue with one's self—I'm in love with
her, and badly too. Well, that, they say, is a
thing that comes with a look or a word. It's been
so in my case.”
Then he walked slowly home and went to bed.
He thought of Brigit until he fell asleep.





PART THE SECONL)
CHA PTER I
WHEN Marriot came to reflect calmly upon Mrs.
Marshall's story of the Challengers, he felt bound
to conclude that, whether from prejudice or from
natural inability to understand the strange idio-
syncrasies of human nature as illustrated in a
masterful, savage-tempered man, his landlady had
scarcely done justice to Gabriel. He thought
over the events of the previous day, and decided
that whatever Gabriel Challenger's faults and vices
might be, his generosity and hospitality were
genuine and real. There had been nothing affected
about his treatment of the man out of work, and
his reception of Marriot himself had struck the
latter as being wholly frank and sincere. It might
be that these were his only good points, but their
possession proved that he was not wholly bad.
Moreover, it had struck Marriot that there had
been a certain wistfulness—mixed certainly with
much bitter disdain — in the way in which
Challenger had spoken of his son. It seemed
to imply a longing of some sort for better things;
and that in itself could not, Marriot argued, come
from one of an utterly evil nature.
7


98 The Threshing-Floor
“And that, of course,” he said to himself, “is
an impossible thing, as things are. No man's
wholly good, and no man's utterly bad—there
must be a mixture of both in every man. Mrs.
Marshall's theory as to the entire depravity of
the Challengers is wrong—it's illogical.”
Without any conscious desire to do so, he made
some excuses for Gabriel Challenger, even as
regarded the terrible story which Mrs. Marshall
had outlined to him on the previous night. No
sensible man, he argued, would believe that
Challenger could have done the thing he did if he
had not been literally mad with drink at the time.
Such a deed on the part of a sane man would have
placed him beyond all consideration as a human
being; such an action on the part of a man whose
reason had been destroyed by drink and by
uncontrollable anger could be understood. He
thought that Mrs. Marshall—in common, probably,
with most folk thereabouts—had not differentiated
between the two natures which he himself had
already detected in Gabriel. Certainly the man
who could kick a dead child's body from his door
was not the man who extended ready hospit-
ality to the stranger and the wayfarer. And
Marriot had already seen sufficient of life to know
that there are strange contradictions in every
individual of a forceful character. Such, he said
to himself, are living paradoxes—who but the All-
Understanding should understand them?
Of Brigit, in relation to the dark and sombre
tradition held by Mrs. Marshall in respect to the


The Threshing-Floor 99
women of the Challenger family, he never thought
at all. The vision of her which had risen up be-
fore him while his landlady talked had banished
the first impulse to wonder if that tradition had
even the remotest connection with her. Marriot
set much store by an open countenance and a
frank look, and he said to himself that he had never
seen clearer eyes than Brigit's, or a more direct,
fearless gaze. To him the mere idea, however
faint or shadowy it might have been, of connect-
ing her with the current tradition of her women
ancestors, would have been a profanation of what,
to him, was one of the most sacred of all the
world's sacred ideals. He had known little of
women—practically nothing of them save of his
mother and his sister. His ideas of women were
almost entirely drawn from them. And they
being good women, of some character and ability,
his ideas were inclined to loftiness. Where, in
another nature, Mrs. Marshall's remarks might
have set up a strain of morbid speculation and
curiosity, it only aroused in him an instinctive sense
of complete repulsion, strong enough to turn his
mind immediately from the more abstract notion
of doubt or wonder. Besides, he was already in
love with Brigit.
He said nothing of his thoughts or intentions
to Mrs. Marshall, but he knew quite well that he
should return to Abbotsholme, and that the return
visit would only be the first of many. And during
the whole of June—an exceptionally delightful
month that year—he went there often. He had


1oo The Threshing-Floor
good excuses, or rather reasons, for riding that
way, for the hillside road was being repaired in
thorough fashion, and the work involved his
constant attendance and supervision. True, he
might have ridden straight to the spot and straight
away from it, but the old farmstead lay in his
direct path in going and coming, and he had many
pressing invitations from Challenger to drop in for
a cigar or from Brigit for a cup of tea. And very
often he encountered Brigit by the river side, or on
the hillside road, or saw her in the garden and went
to her, and they began to have long conversations
and to find each other out.
Marriot quickly discovered that Brigit's mind
was as open as her face. She was quick to show
signs of feeling, and had evidently no instinctive
notion of repressing or concealing her emotions or
passions. He soon became aware that she loved
sunlight, the open air, the river, deep woods, the
singing of birds, and, above everything, flowers.
Most of her time she spent in the garden, where
she worked with the energy of a man. Of books
or thoughts she seemed to know little; Marriot
found out within a week or two that she had read
scarcely anything, but she possessed a rare store of
knowledge of the countryside folk-lore and fairy
tales. He was bound to confess, as his acquaintance
with her deepened, that she was somewhat strange
to understand in spite of her frank eyes and candid
countenance. At times she suddenly dropped into
strange silences, her eyes grew sombre and moody;
she seemed to be looking into deep, shadowy pools.


The Threshing-Floor Iol
At such times, after sitting or standing near him
for a long period of silence, which he would not
break, she would give him a swift speculative
glance, and go away from him without a word.
That his passion for her increased with each
visit Marriot knew full well. It possessed him.
He considered her the most beautiful, the most
desirable woman he had ever seen. His eyes
followed every movement of her supple, strong
young figure with an adoration which was all the
greater because it was pure and natural. At her
face he was never tired of gazing—the rich warmth
of her womanhood was shown so clearly and with
such generous promise in her eyes and mouth that
it seemed to him that the withdrawal of a veil from
her would be as an unveiling of Love incarnate.
And he was conscious that in her there was a
subtle magnetic power which drew him toward her
more and more strongly and compellingly every
time they met.
While Marriot learnt much about Brigit during
these first meetings Brigit also learnt much about
Marriot. She found that he was a man who read
and thought much, that he had worked very hard
all his life, that he had considerable ambitions, and
that he intended eventually to do great things as
a civil engineer. She soon became aware that it
pleased him to tell her of what he meant to do and
how he meant to become able to do it. She was
also aware that it pleased her to listen—for the
first time in her life she seemed to be looking into
a man's mind and realising his manhood. When


Io2 The Threshing-Floor
Marriot left her after one of these visits she used to
relapse into one of her strange silences and sit
staring into space, thinking. And by the end of
that June there was a new expression in her eyes
—an expression of troubled thought, of waking
doubt. Marriot saw it and wondered at it.


CHAPTER II
IN the quaint market-place of Normancaster stands
an ancient church from whose square tower curfew
rings at eight o'clock every night throughout the
year. It was ringing one evening about the middle
of July when Marriot, going homeward from his
office, turned the corner of the church and came
face to face with Brigit. She was in his thoughts
at that moment—the sudden meeting with her sent
the blood to his face as swiftly as the colour rose
to hers at the sight of him.
“Why,” he said, “I—I have never seen you in
the town before. Somehow, it seems the strangest
thing in the world to see you in Normancaster.”
“It is very seldom that I ever come into the
town,” she answered. “I only came now to do
some shopping. I am just setting off home again.”
“Driving?”
“No, walking.”
“All that way?—six miles l’ he exclaimed.
Brigit laughed.
“You don't think that a twelve miles walk
means much to me?” she asked.
“No,” he answered seriously, “no, I don't.
But it's eight o'clock now, and it is a lonely
road.”
103


104. The Threshing-Floor
“Oh, but I don't go by the road,” she said. “I
go by the river all the way through the woods.”
“That,” he said, “must be lonelier still.”
“I don't think that any loneliness would bother
me,” she said. “I’m used to plenty of it.”
They had crossed the market-place as they
spoke and had now reached the top of a steep
by-street which led down the hillside to the level
of the valley. At its foot they could see the river
and the woods, hushed and silent in the summer
eventide.
“I turn down here,” said Brigit. “Good-bye.”
“No,” said Marriot, “I am going with you. I
have not been out of the office all day—the walk
will do me good. Let me fetch a stick from my
rooms.”
He ran across the market-place and presently
came back, out of breath from running so quickly,
and joined her. Side by side they descended the
hill out of the town. Near the bridge Brigit turned
from the high road to a wicket gate which gave
entrance to the woods. Marriot followed her
through it—the thick foliage shut them out from
all else but itself.
“I have never been in these woods before,” he
remarked, looking about him. “How thick they
are l’’
“Yes, just here,” she said. “But soon the path
leads out on the river-side, and there they are open,
and after that we cross the meadow in the valley,
underneath Eagle's Crag, and then we go through
Dead Man's Copse, and then into our own


The Threshing-Floor Io;
meadows. It's a much nicer way home than by
the road.”
“You're fond of woods,” he said, watching her
as she glanced from side to side.
“Yes,” she answered simply. “I’ve always been
fond of woods since old Jacob and I used to go
bird-nesting—a long time since. Those were nice
days.”
“Well,” said Marriot, thinking that he perceived
a note of regret in her voice, “I don't see what's
to prevent you from having lots of nice days of
that sort now—at least next year. One can go
bird's-nesting when one's grown up just as easily
as when one was not, eh?”
“With the difference that one isn't a child any
longer,” she said.
Then the look of troubled thought, of something
like perplexity and doubt, came over her face, and
she lapsed into one of the long spells of silence
which he was beginning to know well and to
wonder at. They walked for a long way without
a word being exchanged—out of the thick woods,
along the river-side, through the meadows, as far
as Dead Man's Copse, and still she remained
silent. But as she passed through the wicket into
the copse she spoke.
“Will you be frightened when you come back
through here if I tell you that this place is said to
be haunted P” she said, turning to him with a
smile. “There was a man hung in chains in
this wood. And he was one of us. He murdered
another man—a gamekeeper—here, and he was


106 The Threshing-Floor
hanged for it at York. Afterwards they put him
in an iron cage and hung the cage to the tree
beneath which he killed the man. Jacob Garthen
remembers a man who remembered seeing the
cage and some of the bones and rags. But it's
all gone now. I believe my grandfather took it
down, sold it for old iron, and buried the bones
in the wood. It's a pretty story, isn't it?”
“But you like to tell it,” said Marriot.
“Anything wicked about the Challengers
fascinates me,” she said, with a strange laugh.
“Whether other people like to hear such pleasant
tales is another thing. What a nice lot we are l’
“Don’t l” he said. “I—don't like to hear you
talk like that. When you do talk like that
there's something—something that sounds so—
well, hopeless, about it.”
She half turned as they walked side by side and
looked at him with a quick, searching glance.
“I should think anybody could see that every-
thing was hopeless about us,” she answered quietly.
“You’ve been coming to this place for nearly two
months—don't you see it? Isn't it evident in
father's case? Isn't it still more evident in the
case of Denys P Hopeless?”
“But there is—yourself,” he said in a low voice.
He saw the colour rise in her cheek, and her
head sank a little, but she made no answer.
Involuntarily she quickened her step.
“Stop!” said Marriot. “I want to speak to
you—Brigit. See, let us sit down on this rock—
you must let me speak.”


The Threshing-Floor Io?
She stopped, looked at him irresolutely, with
troubled, anxious glances, and once she moved as
if she meant to hurry away. But suddenly she
sat down on a great mass of limestone that had
fallen from the rock above. She folded her hands
in her lap and looked up at him quietly, ex-
pectantly, as a child might look into the face
of one who has bidden it to listen. It seemed
to Marriot that he saw in her eyes what he might
never see again on earth. And he knew, as he
looked down at her, that for good or evil she was
the one woman of the desire of his soul and body,
and that there would never be another.
He sat down by her, and laid his hands on hers.
“Brigit,” he said, “don’t you know that I love
you with all my heart?”
He wondered at the absolute calmness and
steadiness with which he spoke. He had never
spoken of love to a woman before; now that the
moment had come, he felt himself master of his
voice, his passion, his emotion—he was sure of
himself. And his dominance was forcing her
to look at him earnestly, strenuously, as he spoke.
She kept her eyes on him; her face remained grave,
quiet, almost unemotional, save for her colour.
He saw her bosom rise and fall, and heard her
catch her breath with a quick faint sob, but she
faced him bravely.
“Don’t you know—Brigit?” he repeated.
Her lips parted slightly, and at last she looked
away from him.
“I thought it,” she said in a low voice.


108 The Threshing-Floor
“Yes—tell me why,” he said.
“Why? Because you talked to me — about
yourself—and your thoughts and hopes. And
spoke kindly to me — always. But still more
because of something I saw in your eyes. Never
in anybody else's eyes—never!”
“Look back in my eyes, Brigit. Look back in
them while I tell you that I love you with all
that there is in me! Do you hear it?—do you ?
I have loved you ever since I saw you—ever
since. And I shall never love another woman
but you.”
He had taken her hands in his, and he was
drawing her to him. His eyes held hers, and would
not release them.
“Tell me,” he whispered, “tell me quickly if you
love me—tell me!”
In the gathering dusk he saw that her face
flushed crimson, that her shining eyes grew soft;
he felt her hands grow warm and moist, and
tremble in his own, and without waiting for any
spoken word, he drew her into his arms and laid
her head against his breast and kissed her softly
and tenderly on her lips. A great silence fell
upon them—Marriot remembered afterwards that
while it lasted she clung to him like a hurt thing
that needs care and protection, and nestles closely
to protecting arms lest they should be taken away
from them.
“And you will marry me, Brigit?” he whispered
at last. “You will marry me soon, and let me
take you away from all that sad wretchedness, and


The Threshing-Floor io9
take care of you, and love you, and try to make
you happy? You will?”
He felt her face, her lips, her hands suddenly
turn cold as the stone on which they sat. She
drew herself away from him. He, gazing at her,
saw that her face and eyes were full of mute
agony. She rocked herself to and fro, and a
low moan came from her heart.
“Marry you?” she said. “Oh no, no, no!—
never. O God l’”
Marriot felt as if some awful, impassable gulf
had suddenly opened between them. A deadly
fear of he knew not what seized his heart, and
made him sick and faint. He leaned forward as
Brigit drew away from him, watching her with
keen, eager eyes.
“What is it?” he said hoarsely. “Brigit!”
She covered her face with her hands as if to
shut out the sight of him. And presently she
began to sob, not loudly, but quietly and regularly,
as a child sobs whose heart is broken by some
childish grief. Marriot saw great tears gather
between her fingers and fall on her lap. Mighty
waves of pity, of desire to comfort her, of protect-
ing love, swept over him. He put his arm round
her shoulders and drew her nearer.
“Brigit !” he said. “Don’t cry like that. Why,
why do you say you will never marry me? Speak
to me, Brigit.”
She made a strong effort to control herself, and
presently she dried her tears and turned to him
with a calmer face.


1 Io The Threshing-Floor
“It couldn't be,” she said. “Think of how
you've told me things about yourself, how you
mean to get on and to be a great man. Think
of what a family mine is. Why, it would be pulling
you down into the dust, the very dirt, to marry
me!”
The impassable gulf was bridged; the deadly,
sickening fear had dissolved. Marriot laughed
joyously. He drew her into his arms again and
kissed her passionately.
“Is that all P” he said. “Why, that's nothing !
I want you ! And since I know you love me—
tell me, tell me you do.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I do.”
“Then you are mine, and you will marry me.
Give me your promise, Brigit.”
“No 1" she answered, with a firm decision of
tone, “I won't promise. Perhaps—perhaps it's
just the very surest proof of how much I do
love you that I can give you, when I say that I
won't.”
Marriot shook his head. The impassable gulf
had opened again, and again he grew sick at heart.
His face clouded, and he sighed deeply.
Brigit looked at him intently—she laid her hand
on his sleeve and stroked it gently and timidly
with her fingers. He turned and looked at her
with questioning and speculative eyes. She
glanced up at him timidly, and he saw her lips
tremble and her eyes grow moist and wistful.
“You don't know how—how I love you !” she
said gently. “I think I did almost from the


The Threshing-Floor I I I
beginning. You seemed—such a real man. And
I'd do anything—anything to serve you. I'd work
for you—be your servant, anything you liked—just
to be near you, and to see you, and to hear your
voice—oh, I would !”
“And yet you won't marry me!” he exclaimed,
with some bitterness.
“No ; because I'm not good enough. Oh—ohl
Can't you see, won't you see, that I'd give all the
world to be—your wife? But it would be wrong.
Oh, I don't know how it is—I’m changed. I'm
not the same girl that I was two months ago.
Something's happened to me. It's you; you've
changed me—altogether. I didn't care what I did.
Don't you remember, that first morning you came
to the house, that I said we didn't fear anything
or care for anything, that we were a bad lot? And
now—oh, I want to be good—I want to be good l’’
Marriot drew her close to him again. He looked
earnestly into her eyes.
“Brigit,” he said, “tell me—have you ever cared
for-loved—anyone—any man—before me?”
She looked at him, half startled. Then she
Smiled mournfully and pathetically and shook
her head.
“Oh no, oh no l’ she said. “No-never—
never !”
“And no man has ever loved you?”
She shook her head again—he thought there
was something sad in her eyes as she turned them
with absolute candour to him.
“No,” she said, “no man has ever loved me.


114. The Threshing-Floor
She lay there until the darkness was thick, but
at last she rose and went into the house. In the
great kitchen Jacob Garthen sat alone, reading
his Bible. She went to his side and laid her
hand on his shoulder.
“Jacob,” she said, “I’ve something to tell you.
I believe in God—at last. And—and I’m going
to pray to Him, Jacob. You pray for me too—
oh, pray hard for me!”
Then she bent down and kissed the old man's
cheek and went up the stairs to her own room.


CHAPTER III
SINCE the day on which he and Brigit set the
bantam's eggs in the hayloft Dimsdale had not
been to Abbotsholme again. He was now formally
articled to his father, a stern, old-fashioned solicitor,
who believed that young men should have as much
work and as little play as possible, and he was
being kept to his books and his duties rather more
closely than he liked. Mr. Warrington, indeed,
insisted that Dimsdale should devote at least three
evenings a week to reading law: he was accordingly
restricted a good deal in his meetings with Lizzie,
in whom he had found a mistress much more to
his vicious tastes and likings than any girl he had
yet known. Since he had carried out his plan of
bribing her to silence, he had been much taken up
with her, and all desire of seeing Brigit or being
with her had passed completely out of his mind.
Chance brought them together again on the day
succeeding that on which Marriot asked Brigit to
marry him.
On the morning of that day Mr. Warrington
summoned his son into his private office. He
pointed to some papers lying on his desk.
“I want you, Dimsdale,” he said, “to be good
enough to get on your horse and ride over to
115


116 The Threshing-Floor
Abbotsholme with those papers and to give them
yourself to Mr. Challenger.”
Dimsdale glanced doubtfully at the papers.
“If it's a writ or a summons,” he said, “there'll
be a row. He'll accept service in the town, or on
the road, but not on his own land. He ran
Johnson, Smith & Carter's head clerk, out of his
paddock with a dog-whip the other day. He's"—
Mr. Warrington lifted a deprecating hand.
“Be good enough not to trouble me with the
idle gossip of clerks,” he said in his most icy
manner. “There is not the slightest possibility
of my serving writs or summonses upon Mr.
Challenger, seeing that I am, as you may be aware,
his family solicitor.”
“I thought it might be on your own hook,” said
Dimsdale apologetically. “I know”—
“On my own —? Be good enough to explain
your remarkably strange and doubtful phrase-
ology.” -
“On your own hook, you know—that is—I mean
doing it yourself, you know—on your own busi-
ness,” said Dimsdale. “I know all his land's
heavily mortgaged to you.”
“Be good enough to endeavour to cultivate a
preciseness of expression and a due regard to
niceties of language, together with a proper respect
for the dignity of the English tongue,” said Mr.
Warrington. “Your usual method of communi-
cating your ideas—which are nebulous—and your
thoughts—which, if not absolutely inchoate, are
almost invariably half-formed—is by expressing


The Threshing-Floor 117
them in the phraseology of the schoolboy or the
groom, or in that lamentable and ungraceful form
of articulate expression which is, I believe, called
slang, and obtains, I regret to say, even amongst
the upper and presumably educated classes of this
country.”
“Am I to go with the papers just now P”
inquired Dimsdale.
“Be good enough to start upon your journey at
once, to deliver the papers personally into Mr.
Challenger's hands, to request his signature at the
places indicated, and to witness it in due and legal
form,” replied Mr. Warrington. “Be good enough
also to thereafter return to town without delay.”
“Oh, I shan't be long,” said Dimsdale, seizing
upon the papers and bestowing them in an inside
pocket. -
“Be good enough to remain one moment,” said
Mr. Warrington, assuming a judicial attitude. “I
am told that you were seen speaking to a young
person—a young person of the female sex and of
the domestic class—in the wood called or known
by the name of Dead Man's Copse, situate in the
valley lying between Normancaster and Abbots-
holme, on the evening of Thursday last. I desire
an explanation of this remarkable, unaccountable,
and quite unpermissible action on your part.”
Dimsdale knitted his brows, rubbed his chin,
stared at the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and finally
with perfect frankness at his father.
“Young person—female—Dead Man's Copse—
last Thursday evening?” he said wonderingly.


The Threshing-Floor I 19
no more fine clothes, no horse to ride, no money
for cigarettes, or drinks, or French novels and
papers, which he secretly imported from Paris—
no, he would have nothing at all. Worse than
that, he would be literally obliged to work for his
bread. He almost wept at the thought of it.
Decidedly he must keep his affairs unknown to his
father; he must just as certainly keep in with
Lizzie. Although he was only nineteen, he knew
enough to know that girls like Lizzie will kiss one
moment and betray the next. It was in a not too
comfortable state of mind that Dimsdale went t
Abbotsholme. -
Hannah answered his knock at the front door.
She showed no surprise on letting him in, but he
saw something very like resentment at his presence
in her eyes.
“Is Mr. Challenger in P” he asked.
“No,” replied Hannah.
“When will he be in P”
“At dinner-time.”
“Well,” said Dimsdale, getting off his horse,
“then I shall have to wait for him.”
He fastened the horse to a ring in the wall of
the porch and turned to Hannah, who stood in the
doorway of the stone hall as if to bar his entrance.
“I suppose I may sit down until Mr. Challenger
returns?” he said.
Hannah retreated into the stone hall.
“Miss Brigit, here's Mr. Dimsdale Warrington,”
she said.
Dimsdale walked in, swaggering and self-assured.


12o The Threshing-Floor
Brigit was sewing at one of the window tables.
She looked up, regarded Dimsdale calmly, and
asked in very cold tones what he wanted.
“To see your father,” answered Dimsdale. “On
business from my father.”
“If it is a writ,” said Brigit, “I give you fair
warning that you had better go away. He is in a
savage mood, and will probably beat or shoot you.”
“Then it isn't,” retorted Dimsdale. “It’s some
papers to sign.”
“Will you take a seat?” she said. “And,
Hannah, will you draw some ale for Mr. Dims-
dale P”
Dimsdale sat down. He felt that he was being
treated in a distant fashion, and it struck him as
being decidedly incongruous that he had often
amused himself with Brigit in that very hall. She
now sat silent, steadily working, and she paid no
more attention to him than if he had been one of
the chairs or tables.
Hannah brought the ale, placed jug and glass
before the visitor, and went away. Dimsdale helped
himself, and drank with appreciation. Then, having
nothing better to do, he amused himself by eyeing
Brigit over. The result of his examination pro-
duced a sudden enthusiastic outburst.
“By George, Bid,” he exclaimed, “I’ll swear
you're handsomer than ever ! But you're a bit
pale.”
She turned and looked at him gravely. Any-
one possessed of good feeling would have seen
something of an appeal and a protest in Brigit's


The Threshing-Floor 121
face at that moment, but Dimsdale had no good
feeling, and could not see beneath the surface.
And Brigit saw it and sighed, and turned her face
to her work again.
“Why don't you speak to me?” he said. “Why
are you so glum and stand-offish? Hang it all,
you were fond enough of me for over a year !”
Brigit rose quietly from the table, and gathering
her work together, gave evident signs of her inten-
tion to leave the room, every fibre, every nerve
in her body tingling with resentment and horror
of Dimsdale's presence. She felt that she must
escape from it, and she moved towards the door.
Then Dimsdale did a foolish thing. He laughed
in a loud, masterful fashion, and jumping from his
seat, threw his arm round her and tried to kiss her.
The resentment in Brigit flamed into fierce, burning,
irrepressible anger—her free hand swung back and
flashed forward again, and she struck Dimsdale full
in the face.
Brigit's arm was muscular; her muscles were
hard as steel. She had struck with her clenched
fist, and the blow fell square and true on Dims-
dale's nose. A bright stream of blood shot out
across the floor, across Dimsdale's fine clothes,
across the skirt of Brigit's gown. And with the
outpouring of blood came an outpouring of woe,
Dimsdale uttered a scream of rage and pain that
brought Hannah and Lizzie from the kitchen.
Upon the group thus formed Gabriel Challenger
entered from the paddock.
“What is this?” he inquired. “Young Mr.


The Threshing-Floor 123
While he bathed and blubbered Lizzie hung round
him, furious and venomous.
“You were trying to kiss her, you lying hound !”
she hissed into Dimsdale's ear. “You were—you
know you were. You can't keep your hands off
anything with a petticoat on, you little devil. But
I'll watch you—do you hear? You dare to try to
kiss her again, and I'll tell everything I know.
And bring some more money on Monday night,
for I want it. A couple of nice black eyes you'll
have by that time !”
Then she too left him. Secretly, she was full
of astonishment and wonder that Brigit should
have repelled Dimsdale's advances.


CHAPTER IV
WHEN Dimsdale had repaired his damage as well
as he could, he fell into a sulky anger. He
returned to Challenger, obtained his signature to
the papers, and curtly declining an invitation to
stay to dinner, went out to his horse and rode off.
He felt - that he had been wickedly and rudely
treated.
At the gate of the paddock he met Brigit. She
had gone out there to speak to him. She looked
at him sadly; Dimsdale returned her gaze with a
surly glance. He would have ridden on in silence,
but she stood before the horse.
“I’m sorry I struck you, Dimsdale,” she said.
Dimsdale snarled.
“Wanting to grease in again, are you?” he said.
“Well, I'm not having any. I've had enough of
you, Miss Brigit Challenger, with your high-and-
mighty ways. And what shall I look like with a
couple of black eyes? There'll be a nice to-do at
home. And all for nothing. I wish I’d never
seen such a she-devil as you are.”
Brigit hung her head and returned slowly to the
house. She was wondering at the strange light
which had suddenly shown her so many things in
their true colours.
124


The Threshing-Floor 125
Lizzie had witnessed this meeting from an upper
window. She saw Brigit return with hanging
head and slow step.
“He’s given her one for herself,” she said. “I’ll
forgive him for that.”


CHA PTE R V
DURING the week that ensued Brigit was full of
thought. She lay awake at night thinking, she
spent most of the day in silence. Hannah Coulson
noticed that she moved about the house slowly
and with little of her old activity, and she further
observed that Brigit was losing some of her colour.
She came to the conclusion that the girl had some-
thing on her mind, but in pursuance of her strict
policy of non-interference with the Challengers, she
said nothing to her. She knew that if Brigit
wanted advice or counsel from her she would
ask for it. At that time, however, she did not
invite Hannah's confidence. Now and then,
during that week, she sought out Jacob Garthen
in the little outhouse and spent an hour with
him while the old man worked, but she exchanged
very little conversation with him. It seemed to
her that his presence was helping her in some
way.
All that week it was impressed upon her that
she was undergoing a strange transformation, or,
rather, that she was beginning to realise a trans-
formation which had been effected with startling
suddenness. That she loved Marriot with all the
depth and strength of hºr passionate nature she


The Threshing-Floor 127
knew, and about that most certain and obvious
fact she did not think much—it was too real to
need thinking of. But she thought long and
earnestly of the wonderful change in herself
which this new birth had made—she felt that it
was as if she had been dipped in some lake of
liquid flame, which had burnt out of her all the
old passions, desires, thoughts, and feelings.
Again it seemed to her that it was as if some
hand had suddenly unlocked a door that had
previously been closed to her, and by that swift
action had revealed to her wondering eyes a new
world, into whose beauty and restfulness she
was freely bidden to enter. That she was dazed
and confused by the sudden dawning of love she
also knew, and she wished time to pass away so
that she could think with a clear mind. For
she was honest in motive and purpose, and she
realised that there was a question to answer to
herself before she could answer the one which
Marriot had put to her. And that question was
—ought she not to tell him everything about her
own life before she had known him P In trying
to solve this problem she thought and thought
until her brain was almost sick with continued
effort.
During that process of thought Brigit became
aware of a remarkable psychological fact, which
so impressed itself upon her that she finally
recognised its truth and never afterwards doubted
it. It was this—the Brigit who had lived previous
to this coming of love was not the Brigit who


128 The Threshing-Floor
lived after it had definitely come. The old
Brigit was dead—so dead to the new Brigit
that she seemed to be like some grey shadow
moving indistinctly in the mists of the far-away
past. There was so much difference between
what the old Brigit had been and what the new
Brigit desired and felt it in her power to be, that
it was only recognising a definite truth to say that
they were two different individuals. But this new
Brigit wanted to know how far she was responsible
for the old Brigit.
“Lots of people,” she said to herself, as she sat
in the orchard one morning staring at the fruit trees
with fixed, unseeing eyes, “would say it's all fancy,
but I know it isn't. I'm not what I was when he
came. I was nothing but a child up to then—I
never thought or reflected, or looked ahead or
anything. I did what I pleased and what pleased
me. I never regretted anything that I did—did
I ever even think of it after P Why, I didn't even
know what shame was ' "
She covered her face with her hands, and rocked
herself to and fro in a sudden agony of awful
regret.
“Oh, I wish I'd known — I wish I'd known,”
she said. “But I never thought, never knew,
never cared ' And I know it wasn't me—this
me—it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't. I don't care
how much they might say it was. God knows it
was not me as I really am.”
She began to think, in a vague, puzzling fashion,
of something that Jacob Garthen had told her.


The Threshing-Floor 129
He had said that however sinful a man might
have been, he became a new man, washed of all
his evil, if he was born again through repentance
and faith. If that was so, if people believed it in
religion, why couldn't they believe it in the case
of a woman who had not been good in early life
but in whom the great impelling influence of love
had induced the desire and the power to be good?
Why, since Christ, as Jacob said, freely and fully
forgave the blackest sinner and made him a new
man, would not the world admit the truth of the
same doctrine as regards a woman who had sinned
and been cleansed of her sin by love? And why
did men go free while women were condemned for
life for one single folly? It seemed to her unjust
and unreasonable. Yet little as she knew of the
world, she knew that from the world the Brigit
of old would have met with no mercy and no
consideration. And with that knowledge before
her she returned to the insistent declaration of
belief to which she clung as a drowning man clings
to his last refuge. -
“It was not me !” she said. “I wasn't even
alive then. That me is as dead as these stones.
I don't care what anyone may say—yes, even if
he said it himself—I shall believe that till I die.
That Brigit was a child—a poor ignorant, un-
thinking, wilful child. But this is a woman—
made by his love. Oh-if-if-I could make
him see it—like that l”
The day arrived for the promised meeting with
Marriot. Brigit was still undecided as to what
9


130 The Threshing-Floor
she should say to him. They met at the place
whereat Marriot had told her of his love, and at
the same hour of the evening. There was some
constraint and shyness on the part of each, but
to Brigit, after the mental storm and stress of the
last six days, there was a blessed sense of relief
and restfulness in knowing that he was at her
side again.
Conscious that there was a great deal to be
said, they began, after the fashion of strenuous
and passionate natures, by saying nothing at all.
But at last Marriot spoke—
“What are you going to say to me, Brigit? I
have been watching your face—I can see that you
have been thinking deeply. Your eyes are tired,
and you are pale.”
“Yes,” she answered, turning to him and looking
narrowly at him. “I have been thinking—a great
deal. Haven't you?”
Marriot shook his head in a way which sug-
gested that he was rather puzzled by the
question.
“Not so much thinking as wondering—trying to
feel certain—of what—what you would say to me.
Oh, Brigit, why don't you say straight out what I
want you to say?—especially when you have
already told me that you love me.”
“I didn't know a week ago, when we were
talking here, that I loved you one-half as much as
I do,” she said, with a frank simplicity that struck
Marriot deeply. “I suppose one never realises it
at first, Do you know that you have changed me


The Threshing-Floor 131
in almost everything? I didn't believe in anything
at all until I knew you. And now—I can't quite
tell why—I have come to believe in God, and I’ve
said prayers—Jacob taught me how to pray—
and oh, I’m changed altogether. Don't you think
that that shows how I love you?”
Marriot drew her to him and kissed her
tenderly.
“Then why won't you say yes to me at once?”
he asked.
“Because I want you to know exactly what you
are doing,” she answered. “I pointed out to you
last week what a pity it would be for you, with
your hopes and ambitions, to marry into a family
of such bad reputation as ours. You”—
“Brigit,” he said, interrupting her, “I want you
to understand, once for all, that all that is utterly
beyond the question. The reputation of your
family has nothing to do with my love for you.
What difference could it make to me?—what do I
care about the past? The past is—the past.”
She drew away from him and looked at him
searchingly.
“Do you mean that?” she asked. “That you
don't care about—the past?”
Marriot snapped his fingers.
“Not that!” he said. “My concern is with the
present and the future.”
She drew a deep breath and seemed to think
seriously over his words.
“But there is something of the present in what
I have just said,” she continued. “If you marry


132 The Threshing-Floor
into a family, you in some sort join yourself to it,
don't you? Well, now, think of what unpleasant-
ness might come to you through me. There is
Denys—he is so bad at present that nothing can
be done with him—as things are going on he can-
not last long. It is dreadful to see him now. And
I believe—I don't think it is much of a secret—
that my father is on the verge of ruin. Every-
thing that he has is heavily mortgaged, and I fear
—I fear that a crisis is coming. And I don't want
to bring trouble to you, even indirectly.”
“I don't care,” said Marriot doggedly. “I’m
sorry indeed that you should have such bad news,
but I’m not wanting your father or your brother—
I'm wanting you. If all this is true, poor child,
the Sooner you have a husband and a home the
better. Understand, I won't take your family as
an excuse.”
She looked down and laid her hand timidly on
his sleeve.
“There's another thing that I think you haven't
thought of,” she said. “That's myself.”
“YourSelf l’”
“I mean,” she said, “that you know nothing of
me—next to nothing. What do you know about
me? I might be anything but what you fancy me
to be. I might not be—what you would like me
to be.”
“That's nonsense,” he said. “You are what I
like you to be. Do you think I can't tell what
you are by your eyes, your words, your thoughts
of me in putting me and my prospects before any-


The Threshing-Floor 133
thing else? No; I know what you are, Brigit,
and what you would be to me.”
“But,” she said in a very low voice, “before you
knew me I might not have been—because then I
didn't know you, or what love is — I might not
have been all that you would have liked.”
Marriot, who did not comprehend her train of
thought, failed to see that she here deliberately
handed him the key of a closed chamber. He
stirred impatiently, and he frowned a little.
“I tell you,” he said earnestly, “that I do not
regard the past as being worth consideration. I
am a man of the present and the future—we are
not going to live in the past, but just now, and in
the days to come. I want you for yourself, as you
are, and as you tell me you have come to be
through my love for you. As you are now you
are what I want.”
She gazed at him steadily—the colour came
back to her cheeks and her eyes grew soft and
tender.
“Do you really mean that?” she said. “That
you want me for myself, as I am now—now, since
I knew you—that you want me to love you and be
true to you for always — your wife — do you ?
Then—yes, yes, yes!”
She threw herself into his arms with a great cry
of happiness, and clung to him as if she would
never release him from her embrace again; but as
Marriot bent his face down to hers he felt a violent
shudder run through her frame, her arms tightened
about his neck, and then relaxed, and she sprang


134 The Threshing-Floor
away from him with a sharp cry of horror and fear.
With dilating eyes and outstretched arm she
pointed over his shoulder to something behind
him.
“Look—look 1" she panted.
Marriot turned quickly, almost as much startled
as he saw that she was. And gazing in the
direction to which Brigit pointed he saw Rachel
Dene. She stood on the edge of a belt of wood
high above the cave in which they had been
sitting; her long black garments looked blacker
than ever against the limestone rock, her face was
white and drawn, and her eyes burned with a
fierce light which Marriot felt to be born of
insanity. She was looking down on Brigit with
an expression of malignant hatred so fierce and
intense that Marriot hastily put his arm about the
girl's waist and drew her protectingly to him.
Brigit covered her face with her hands.
“Oh, don't let her look at me like that—don't
let her look at me like that l” she sobbed. “It
frightens me—it frightens me!”
“Hush — hush | * said Marriot. “Never mind
her—the poor thing's mad. Come away, Brigit.”
The madwoman turned her fierce gaze away from
Brigit to Marriot, and her expression changed and
softened. She shook her head sadly.
“I knew what was to be when first I set eyes on
you,” she said, “and if I could have saved you I
would; but did I not say that one thread must
twine with another as it is appointed, and we must
all dree our own weird, and neither you nor me


The Threshing-Floor 135
can change what is written? But better had you
taken a fiend in woman's shape to wife than a
daughter of that accursed breed l’”
With the last word she slipped back into the
underwood behind her, and he heard the dry sticks
and twigs crackle under her tread. In a moment
there was deep silence, broken only by the music
of the Swirl running swiftly at the foot of the copse.
Brigit was crying bitterly in Marriot's arms. It
was some time before he could soothe her—when
she grew more composed he led her away towards
Abbotsholme. At the gate leading into the
meadows he took her into his arms again and
kissed her last tears away.
“You were overwrought—nervous,” he said.
Brigit laughed pitifully.
“Nervous !” she said. “It was for the first time
in my life, then. I've never been nervous.”
“But you have been troubled and agitated all
this week, and that would upset your nerves. And
the sudden fright—for she's not the most reassuring
sight in the world, poor thing.”
Brigit shuddered and shut her eyes.
“Oh 1” she said. “It was seeing her at the
very moment that I gave my promise to you.
Will it have any effect on it—will it, will it?”
“Of course not,” said Marriot. “Why, Brigit
dear, what's come over you? You told me you
didn't believe in anything of that sort—curses and
so on.”
“Ah, but you don't know what the sight of that
woman meant to me—you don't know her story !”


136 The Threshing-Floor
“Don’t I ?” said Marriot. “Well then, I do.”
She drew back and looked at him with one of
the searching inspections which he was beginning
to know so well.
“Who told you of it?” she asked.
“Mrs. Marshall.”
Brigit sighed deeply.
“And you can still love and even marry me
when you know that my father and brother did—
that?”
“And even if they had done viler things—I love
you.”
He took her almost to the door of her father's
house, and when he left her she was smiling again
and happy. When she had gone in he remained
for awhile in the rapidly-gathering darkness gazing
at the house and reflecting on the strange sad
history of the people amongst whom he had found
his heart's love.


CHA PTER VI
INSTEAD of returning to Normancaster by the river
and the woods, Marriot turned up the path from
the ford and struck into the highway. He was
in a mood for sharp walking on a hard road: the
air of the valley, too, seemed hot and close—he
wanted to feel the clearer atmosphere of the moor-
lands above him. Once in the highway, he marched
forward at a quick pace, thinking of the morning
whereon he had first traversed it, first looked upon
the valley of the Swirl, first seen Brigit. That was
but two months—scarcely two months—before, but
so much of importance in his life had happened
during the time that the two months seemed like
two years. He thought of the strange conditions
under which he and Brigit had met, of the
mysterious things said by Rachel Dene that June
morning, and of her repetition of them that very
night in Dead Man's Copse. And coming at that
instant to the Abbot's Stone, he saw that Rachel
Dene was sitting there in the thickening gloom.
She sat in the same attitude in which he had
first found her, with her glittering eyes fixed on
the lights of Gabriel Challenger's farmstead far
below in the valley, and when he went closer to
her he saw that the coil of long fair hair was
187


138 The Threshing-Floor
lying in her lap. As at their first meeting, she
showed no sign of surprise or interest in his
presence.
“Mistress,” said Marriot gently, “you are in
great trouble.”
She lifted her face and looked at him. Seen
close at hand, he saw that she must once have
been a singularly handsome woman—now her
features were scarred and seamed as if with
actual wounds.
“It is the lot of many,” she answered, quietly
and indifferently.
“But not to bear such trouble as yours,” he said.
“Can no one help you—is there nothing that any-
one can do—I, for instance P”
“In a little while,” she replied in the same tone,
“you will have trouble enough of your own to
bear.”
“Never mind that,” said Marriot. “Listen—
where do you live, mistress P”
“On the ground, in the wood, anywhere, with
the sky for a roof. It is enough for such as I
am.”
“But think,” said Marriot. “That is all very well
in summer, but winter will soon be here, and then
you will be starved to death of cold.”
“Cold !” she exclaimed, with the first evidence
of any feeling. “Cold 1 Man, I have a fire within
me that would melt the Arctic ice.”
Marriot shook his head.
“You are not going to sit there all night?” he
asked.


14o The Threshing-Floor
dropping her hand. “It is only I who can see—
you haven't the gift. And I have seen and seen
until I am weary of seeing. If only the moment
would come and release me, and let me be at peace
—at peace l"
She resumed her former attitude, and Marriot,
seeing that she wished to be alone, left her.


CHA PT E R VII
ON the following evening, Marriot, in pursuance of
an arrangement which he had made with Brigit,
walked by the river-side path to Abbotsholme,
where she was to meet him in the meadow. He
arrived at the trysting-place before the appointed
hour, but glancing in the direction of the farm-
stead, he saw Brigit leave the porch, cross the
river, and advance towards him so rapidly that he
was forced to the conclusion that there was some
reason for her unusual haste. He left the gate
whereat he had meant to await her coming, and
hurried to meet her. As they drew near each
other he saw that she was troubled and agitated.
“What is it, Brigit?” he said anxiously, as she
came up to him. “What is the matter?”
Brigit was out of breath. She leaned, panting,
against a tree.
“It's—Denys,” she said at last, “Denys. He
is almost mad with fear or drink, or because he
can't get drink. Oh, we have had a dreadful
time with him 1 Last night he saw—at least my
father insists that he saw—the ghost.”
“The ghost!” exclaimed Marriot.
“The abbot—in the stone hall. My father is
absolutely assured that Penys did see it. He's


142 The Threshing-Floor
nearly as bad as Denys is—but he's perfectly
quiet. I wish he wasn't so quiet—it frightens me.”
Marriot put his arm round her and drew her to a
fallen tree that lay a little distance away. He
made her sit down, and he took a seat at her
side.
“Tell me all about it, dear,” he said. “Why,
your hands are trembling !”
“Yes,” she said, smiling faintly. “I’ll admit I'm
upset this time. I’ve had such a lot of trouble with
Denys at one time or another that I thought I was
getting hardened to it, but he frightened me last
night. You remember what he was like the first
time you came to the house?”
“Yes,” said Marriot. “I remember very well.”
“Ever since that dreadful affair two years ago,”
continued Brigit, “he has been drinking heavily.
Brandy—all day long. He has a secret store
somewhere—we don't know where, he is so sly and
secret in his movements. My father stopped him
from drinking brandy in the house, because he was
at it first thing in the morning, and now, for some
time, the spirits have been locked away from
Denys. But he gets brandy all the same. Hannah
and I think he has a store hidden somewhere about
the farm—he must have, because he is always
drunk before dinner. Isn't it awful ?”
“Tell me about last night,” said Marriot.
“He had been worse than ever all the week,”
said Brigit, sighing heavily, “and yesterday after-
noon he was so bad that we had to put him to bed.
He was asleep when we went to bed at ten


The Threshing-Floor 143
o'clock, but about an hour after I was awoke by a
fearful scream, followed by another, and then by
a third. Oh ”
She shut her eyes and covered her ears with her
closed fists as if to shut out all hearing.
“I shall never forget those screams to my dying
day,” she said, shuddering. “There was something
so horribly unearthly about them. Everybody in
the house heard them. We all ran downstairs—
my father, the women, the men, and myself. We
found Denys in the stone hall—he had evidently
come down to get spirits, if he could find them,
and I think he must have meant to break open the
sideboard, for there was a big chisel lying by his
candlestick on the table. But he-oh He was
leaning against the wainscoting on the far side of
the room, half turned away from and half turned to
the cross which I showed you cut in the floor, and he
was pointing at it with one hand. But his face —his
teeth were chattering so badly that we could hear
them, and he was white as death and sweating with
fear. I wish—I wish I hadn't seen him like that l”
“What happened?” asked Marriot. “Did he say
that he had seen anything P”
“He has never said anything intelligible since,”
she replied, “except to call for brandy and to beg
to be let out of his room.”
“Is he locked up, then P” said Marriot.
“Yes; my father insisted on it. We got him
back to his room, and he locked him in himself—
until, he says, the brandy is sweated out of him.
Of course there was no sleep for anybody during


The Threshing-Floor 145
might find it out, and he's in such a state that no
one knows what he might do if anything didn't
please him. No, you must go back.”
“I won't do that,” he said firmly. “I’ll stay
about here—in the covert there, so that you'll
know where to find me if you want me.”
“Do you mean you would stay there—all
night?”
“Why not? It's summer. Do you think I mind
a little discomfort so long as I can be at hand to
help you?”
Brigit was touched. She put her arm round his
neck and kissed him affectionately.
“I don't want you to do that,” she said. “But
if you care to stop for an hour or so I'll come back
then and tell you how matters are going on. If he
would only get quiet and go to sleep he would
calm down.”
“That's precisely why a doctor is needed,” said
Marriot. “Well, I shall wait about here—I’ll smoke
and think until you come back.”
“Yes, I'll come back in an hour or so in any
case,” she answered. “It will be almost dark then
—meet me at the ford.”
She hurried away in the gathering dusk, and
Marriot, taking out his pipe and tobacco, began
to smoke. He went into the little covert which
overhung the ford and the stepping-stones, and
paced up and down amongst the pines, thinking.
Across the river lights began to gleam in the
farmstead.
Marriot felt a sense of profound sadness, of
IO


CHAPTER VIII
THE appeal to his strength and protection which
was implied in Brigit's words drove away the
oppressive feeling which had gradually settled
over Marriot. He felt that he was called to
possible action, that there might be things to be
done which only a man could do, and the prospect
braced his nerves and filled his mind. He took
Brigit's hand in his, pressed it encouragingly, and
turned to the house with her.
As they crossed the paddock a sudden glare of
lightning shot out from the dark sky above the
fells and lit up the gaunt walls and turrets of the
dismantled parts of the old abbey. Marriot
quickened his pace.
“There is going to be a storm,” he remarked.
“No,” said Brigit. “It is only sheet-lightning
—there is always a lot about the beginning of
harvest. They say it ripens the corn.”
The word harvest recalled the oppressive feeling,
the vague dread to Marriot's mind.
“What about your brother?” he asked abruptly.
“When I got back after leaving you,” Brigit
replied, “Hannah said that he had become per-
fectly quiet—she thought he had gone to sleep.
But soon after I entered the house we heard him
147


The Threshing-Floor 149
“Have none of you ever noticed any particular
direction that he takes P” asked Marriot.
“No, master,” replied Jacob, “for if he has the
drink hidden away somewhere, he'd take good
care never to go to it by the same way twice
running.”
“They're so uncommon cunning about anything
like that,” remarked the shepherd. “Worse than a
dog with a bone.”
“He must be found,” said Marriot. “In his
present state he may do himself some injury.”
At that moment the door of the kitchen opened
and Gabriel Challenger appeared on the threshold.
He looked from one face to another, and recognised
Marriot. Marriot saw that he was perfectly calm,
but there was an expression on his face and in his
eyes which he had never seen before. Gabriel
looked as if his eyes had been contemplating
strange things all day.
He came a step or two into the kitchen and
nodded to Marriot.
“Mr. Marriot,” he said, “good-evening. I had no
idea that you had arrived. Come into the parlour
and smoke a cigar.”
Brigit stepped forward—
“Father,” she said, “Denys has got away. He
became quiet and asked for tea and food. When
I took them up he rushed from his room and out
of the house. Mr. Marriot thinks we ought to
search for him, and get a doctor to see him at
once.”
Challenger received this news with absolute


150 The Threshing-Floor
calmness. He listened attentively to his daughter,
and when she had finished he bowed his head.
“It is very kind of you, Mr. Marriot,” he said,
“to offer any helpful suggestion, but I do not think
that anything can now be done. Last night Denys's
doom was announced to him—he is now in all
probability gone to it. What it may be I cannot
tell. But it is certain—nothing can prevent it.
We shall soon know of it.”
Brigit covered her face with her hands. Hannah,
who had sat down on the long settle near the
shepherd, folded her hands in her apron and looked
fixedly at the fire. Jacob moved his head restlessly
and sighed deeply; the shepherd stared wide-eyed
and open-mouthed at his master. All seemed to
be listening—waiting.
“We shall soon know of it,” repeated Challenger.
“The warning was sure and the consequences are
inevitable. The warning is never given in vain.”
Marriot felt the situation intolerable.
“At least,” he said, addressing Challenger, “at
least, let me do something to try to find your son
and to help him. A doctor”—
Challenger shook his head.
“Anything that you care to do, Mr. Marriot,”
he said, “I shall be grateful to you for doing. But
I tell you that it is useless. Denys has gone to
his doom—whatever it may be. Search for him
if you like; as for me, I will await the news that
will come—must come.”
He turned away quietly, and leaving the kitchen
closed the door behind him. Marriot, who had


The Threshing-Floor 151
been leaning against the table during the fore-
going colloquy, sprang into activity.
“Come!” he said. “Let us see if we can't do
something. Jacob, couldn't you go round all the
buildings? There must be many places about the
house where he could hide things.”
“Ay, master,” said Jacob, rising. “I could and
will, but thee'll find that it'll be of no use. The
Lord forbid that I should believe as the master
believes, but there's death in the air to-night—I
can feel it.”
“Don’t frighten Miss Challenger,” said Marriot,
looking at Brigit. He turned to the shepherd.
“Couldn't you search the wood at the back of the
house?” he suggested. “That looks a likely spot
to make a hiding-place of.”
“I’ll do it, sir,” answered the man, rising, “but
it’ll be like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay.
He's that 'cute that he'd slip away like a fox at
the first noise.”
“You can but try,” said Marriot. “I’ll go down
by the river.”
Jacob and the shepherd went into the small
kitchen, lighted lanthorns, brought one to Marriot,
and set out on their respective missions. Marriot
looked at Brigit.
“Come with me,” he said.
She followed him into the darkness. As they
left the house a vivid flash of lightning illumined
the river and the fell-side beyond it.
“Brigit,” said Marriot, taking her hand as the
darkness fell again, “can you be a very brave girl?


152 The Threshing-Floor
“Yes,” she answered, pressing his hand. “I am
brave enough now—when I feel that there is real
need.”
“Then listen—do you know the actual spot
where that poor girl threw herself into the
Swirl P”
“Yes,” she replied in a low voice. “I know it.”
“Take me to it,” he said.
“Do you think he may have gone there?” she
asked, in an awestruck whisper.
“I think it very likely indeed,” he answered.
“Because, don't you see, his brain, confused and
bewildered as it must have been, would be domin-
ated by some principal idea or image, and it is
very probable that he has always brooded over
the girl's death, and would turn instinctively to
the place where she died. We will go there.”
Brigit led him across the paddock and the
meadow to a pool formed by a sudden incursion
of the river into the shelving bank.
“It was here,” she said.
Marriot walked round the three sides of the pool
with his lanthorn. Once or twice the lightning
flashed and lit up the slowly-swirling waters most
vividly. The pool was of no great depth and the
water was clear. He had convinced himself in a
few minutes that wherever else he was Denys was
not there.
“There is no sign of him here,” he said, return-
ing to Brigit. “Let us walk along the river-side
to the ford.”
From the fell-side high above them on the other


The Threshing-Floor 153
side of the river came a sudden gust of warm,
heather-scented wind, and on it the high, shrill
notes of a woman's voice— -
“This a nighte, this a nighte,
Every nighte and alle !”
The wind passed them and fell: the voice grew
indistinct. But Brigit clutched at Marriot's arm.
“The Lyke Wake Dirgel” she said.
“And Rachel Dene singing it,” he answered.
“Listen l’”
They stood, holding each other's hands, on the
river bank by the ford, gazing upward through the
darkness. The lanthorn threw a stream of dim
light on the stepping-stones and the creaming
waters that ran by their worn sides. The wind
came warm and scented as before, with a sudden
whirl that swept past them and was gone. The
shrill notes came with it as swiftly and died out
as suddenly—
“The fire shall burn thee to the bare beean l’”
Marriot started. He turned quickly to Brigit,
whose hand was quivering in his own.
“Brigit,” he said, “go back to the house. I am
going up to the Abbot's Stone. I think perhaps
Rachel Dene has something to do with Denys's
disappearance. I don't know how or why, but
I've a feeling that she has. I'll go up there.”
“Let me go with you,” she said. “Please let
me go.”
Marriot hesitated for a moment.


154. The Threshing-Floor
“Very well,” he said. “But you must do
exactly as you are told.”
They crossed the stepping-stones and climbed
the path through the covert in silence. Brigit's
breath came short and hard with the upward
ascent; on reaching the highway she paused,
panting.
“Stay there, Brigit,” said Marriot. “I will go
on to the Abbot's Stone and see if I can see or
hear anything. Remain by this gate—don't come
after me or go away. If Rachel comes this way
keep in the shadow.”
He left her and went along the highway, and
the light of the lanthorn soon became faint in
the distance and disappeared. Brigit remained
leaning against the gate. Now and then a vivid
flash of lightning threw the objects about her
into clear relief. She remembered, afterwards,
how clear was the tracery of the leaves and
branches against the shadowy background of the
covert. "
In a very short time she heard Marriot return-
ing. He had left the lanthorn behind him, and
she argued from this circumstance that he had
made some discovery. He came quickly up to
her, and taking her in his arms drew her close to
him and kissed her.
“Brigit!”
“Yes P’’
“I have found him. Be brave—he is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes. And—I think Rachel Dene killed him.”


The Threshing-Floor 155
She made no answer, but he felt her tremble
from head to foot.
“Can you make your way home?” asked
Marriot. “Go, then—tell Jacob that he is dead,
and where, and get him to arrange at once to
fetch—the body. I will stay by it. And, Brigit,
tell your father.”
When Brigit had gone, Marriot went back to
the Abbot's Stone and once more looked at
Denys, lying dead at its side. Near him, un-
corked and almost empty of its contents, lay a
brandy bottle. He had been struck down by
some heavy instrument in the act of drinking, and
there was blood on his face. But round his throat,
drawn tight, and knotted and re-knotted with
savage determination, was a coil of thick golden
hair. Here and there the dead man's blood had
turned the gold to crimson.


CHAPTER IX
WHEN the coroner held his inquest upon Denys's
body Marriot was necessarily one of the principal
witnesses. His evidence made it plain to the
Normancaster people and to the countryside
generally that on the night of the murder he had
gone to Abbotsholme to visit Brigit. Having no
notion of concealing anything, he stated in simple
language that Miss Challenger had told him on
their meeting of what was going forward, that he
and she had set out to search for Denys, and that
he had found him dead, and had sent her back for
help while he remained with the body. He was
conscious during the next few days that he was the
object of a good deal of interest, but he put it down
to the fact that country folk are invariably much
agitated and enlivened by a nine days' wonder, and
that the circumstances of Denys Challenger's death
had been so tragic that anyone connected with
them must needs submit to be stared at and talked
of for a while.
A few days after Denys had been buried in
Granton churchyard Marriot became aware that
some of the interest with which he was being re-
garded was due to the fact that he had practically
declared himself to be Brigit's lover.
156


The Threshing-Floor 157
He had occasion to ride into the valley in the
neighbourhood of Abbotsholme on business which
took him to the farmhouse of one Mr. Robert Day,
a farmer, who was a member of the Highway Board
and had formed one of the deputation sent to
interview Marriot and inspect the work which he
had accomplished at his former post. It was
evening when he called at Mr. Day's house; in
accordance with local custom, Mr. Day invited him
to walk in and smoke a cigar.
Marriot noticed that the old gentleman was
thoughtful and that he seemed to regard him with
speculative and considering glances. He was a fine
old man, simple-mannered, simple-natured, kindly,
and since Marriot's arrival in Normancaster they
had been good friends and had often chatted
together on the roadside or on market days.
Usually Mr. Day was very communicative and even
garrulous; on this particular evening his conversa-
tional powers seemed to have dried up at their
source. He puffed and pulled at his churchwarden
pipe, and said “Hum !” and “H'm l’ and “Nay,
surely 1” at intervals, but Marriot did most of the
talking. And at last, having smoked the cigar
which Mr. Day had pressed upon him, he rose to
go.
“Sit you down a bit longer, sir,” said Mr. Day,
pressing him back into his chair. “Take another
cigar—there was something I was minded to say
to you.”
“Oh,” said Marriot. “What is that, Mr. Day ?”
Mr. Day made no immediate answer. He


158 The Threshing-Floor
handed the cigar box to his guest and waited until
Marriot had made a selection and begun to smoke.
Then he leaned forward in a kindly and con-
fidential fashion and laid his hand on Marriot's
knee.
“Mr. Marriot,” he said, “I was one of them
that was sent as a deputation to see you and your
work before you came here.”
“You were, Mr. Day,” said Marriot, wondering
what the old man meant. “Yes, I remember it
very well.”
“I said then that you were a clever young man,
a young man that knew his trade, and would do
well for us and for himself, and get on.”
“I hope I've justified your confidence and the
Board's, Mr. Day ?” said Marriot.
Mr. Day nodded his head.
“Very well indeed, sir, very well indeed. So
far you've carried out every hope I had of you.
Everybody's satisfied—everybody. In your time,
Mr. Marriot, you'll do well, and go far. No doubt
of that.”
“Encouragement like that, Mr. Day, ought to
make me go very far indeed. It's a great help.
Thank you,” said Marriot.
Mr. Day puffed thoughtfully at his pipe.
“But I've mentioned that much to you, Mr.
Marriot,” he presently went on, “because I want
you to feel, sir, that I’ve a genuine interest in you,
and want to be a true friend to you, and that what
I’m going to say to you is said out of real friend-
ship to a young man that I respect.”


The Threshing-Floor 159
“I appreciate that still more, Mr. Day. I'm
sure,” said Marriot warmly, “I’m sure you do feel
all that you say for me. Thank you again.”
Mr. Day laid his hand on Marriot's arm and
gave it a tight grip. He looked Marriot square in
the face.
“Well, my lad,” he said, in a low voice, “what
I have to say is this—don't have anything to do
with the Challengers, man or woman.”
Marriot started and the blood rushed to his face.
This was the last thing he had expected to hear.
He stared at his host. And as he stared the
sudden heat into which he had been plunged died
away as quickly, and his heart felt cold as ice, heavy
as stone. He made no answer.
“Speaking as one that feels a friendship for you,”
continued Mr. Day, pressing Marriot's arm again,
“I say don't have anything to do with a
Challenger, man or woman. If you do, sir, you
will suffer for it—certainly in this life, perhaps in
the next.”
Marriot made an impatient movement. He was
going to speak, but the old man stopped him.
“Bide a bit, sir,” he said. “I noticed at the
inquest that it came out that you'd gone to meet
the daughter on the night when the son was done
to death by that poor madwoman. I make no
doubt that you'd been to see her before. Mr.
Marriot, take my advice—don't go again.”
Marriot could bear this no longer.
“Mr. Day!” he exclaimed, “what does this mean?
Does it mean that because there are black traditions


16o The Threshing-Floor
about the family, because of the father's savage
temper, because of this awful tragedy of the son,
that the daughter is to be avoided ? Is that right
—is it fair P”
“Mr. Marriot, in an ordinary case, I'd be the
first to say, No, it's not fair or right. But in this
case I say you'll be a wise man if you take the
good counsel I'm giving you and keep away from
Abbotsholme. I know what I’m talking about.”
Marriot looked at him gloomily.
“But I,” he said, “don’t know what you're talk-
ing about.”
Mr. Day nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “I see that. But if you believe,
sir, that I’m speaking as your friend, you'll bear in
mind that I've lived here, boy and man, since I was
born, sixty years ago, and I do know what I'm
talking about. I've known three generations of the
Challengers, men and women, and I say to you, have
naught to do with Gabriel Challenger's daughter.”
Marriot's heart was now beating so rapidly that
he could scarcely breathe. The old man's earnest
words had conjured up some dreadful phantom
whose outlines were as yet concealed by mists,
whose true form and substance were shrouded in
darkness. But it was there—he felt it there.
He tried to speak, but his tongue had become
dry—it felt paralysed. He looked intently at Mr.
Day with a question in his eyes.
“See, my lad,” continued the old man, “I’ll tell
you something that nobody knows of but me and
my wife. You'll have noticed that we've no young


162 The Threshing-Floor
sides to a room — one hundred and forty-four
multiplied by four—let's see, let's see, let's see—
yes, five hundred and seventy-six. Five hundred
and seventy-six separate Squares of paper in the
room, each a foot wide. No — wrong. Quite
wrong. There were the spaces filled by the fire-
place, cupboards, window, door, to allow for, and
deduct. Let's see, now — four feet by five for
the-
“It was one afternoon when we found it out,”
he heard Mr. Day's voice break in. “In harvest
it was, just as it might be now. I was told it by
one who knew what he was talking about. I came
home and told the mistress. It seems a hard thing
to say, but we'd rather have seen the boy dead in
his coffin than have heard that. But we soon made
up our minds. He came in to his tea at six
o'clock, and if he'd done the usual thing he'd have
been off soon after. But while we were at tea I
said to him, ‘Now, Rob, my boy, I'm going to
London,' I said, ‘this very night, on business,' I
said. “And,' I said, ‘you were saying the other
day that you'd like to go to London and see what
it was like, and see your cousins that you've never
seen (I've got a brother in London, Mr. Marriot, a
lawyer, with an uncommon good practice), and now,
Rob,' I said, “as you've been a good lad at school,
you shall go with me.’ ‘Hurray, father l’ he says.
‘You’re a brick —but, he says, and I saw his face
fall, ‘must we go to-night?” he says. “We’re off
in an hour, lad,' I said. “Your mother's packed
the things.’ “How long shall we stop?’ he asks.


The Threshing-Floor 163
‘Long enough to see all the sights,' I said. And I
took him off there and then.”
The fireplace was five feet by four—twenty feet.
The door seven by three and a half—seven times
three and a half were—
“It was the only thing to do, Mr. Marriot. I
talked to my brother, and he talked the lad into
going in for the law, and I articled him there and
then to brother Ned, and he settled down after a
bit; for Ned had young folks of his own, and there
were all the amusements and pleasures of London
to turn his thoughts away from other things. It's
been lonely for me and the wife, for we've never
let him come back. We've gone to see him twice,
and the last time we took him to the seaside and
had a good holiday with him; and now he never
talks of coming back—at least not yet—and he's
comfortable and happy and doing well. But we
miss him — and yet I'd rather have seen him
dead than that he should have stayed here and
gone to that girl. And I warn you, my lad
— have nothing to do with one of that breed
You're a stranger, and you don't know what we
know.”
Marriot rose to his feet. He felt sick and giddy,
and he clutched at the mantelpiece before which
they had been sitting.
“Mr. Day,” he said, “I’ll tell you honestly that
I’ve promised to marry Brigit Challenger and she's
promised to marry me. I’ve never loved a woman
in my life but her, and I love her with all my
heart. That's the truth.”


164 The Threshing-Floor
The old man uttered a sharp cry. He also rose,
and put his hand on Marriot's shoulders.
“My poor lad!” he said. “My poor lad! If
you'd told me that at first I wouldn't have said a
word to you. And yet, God knows, every word I
have said is true.”
“You’ve said that you'd rather have seen your
son dead in his coffin than—than that he should
go to Brigit,” he said, the words nearly choking
him. “What—what—what is it that you mean?
For God's sake, Mr. Day, tell me — tell me the
truth—if you know it!” -
The old man's face became very stern and grave.
He hesitated for a moment, then he faced Marriot
unflinchingly.
“When my lad came home, Mr. Marriot,” he .
said, “he was innocent. When I took him away,
he was not. The curse that lies on the Challenger
women is on Brigit Challenger. That is the
truth, so help me God! And God help you!”


CHAPT ER X
MARRIOT never knew how he got home that night.
Mr. Day's direct charge against Brigit had fallen
upon him like a thunderbolt. He felt like a man
who has been walking in darkness, clinging to a
companion wanderer whom he can feel but cannot
see, whose voice promises good things, but whom
daylight or a chance flash of lightning reveals
suddenly as a loathsome and hideous deformity.
Marriot knew the difference between mere conjec-
ture and knowledge, between suspicion and absolute
certainty. There had been no doubt in Mr. Day's
tone—he had spoken as one speaks who knows
that he voices the truth.
And yet as he made his way homeward his
heart was protesting passionately and fiercely
against an acceptance of Mr. Day's statement.
He repeated over and over again the words which
Brigit had spoken to him. “No one has ever loved
me but you.” He thought of the candid eyes, of
the warm, frank way in which she showed her love
for him; he thought, too, of her shyness and un-
doubted modesty with him—her behaviour towards
him had invariably been that of a girl to whom a
lover is a wonderful, mysterious power, fascinating
and awe-compelling. Añº he protested to himself


166 The Threshing-Floor
that it couldn't be true, it wasn't true; there was
some hideous, awful mistake. Mr. Day was under
a wrong impression, he had been misinformed.
And yet—he suddenly remembered the words
spoken by Brigit on the night of her promise to
him.
“Before you knew me—because then I didn't
know you, or what love was—I may have been
what you wouldn't like me to be.”
These words struck him now with new force.
He began to see, vaguely, dimly, that her purpose
in speaking them might have been to give him a
chance of asking her a direct question. But the
notion of asking such a question would have been
hateful and repugnant to him. Yet it was possible
that she wished to make a confession to him. He
remembered now with what evident relief and
happiness she had heard his emphatic declaration
that he cared only for the present and the future,
that the past was as nothing to him.
And suddenly he realised that a few words had
made the present and future as nothing, and the
past all.
He went to his sitting-room on arriving at his
lodgings and sat down in utter agony. He could
not believe, and yet he felt that he was bound to
believe—men like Robert Day did not use idle
words. Then he tried to reason the accusation
away on the ground of some girlish levity or
indiscretion. But that failed him. Out of the
past had risen the most awful phantom that can
appear to a man who loves strongly and for the


The Threshing-Floor 167
first time. He saw the woman he loved, and there
was a stain upon her.
“It's either true or false,” he said wearily;
“either true or false. If it's true, God help me!”
He got up from the chair in which he had sat
for a long time crushed and broken, and wandered
over to his writing-table. There, lying on his desk,
he saw a letter, and he mechanically picked it up,
cut open the envelope, and unfolding the sheet,
cast his eye carelessly over its contents. Suddenly
he gripped the paper tightly and his hands began
to shake. He read from end to end quickly, then
read again, and then yet again. At the end of the
third reading he dropped the sheet on his desk, and
sinking into his chair, covered his face with his
hands and groaned aloud.
The letter was short. It congratulated Marriot
in sneering and evilly suggestive fashion on his
acquisition of a young lady who had frequently
conferred favours on the writer, who expressed
his pleasure in being able to testify to her ready
amiability and complaisance, and only regretted
that he had got somewhat tired of her temper.
There was no signature. Both paper and envelope
were typewritten. The letter had been posted in
Normancaster that afternoon.
That night Marriot did not sleep—did not even
go to bed. He went out, and for hour after hour
walked round and round the great silent castle,
beneath whose imperturbable majesty the Swirl was
brawling and bubbling through the valley. When
he returned to the house he paced up and down


170 The Threshing-Floor
in the valley last year—there was some talk about
it. I'd forgotten.”
“I think this will drive me mad,” said Marriot.
Mrs. Marshall laid her hand on his.
“You must be a man, my dear!” she said, “a
brave man. See this poor girl at once, and ask
her for the truth. And if—if you find out—
though I pray God you mayn't, for both your
sakes—that it is true, then, don't be cruel to her
—any woman may transgress through innocence
or thoughtlessness, and we're all sinners, and Brigit
has had little to help her to be good. Be kind to
her.” -
Marriot stared at her.
“Kind l’ he exclaimed wonderingly. “Why, I
love her Do you think that I love her any the
less because of this? I don't think anything could
alter my love for her, Mrs. Marshall. Do you
understand P”
“Yes,” she answered, “I believe I do. Go to
her, Mr. Marriot, and talk to her.”
“I shall go there as soon as I've finished my
day's work,” he said, picking up his stick and his
cap. “There's one thing I'm certain of-she'll
tell me the truth. Whatever she says I shall
believe. She's not a liar.”
With that he set out for his office, leaving Mrs.
Marshall to shed some sad tears. She had often
wondered whether Marriot had taken her advice
in respect to visiting the Challengers or not: she
now knew that it had been given too late. It
was evident now that he had fallen in love with


The Threshing-Floor 17
Brigit at first sight, and that nothing could have
turned him from her.
Marriot had a hard day's work before him, and
he was ill fitted, after a sleepless night and long
agony of mind, to do it. But he strove to crush
down and sweep aside his own feelings, and the
energy with which he transacted his business
helped to keep him up.
During an interval in his day's proceedings he
went into the principal stationer's shop in Nor-
mancaster and asked to see the principal. To
him he showed the envelope which had covered
the anonymous letter.
“Do you know what make of typewriting
machine that is P” he inquired.
“Yes,” answered the stationer, readily enough.
“It's a Remington.”
“Are there many in use in the town P”
“Only one that I know of, and that's at
Warrington's office. I supplied it myself not
very long ago. Most of us are too old-fashioned
for typewriters yet, sir.”
Marriot thanked him and withdrew. Outside
he glanced in the direction of Warrington's office,
and half turned towards it, then stopped.
“No,” he said. “It’s Brigit first. After that”—
At four o'clock, without waiting to eat or drink,
he set out for Abbotsholme.


CHA PTE R XI
THAT evening Brigit carried her sewing out into
the old arbour in the orchard and prepared to
spend an hour or two amongst the surroundings
which she best loved. From the arbour she could
see into her garden; round about her the fruit
clustering on the boughs was already beginning
to change colour under the warmth of the August
sun. She sat down in the arbour with a grateful
sense of the restfulness of the soft green and the
quiet peace which shut her in. Already the first
breath of the coming autumn was in the air;
it was that magic time of the year when summer
is loth to go and autumn is impatient to arrive:
she almost fancied, and smiled at the fancy, that
she could detect in the cool evening air some
slight trace of the first nip of frost, which seems
to come as soon as harvest is over and the dews
begin to fall. But that, she knew, was a fancy,
for harvest was not yet over, and it was only the
last week of August.
Brigit had intended, on leaving the house, to be
very industrious when she reached the arbour,
but at the end of half an hour she had not even
picked up her sewing. She sat in her usual
attitude, elbows propped on the table, chin sup-
172


The Threshing-Floor 173
ported in the bridge of her interlaced fingers,
eyes staring straight ahead. Within a few minutes
she saw neither trees nor flowers, nor the bend of
the river nor the high hills beyond—she was
thinking of the events of the past fortnight. The
various scenes through which she had passed, and
in which she had been a more or less important
figure, came up before her again as in a panorama.
Her eyes grew dark and moody. She saw the
sordidness, the sombreness of the recent tragedy
more clearly than at the time of its happening.
It was as if she had climbed to a superior height,
from which she could see at one view a complete
prospect of a country in which she had been
wandering in thick woods and obscure byways.
When Brigit carried the news of Denys's death
to her father, Challenger received it without a sign
of emotion. He remarked, with perfect calmness
and conviction, that he had known that his son
was dead for half an hour before Brigit brought
the tidings. He assumed command of everything
then : sent the men away for help; gave the women
instructions for the reception - of the body, and
ordered them to have it laid out in the old chapter-
house, which was all that remained whole of the
ecclesiastical part of the abbey. This done, he
shut himself up once more in the stone hall. He
never looked on his son again.
Everything was left to Brigit. Her eyes grew
gloomier as she thought of the trying events of
those sad days during which Denys's body lay in
the chapter-house. She thought of the coming


174 The Threshing-Floor
and going of people—coroner, jurymen, policemen,
pressmen—and her brain sickened at therecollection.
She thought of the funeral in Granton churchyard.
Challenger had driven from his door every neigh-
bour that would have shown sympathy by follow-
ing the body to its last resting-place. When the
appointed time came, his men had placed the coffin
on one of the farm waggons, drawn by two of his
own horses, and with himself and Brigit walking
behind it, the waggon had passed slowly across the
fields to the village. There was a great crowd in
the village itself, but beyond the necessary officials,
no one dared to enter the church or the churchyard.
When the service was over, Challenger marched
straight from the grave-side without looking at
anybody. From leaving the house to re-entering
it he never opened his lips.
Brigit thought, too, of the sorely-tried, deeply-
injured woman who at last had wreaked her
vengeance on Denys. From the moment that
Brigit and Marriot had heard her singing that
fatal night nothing had been heard or seen of
Rachel Dene. A searching examination of the
fell-side that rose beyond and above the Abbot's
Stone had resulted in bringing to light a cave
wherein Denys had kept his secret store of liquor.
Also in the copse immediately behind the scene
of the murder there had been found the woodman's
axe with which Rachel Dene had wreaked her
vengeance on her daughter's betrayer. It had
been taken from the shed of a woodman's cottage
close by. More they could not find. Rachel had


The Threshing-Floor 175
vanished from the face of the earth. It was the
general impression that she had thrown herself
into one of the deep fissures or pots which abound
on the moors thereabouts and are held to be
bottomless. It was an explanation that satisfied
most people.
So that tragedy was over. Denys, and the girl
he had wronged, and their child, were sleeping in
Granton churchyard, and Rachel was lying deep
down below the dark rolling moors. Four lives
had gone in that tragedy—two by suicide, two by
madness. And the beginning of the tragedy was
the Challenger lust, the Challenger selfishness, the
Challenger wickedness, inborn, inherent, never to
be stamped out but by their extinction.
Brigit covered her face with her hands and
shuddered, and as she shuddered she prayed. Under
Jacob Garthen's instructions she had prayed much
of late—short simple prayers for a clean heart and
a right spirit. As she prayed now she grew calmer,
and presently she forced all the black remembrances
from her and took up her work and began to sew.
She thought of Marriot—how kind, how helpful,
how solicitous for her comfort he had been during
those dark days. He had come out every day to
see her, done everything that he could for her.
And he had spoken of their early marriage, and of
the care he would take of her afterwards; and
she had looked forward out of the storm to a safe
and happy coming into a harbour of peace. Oh,
only let the past slip away, all of it, all of it, and
let the future blot it out from her memory !


176 The Threshing-Floor
She heard a step on the path, and looking up
she saw Jacob Garthen coming towards her. He
often walked in the orchard and garden on fine
mornings, and sometimes he sat with Brigit in the
arbour and talked to her. She made room for
him now on the rustic seat, and smiled an invitation
to him to come.
“Are you coming to talk to me, Jacob?” she
said.
“Ay, my dearie,” said the old man, as he sat
down at her side and patted her arm. “I’d
something to say to thee. Lassie, is yon fine young
man from Normancaster wanting to marry thee?”
Brigit flushed happily.
“Yes, Jacob,” she answered. “And I’ve promised
him. Oh, Jacob, I love him It's that—that—
that's made me so want to be good.”
“Ay, ay!” he said. “I knew love had touched
thy heart, child. It has a mighty power, and
folk make a great mistake, I think, when they
talk about Divine love and human love as if they
were different things; for human love is only a
spark of the Divine love sent as a blessing. That's
my thought—a poor old man that hasn't read a
deal.”
“I don't think you're far wrong, Jacob,” said
Brigit.
“And does he love thee, child, like that?”
inquired Jacob.
“Oh,” she said, letting her sewing fall on her
lap and looking on the orchard with soft eyes,
“Jacob, he loves me with all his heart l”


178 The Threshing-Floor
“My lassie,” he said, kindly and firmly, “thee
must tell him.”
“But, Jacob,” she said eagerly, “listen to me.
I'm not the same woman that I was before I knew
him—I know I'm not. The woman that I am now
wouldn't, couldn't do what the woman that I was
then did. Oh, Jacob, Jacob, don't you understand P
You say that the vilest sinner can be transformed
into a good man by God's love—don't you see that
love has transformed me?”
“Yes, lassie, yes,” said the old man tenderly,
“but the sinner must confess his sins and repent
before he can be forgiven and made clean. Thou
hast sinned against this man, child, and thee must
ask his forgiveness.”
Brigit turned and looked sharply at Jacob. Her
face became still paler and her eyes dilated.
“Sinned—against him P” she said.
“Thee didst rob him of his treasure before he
could possess himself of it,” replied the old man,
with stern emphasis. “Thee wast as one that is
given a rich jewel to keep until its rightful owner
shall claim it, and thee didst fling it away out of
wantonness. Come, bairnie, put away from thee
all excuses and sophistries—abide by the truth and
make confession of thy sin, and then thee mayst
hope for forgiveness and peace of mind.”
Brigit had bowed her head upon her folded arms
on the table. She began to sob heavily.
“Oh, it's hard—it's hard ' " she said.
“Ay, lassie, it is hard,” said the old man. “It's
a deal harder, a powerful deal harder, to do right


CHA PTE R XII
FOR a moment those two poor faces looked one at
the other as the faces of the lost and tormented
must gaze at other faces in the hopelessness of hell.
Their eyes—sad, despairing—told the truth to their
souls without words. In that moment Marriot saw
the truth, naked, clear-cut, awful in its ugliness, rise
out of the mists of doubt. The It-can't-be gave
way to the It-is. He saw—and Brigit saw that he
SaW.
The great tragedies of life come to men and
women at moments when they are least fitted
to bear them: they happen when reason, calm
judgment, sober reflection, moderation in word and
action, have for the time being fled beyond possible
reach. Man, face to face with uncontrollable
emotion, reverts to the primitive; instinct governs
him with absolute force; the heart swells and bursts,
or shrinks and faints; the brain, fired to madness,
is obscured by impulse. In the Supreme moment
of such tragedies the soul is swept by fire and
storm; when the flame passes and the whirlwind
is gone, there too often remains nothing but ruin
and wreckage.
No moment could have been more inopportune
180


The Threshing-Floor 181
than this in which Marriot and Brigit met. The
sudden shock of the old farmer's news ; the vile
abomination of the anonymous letter; the long
sleepless night, in which his soul had suffered
unutterable doubts and agonies; the effort to tear
his mind from these thoughts during the day and
to fix it on his work; the abstention from food; the
maddened, hurrying flight to learn the truth—these
things had gone far towards destroying Marriot's
mental balance, and as he stood leaning over the
table above Brigit, he swayed like a drunken man
and looked like a mad one. She, overwhelmed
by shame and repentance, lost in an instant all
feeling of self-possession, all power of explanation;
the first look into Marriot's face had swept the
ground from beneath her, and she dropped her
head into the shelter of her arms and did not look
at him again.
When Marriot at last spoke, his voice was so
choked and husky that she could scarcely hear it.
It came in a dry whisper.
“Brigit!”
She made some inarticulate sound, half-cry, half-
IIl Oan.
“Is this—this true that I hear of you?—before
you knew me. Speak l’
Her head, burrowing in her arms, sank lower
and lower—she seemed to be shrinking in every
limb as tortured things shrink before those who
torture them.
“Answer l’ he said, bending over her and
speaking even more insistently, “Answer l’”


The Threshing-Floor 183
The gate clashed; she caught the sound of his feet
running swiftly across the paddock. Then all
sound and light died out, and she felt herself
sinking deeper and deeper into dark waters that
engulfed her silently.


CHA PTE R XIII
WHEN Marriot rushed away from Brigit, it was
with the mad impulse of a man whose mind has
been unhinged by a sudden blow to get as quickly
and as far as possible from the hand that dealt it.
He was not conscious of crossing the stepping-
stones or plunging through the lower stretches of
the covert side: when he came to some semblance
of his real self, he was striding along the path
by the river, through the valley meadows, with
clenched hands and set teeth, cursing God and
man and woman with bitter revilings. The whole
edifice of life had tumbled bodily about his ears.
He had said to himself over and over again as
he hurried to Abbotsholme that Brigit would tell
him the truth. He had always set great store by
the truth all his life—had been so taught to do so
that straightforwardness and plain speaking had
become a second nature with him. He had also
clung to the notion that truth, unveiled, is beauti-
ful; he now discovered that there may be some
reason why truth, revealed in nakedness, should be
veiled for her very hideousness and deformity. But
these thoughts only shaped themselves in his brain
in a vague, confused fashion—he was too excited,
too agonised, to think or to understand anything
184


The Threshing-Floor 185
clearly; he was only conscious that his brain was
on fire, his heart beating; that he was delivered,
bound hand and foot, to the furnace and the
torment. Nowhere, in earth and sky, was there
one voice or ray of comfort. The swift exchange
of poor stumbling words, jerked out with choking
voice and panting hearts between him and Brigit
in the arbour, had transformed everything for him.
Twenty-four hours earlier he had been gay, confi-
dent, happy, brimful of life and its possibilities;
now there was no devil in hell more hopeless, more
lost, more exquisitely tortured. .
He hurried on, seeing little of anything around
him, utterly unconscious of where he was going, or
what he meant to do when he got there. As he
crossed the stile into Dead Man's Copse his tor-
mented senses took some cognisance of the flutter
of a woman's gown in the path before him; it
disappeared amongst the undergrowth, and his
impression of it disappeared just as quickly. He
hurried on, muttering and groaning, sometimes
driving his limbs against the trees which lined the
path, sometimes catching his feet in the trailing
branches or straggling earth-stripped roots beneath
him. He came up to the mass of fallen limestone
on which he and Brigit had sat when he first told
her of his love; some subtle impulse of his brain
called up her face and her voice at the recollection
of that moment.
“No one has ever loved me but you—no one !”
He dug his nails into the palms of his hands and
groaned. Lies—lies—lies | And from her.


The Threshing-Floor 187
pocket with his left hand, and held it, open, before
Dimsdale's eyes.
“Who sent that?” he asked. “Did you?”
Dimsdale laughed evilly. He was keeping an
eye on Marriot's right hand and on the stick which
it grasped, and the other on the chance of escaping
through the trees if he was attacked. He thought
himself safe, and he sneered.
“So that's touched your high-and-mightiness up
a bit, has it?” he said. “Serve you right for hold-
ing your nose so high in the air.”
“Did you send this?” repeated Marriot. “Did
that ”—he pointed with the end of his stick to the
abominable lines in the letter—“did that—that
come from you?”
“What if it did P” retorted Dimsdale, ready to
spring away, but unable to resist his evil instinct
to spit and sneer. “Do you think that's—all that
might be said P Bah!—go and ask her to tell
you.”
He leaped aside as he spoke, but Marriot's stick
had been raised and had fallen ere he could gain
the tree at his side. It was raised again and fell
again as Dimsdale reeled under the first blow; it
fell once more as he collapsed, limp, silent, across
the path. In his blind rage, his mad hate, Marriot
had forgotten that the stick, stout and formidable
enough in itself, was heavily loaded with lead. It
had been given to him years before when he lived
in a lonely rural district, where his work often kept
him out late at night, and where at the time there
were reasons why he should carry some defensive


188 The Threshing-Floor
weapon. He had used it now as thoughtlessly as
he might have used a cane or a light walking-stick.
But as he stood staring at the recumbent figure, he
suddenly remembered what it was that he was
carrying, and he lifted it mechanically and looked
at the heavy knob. Blood |
At the sight of those dark red stains Marriot
shut his eyes. A great buzzing arose in his ears;
a sudden sickness at his heart. It seemed to him
that he stood swaying on the brink of some abyss,
into which he must presently fall headlong.
Hurrying steps on the path behind him, the swift
passage of some rustling body, a woman's sharp,
frightened scream, a heavy fall. He opened his
eyes. Lizzie Braithwaite had thrown herself on
Dimsdale's inert figure, and was calling him by
name and shaking him. Already the sleeves of
her print gown were stained with blood.
“Dimsdale !” she cried. “Dimsdale, speak |
Where's he hurt you?—where is it?—what's he
done? Dimsdale—it's me—Lizzie l’
Suddenly she let the lifeless figure drop back,
and she rose to her knees with a fierce Scream
that set the copse ringing. With her hands
pressed to her temples she glared upwards at
Marriot.
“You’ve killed him l’” she shrieked. “You’ve
killed him. He's dead—dead—dead l’”
“No-nol" said Marriot chokingly. “No."
“He’s dead—he's dead l’” she wailed. “You’ve
killed him out of jealousy. Fool—fool! It was
me that he loved—me, do you understand? He


CHA PTER XIV
WHEN Jacob left Brigit in the arbour he went
round the farm buildings in pursuance of a usual
nightly custom. There was in reality nothing
that required its nightly observance; in summer,
at any rate, there was scarcely anything to look to,
for the cattle were turned out to grass, and the
only animals in the fold were a score or so of
pigs, which might safely be trusted to take care
of themselves. But Jacob, like all old-fashioned
folk, lived by rule and method, and he would have
been sorely upset if anything had prevented him
from observing this old-established custom of his.
So he went round from one place to another,
peeping in at the barns, the byres, the stables:
he paused for awhile in the fold to observe the
pigs, and to ascertain that the door of the fowl-
house had been locked; and seeing that the trough
behind the pump was not full, he took a spell at
the pump-handle, so that the cows might find
enough water when he fetched them up early the
next morning. And these things done, he passed
through the dairy into the great kitchen.
The kitchen was empty of human presence and
the old house was silent as the grave save for the
steady tick-tack, tick-tack ºf the grandfather's clock


The Threshing-Floor 191
in the corner. Through the open window he saw
Lizzie Braithwaite cross the stepping-stones and
turn along the river-side path in the direction of
Normancaster; in the yard outside the kitchen
Hannah Coulson was pacing up and down, knit-
ting away at a grey stocking, as if her life
depended on its being finished by some given
hour. Across the valley the purple fell reflected
the last glow of the sunset.
Jacob turned away from the window; taking
his Bible from the drawer of an ancient bureau
kept sacred to his uses, he sat down on one of
the long settles and began to read. He read
until the light failed, and then he took off his
spectacles, put his Bible away, and meditated on
what he had read. And on his meditation
presently entered Hannah.
“It’s beginning to get dark soon now, Jacob,”
she said. “If you want to read I'll get you the
lamp.”
“No, thank thee, my lass, no,” said Jacob.
“I’ve read my chapter already.”
“Well, we'll have the lamp at any rate,” said
Hannah. “If you've read your chapter, I haven't
finished my stocking.”
She fetched and lighted a lamp, and placing
it on the table near Jacob, sat down at his side
and resumed her knitting as vigorously as ever.
Jacob, with his hands crossed over his breast,
twiddled his thumbs, blinked out of half-closed
eyes at the lamp, and continued his meditations.
He had been reading about a great battle between


192 The Threshing-Floor
the Amalekites and the Philistines, and he was
endeavouring to gain some notion of the geo-
graphical situation of the opposing forces by
posting them on the surrounding fells and imag-
ining Normancaster to be the debatable point.
He had almost come to the conclusion that the
Amalekites must have been stationed, as it were,
on the fell above Abbot's Stone, and the Philistines
in the valley beneath them, when Hannah broke
in upon his thoughts.
“Jacob,” she said.
“Now, my lass,” responded Jacob.
“Jacob, don't you think the end's coming?”
she asked.
“What end, my lass?”
Hannah looked round at the shadows of the
great kitchen.
“The end of all this,” she said, in a low voice.
“They say at Granton and in Normancaster that
the master's come to the end of his tether. What
do you think, Jacob P.”
Jacob shook his head and made no answer.
Hannah continued to knit, but after she had
counted some stitches she stopped and spoke
again.
“Jacob, do you believe in that curse they talk
about? I didn't use to—I don't know and don't
understand such things. I’m not religious, like
you are, though I'm an honest woman, and try to
do what's right as far as I know. But of late,
hasn't it seemed as if there was a curse —
hasn't it?”


194 The Threshing-Floor
Jacob sighed and shook his head.
“I cannot tell thee, Hannah,” he answered. “I
have heard, too, that the master is come to an end.
Lawyer Warrington, they say, is the real owner of
every acre of land, every stick of furniture, all that
there is on farm and in house. And he's a hard
man—a hard man.”
“The master's been in Normancaster all day,”
said Hannah. “And he's not home yet.”
Nine o'clock struck. Hannah put her knitting
aside, and going to a cupboard brought out a
churchwarden pipe and a leaden tobacco jar and
set them at Jacob's elbow.
“Time for your pipe, Jacob,” she said.
Then she fetched a jug of ale from the cellar, and
taking down one of the shining brass pans, measured
a pint of ale into it, and adding sugar, cloves, and
nutmeg, heated the mixture over the fire and set
it before the old man.
“It's made you sleep better since you began
trying this, Jacob, hasn't it?” she said. “I knew
it would be better for you than a pint of cold ale
—my poor old father used to have this every
night.”
Then, without waiting for a reply, she opened
the door leading into the passage that led to the
stone hall, and stood there listening.
“I wonder if Miss Brigit's in P’’ she said. “I’ve
seen nothing of her since she had her tea.”
“She was sitting in the old summer-house in the
orchard,” said Jacob. “But she wouldn't stay there
after she couldn't see, surely.”


The Threshing-Floor 195
“I’ll step round and look,” said Hannah.
She came back in a few minutes, looking some-
what uneasy. -
“She's not there,” she said. “I wonder if she
has come in P I'll see if she's in the parlour or her
own room.”
She went to the old refectory and then upstairs,
and came back more anxious.
“She's not in the house, Jacob,” she said.
Jacob did not appear to share Hannah's anxiety.
“The lassie is fond of staying out of doors these
summer nights,” he said. “There's no call to be
afraid, Hannah. Why should thee be anxious?”
“I don't know,” replied Hannah, sitting down
and helping herself to a glass of ale. “I expect I'm
a bit upset by all the worry there's been of late.”
Like all old folk, Jacob found that each year
brought an increasing inability to sleep. It was
his custom to sit up late, for he found it more
tiring to toss in bed, sleepless, than to sit in
a warm kitchen, resting. He sipped his spiced
ale and smoked his pipe, and Hannah resumed
her knitting. With an occasional remark on
such subjects as the cows, the pigs, and the price
of butter, they spent their time comfortably until
the clock struck ten. Hannah jumped to her feet
with a sharp exclamation.
“There!” she said, “that's ten, and Miss Brigit
isn't in yet. And Lizzie Braithwaite's out. She's
been out a good deal too much of late—and for
aught I care she could stop out all night. But
Miss Brigit oughtn't to be out at this time, Jacob.


The Threshing-Floor 197
Hannah shook him again.
“What are you talking about?” she said fiercely.
“Who's murdered P-say what you mean.”
The shepherd withdrew his gaze from the fire
and looked up at Hannah—his eyes were still
seeing something far removed from his present
surroundings.
“Mr. Marriot,” he said, with an evident effort to
put a plain tale into plain words, “Mr. Marriot—
him that looks after the roads—Mr. Marriot has
killed that young Warrington, the 'turney's son.
Murdered him—in Dead Man's Copse—the other
side of the river, that is. Oh ay—he killed him
—right enough. A hanging matter | Yes.
But— ”
He stared with clouded eye at Jacob as the old
man dropped back into his seat. Then he glanced
up at Hannah as she shook him again.
“It was in this way,” he said. “I’d been to
Normancaster for some stuff for them hogs in the
low meadow—the mork's at them already, Jacob—
and I stopped a bit latish, having a pint or two,
and then at last I come home along of the river-
side. And under the Eagle's Crag who should I
meet but Marriot? Walking like—like—well, as
fast as he could go, he was, and talking to himself,
and looking every yard or two that he took at a
stick that he carried. And on the stick—blood.
I saw it—blood. Give me a drink of something.”
Hannah pushed the jug of ale in front of him.
He drank, spat on the floor, and went on—
“He passes me like a flash—he saw me no more


The Threshing-Floor 199
He pulled his shoulder out of Hannah's gripping
fingers and fell with bowed head upon the table,
sobbing.
“I loved her—loved her l’ he gasped. “Curse
him —I hope Marriot's sent his soul to hell. I'd
ha’ killed him myself if I'd known. I didn't rightly
reckon things up at first—I was dazed, like, and
had to study on them ; studied, you'll understand,
over what I heard her say to him. And studied
more after the police had come and carried them
off—both. And studied more coming home. But
more here—I’m studying about it now. Because
she'd promised me—me ! Oh, I hope Marriot's
sent his black, lying soul to hell—to hell !”
He lifted his face and glared at Hannah and
then at Jacob.
“What did Marriot kill him for ** he cried.
“What for—what P What did she mean when she
said, ‘I’ll kill her’? I don't know anything—I'm
studying about it, I tell you—I’m studying. But
I’m thankful that Marriot killed him. God | I wish
I'd been there to see it !”
Jacob uttered a sudden cry and lifted his hand.
Hannah turned sharply.
Brigit was standing, white, still, at her side.
Her hands were pressed closely to her bosom.
She was staring at the shepherd's head, bowed
once more upon his arms upon the table.
“Marriot killed him P-killed whom P” she said,
in a harsh, mechanical voice.
“He killed him right enough,” sobbed the shep-
herd. “Damn him | I wish it had been me that


CHAPTER XV
MARRIOT stood his trial for the murder of Dims-
dale Warrington at York in the following October.
He had spent six weeks in prison as in a dream.
The authorities had had some doubt as to the
state of his mind, and had caused competent
physicians to examine him. They decided that
he was perfectly sane, but dazed and intellectually
inert as the result of nerve shock. His gaolers
found him apathetic, mechanical, stupid. He
moved, spoke, behaved himself generally more
like an automaton than a man.
When they put him in the dock he looked round
the court with no more interest than a farmer
would display in looking at so many rows of
turnips. Mrs. Marshall observed that he made no
search for any particular face, nor showed recog-
nition when his eyes encountered those familiar to
him.
When bidden to plead, he answered, “Yes, I
killed him,” but on being counselled by the judge
to plead not guilty, he said “Not guilty,” as
obediently as a good child repeats its lesson.
When Brigit appeared in the witness-box
Marriot showed no sign of any emotion or feeling.
People wondered why he stared so persistently at
201


The Threshing-Floor 203
“Guilty”—
A long coo of delight burst from Lizzie's lips—
she clapped her hands. The foreman cleared his
throat still more.
“—of manslaughter,” he added. “With a strong
—the strongest—recommendation to mercy.”
Lizzie started up. Her eyes, blazing with fury,
fastened on the judge.
“Manslaughter! Mercy! Then — they'll not
hang him P. Not hang him P Not hang him P
Liars—liars—liars! I said I'd see him hang—I
said I’d "-
When they had carried Lizzie out of court, but
not so far that her screams and curses were not still
heard, Marriot was asked if he had anything to say
before sentence was passed upon him. He replied
in one word—
“No.”
The judge was almost as laconic in pronouncing
Sentence.
Twelve months' imprisonment with hard labour.





PART THE THIRD
CHAPTER I
FIVE days after Marriot heard his sentence pro-
nounced and left the dock to suffer his punishment,
the last hold of the Challengers on the house and
land which had been theirs for three hundred and
fifty years was torn from them.
Warrington senior heard of the death of
Warrington junior, and of the events which had
led up to it, with almost as much surprise and
horror as he would have shown had some trust-
worthy person suddenly informed him that he
was no longer the richest but the poorest man in
Normancaster. He had for some time been very
well aware that his son was inclined to idleness
rather than to work, that his tastes ran in the
direction of self-indulgence rather than towards
the attention which had helped him, Warrington
senior, to become the well-to-do man that he was,
but he was not prepared for the revelations which
came out at the coroner's inquest and the magis-
terial inquiries. Now that the lad was dead,
struck down in the first flush of youth, the father
only remembered that he and his wife were left
childless, and that his wealth must either pass to
205


206 The Threshing-Floor
relatives whom he hated, or be given to charities
to which in life he would not give a penny. He
became beside himself with rage; his frigid, formal
manners fell off him at a touch; he called down
imprecations from Heaven upon his fate, and his
curses were so deep and bitter that the folk of his
own house and the clerks in his office were afraid
to go near him. And the curses, naturally enough,
were for the Challenger brood. He swore that
Brigit had corrupted the dead lad; that she had
lured him on with the devilish temptation of the
Challenger women; that if it had not been for her,
with her allurements, her shamelessness, he would
have been a good lad and living still.
Coming across Gabriel Challenger at a public
place—to wit, amongst a crowd of farmers and
better sort of country folk, at the door of the
Queen's Head—Warrington, shaking with wrath,
told him all this to his face, and cursed the whole
Challenger brood, dead and living, with vicious
imprecations.
“But I will make an end of you!” he said,
shaking his lifted hands at Gabriel. “I will
destroy you, root, stock, and barrel. I will rid
the land of you as men rid a house of rats |"
“Much more easily,” said Challenger taunt-
ingly.
“I will sweep you off the very face of the earth,”
screamed Warrington. “I will drive you where you
shall have no roof to your head. Everything that
you have is mine. There is not an acre, an inch,
of your land that is not mine. There is not a bed


The Threshing-Floor 207
you sleep in, a chair you sit on, a knife you eat
with, that is not mine. I will take every jot and
tittle you have without mercy — I will drive you
out of house and home like the beggars you are.
And when you are gone, I will not leave one stone
standing upon another of the house that you have
made to stink with your wickedness and your cor-
ruption. Bear me witness l’ he said, turning to
the crowd of gaping folk, many of whom would
have had him control his passion. “Bear me
witness that I will wipe this brood of devils,
woman and man, out of our sight. By God, I
will l’”
“As you like and when you like,” said Gabriel.
“After all, you have nothing to do with it. If you
were anything but the instrument of fate I would
have choked the life out of your throat ere you had
said two words of what you have said. Wreak
your vengeance — make an end. And do it
quickly.”
He went home much earlier than usual that
night, and when he arrived there he called his
daughter into the stone hall and bade her sit
down.
“Brigit,” he said calmly, “the end has come.
Warrington has sworn that he will uproot me, and
leave no single branch unbroken. He will do it.
And he will do it soon. I accept it. It is fate. I
have known it was coming for a long time. The
curse has come home at last.”
Brigit, pale and worn from great trouble and
illness, faced him bravely.


208 The Threshing-Floor
“Father,” she said, “I don't believe it is fate,
and I don't believe in the curse.”
Challenger gazed at her with feelings of evident
surprise. -
“You do not believe in the curse?” he said.
“Not believe in a curse which has made itself
felt over and over and over again during the
last three hundred and fifty years? That is
woman's folly—stupidity—obstinacy. Why, look
at recent events, recent results | Your brother—
was not he under the curse? Myself—am I not
to lose the last stick, the last penny—am I not
under it? Yourself—have you not followed the
tradition of all our women—has not one man just
killed another because of you? Are you not under
it? Come—come !”
“I will not be under it,” she said fiercely. “I
have been a wicked girl, because until lately no
one even helped me to be anything better, and
I shall have to pay all my life for it—all my lifel
But I am not going to believe in a thing like that,
and I am going to try to be a good woman, and
what's more, I will be—I will !”
Challenger stroked his beard and stared at her
inquisitively.
“During your illness, Brigit,” he said, “Jacob
has been impregnating you with his religious
ideas. Well, I have nothing, nothing whatever,
to say against that; I am much indebted to
Jacob—a faithful servant—for any comfort he
could give you. I have told him so, and will
tell him so again. Nay, I have said often that
|


The Threshing-Floor 2 i I
“Work for your living !” he exclaimed. “You
would be the first of our women who ever did.
That is against all the traditions.”
“Never mind the traditions, or the curse, or
the spell,” she said. “Let me go, father.”
Challenger shook his head.
“Why, indeed, Brigit,” said he, “I could not
stop you if I tried. In a few weeks I shall not
have a roof over my head nor a crust to offer
you.”
“Father,” she said, rising and coming close to
him, “what are you going to do?”
“To do? Girl, that is no question. It is—what
is going to be done with me? I believe in the
curse.”
“Oh, father,” cried Brigit, “never mind curses
and spells | Listen, I've been thinking—couldn't
you and I go away, far from here, and get some
work together ? I could manage a dairy, and you
—couldn't you act as steward, or farm-bailiff, or
something?”
Challenger's eyes flashed and the veins in his
forehead swelled.
“You forget yourself, Brigit,” he said coldly.
“I should be the first Challenger that ever called
another man master.”
“But something must be done,” she said
wearily.
“Something will be done,” he answered. “But
it will be ordained by fate. You may say what
you like, but we are puppets, and the strings are
pulled by something which we cannot control.”


214 The Threshing-Floor
altered the position of his favourite chair. It was
now so placed that Challenger could keep his eyes
on the stone cross cut in the floor. Brigit knew
that he sat for hours at a time staring fixedly at
this memorial of his ancestor's sin.
On the night before the sale Challenger called
Hannah and Jacob into the stone hall. Both
wondered greatly at the great calm on his face
and at the mansuetrial quality of his voice.
“Hannah—Jacob,” he said. “This is the last
night we shall all spend together under this roof.
I want to know if you have made any arrange-
ments for yourselves.”
The two old servants looked at each other.
“You tell the master, Jacob,” said Hannah.
Jacob turned to Challenger.
“Well, master,” he said, “the truth is, Hannah
and me have decided to marry. I'm getting an
Oldish man—sixty-and-three I am—but Hannah's
agreeable, and we shall get on well together. And
we've both saved a bit of money in your service,
master, and we've taken a cottage at Granton
yonder, with a bit of land, and we shall keep two
or three cows. To-morrow, Hannah's going there,
and I'm going to stay a few days with a friend of
mine over the fells, Westmoreland way. Then,
next Monday, we shall be wed.”
Challenger nodded his head.
“That's a wise step, Jacob and Hannah,” he said.
“I wish you well.”
Jacob, who had carried his old hat into the room,
fumbled at its brim and seemed anxious to say
t


The Threshing-Floor 215
more. He looked at Hannah. Hannah plucked
up courage.
“There's something else Jacob wanted to say,
master,” she said. “But he thinks I ought to say
it. It's a roomy little cottage that we've taken,
and there's two spare rooms in it that we've fitted
up, and—and you must take it as we mean it,
master, but we want you and Miss Brigit to come
and stay in them. Don't say no, master.”
Challenger looked hard at both of them. Then,
as if he had forgotten their presence, as if speaking
to something he did not see, he repeated four lines
of the weird dirge which Brigit had recited to
Marriot that June morning.
“If ever thou gave either meate or drinke,
Every nighte and alle;
The fire shall never make thee shrinke,
And Christ receive thy saule.”
He turned to Brigit, who was standing near.
“Brigit,” he said, “you hear what these good
folk, our old servants, wish? It is my wish that
you go with Hannah to-morrow.”
“Yes, father,” she answered readily. “I will go.”
“All of you go—early in the morning. As for
me, Jacob and Hannah, I cannot say with certainty
what I will do until to-morrow comes.”
Jacob seemed anxious to say more, but Hannah
nudged his elbow, and they left the parlour. Brigit
quickly followed them — her father's desire for
solitude was always evident.


CHAPTER III
EARLY the next morning, Hannah, Jacob, and
Brigit set out from the farmstead for Granton.
They carried away their own personal belongings
in a donkey-cart which one of the village lads had
brought across the meadows at Jacob's orders. As
they were leaving, Challenger came out into the
paddock to them. Brigit went up to him timidly.
“Father,” she said, “you will come to Hannah's
to-night, won't you? I shall be so anxious about
you.”
“Have no anxiety,” he said. “I may come
to-night—I may come to-morrow night. I have
something to watch to-day, and to-night I may
have an important message. I expect it.”
Then, without further word or any leave-taking,
he went across the paddock in the direction of the
river. As Brigit and her companions pursued their
way towards Granton, they saw him cross the
stepping-stones and disappear in the covert on the
opposite bank.
Looking neither to the right nor the left,
Challenger passed straight through the covert,
crossed the high road beyond it, and climbed in
a direct line to the top of the high fell which
enclosed the south side of the dale. There was a
216


218 The Threshing-Floor
and his father's, and were now in the hands of a
bitter, implacable enemy.
All that day he sat there, motionless, watching.
As the morning wore on the roads in the valley
and across the fells began to be busy. Folk came
from Normancaster, from Highdale; across the
fells from the north and the south. Some came in
carts, some on horseback, some on foot. In what-
ever fashion they travelled, all made for Abbots-
holme. By eleven o'clock the paddock, orchard,
fold, and meadow were black with people. The
sound of their voices, faint, irregular, came up to
the lonely man on the fell top as the murmur of
gentle-breaking waves comes to the watcher on a
high headland above the sea.
Challenger followed the movements of the crowd
with eyes that never relaxed their vigilance. He
saw people going in and out of the house, unre-
strained, unchecked; he saw circles round about
the cattle, the sheep; he saw little knots pass from
one lot of implements to another. There seemed
to be more people on the premises than he remem-
bered seeing at a sale for many years. It was easy
to tell where the sale began by the movements of
the crowd. It followed the auctioneer from point
to point. First the sheep. Then the cattle. Then
the implements. Then the horses. There were
only three horses, for there was scarcely any arable
land on the farm. One of these was the old cob
which Challenger had ridden for many years.
He wished now that he had shot it before leaving
the house.


222 The Threshing-Floor
“There, father, now you can be comfortable.”
Challenger stared at her as if he had never seen
her before. She clipped off the end of a cigar for
him with her teeth, put it in his mouth, and gave
him a light. Then she mixed a glass of spirits for
him.
“Drink some of it while it is hot, father—it will
do you good after getting so wet.”
Challenger stared at her more than ever. Then
his face suddenly clouded. He looked at the bottle
of spirits and at the box of cigars.
“Brigit,” he said, “nothing should have been
brought away. There was not a thing in the house
that was mine.”
“Don’t be alarmed, father. You are not
drinking or smoking anybody else's property. I
bought the whisky and the cigars myself—out
of my own money. So be comfortable about
that.”
He thanked her.
Brigit could scarcely believe her ears. He had
never thanked her for anything that she had ever
done for him. She blushed with pleasure, and the
tears came into her eyes.
They sat for a long time in silence, until at last
Challenger said—
“It is the greatest pity in the world, Brigit, that
you were not a boy.”
Brigit bent over her sewing.
“I wish I had been, father, if it would have been
any help to you,” she said. “But there are things
that women can do, and I mean to do them.”


The Threshing-Floor 223
He made no answer to that, but sat staring at
the fire. And when he had finished his cigar he
said very quietly that he was tired and would go to
bed, and so passed into the little chamber which
Hannah had set apart for him.


CHAPTER IV
CHALLENGER left the cottage next morning at an
early hour and went back to the cairn on the
summit of the fell. And once more he sat there
all day, watching.
The despoilers were already at work when he
took up his post. In front of his house stood
several great furniture vans, flanked by smaller
carts and waggons. Men were carrying things out
of the house at every door. Of his stock there was
not a trace about the farmstead or in the meadows.
During this vigil Challenger called up many
visions of the past. He thought of his own life,
seeing it at last from without himself. He thought
of Denys, delivered over body and soul to corrup-
tion and destruction. He thought of Letty Dene,
whom Denys had ruined, whom he himself had
treated with scorn and contempt. He thought of
the child whose dead body he had foully dis-
honoured. He thought of Rachel and the final
tragedy. And he groaned in bitterness of spirit.
Then he thought of Brigit. He was puzzled,
confused in his thoughts of her. He had never
come across a woman like her—a woman who
was actually brave enough to confess her sins,
show her repentance, announce her determination
224


The Threshing-Floor 225
to do right, to make a good fight, to win in the end.
And his daughter | The last of a long race of
harlots and drunkards. Truly it was a miracle!
And she had said that love had wrought it.
Then he thought of Hannah and Jacob—faith-
ful souls who had stood by him all these years
—to whom he was now indebted for a sheltering
roof, a bed to lie on, and his daily bread; who still
called him master, though he was a beggar. He
had never been a bad master to them, but he had
been imperious, exacting, overbearing, cold, proud
in his manner. And yet they seemed to love him.
Wonderful—another miracle !
In his degradation and shame these hearts had
shown him their love.
It seemed to him that this came as a manifesta-
tion of some awful power that had already laid a
finger on his own heart.
But why? At this time P When the end was
near? Why not earlier, when he was younger,
when there was yet time to repent, to atone?
The afternoon wore away as he sat there
thinking and wondering. One by one the vans,
the carts, the waggons drove away from the house.
He watched them as they traversed the field track
to Granton; he followed them over Granton
Bridge and along the fell-side road; he heard them
rumble beneath him on their way to Normancaster.
At last the house and the paddock were free of
them—he saw men come out of the porch, cross
the stepping-stones, and go away by the river-side
path.
I5


226 The Threshing-Floor
He sat there until the darkness fell.
That night no light shone out from the farm-
stead window.
Let their habitation be desolate and let none dwell
in their tents /
Challenger rose and descended the fell-side with
swift steps. He crossed the high road, traversed
the covert, hurried across the river, and up to the
house.
The paddock and orchard were strewn with
straw, refuse, odds and ends of wreckage. The
grass had been trampled into mud by the passing
and repassing of many feet. Over the house and
the buildings hung heavy folds of solitude and
desolation.
Challenger lifted the latch of the door in the
porch. The despoilers had not taken the trouble
to lock it—it yielded easily to his pressure. He
stepped into the stone hall.
It was like standing in a vault walled about with
the dead.
As he stood grasping the door he suddenly
staggered and reeled against it. With a mighty
effort he pulled himself erect again and stared
earnestly into the deep gloom. A moment later
he bowed his head as if in submission. Turning
away, he closed the door and walked across the
fields to Granton.
Once more a cheery hearth, warmth, food,
comfort, and love.
“Brigit,” he said that night as he and his
daughter sat alone, Hannah having purposely gone


The Threshing-Floor 229
slope known to the countryside folk by the name
of Blind Man's Slide. If he was caught in the
snow above, how would he find his way over such
rough country? She knew that there was scarcely
an inch of land or mountain for many miles about
with which he was not familiar, but the snow was
blinding. The most experienced dalesman might
be forgiven for losing his way in its confusing whirl
if he once stepped aside from a known path or was
twisted round by the wind.
Under ordinary circumstances, Challenger might
have been reasonably expected back before dusk;
as things were, Brigit gave him until six o'clock.
But at six o'clock he had not come, and her
anxiety increased. Hannah tried to comfort
her.
“Nobody knows the fells better than the master,
Miss Brigit,” she said. “And he's the soundest
head for crossing bad places of any man I ever
knew or you either. He's been out in far worse
storms than this. And again, if the snow began
before he left Morningdale, he might settle to come
round by the road. There's no cause to be over
anxious.”
But Brigit became more and more anxious.
She went often to the door of the cottage and
looked out into the night. The wind had increased
in strength and the snow in heaviness. Great
drifts were being piled up in the lane and the
garden. The air was suffocatingly thick with the
driving flakes—outside the shelter of the door it
was difficult to breathe.


23o The Threshing-Floor
“I hope he is not out in this storm,” she said.
“He couldn't find his way back.”
“He may have had to stop all day and all night,
said Hannah. She too went to the door and
looked out. “It is bad ' " she exclaimed. “We
shall be snowed up if it goes on till morning.
However Jacob will get back from Westmore-
land way I cannot see. The drifts’ll be thirty
feet high at the head of the dale and in the
pass.”
“What will you do, Hannah, if Jacob is not
back by Monday?” asked Brigit, thinking of the
marriage ceremony which was then to take
place.
“Put off the wedding till he does come,” said
Hannah. “That's the only thing to do. I expect
it's what we shall have to do—it's a wild part that
Jacob's gone into.”
Challenger did not return that night, nor the
next. Monday came, but Jacob did not come
with it. The snow had fallen for forty-eight hours
without cessation. In the village and its immediate
surroundings it was of exceptional thickness; on
the fells the drifts must needs be heavy and deep.
That part of the dale was cut off from all the
rest. It was impossible to reach Highdale in
one direction or Normancaster in the other.
Hundreds of sheep were under the snow in the
valley—on the fells thousands would share a
similar fate.
There were no railways in that corner of the
land and no telegraph wires. For some days no
yy


The Threshing-Floor 23 I
letters came into the village nor went out of it.
A week passed, and Challenger and Jacob were
still unheard of.
Then, on the eighth day, Jacob returned. The
dalesmen had cut a road through the pass, and he
had made what speed he could homeward. His
face became grave when he heard of Challenger's
journey and non-return; an old dalesman and
cragsman himself, he knew the danger of crossing
Blind Man's Slide in a snowstorm. He did his
best to comfort Brigit with the suggestion that her
father, like the rest of them, had been snowed up.
Now that the roads were being opened out again,
said Jacob, the master would soon return. Secretly,
he was afraid that Challenger had been overcome
by the snow or had fallen over one of the precipitous
slopes which he must needs pass in coming from
Morningdale.
Next day the road to Normancaster was open.
Brigit could wait no longer for news. She walked
all the way into the town and despatched a
telegram to the great house to which Challenger
had set out, begging for any news of him they
might have there or could obtain in the neigh-
bourhood. She waited in the post office for a
reply. Folk came in and out and stared at her
inquisitively as the heroine of the recent tragedy;
she never saw them or their nudges and nods
to each other or heard their whisperings. Some-
thing told her that more sorrow was in store for
her.
The reply to the telegram came back in two


232 The Threshing-Floor
hours. Challenger had left the village inn in
Morningdale at three o'clock on the 2nd November.
He had not been seen or heard of in that neighbour-
hood since.
Brigit crushed the paper in her hand and left
the office. She walked straight out of the town,
straight along the highway towards Granton. She
was certain now that her father was lying dead
somewhere on the fells—had been lying dead for
many days.
It was hard—it was hard | To be taken from
her when at last, after so many years of reserve,
of neglect, he had come to love her, had spoken
words of affection to her, had let her see that she
had wrought some strange, miraculous change
in him, had shown a new, infinitely new side
of himself to her | She had meant to work
for him so faithfully, to do so much to make
the rest of his life happy. And now—he was
dead.
Then she suddenly realised, with a great burst
of illumination, that her father had repented of
his sins before the end came. He had seen the
light, and it had changed his heart.
Four days after that Gabriel's body was found
at the foot of Blind Man's Slide. It was evident
that he had slipped from a narrow ledge seventy
feet above, and had been killed on the spot. In
his pocket they found a formal letter from the
great man he had gone to see. It gave him
a comfortable appointment on the great man's
estate.





PART THE FOURTH
CHA PTER I
BRIGIt now realised that she was alone in the
world.
True, there were two faithful friends at hand
who loved her, and who were ready and eager to
share all they had with her. She knew that what-
ever might chance, there would always be a home
for her in the little cottage at Granton, so long as
Jacob and Hannah lived in it. But Brigit was
young, and proud, and strong, and she felt that
inaction, even comparative inaction, would be bad
for her. She wanted to do things.
She began to cast her eyes about, looking for
Something that she could do.
She had none of the usual young-lady notions
of acting as bear-leader to other people's fractious
children, or becoming the daily drudge of some
ill-tempered old dowager, in order to gain her
bread - and - butter and new clothes every year.
She wanted work—real hard work, that would
tire her out, physically and mentally, every day.
She looked at her muscular arms; she felt the hot
blood running clear and strong in her healthy
235


The Threshing-Floor 237
“A nurse P What—to children P”
“No, but to sick people. In a hospital.”
Hannah considered matters.
“They say that's very hard work,” she remarked
at last.
“The harder the better. I want hard work—
I'll have hard work. Look how strong I am
How many men are there who are stronger?”
Hannah looked at Brigit admiringly.
“You’re a fine, handsome woman, my dear,” she
said. “But I don't like to think of you wasting
your life in nursing poor folks. It's not what you
ought to expect.”
“Nonsense, Hannah I ought to be only too
glad to get the chance. I wish I knew how to
set about it.” -
Hannah grew thoughtful.
“Miss Brigit,” she said after a time, “what about
Mr. Marriot?”
Brigit blushed and the tears came into her
eyes.
“It seems to me,” said Hannah, “that when
—when the twelve months are up, he'll want to
marry you. He—he'll see things in another light
by that time.”
“Don’t, Hannah; because it's no good. That is
all over, Oh!”
She sat down in Jacob's easy-chair and cried.
But very soon she dried her tears and resumed
her work.
“I don't want to talk about it,” said Hannah,
“but, Miss Brigit, those things have got to be


238 The Threshing-Floor
faced. It's my belief that when he comes out,
he will want to see you again.”
“No,” said Brigit.
“If you could have seen him when he'd calmed
down, poor man,” said Hannah, “there would
have been an understanding. He would have
seen things in another light, as I said.”
“No,” repeated Brigit firmly. “It is all over.
Nothing could ever make him see me again, think
of me again, as he saw me and thought of me until
he found out what I really was. It is all over.”
“I don't think so,” said Hannah. “If you could
have seen him.”
Brigit sighed.
“Hannah, I did try to see him,” she said. “It
was after the trial was over. I got Mr. White,
the clergyman at Normancaster, to see him, and
to ask him to see me. And—he sent word back
that it was—better not.”
Brigit began to weep again.
“And then—then I sent Mr. White to him
again, asking him to send me one word of for-
giveness, and telling him that, in spite of everything,
I never had loved any man but him, and should
be true to him all my life, begging him to forgive.”
“What answer did he send ?” asked Hannah.
“One word only—Yes.”
“Ah!” said Hannah, shaking her head. “You’ll
see, Miss Brigit. He'll come to you when the
year's up.”
“No,” said Brigit, for the third time. “It’s all
over. He has forgiven — he wouldn't lie — but


The Threshing-Floor 241
but very quietly, whose carriage and air suggested
breeding and some distinction. And something in
her face struck Brigit as being familiar.
The lady uttered an exclamation of pleasure as
her eyes fell on Brigit. She held out a small, well-
gloved hand.
“You are Brigit?” she exclaimed. “And, my
dear, you are a beautyl Ah, I should have known
you anywhere.”
Brigit stared at her.
“You don't know me,” continued the stranger.
“How should you? But I am your aunt—your
father's younger sister. He never spoke of me, I
daresay. How should he? He never heard my
name, after I left home. I am Mrs. Errington.”
Brigit was utterly confused and astonished. She
begged this newly-found relative to sit down. Mrs.
Errington accepted the invitation readily enough,
and threw back her furs. Hannah slipped away,
leaving aunt and niece alone.
“I did not know,” said Brigit slowly, “I did not
know that I had any relations living.”
“No, my dear, you couldn't. I’m not sure that
I knew you were living until I read all the recent
sad business in the papers—poor child, how you
must have suffered —and then I saw the announce-
ment of your father's death,” said Mrs. Errington.
“When I saw that, following so closely upon the—
the other affair—I felt that I really must come to
see you, Brigit.”
“That was kind,” said Brigit heartily. “Thank
you—aunt. You must forgive me if I seem
I6


242 The Threshing-Floor
awkward and shy. Indeed, I am so much sur-
prised that I don't seem to realise that you are
really there !”
“Did your father never speak of his sisters—did
you never know of them?” asked Mrs. Errington.
“There were two of us—Katherine and Ursula.
I am Ursula.”
“No,” said Brigit. “He never spoke of you.
And I don't remember that I ever heard of you.
I may have done, but "–
She had a misty notion that she had heard
somewhere, somehow, that her father had sisters
who had followed the family tradition, and she
wondered about it as she stared at the elegant,
self-possessed person before her. But this notion
was too vague to be spoken of with any certainty.
“No,” she repeated, “I can't remember at all.”
“I daresay not,” said Mrs. Errington. “We
Challengers, as you know very well, always were
a strange family. But I am, or was, Ursula
Challenger, my dear—your father's youngest sister.
Katherine and I, like your father, were born at
Abbotsholme, and we were christened in this very
Granton church—there'll be the entries in the
register. I—I was five years younger than Gabriel
—Katherine was between us.”
“Is my Aunt Katherine alive?” asked Brigit.
Mrs. Errington sighed and shook her head.
“I don't know,” she said. “Katherine—dis-
appeared. You know all the Challenger women
have always been a little—well, flighty. I ran away
from school to be married when I was seventeen.”


The Threshing-Floor 243
“Is Mr. Errington alive P” asked Brigit, who felt
as if she was being introduced to a new world.
“Oh, Mr. Errington was my second husband.
He is dead, poor man—some years ago. The first
was Captain Broomfield. He was stationed with
his regiment—the 90th Lancers—at York when I
was at school there. We used to make eyes at each
other when we met, and at last we eloped. Poor
Broomfield—he was killed at Tel-el-Kebir, years
ago. Then I married Mr. Errington, a London
merchant.”
“Have you any children, aunt?” inquired Brigit.
Mrs. Errington sighed.
“No,” she answered, “I have no children.”
Then she asked Brigit to tell her about Gabriel's
death, and she shed some tears and was sym-
pathetic. While Brigit talked Mrs. Errington eyed
her over with particular intelligence; she said to
herself that her niece was the handsomest young
woman she had seen for many years.
“Brigit,” she said after a time, “do you know
what my chief reason in coming here was P I want
you to go back to London with me—to stay with
me—live with me altogether if you like.”
Brigit's faced flushed. The words and the voice
were kind.
“You said—you said you had read all about that
—terrible affair in the papers,” she murmured,
bending her head over her sewing. “Do you
know what sort of a girl I was P Would you care
to take me into your house with that knowledge?”
Mrs. Errington patted her niece's hand.


244. The Threshing-Floor
“Never mind the past, my dear,” she said kindly.
“You must look to the future.”
“Yes,” said Brigit, “that is what I am trying to
do. But if I went with you to London, aunt, what
should I do?”
Mrs. Errington stared.
“Do, child P” she exclaimed. “Why, enjoy
yourself!”
Brigit laughed and shook her head.
“That doesn't attract me,” she said. “I want
some work to do—some hard work. Look how
strong I am.”
Mrs. Errington's keen eyes swept her niece's
figure over from head to foot.
“I want to be a nurse,” continued Brigit. “When
you came I was wondering how I could get into a
hospital.”
Mrs. Errington clapped her hands.
“Well,” she said, “if that's what you really
want, child, I can help you to that. If you'll come
back with me to London I can get you into one
of the hospitals easily enough. I know several
doctors of great influence.”
Brigit's eyes shone with delight.
“Then I will go,” she said. “It’s very kind of
you to take so much trouble.”
“Well, now,” said Mrs. Errington, “let us be
practical. I mean to stay at the Queen's Head
at Normancaster until the day after to-morrow.
Could you be ready to go with me then P.”
“Yes,” replied Brigit. “I have no preparations
to make.” v


The Threshing-Floor 245
“Very well, then, the day after to-morrow,” said
Mrs. Errington. “And now can't you give me a
cup of tea P”
Brigit summoned Hannah and introduced her to
Mrs. Errington. She spoke of Hannah's and Jacob's
kindness to her, and then told Hannah of her
aunt's proposal. Hannah was overjoyed—it did
her heart good, she said, to know that Miss Brigit
had a relation who would look after her. That
Brigit should be whisked off to London by a fine
lady in silks and furs seemed to her simple mind a
very good thing indeed.


CHA PTER III
MRS. ERRINGTON and Brigit arrived in London
late in the afternoon of a dull November day.
Brigit had never been in London before: as they
drove westward along the Euston Road she gazed
out of the window of the cab and thought the
streets looked mean and dirty and the people ill-
dressed and common. Mrs. Errington noticed
the surprise on Brigit's face, and laughed.
“Don’t judge London from this, my dear,” she
Said. “I can assure you that the real London—
the London that you shall know—will be very
different from this part of it. Wait until I have
taken you about a little—you must see something
of the sights before you begin to work.”
Brigit was not averse to a certain amount of
sight-seeing. She had often heard and read of
London and its famous show-places, and she had
wished from childhood to see them. So long as
her mind could be fully engaged by what she saw,
a little pleasure and amusement, she thought,
would do her good before she set herself to the
work which she contemplated.
Mrs. Errington resided in a small villa situated
in a quiet, tree-shaded street in St. John's
Wood. Brigit thought i: one of the prettiest little
46


The Threshing-Floor 247
places she had ever seen. There was a quiet
garden enclosed by high walls; its patch of turf
was velvet-smooth and green in spite of the season;
there were climbing plants and evergreens, beds
bright with flowers, and in one corner a little
conservatory was gay with colour. From a fountain
in the midst of this miniature lawn came a musical
tinkle of falling water.
Brigit was equally charmed with the inside of
the house. Two smart maids, neither of them
young, at the door. Soft carpets everywhere—a
nest of warmth and luxury, which seemed very
welcome after the long cold journey. Beautiful
pictures on the walls—cosy, inviting furniture in
the rooms. Evidences of wealth and comfort
everywhere. Through an open door she caught
a glimpse of a table spread for dinner—silver
and glass shone like points of fire under the soft-
ened glow of shaded lamps. Her own bedroom
frightened her, it was so luxurious. She felt that
she would be afraid to sleep in the silk sheets of
the bed, and she marvelled at the magnificence of
the various appointments. And a bright fire in the
grate —she had never heard of a fire in a bedroom
in her life. She thought of the old stone-walled
rooms at Abbotsholme, and sighed. And yet she
had such an innate love of colour and of warmth
and pleasantness that she felt bound to confess that
all this was nice.
She came to the conclusion that the late Mr.
Errington must have left his widow a large
fortune.


25o The Threshing-Floor
“Sh !” she said. “I–well ?” -
“You’ll have to come with us,” said the man.
“Here's the warrant. Shall I read it to you here
or at the station? As you please.”
Mrs. Errington rose. She was trembling very
much, and her eyes and mouth looked decidedly
unpleasant.
“Brigit,” she said sharply, “this is a dreadful
mistake. I shall make it all right. You must
stay here until—until I come back. I'll tell the
maids what to do. I must get some papers from
my private room,” she continued, turning to the
big man.
“Very well, but my men will go with you,” said
he, “Keep a sharp eye on her, Johnson and
Lewis. Don't try any tricks on, Mrs. Errington—
it isn't a ha'porth of good.”
Mrs. Errington hurried from the room. The two
men addressed as Johnson and Lewis closed in on
each side of her.
The big man turned to Brigit and looked at her
narrowly.
“And who may you be, young lady?” he
inquired, not unkindly.
“I am Mrs. Errington's niece,” she replied. “Is
—oh, I’m frightened. Is—is something wrong?”
The man looked at her still more closely. He
noticed her simple dress, her candid eyes.
“Are you sure you're her niece?” he asked.
“Don’t be afraid of telling me anything. I'm
Inspector Winter of Scotland Yard—police, you
know.”


252 The Threshing-Floor
Take my advice and go straight back to your
old servant's cottage in Yorkshire—at once.”
“But I want to be a nurse,” said Brigit. “She
—this woman—promised to help me to get into a
hospital here in London.”
“I daresay she did,” said the inspector drily.
“Well, now, listen. I'm going to send my two
men off with her in a cab presently. Then I'm
going to have a look round this place myself.
After that, if you'll trust yourself to me, I'll take
you to a young woman's club and boarding-house
that I know of, and introduce you to the matron.
You can tell her anything you like and trust her
fully. She'll help you. What do you say?”
“Thank you—thank you indeed l’ cried Brigit.
“Shall I get my things on P”
“Wait a bit. There's the old Jezebel coming
down. Let me get her off, and then we can go,”
said the inspector.
Mrs. Errington, closely escorted by the two
men, came back into the room, attired in her
furs. Her face was ghastly in its paleness and
haggardness. Brigit could scarcely believe that
this was the same woman who but ten minutes
before had laughed and chatted so gaily and
pleasantly. It was not pleasant to look at Mrs.
Errington's eyes now, nor at her twitching mouth.
And Brigit suddenly saw a painfully striking re-
semblance to her father in the eyes—she had seen
his eyes look like that when he was in a violent
rage. It must be true—this woman, vile, perjured,
unspeakable, was of her own flesh and blood |


The Threshing-Floor 253
Mrs. Errington looked at Brigit.
“Now, Brigit,” she said sharply, “you stay
here. I've given Thompson and Brown my
orders. I may be back in a couple of hours—I
shall certainly be back by noon to-morrow. I
can give bail to any amount—thousands, if it's
necessary,” she said, with a defiant glare at the
inspector. “I’m not without powerful friends, Mr.
Winter—in pretty high places, too, as you know,
eh? Do you hear, Brigit?—you stay here.”
Behind Mrs. Errington's back the inspector
signalled to Brigit to remain silent.
“Now then, Mrs. Errington,” said the inspector,
“off you go—there's a cab outside. Keep a strict
eye on her, you men. And send Smith in from
the garden. I want him here.”
Mrs. Errington stopped and looked at Winter
with some anxiety.
“Are you going to make a search P” she de-
manded. “Are you?”
“I’ve a warrant for that too, Mrs. Errington,” he
replied. “Now, men.”
But before they could leave the room, Brigit
jumped to her feet and laid her hand on the
woman's arm.
“Please, please tell me the truth !” she said
passionately. “Is it true — are you really my
father's sister? Tell me, please !”
The woman's eyes flashed. Brigit sank back.
Once more she saw the fatal resemblance.
“Your father's sister? Why, you stupid fool, do
you think I'm not? Of course I am l’


254 The Threshing-Floor
Brigit sat down, convinced, cowed. She was
conscious that Mrs. Errington and the two men
went away, that another man entered, that he and
the inspector moved about the house a great deal,
that the inspector called in the two servants and
talked to them in very authoritative tones. But
she paid no particular attention to anything that
went on—her mind was running on one thought
only.
Her father's sister |
Her own flesh and blood—and a woman.
She sat in a stupor until the inspector came and
told her to put her things on and not to be afraid
—she would come to no harm where he was going
to take her, and she would find a good and a kind-
hearted woman to receive her.


CHAPTER IV
BRIGIT had now, for the first time in her life, the
opportunity of seeing many other young women.
In the house to which the friendly inspector took
her there were some thirty or forty girls, some
younger, some a little older than herself, all of
whom earned their own living. Some were clerks,
some daily governesses, some typists, some shop
assistants. Every morning they trooped off to
their daily labour; every night they came back
tired out with their day's work.
During the few days which she spent in this
house Brigit examined its inmates closely and
with much curiosity. She had never seen much
of her own sex, and it soon struck her that these
young women were decidedly uninteresting and
commonplace. None of them seemed to take any
delight in their labour—it was evident that sheer
necessity was the only thing that made them work
at all. Every morning they grumbled at the ill
fate which sent them out to toil; every evening
they complained of the labours they had gone
through during the day. Their pleasures seemed
to be mean, their conversation ran chiefly on new
hats and young men. Those girls who had sweet-
255


256 The Threshing-Floor
hearts were the aristocracy of the establishment;
they formed an upper chamber of their own, and
had a secret language of nods, winks, and whispers,
into which the unfavoured and unsought were not
initiated.
Most of these young women, Brigit observed,
were anything but healthy. They complained
continually of some ailment or other—a hacking
cough, a pain in the back, a pain in the side,
perpetual headaches. Almost all were palpably
anaemic—all suffered from indigestion, the result
of a hastily-swallowed breakfast, a bun or pastry
lunch at midday, and a supper eaten too late at
night. There was necessarily a steadily-kept-up
atmosphere of irritability and peevishness in the
house, and sometimes the plain tendency to
scratch and bite manifested itself.
To one girl, who had shown her some kindness
on her arrival, Brigit expressed her surprise at the
things she saw and heard. The girl laughed,
rather bitterly.
“What can you expect?” she said. “We’re all
poor. We're all worked beyond our strength.
We've scarcely any pleasures. Few of us have
anything much in the way of friendship. We've
scarcely anything to look forward to. Some of us
have young men. What are they? Poor clerks—as
poor as we are. If any of us marry, what is there
to expect? Poverty, struggles, a mean, dull life
in a back street. You can't wonder that girls who
live this life should be irritable and bad-tempered.
It's different with you. Anybody can see that


The Threshing-Floor 257
you've lived in the country all your life. You've
been well fed, you've had plenty of fresh air and
exercise. Look at most of us, and then look at
yourself. Look at our pale faces, flat chests,
straight hips—there isn't the strength of a child in
most of us. Then look at your colour, your figure
—why, you've the strength of a horse !”
Brigit was anxious to make use of her strength.
She had told as much of her story as she thought
necessary to the matron of the establishment on
the night of her arrival, and they had discussed
plans and probabilities. The matron thought that
Brigit might experience some difficulty in entering
one of the large hospitals as a probationer, and
advised her to endeavour to gain some experience
in a smaller one. And at the end of a week she
took her to see a friend of her own who was the
controlling spirit of a children's hospital in the
south of London.
This lady cast approving eyes on Brigit —
she saw the vast capacities for work and endur-
ance in her vigorous health and strength. But
she had no vacancy on her staff—it was full
already. -
“But I want help in the kitchen,” she said, look-
ing doubtfully at Brigit. “I want it badly. But,
of course, you would not care for that.”
“But I would care,” answered Brigit. “I will do
anything.”
“It is rough work — ordinary housemaid's
and kitchenmaid's work — and there is plenty
Of it.”
17


The Threshing-Floor 259
hundred children in the hospital—most of them
incurable cripples. To these she devoted all the
energies that she had formerly given to scrubbing
and sweeping. She became their chief favourite,
but her devotion and desire to excel in her work
was so evident and sincere that none of her fellow-
nurses were jealous. In the wards, as in the
kitchen, she was always bright, cheerful, sunny.
No one knew what black hours she passed
through.
The thought of Marriot, in prison, was always
with her—sometimes pushed far back in the
chambers of her mind, sometimes forcing all other
things away from her consciousness. She thought
of him as she had known him—a man who more
than most men loved personal liberty, the rush of
the wind, the open road, the widespread sky, the
music of streams, the life of the fields and woods.
But he was in prison.
She knew, with a strange fatalistic sureness of
knowledge, that all was over between them, that
she would never be his wife, and that she would
love him, and go unsatisfied of love, all her life.
It was all over—all. And yet as the year slipped
away she felt an impelling desire to see him once
more, if only for a moment; to beg for his forgive-
ness from his own lips, and to ask him to try to
put the past by and begin a new career. This
desire grew stronger every day as the time for
Marriot's release drew near.
Marriot had gone to prison on the 27th October
—she had made a note of the date with special


26o The Threshing-Floor
care. Two days before the expiration of his
sentence fell due Brigit asked for and obtained a
week's holiday, and on the next day she travelled
down to Yorkshire with the intention of meeting
him at the prison gates.


CHAPTER V
MARRIOT had served his sentence of twelve months'
imprisonment at Alderton, a small market-town
on the Great North Road which was once a
coaching centre of considerable importance but
is now chiefly famous because the county gaol
stands within its boundaries. At Alderton Brigit
arrived late in the afternoon. She secured a
lodging for the night in the town, and told the
landlady that she had come to the place on purpose
to meet a prisoner whose sentence expired next
day. From the landlady she learned that prisoners
were usually discharged at eight o'clock in the
morning.
Next morning Brigit was at the prison gate by
half-past seven. The weather was cold and raw,
and a thin drizzle of rain swept across the country.
There was nobody about—the road was deserted.
A myriad cold, repelling eyes seemed to stare at her
from the long black walls of the gaol; the door at
which she expected to see Marriot appear looked
as if nothing would ever open it again. She walked
up and down, shivering — more from nervous
apprehension than from cold.
A woman hove in sight. She carried a tin pail
and a little basket. She took up a position near


The Threshing-Floor 267
could not refuse to give her some news of him.
She would see, as a woman, that Brigit was sick
at heart for news.
She went down to the little town in the Mid-
lands early one morning and asked her way to
the Marriots' house. She remembered the name
by which Marriot had called it—Lone Ash. It
was as he had described it to her—a pretty
house, well out of the town, standing in a little
garden of its own and dominated by a great
ash tree.
, She lifted the latch of the gate as if she feared
to make the slightest noise. And as she pushed
the gate open she paused, breathless with a sudden
thought.
Supposing he should be there?
At last she summoned sufficient courage to
approach the door.
A maid answered her timid knock.
“Is Mrs. Marriot at home P”
The maid stared at Brigit. -
“Mrs. Marriot, m’m P Mrs. Marriot is dead this
twelvemonth.”
Brigit clutched the door-post.
“Miss Marriot?” she said.
“Oh, yes, m’m, Miss Marriot is at home. Do
you want to see her, m’m P”
“If you please.”
The maid showed Brigit into a parlour and
asked her name. Brigit put her off by saying that
Miss Marriot did not know her, and requested the
maid to explain to her mistress that she had


268 The Threshing-Floor
travelled a long way to see her on an important
matter.
Left alone, Brigit looked round the room wist-
fully. She saw some things of which Marriot had
told her—an ancient sampler, worked by his great-
great-grandmother; a curious old picture; an
ivory elephant which had been a source of great
interest to him as a boy. To see these things was
to bring back his voice—his laugh—
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears when
the door opened.
A tall, handsome woman, whose face bore evi-
dent signs of sorrow, whose hair, brown and glossy,
was prematurely streaked with grey. There was a
strong likeness to Marriot in face and eyes—this
was his sister.
Miss Marriot looked inquiringly at Brigit. She
saw that her visitor was a nurse, that she was very
handsome, that she was agitated.
“You wish to see me?” she said.
Brigit gripped the back of a chair by which she
was standing.
“Miss Marriot,” she said. “I am Brigit
Challenger.”
If a look or flash of the eye could have struck
Brigit dead, there would have been an end of her
at that moment. Miss Marriot started back,
turned very pale, and fixed her visitor with a
glare in which the utmost hatred was mingled
with scorn and contempt.
Brigit held out her hands involuntarily.
“Please, please tell me some news of him 1" she


PART THE FIFTH
CHAPTER I
FROM that night forward Brigit resolutely put
away from her all thought or hope of ever seeing
Marriot. She understood his disappearance better
than his own sister did. He had wished to die to
the past. Probably he had gone away to begin a
new life in a new land. It was evident, at any
rate, that he had no wish to resume any relations
with the people he had known of old. It was all
over. She had known it from the first, with the
certainty of instinct. She accepted the verdict of
fate with resignation.
For herself, she must endeavour, by hard work,
self-denial, patient toil in the service of others,
to atone for her sins. She had an instinctive love
of pleasure and of the music and colour of life,
but she told herself, once and for all, that neither
pleasure nor ease was to be hers at any time:
until death came, her lot was to be one of ceaseless
striving, with the object of helping some in the
same degree that she had injured others. She had
done irreparable wrong to some men and women;
it was the burning desire of her heart to atone for
271


272 The Threshing-Floor
it by giving her life and her strength to the service
of suffering humanity.
She remained at the children's hospital for a
year longer, then, with a view to increasing her
sphere of usefulness, she went through a three
years' course of general training at one of the
great London hospitals. That over, she began to
look about her for the proper sphere of her life-
work. She did not want to remain in a hospital,
where her energies must necessarily be limited
and her initial responsibility under the control of
fixed rules. Her desire was to seek out some
place or area wherein there would be hard, con-
stant work—if possible, amongst the very poor.
She wanted work that would take all her energies
day and night: she wanted to be amongst people
to whom she could be a real help and dependable
friend, people whose lot was hard, who had little
sunshine, who needed love and sympathy as well
as mere hand service.
At last she heard of something that seemed
suited to her desire. The authorities in control of
Weatherstone, a mining village in the Yorkshire
coal-field, wanted a district nurse.
Brigit went down to see the place for herself.
When she got there, she marvelled that two places
so utterly different as Normancaster and Weather-
stone could be found in the same county. Here,
with the exception of a few ancient cottages which
had once stood lonely and isolated amongst woods
and fields, there was nothing that spoke of any-
thing but to-day. The unlovely top-hamper of


The Threshing-Floor 275
entrance hall was filled with men lounging at an
open bar; in a long room opening from it a crowd
of indistinct figures was fitfully revealed through
circling wreaths of tobacco smoke; there were
glimpses of men in other, smaller rooms—there
seemed to be men and drink and tobacco every-
where. And every man seemed to be talking at
the top of his voice.
Collier-like, the men in the entrance hall made
way for the nurse with ready politeness. She
nodded to them as she passed through, and spoke
to one or two whom she recognised. One man,
somewhat advanced in his cups, waved a mug of
beer at her with frantic enthusiasm.
“Eh, bless thy bonny face, the sight o' thee's
berrer nor seein’ an angel—now it is Berrer—nor
—seein'—fifty bloomin' angels. Thash ri'—that is.”
Brigit smiled and nodded again, and passed into
the landlord's private parlour. As she washed and
dressed the child's wound, she heard the loquacious
collier voice her praises.
“I shay berrer—nor—fifty bloomin' angels—or
a hundred, if it comes to that. I know what I’m
talkin' 'bout—see Angels —I’m shurprised at
you, a-defendin' angels agen a young lady like
that. Does angels sit up all ni' wi' poorly folk P
Does angels go round all day—and all ni'—a-doin'
good? Does angels bandage little boys as breaks
their legs and little gels as cuts theirsens? No! I
nothin' to say agen angels—in their way. But
wha' I say is—there ain't no blurry angel half's
good as wha’ this here young lady is. Don't you


276 The Threshing-Floor
make no mistake. I know what I’m talkin' 'bout—
see 1 I'm—I'm proud be under same roof with
good young lady like that—makes man hold his
head up. Much berrer nor a hundred blurry
angels, I say.”
“There's praise for you, nurse,” said the landlady,
as she watched Brigit's deft fingers. “He lays it
on thick, doesn't he P”
“I'm afraid it's beer,” said Brigit. “The
admiration seems inspired by something of that
sort.”
“It takes a good deal of beer to wash the coal-
dust out of some of them,” said the landlady
reflectively. “Poor things I it's the only bit of
comfort they have.”
Brigit made no reply to this remark. She
completed the treatment of the child's wound,
declined the landlady's pressing offer of a glass of
real good port wine, and picked up her things for
departure. At the door of the private parlour she
paused for a moment to give some directions about
dressing the child's arm, and as she spoke her eyes
involuntarily glanced round the men in the
entrance hall.
She suddenly reeled, caught at the door—would
have fallen if she had not clutched it.
The landlady rushed to her side. Brigit was
white as death.
“You’re ill — fainting !” cried the landlady.
“Here—sit down.”
She pulled Brigit within the room and closed
the door. Brigit dropped into a chair and lifted


The Threshing-Floor 279
came out—she turned and recognised a miner
whose wife she was then attending. He greeted
her respectfully.
“David,” she said suddenly, “who is that man
sitting in the corner inside there? A tall man,
bearded, with scars on his face?”
“Oh, that?” answered David. “Why, miss, we
call him Long Looney, but I don't suppose any-
body knows his real name. If anybody does, it'll
be Sal Haines, where he lodges. He first came
here with Bill Haines, her husband—dead now, is
Bill.”
“Where does Mrs. Haines live, David P” asked
Brigit.
“Paradise Street, miss, off the Sicaster Road.
Long Looney's always lived with her. He's a
quiet sort, miss, but a bit touched in the head;
not all there, as you might say.”
Brigit said good-night to David and went home.
That night she scarcely slept.
Marriot's eyes—and clouded, dull—vacant.


The Threshing-Floor 281
doctors,' I says to Mrs. Thomson, “does me no
good at all. After all,' I says, “when all's said
and done, they're naught but men, and men can't
understand women. I’ll see what this here young
lady can do for me,' I says; and so Mrs. Thomson
promised to give you word of it, miss. And thank
you kindly for coming so soon.”
“What is the matter with you, Mrs. Haines?”
inquired Brigit, secretly resolving to call upon
Mrs. Thomson as soon as she had finished her
present business. “Are you ill?”
“Not ill, miss, nor yet poorly. It's a sort of
tightness about the 'eart—catches me bad, it does,
over the washin' tub, and ironin', and goin' up
stairs. Dr. Mitchell he's given me some medicine
times and again, but it don't do no good. An’
when a woman has to earn her livin' washin' and
ironin', a thing like that's agen her. An' I don't
hold with takin' of drops of sperrits, as some does,
when the feelin' comes on.”
Brigit went into Mrs. Haines's case at some
length, and finally suggested some remedial
measures which took the patient's fancy. And
at last she approached the subject which was
uppermost in her mind.
“Mrs. Haines, I wanted to ask you a question.
I understand that a man named Looney lodges
with you?”
“Yes, miss, and has done this three years and
more. A harmless, quiet chap he is, poor fellow.
Not quite himself, you know, miss, but as easy as
a child to manage.”


282 The Threshing-Floor
“Do you know if that is his real name, Mrs.
Haines?”
“No more than the name of the man in the
moon, miss. Looney he always been called here
because he's a bit dotty. I don't suppose,” said
Mrs. Haines reflectively, “that he knows his own
name.”
“Mrs. Haines,” said Brigit, “I saw this man last
night in the Rising Hope, and I thought—fancied
—I knew him. He is very like someone I knew
some years ago. Would you—do you mind telling
me how you got to know him—how he came
here P’”
“Eh, bless you, miss, not a bit,” said Mrs.
Haines. “There's no mystery about it that I
know of. You see, my husband, dead now, had
been in to Sicaster yonder one night, and coming
back along the road he came across this poor
Looney, and found he was either ill or a bit out
of his mind or something. Now he was a very
soft-hearted man, Haines was—always ready to
do a good turn and lend a hand—so what does he
do but brings this poor chap home with him.
He "—
“What was he like—how was he dressed then?”
interrupted Brigit eagerly.
“Well, miss, like a common working man,” said
Mrs. Haines. “A man on the tramp—yet he had
a bit of money—a pound or two—on him. Well,
Haines he would have us to look after him a bit,
and he stopped with us, and we found that his
head was a bit touched, but that otherwise he was


CHAPTER IV
RETURNING from a round of visits that evening,
Brigit was informed by her landlady that Mrs.
Haines and her lodger were waiting to see her in
her sitting-room. Although the thought of this
meeting had been in her mind all day, the curt
announcement that it was now at hand threw her
into a violent agitation. Her heart began to
beat so fiercely as to produce a feeling almost
amounting to suffocation, and she was obliged
to leave the house again and to walk up and
down the street ere she could regain her com-
posure.
The things she saw in those few minutes burnt
themselves in upon her consciousness as acid burns
into a plate. A fishmonger's shop, its marble
slab destitute of anything but a flabby-looking
haddock, whose pale yellow flesh was lighted up
by a solitary gas jet. A boot-shop, styled gran-
diosely Emporium, wherein were boots at four
shillings and elevenpence the pair. A boy, who
never ceased to bawl in a loud, raucous voice the
news appearing in the special edition of an evening
paper. A collier's wife, little more than a child,
carrying a baby in one arm and with the other
Supporting her boy-husband, who seemed to be
287


The Threshing-Floor 293
“Tell the lady some more—about the man,
Looney,” said Mrs. Haines. “Didn't he use to
smoke cigars?”
Marriot's face brightened and he chuckled
softly.
“Eh, yes!” he said. “Cigars—good cigars.
He gave me cigars.”
Brigit remembered that a good cigar was the
only luxury that Marriot ever allowed himself.
“And he'd fine clothes, hadn't he?” said Mrs.
Haines.
He chuckled again and nodded his head several
times.
“A waistcoat,” he said, “white, with little blue
and black spots on it, and pearl buttons. He gave
it to me—I wore it. Fine !”
Brigit turned away half laughing, half crying.
She remembered that Marriot had bought a white
waistcoat with blue and black spots in it during
that long-dead summer at Abbotsholme, and that
she had teased him about his palpable boyish
vanity in it.
How was it that the poor diseased brain, re-
membering vaguely and dimly some of the
tragedies of that previous life, had kept most
green the memory of such little frivolous pleasures
as smoking a good cigar and wearing a fancy
waistcoat?
Brigit was seized with an idea. She told Mrs.
Haines that she would be back in a few minutes,
and leaving the room, she ran as fast as she could
to the best tobacconist's in the place, and there


The Threshing-Floor 295
“Miss,” said Mrs. Haines, “what's his real
name P”
Brigit hesitated.
“Well, Mrs. Haines,” she said, “I’ll think care-
fully before I tell you that. He has had heavy,
dreadful trouble in his life, and it has unhinged
his mind. He must be properly cared for. I
know where his sister lives, and I may write to
her. I must think. In the meantime, take care
of him as you have done so long. He's happy
with you !”
“Eh, bless you, miss, as happy and content as
a king,” said Mrs. Haines. “To be sure the poor
lad's what you see, but he never gives me any
trouble. Trac'able as a child—he is a child, as
you might say. And as for the pit, miss—well,
I never heard him complain. He's as regular as
a clock at his work.”
“Yes,” said Brigit, “but we must have him out
of that.”
They went back to the sitting-room. Marriot
smiled at them through the smoke wreaths.
He was obviously very vain and proud of his
cigar.
“Well, we must be going,” said Mrs. Haines.
“He’s on the night shift, is Looney, and he's got
to get his supper before settin' off for the pit.
And so we'll say good-night, miss, and thank
you.”
Marriot followed Mrs. Haines out. He nodded
and smiled and bowed at Brigit as she held the
door open for them, and tapped his cigar box


The Threshing-Floor 299
“Cigars—good cigars. He gave me cigars.”
“A waistcoat. White with little blue and black
spots in it, and pearl buttons.”
A hand, tremulous, insistent, shaking her
shoulder. Grey morning above the chimney-pots,
the slate roofs across the street.
“Nurse Nurse !”
“White—white—with little blue and black
spots”—
“Nurse ! Nurse—wake l’”
The landlady. In her nightgown and night-
cap. A red flannel nightcap. And why was the
window open? And the rush of feet along the
street P Not the familiar clicketty-clock, clicketty-
clock of the clogs, but mingled with it the hurrying
scurry of lightly-shod feet.
“Nurse Wake —get up. There's been an
explosion at the New Pit—they're wanting you.
Doctor Marsh has just been to the door—you're to
go there, quick.”
A grey sky, still, emotionless, canopying a grey
land. The wheel above the shaft of the New Pit
silhouetted vaguely against the grey sky. In the
open space round the shaft, men, women, and
children, crushing, crowding, jostling. Curses, blas-
phemies, prayers, entreaties to God and to man.
A clock-face of white enamel, with very
black figures and hands staring, staring, staring
persistently from a turret tower of new red
brick.


The Threshing-Floor 303
crowd lower down the yard and was lost to
sight.
“It's all right, nurse,” said one of the men
soothingly. “He’ll ha' gone to Widow Haines's
as he lodges with. You'll find him there
to-night.”
Brigit made no reply. She turned away and
walked slowly back to the shed. The doctor
glanced sharply at her as she entered.
“That's better,” he said. “Here, set to work
on this—heavens, what a day of it we shall
have ”
All through that day and far into the night
the doctors and nurses were hard at work. There
was scarcely any respite or cessation for any of
them. And when Brigit at last got away she was
weak and trembling—even her strong frame had
been unduly taxed.
She went straight to Mrs. Haines's cottage.
She wanted food and rest, but she passed her own
lodgings without a thought of entering them.
Her anxiety about Marriot was dreadful to bear:
she must find relief from it as quickly as possible.
Mrs. Haines had neither seen him nor heard of
him. She was quick to see Brigit's worn-out
condition, forced her into a chair, and made her
eat and drink, and bade her be cheerful and
hopeful.
But Brigit felt that there was no hope. He had
come to his senses again; he had seen her, spoken
her name, and heard her speak his. And he had
held up his hand as if to keep her off, and had


3O4. The Threshing-Floor
turned away from her. The lifted hand was to be
between them for ever. ****
And as the days passed into weeks and no news
was heard of him, she came to believe that she
would never see him again.


CHA PT E R VII
TOWARDS the middle of the summer Brigit was so
much stronger that she began to think of setting
to work again. Some of the old zest for work was
revived in her, and she presently decided to resume
her duties at Weatherstone again.
But there was work close at hand, in Granton.
An attack of diphtheria broke out, and spread
with startling rapidity. Men, women, and children
were stricken, and within a fortnight several deaths
occurred.
Brigit threw herself into the work with character-
istic energy. In spite of her recent illness, she was
here, there, and everywhere; she worked night and
day. Other nurses came on the scene, and many
doctors—Brigit accomplished more than any two
of them put together.
Step by step the disease was driven back, beaten
down, conquered. The little company of nurses
and doctors melted away. And then quite sud-
denly another outbreak began.
A woman came running to Jacob's cottage one
night to tell Brigit that Lizzie Braithwaite's boy
was bad. The village doctor was away, and it
would be impossible to get a doctor from Nor-
mancaster under three hours. Would Brigit come?
307


The Threshing-Floor 309
of them through a grim fight that it seemed hard
to see her fighting as grim a one herself.
Whether there was some inherent consciousness
within her that told her it would be useless, whether
she had been reduced in strength by her recent
efforts, whether the zest of life had died out of
her, she made no fight against the destroying
sickness.
The local doctor, who had admired Brigit's
strength and powers of endurance as they were
manifested in the first outbreak of the epidemic,
was as greatly surprised as he became greatly
despairing.
“She makes no fight for herself,” he said to
Hannah. “It's as though she didn't want to
live.”
If the prayers and desires of those around her
could have restored her, she would have recovered
from her sickness as by a miracle. Hannah, using
an old-world country phrase of those parts, said
that the doorstep was never cool of visitors, all
anxious for better news.
Lizzie Braithwaite, boundlessly grateful to the
woman who had saved her child's life, and ready to
show a dog's devotion to her for ever, came eager
and tearful, many times a day, to hear the news
which she would have sped hot-foot through the
village to retail. But the only news she got was
conveyed by Hannah's sad shake of the head or a
whispered word or two from Jacob.


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