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1 2 3

C^i

^ a^L^

-^ -^ -

1^^

WEARITHORNE.

^-m-

^^^Pi^^BWBIPBPB^BBIUi

■!

WEARITHORNE;

IN THE

TO-DAY.

AUTHOR OF " INGBMISCO" AND " RANDOLFH HONOR."

•I*

— — " this dream of mine-
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch further,
But milk my ewes, and weep." — IVinier's Tale.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1872.

■HUP

i4S

Entered (according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

10 J 3 i-S

WEARITHORNE.

How the wind flitteth
; In and out the halls I

Unseen robes trailing, —

Lightest foot that falls ;
Murmur and laughter

Weird and soft-supprest, —
How mem'ries wander here,

And never rest 1

Blue the flames flicker

In the yawning hearth, —
Leaping and dancing,

Yet withouten mirth.
Far in dark corners
, In and out they glide ;

Out from dim comers, eyes

Just peer, and hide.

"A ^' ^y* ^^'^^ ^^' need o' a long spoon, if so
-^^ be he's bound for to sup porridge wi' Auld
Nick,— that will my young Mester o' Wearithorne.
An' so he's find out for himsen, one o' thoe days,
mayhap."

'• He's none so far wrong, my man, there," put
in another and a shriller voice. " He's nobbut
right at the most o' times, is my man. But about
t' young Squire, now ; why, I were in an' out here

'* (5)

r •

WEARITHORNE.

at Wearithorne, under Marget like, when he were
but a bit laddie; and for all he were a stiff one, I've
' niver clapt eyne on a finer bairn."

The young Squire?

The words, coming through the open window
of Naunty Marget's great cheery kitchen, stayed
me in my loitering past it across the courtyard.
The young Squire ? Tidings of him ? With more
of interest than of mere girlish curiosity, I stopped,
and leaned with both arms on the window-ledge.

I hardly deepened the shadow there, which the
swaying ivy-bough had flung before, across the
lattice. There was little risk of my being observed.
All were assembled round the hearth, where, until
the summer evenings set in hopelessly, my good
old friend Marget, sole guardian of Wearithorne,
or " The House," as it was known in the neighbor-
hood, was wont to keep a light fire crackling away,
by way of companionship in her loneliness.

But the present was as far removed from lone-
liness as it could be by four or five old wives as-
sembled there, and more than one or two among
them with "her man." The dark-blue belted
smock, or the short-waisted frock-coat, a-glitter
with its rows of metal buttons, made the shadows
to the picture, where gay flames lighted up gayer
kirtles and short-gowns, and high-crowned white
caps. The flames glanced, too, upon the great oak
dresser, with its burnished pewters flashing out
from floor to roof; and on the oak-beamed roof

WEARITHORNE.

itself and its suspended frame, garlanded with oat-
cake and garnished with pendants of cured hams
and legs of mutton.

Yet the picture was too large a part of my own
life to hold my attention, as a picture, even for a
moment. No roof in all the dale — ours up at the
Hag only excepted — beneath which these good
gossips were not used to meet thus, to hear or to
tell some new thing under cover of the click of
the knitting-pricks. These "sittings," however,
were chiefly in the winter evenings ; and it must
be a choice bit of gossip indeed, to draw the men
here now.

So it was no wonder I had loitered when I heard
a deep bass mingling in the chorus of the knit-
ting-song which was dying away as I set foot on
the courtyard pavement.

All this while the conversation had gone on. A
third voice, — it was Meg o' Birkdale's :

" Eh, Bessy, happen ye may make us a' believe,
as ye believe yersen, as t' sun rises and sets in
yer man yonder. But," went on the scornful
spinster, nothing heeding the little laugh that went
round the circle, — "but t' young Squire, — that's
quite another make o' a thing. As ye say, he
were a stiff one when he were a bairn, an' flitted
away fro' Wearithorne it's fifteen year ago this
summer ; an' I am thinking he's be but a stiff one
yet. And — though it's no all day long an' ivery
day as men-folk's wide enough awake to run a

«• I

WEARITHORNE.

proverb straight, let be a plow — yet I'll say this
for yer Adam yonder, this time, — he's be right
enough ; it's ill supping porridge wi' Auld Nick
wi' a short spoon. An' I misdoubt the young
Squire's is none o* t' longest. What' j that, Bessy ?
He's no call for to sup porridge wi' Auld Nick ?
Happen ye're right there, an' we all say that same.
It's t' way o* t' world, leastways in our dales. When
Auld Nick spreads his feast, we tuck our head o'
one side, not to see who's sitting anent us, an' we
dip on after t' savory porridge wi' our poor little
spoon o' good intentions. But betimes t' spoon
falls with a ring in t' empty platter, an' we turn our
head in a vast o' hurry — to find our queer friend
flitted, mayhap, but wi' him t' porridge as we'd fain
ha' suppered on. It's none so pretty-behaved in
us : if we're friends to t' gift, it's no for us to be
fremd to t' giver. If nought wunna serve t' young
Mester but coming back here to Wearithorne an'
shutting us out o' t' common an' setting up a fac-
tory as '11 ruin a' our trade i' weaving an' knitting,
— if nought wunna serve him but this, why, then,
I say, let him sup wi 's Auld Nick. But let him
make his manners, beg a spoon o' his, an' fall to it
so, — not rattle his ' good intentions' in our face to
pleasure us, as if we were bairns, an' have it talked
about as he's bound for to improve our dales and
us."

Truly, Meg o' Birkdale was generally credited
with knowing the most profitable way of supping

WEARITIIORNE.

with Auld Nick — and saving her soul too, per-
haps ; for she never had the worst of any bargain.
But I grew impatient of her over-long harangue,
being more eager for text than for commentary. I
was not one to take warning until the day came
when my own spoon fell with a ring upon the
empty platter.

But I never thought of myself, so intent was I
on gaining something more of the strange news.

" But, Meg," remonstrated the other (I had
looked round for a sharper answer from Naunt\
Marget, but she wa^ not in the room), " what ails
ye at t' Mester, to miscall him this gate ? One 'ud
think as ye'd be main glad to see Wearithorne
wi* a Lethwaite again under t' auld roof, and a
Lethwaite as has getten his pockets lined wi' gold
away off in t' Indies, they do say, and's bound for
to ha' builders down fro' York for to build up t'
House braw an' fine again, as'U be a credit to t' dale.
For it's been but a dree House this many a year, it
has."

There was a general murmur of assent, and an
" It'll pleasure Marget rarely, t' day t' Mester comes
back to his own." But there had been a half-
suppressed, doubtful " Humph" from one or two
among the men, and Adam knitted his brows
darkly over the knitting-pins in his great, brown,
clumsy, skilful fingers.

Meg had shrugged her shoulders, while she took
up the word again :

WEARITHORNE.

"I'll none miscall t' Master, Bessy. But I'll
say just this : It's a kittle thing, it is, to come back
here fro' foreign parts, be they London city or
across t* seas, and bring wi' him such a rubble
o* new-fangled notions as'U take thoe bread-win-
ners straight out o' yer hands," she added, with a
nod, as she held up her own knitting, while the
firelight flashes came and went upon the steel.
" How many bump-caps can ye knit a day ? Well,
what time div ye think to make again' this new-
fangled machinery, as they say as he's to set up in
a stretch o' t' common ?"

" T' common, as we'n gi'en up to t' sheep to
pick a mouthful on," muttered Adam, with the
grim frown gathering again.

" Eh, but ye'U mind it's no just to say t' com-
mon," put in Bessy, deprecatingly. " It's but a bit
o' t' Lethwaite estate as has lain waste on t' edge
o' t* common."

" Common or no common," — this time there
were voices more than two or three that took the
question up, — "f beasties ha' had t' range o't for
so long, it's ill shutting them out now."

" And for one o' t' proud Lethwaites to demean
himsen wi' building a mill, — an' that on t' ruin o*
t' auld castle as has been a pride an' a show in t'
dale ! Why, many's t' sixpence as my Kit's earned
fro' travelling bodies passing by t' cottage, as were
speering t' road to t' auld place."

" And it's here an inclosure-bill, and there an in-

WEARITHORNE.

closure-bill, till there'll be niver an acre o' waste
land in a' t' Ridings."

" Eh, well," cried Bessy, dropping her knitting
forgotten on her knee, while she looked round
from one to another with a broad face of blank
dismay, " if it's althegether such a kittle cast to
play, this about t' mill, what for dunnot ye go to t'
poor laddie and warn him ?"

She was broken in upon by the mocking laugh
of Meg o' Birkdale.

"Ay, ay, I'se go fetch away t' torrent o* Har-
draw in t' hollow o' my hand ; and at after, I'se
wait a wee to gather strength afore I strive to turn
t' current o' a Lethwaite's will. Go to t' poor lad-
die an' warn him, did she say?"

" Him as wunna be warned by his feyther, mun
be warned by his stepfeyther."

It was Adam o' Linn Brig's gruff voice said
that. He was a man of few words, leaving the
burden of conversation generally, with a somewhat
scornful indifference, to his good wife Bessy. But
what he said he meant; and somehow a shud-
dering thrill ran through me as I listened to the
familiar saying from his lips.

Perhaps it made the same impression upon
others ; for a dead paupe followed it, in which the
crackling of the flames,, and the click-click of the
knitting-pricks, had space to make themselves dis-
tinctly heard, — until Bessy spoke, presently, in a
hushed voice.

WEARITHORNE.

" Whisht !" she almost whispered, her eyes fixed
on th6 inner door ; " it's Marget's coming back."

Guilty glances were exchanged from one to an-
other, — they had evidently been talking treason,
and dreaded lest some shadow of it might have
stamped its brand upon the brow. Some one
coughed : there was an uneasy movement

When, suddenly, Meg o' Birkdale's shrill and
somewhat quavering, yet still powerful voice struck
up the air of a familiar knitting-song. It either
had broken the spell, or was a secure refuge from
embarrassment ; for every voice chimed in, while
the stuijdy figures were rocking to and fro in the
swaving, keeping time with busy tossing hands
which rose and fell with the old rhythm :

" Twal bonny sheep 'at strayed afield the day,
The mirk November day, the lee-long weary day; —

(Hie, Rockie ! run, Rockie, run !)
Twal bonny sheep 'at strayed afield the day ;
Fause Helbeck's tinkle calls across the brae, —
Down Shunnor-fell the mists lurk a' the way, —

(Run, Rockie, run !)
The fause snow fa's as fast as blooms i' May,
Eleven sheep we'n lost the weary day,

And ane we fun'."

And then, on the next row, — ,

" Ten sheep we'n lost the lee-long weary day,
And twa we fun'."

But I had already crossed the court before that
second sheep wi.c found, and the chorus only fol-

WEARITHORNE.

lowed me upon my way; for, though I meant to
seek out Marget presently, I had no mind to be
caught there at the window ; and I knew well, if I
loitered, Naunty Marget' s keen eyes would not fail
to detect me.

So I stole away from the open window, and stood
hesitating. Should 1 go home ? or for awhile into
the library, — my usual refuge when the house-
keeper was not at my disposal?

Home ? — it was an empty sound to me at best.
At worst, it was drear and hard as its line of rock-
bound cliffs rising up yonder to the southeast of
the courtyard where I loitered, and barren as the
moor that stretched between. But here the moor
was shut out. Glimpses of smooth pastures dotted
over with browsing cattle, these limes and oaks
gave between breeze-lifted boughs. The moat
sweeping about the rising ground where stood the
House, and dividing in twain the prim garden
with its stiff flower-beds and multiform clipped
hedges, was overgrown with shrubs and weeds and
blossoming eglantine ; and here a crossing of felled
trees, all green and mossy, replaced the vanished
drawbridge and led into the square paved court.
This in former days of danger had been walled,
and strengthened by rude arched and turreted por-
tals ; but time and neglect had crumbled these, —
ivy and lichens had overrun their fragmentary re-
mains. The court was now bi'.f n ;^ assy vestibule,
inclosed on three sides by tiiC gray mansion itself,

WEARITHORNE.

with its steep, uneven roofs, overhanging balco-
nies^ and small, pointed watch-tower at every fre-
quent angle added and superadded by successive
Lethwaite generations. It was all this, I say. I
speak in the past ; not because the few years passed
since then have had power to change Wearithorne,
but that to me there is no Wearithorne now.

I am writing of that sunset, however, — not of
this; and that sunset, I hesitated but for a mo-
ment, then turned to a side-door, and so to the
library.

This time it was not the books there I had come
to see. With the conversation I had overheard fresh
in my 'mind, I crossed the room straight to where
the wide-open bay-window threw a flush of sunset
or: the two portraits hangin j near.

Fifteen years ago, said Meg o' Birkdale, — fifteen
years since Mrs. Lethwaite flitted with her bairn
from Wearithorne, just when Uncle Kester came
back from sea to Iiis old neighborhood, bringing
me — a desolate, tiny creature — with him to his
home at Mallerstang. Why I always connected
that coming and that flitting, I do not know. Mar-
get, from whom I had the story, certainly did
not so connect them. But the instincts of child-
hood have strange wisdom in them sometimes.
In all these years, since first my roaming steps had
found the way from Mallerstang, I had been steal-
ing in here where the light fell on the portraits,
and gazing up with a cold shrinking from the fair,

WEARITHORNE.

slight woman whose haughty glance met mine,
and with a wondering interest in the sturdy little
lad looking at me frankly over his hound.

" Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in
secret is pleasant." Happen, if my Eden of Weari-
thorne had not been shut out from me by the
flaming sword of Uncle Kester's wrath, I might
not have crept back so often, a-hungered and
a-thirst, into the shadow of the tree of knowledge
in the old library there.

And the last draught of stolen waters is the
sweetest. That last sunset

It is fading out so soon in the great, dim library,
— the dimmer for its dusky alcoves, and its carven
wainscoting of oak, and the high, deep windows
in their embrasures. Thrown wide as those win-
dows are, shadows are gathering in too fast, for all
my stooping low upon the hearth-rug, with the
open page aslant in the fire-glow.

For a pile of books, lying evidently just un-
packed before one of the bookcases, had drawn
me away from the pictures. No new thing had
ever arrived to Wearithorne before, in all my
memory of it. And so every volume seemed a
herald of the ..laster's coming. A new book?
Many an old one on the walls here was a special
friend of mine. But for a new one, — setting aside
some " Flower of a Sweet Savor Pluckt in the
Meadows of Grace," which Letty would bring

WEARITHORNE.

home at rare long intervals from some chance
peddling body down the dale, — setting aside these,
I did not know so much as the back of a new
book.

And now I held one in my hand. I turned to
the title-page. Yes, actually, — London, 1822. It
seemed to bring the great unknown world there
very near to me, in some strange way. I stood
gazing at it dreamily; and then I settled myself
within the glow of the fire, kindled, I nothing
doubted, to drive out the damps by way of prepa-
ration for the Master's home-coming, — in some in-
definite time.

I had already loitered away my spare half-hour,
and risked Uncle Kester's anger. Having been
pound foolish, why should I not be penny wise,
and gather all the pleasure here I could, before I
went home to the gloom of Mallerstang ?

For my two eyes are fairly taken captive in the
dainty little volume. No wonder I lose myself in
it ; for as the letters grow confused and dim before
me, and I raise my head, it seems the room has
taken up the thread of the poem just where the
book left off. For all is gloom and silence; on the
dark oak beams, and on the panels of the wain-
scoting, at every movement of my own, or every
leaping flame, my

" Shadow still
Glowers about, as it would fill
The room with wildest forms and shades ;'*

\ \

i I

WEARITHORNE.

and presently, outside upon the courtyard flags, —

« the stil! footfall
Of one returning homewards late."

Was it outside in the court ? or was it the mere
echo of the verse I have been reading ? I listen, —
stoop down closer to the fire-flicker once again, and
read on, till now the words are wavering out to
one blurred line before me. Why could ^ot the
daylight have tarried yet five minutes more, nor
" left me dark, upon" — not the legend, but the
"Eve of St. Mark"?

I lift my head with a little groan of vexation,
pushing my hair back from my brow impatiently
with my free hand. And as I lift my head

Can he have been standing there all this while ?
When did he come ? How did I not hear him ?
True, I had left the door ajar.

And there he was, standing on the other side of
the wide hearth, leaning against the chimney-piece,
looking down upon me with a twinkle of sup-
pressed amusement in his eyes.

It was the merest glance I lifted up in my con-
fusion. I dropped my eyes again with just the
dimmest image of a strong-built figure in a shoot-
ing-jacket, a bronzed, bearded face, and a keen,
answering glance that seemed to be reading me
through and through.

" Pardon me," he said, quickly, as I rose from
my place on the hearth-rug; " I'd not have startled

ii:

WEARITHORNE.

■you

you, but thought some spell was on you,-
were so deep in your book."

"I — I did not know any one was ben," I stam-
mered. " I only thought to find Naunty Marget,
and that I might come in as usual."

" And so you may," he hastened to say. Then,
as his eyes fell on my dress, kirtle and bodice, —
" You come to help the old dame in the house,
perhaps ?"

"No; but-

V/ell, but?"
" She whiles lets me arrange the books in here,

and M And then I stole a swift glance at my

questioner. It lacked courage to risk encountering
his, but took a. reassuring survey of top-boots,
stained, evidently, with a tramp across our moors,
and of a stout oaken staff he was twirling idly in
his careless hold, — such a rude staff as Uncle Kes-
ter himself might use in climbing the fells. No, of
course it was not Miles Lethwaite. Some one up
from York, about the repairing of the House ? I
pictured to myself the Master of Wearithorne
driving through the long lime-avenue with carriage-
and-four and outriders, according to Naunty Mar-
get's description of the day when his mother had
brought the lad to take possession of the estate
inherited from his uncle, Ihe old Master, whose
only child had some few years before quitted her
home with her lover, been disowned, and never
more heard of.

■..'^.'k

WEARITHORNE.

" You'll be a stranger here at Wearithorne ?" I
asserted, rather than asked, my embarrassment van-
ishing before the moorland splashes on those boots,
and my sense of responsibility in Marget's absence
prompting me to speak.

"A stranger to Wearithorne ? Yes, a stranger,"
he repeated, slowly. " But you know it well, I have
no doubt ?"

" It's no late days I've known it ; the auld House
is an auld friend to me," I answered, complacently.
" Naunty Marget lets me arrange the books yonder,
and when she goes to the May-tide Fair, at Askrigg,
or to the Hawes market whiles on a Tuesday, she'll
leave me in charge the day, and I aye spend it in
here." "

" In this lonely, dusk old room ? Surely you
might choose some more cheerful spot, — or is it all
equally dreary ?"

" It's no for a stranger to lightlie Wearithorne,"
I said, hotly, my cheeks aglow for the honor of the
old place. " It's the pride of the country-side. It's
many a cheery spot there is about the House ; but
none so grand as this, to my thinking. And dreary !
why, there are the books, and, if one were a bit
lonesome, there are the pictures, too."

He had gone forward toward these as I spoke,
and he now stood looking at them by the firelight.

" There is a portrait-gallery besides ?"

" A grand hall, throng with Lethwaites, besides
those four there. Yon proud lady is the Mrs. Leth-

WEARITHORNE.

waJte now," I added, coming forward, as I had seen
Marget do the honors to visitors now and then.

" Yon proud lady !" he repeated, and his eyes
had a twinkle in them as they dropped down on
mine. " And the lad there, is he proud too ?"

" I'm feared he is not proud enough by half," —
the conversation I had overheard round Marget's
fireside coming back to me. " That's to say, only
I'll none believe it, but they do say he's to put up
a mill here in the dale. After biding away this
many a year — and it's no a right thing for land-
owners like the Lethwaites of Wearithorne to bide
away, and leave lands and tenants to go awry, as
they are bound to do," I added, decidedly, recalling
a sharp complaint which had once, and but once,
escaped Naunty Marget, — "after this, for a Leth-
waite to come back, and, instead of just guiding the
estate, like his forbears "

I stopped, suddenly aware that I was doing the
honors after another fashion than Marget's. A
Lethwaite's will was, to her, as little to be ques-
tioned as a law of Nature.

" And so a mill is thought a bad prop to a fall-
ing house, eh, lassie ?"

The tone was grave and thoughtful ; but I an-
swered it quickly.

"There's naught tottering about Wearithorne.
The Master's coming home with both hands full
from foreign parts. And — happen it's you have
come to build the mill ?" I interrupted myself.

WEARITHORNE.

" You are right. I have come to build the mill,"

"Are you for guiding the master that gate ?" I
asked, quickly. Then, seeing him puzzled, " Is it
your advice, I mean, leads him to this ?"

It was as though my earnestness amused him,
for he laughed a little, as he answered, —

" Solely and entirely my advice. I am, I may say,
responsible for the whole business."

Certainly this man was to be looked upon in the
light of an enemy to all our dale. To thrust his
great grinding wheels in here, and ruin the mar-
ket for our spinning and weaving!

But when I did look up at him, he did not alto-
gether resemble the relentless tyrant I had been
figuring to myself, crushing down the whole coun-
try-side beneath the groaning weight of his ma-
chinery. He would carry out his will ; there was
that in the strong lines of the face, and the steady
light in the gray eyes. But was it like to be a
cruel will? Could Adam o' Linn Brig and the
others possibly be wrong ?

Yes, I hated the man, I said to myself, and I
turned from him rather decidedly, when he gave
me the last reply. I was moving away, with some
murmur of sending Marget to him if he wanted her.

" I saw your old friend some moments ago," he
replied. " Don't call her from her knot of gos-
sips, busy knitting over my arrival. You are
going ? Yes ; but first you must forgive me this
mill-business, and next you must tell me your

WEARITHORNE.

name. You are from the neighborhood, — from
some part of the Wearithorne estate, perhaps ?"* .

" I am Nannette o' Kester o' Mallerstang Hag,"
said I, stopping, with my hand on the latch of the
door, and turning, with rather a defiant ignoring
of the first demand.

" But what a very long name, lassie \ Nannette
O'Kester O'Mallerstang Hag ! Surely the whole
is rather inappropriate. Fie on our dale names !
O'Mallerstang Hag !"

I laughed outright, forgetful of my righteous
indignation.

" Eh, but that is not my name, of course. I just
belong to 'Kester of the Mallerstang Hag — that is
the highest point in Helbeck Lund — across the
moor yonder."

" Now I begin to understand. You are Kester's
Nannette. And the Hag — was that not once a part
of the Wearithorne possessions ?"

" Mrs. Lethwaite's own, — left to her by the old
Master ; for she was of the Lethwaite blood, as
well as her husband. She let Uncle Kester buy
out the Hag years and years ago."

"And what, then, is your surname, Nannette,
since it is not o' Kester o' Mallerstang Hag ?"

I was puzzled. I had never given a thought to
that before. I could only say that I had never
heard it, — that Uncle Kester was just Kester o*
Mallerstang, as Adam was Adam o' Linn Brig,
and Davie, o' Burtree-syke. And in the midst of

WEARITHORNE.

my explanation, the latch was lifted under my
hand, the door opened, and Marget stood there on
the threshold. *

Naunty Marget — I see now, as I saw then, the
quaint, small figure, in kirtle which made no
attempt to hide the buckled shoes and tight blue
stockings ; and over the kirtle the crimson short-
gown, with its kerchief pinned across, as snowy as
the high-crowned cap itself. That cap framed in,
with its edge of real lace, a face wrinkled and
round and rosy as a frosted winter apple, — with
somewhat of the tartness of a winter apple, too, in
the glint of the eyes beneath bands of hair as
white as cr«nklf ^ hoarfrost, and in the crisp, clear
voice. •

" Guide us !" she exclaimed, the instant she saw
me. " How came the bairn in here ? Mester Miles,
but I wus ye wunna think hard "

Mester Miles !

I heard but little of the excuses she was offer-
ing for my intrusion. " Mester Miles !" Then it
was to the Master of Wearithorne himself that I
had been explaining his duty, recounting his sins
of omission and commission. I stood ready to cry
with shame and confusion of face.

That telltale face must have betrayed me; for
he was looking down upon me kindly, and say-
ing,—

" Our good Marget is rather hard upon me, in
believing me churl enough to be sorry you should

f»

WEARITHORNE.

make friends with my books in all this time I have
neglected them. I hope you will still come for
them at your own pleasure." (Here Margct quietly
shook her head at me.)

"There, run away now, child," she said, in
speech which, if more audible, was no whit more
intelligible than that gesture. "Bj-le a blink in
the spence, — ^the folk are gone the now, — and I'll
set thee part o' the way home."

I heard her, without the most distant intention
of waiting for her and perhaps her lecture. I had
drawn back when Mr. Lethwaite directed his at-
tention to Marget ; and now, catching up my hat
where I had let it fall before the pile of books, I
stole out of the room.

Glancing over my shoulder as I went, I saw that
Miles Lethwaite was stooping for the book I had
left upon the hearth-rug. But if I thought, in
glancing back thus, to find the Master looking after
me, I was mistaken. He had resumed his leaning
posture against the mantel, and was speaking to
Marget, whirling the leaves of the book over idly
while he stood.

II.

All the wind makes solemn moan, — heart in-chimeth to its tone,

" Deserted."
Dreary gloaming settleth down, — shutteth out the gleaming town,
Shutteth in the moorland brown

Where the heather lieth dead, and the nest the wild swan fled,

Deserted,
Rattles dry the reeds among, that all greenly overhung
Once, where summer burnie sung.

Hushed that song. The pebbles strown mark the bumie's bed

alone,
Deserted,
And my life its summer race ran from out yon greenwood chase.
And cold gravestones mark its place.

*'T TNCLE Kester."

^ Further than that^ even my audacity would
not go, unless he held out some reply, as the des-
pot of old extended his sceptre that his maidens
might proceed. This despot of Mallerstang —
ruler absolute over Letty, the middle-aged maid-
of-all-work, and his little niece — was not wont to
hold out any very gracious sceptre. But he did
grant a hearing after his own fashion.

" Humph !" As who should say, " Women will
talk, — it's their infirmity; Vsd be indulgent to it
this once."

3 (25)

WEARITHORNE.

" Uncle Kester, Wearithorne has getten its owner
back."

Kester's pipe fell to the floor with the great start
he gave. At which, I glanced across to him curi-
ously.

It was dim there in the house-place. The great
chimney, projecting with its two walls five or six
feet into the room, threw a black shadow across to
me here in the deep-cushioned window. But the
light was full on Kester's heavy, blue-smocked
figure in the arm-chi. r, with old Rockie blinking
up between bis paws in the opposite wide chimney-
corner. ;The peat-fire glow did not steal out far
enough to chase all the shadows over the white
stone floor, nor to peer into the space yonder where
the cumbrous black-and-gilded dresser, and chest
of drawers, and queer, quamt desk, and the benches
set out in a souare at tho far end, were almost lost
in the wide emptiness. As for my window, it hardly
lessened the gloom, with its checker of diamond-
panes on the rocky courtyard in front, and its out-
look over the rugged, barren gorge of Helbeck
Lund, which sank abruptly down beyond the court-
yard. Any time within my memory, if I had
glanced across the twilight room, just the same
sight would have met me; only, I suppose, in
earlier days, Rockie was younger, — never Kester.
They were always the same, — those evenings we
spent alone together on the Hag, — Letty having
departed with the day to her own cottage under-

WEARITHORNE.

I its owner

^reat start
him curi-

The great
ive or six
^ across to
But the
;-smocked
; blinking
chimney-
al out far
the white
der where
and chest
e benches
mosi lost
, it hardly
diamond-
d its out-
Helbeck
the court-
if I had
the same
ppose, in
r Kester.
nings we
y having
re under-

neath the eastern slope; those evenings when
Kester would smoke his pipe steadily on and on,
throwing me a word about as often, and after the
same fashion, as he, niggard as he was, would
throw a bone to Rockie, who, in his corner oppo-
site, had been growing old in patient waiting ever
since I could remember.

But certainly it was not often I could remember
that any words of mine were of such moment that
at them Kester had started and let his pipe fall.

But he recovered himself and it almost before
I had space to wonder, — refilled, relighted, and
puffed away again, as if his equanimity had been
in no wise shaken. Yet that did not blind me. If
I had told him Ivelet Hall was opened once again ;
or if I had brought him any tidings of Davie o*
Burtree-syke, — who was Uncle Kester's enemy-in-
chief, because his nearest neighbor, — the news
would not have won more than another humph,
and the pipe would never have been moved
thereby. What interest, then, could Wearithorne
have for him ?

Whether he knew I had not broached the topic
merely to let it fall, and shrewdly guessed I would
take it up .igain if left to myself, he did not reply,
but lounged with his head against the chair-back,
his half-shut eyes turned upward to the beams
overhead. I saw his trap, but fell into it deliber-
ately.

" I am thinking you ken all about them. Uncle

WEARITHORNE.

t I

Kester. You'll none have forgot the old Squire's
time, when the young lady made that flitting with
her braw lover from far away. D'you no think it
were hare' in the old Squire to cast her off, and
leave Wearithorne and all to only a cousin, instead
of his own granddaughter? — though for sure the
Master is of the Lethwaite blood by father and
by mother as well. But do you reckon he is come
back to stay ? And will the House be as gay as
the grand places one reads of?"

He answered me, puffing slowly between the
words —

" Ye mun tell me first if t' mistress be yon. He's
no like to bide there his lone."

" But that I didna hear."

"Ye saw naught o' any leddy there, lass?"

Certainly the subject seemed to interest him,
who seldom thought it worth his while to listen to
anything I had to say. He was leaning forward
for my answer now.

" Nay, I saw naught. He was his lone there in
the library. Uncle Kester," — with a seemingly
abrupt change of subject, — "what is my name
besides Nannette ?"

He pushed his chair back, staring at me hard,
staring with a gathering scowl upon his heavy
brows.

" Her name ? Her name besides Nannette ?"

The effect of my question was so dispropor-
tionate to the cause, that I was slow to believe

WEARITHORNE.

Kester really incensed by it. He must have mis- "
understood me.

" My surname, I mean," I hastened to explain.
"Though we fash ourselves but little with sur-
names here in the dales, yet I must have one, I
suppose ; and still I never heard it."

" Who's putten that question to thee ?"

There was that in the tone of his voice which
made mine shake, as I replied, —

" I was up yonder in the library at Wearithorne,
and Mr. Lethwaite asked "

I broke off for the curse growled out at me.
Kester said, furiously, —

" Lethwaite ? Up by yon wi' him ? Nay, Fse
none ha' that, ye daft htmpie ; t' neb o' ye's ne'er
out o' mischief."

"But, Uncle Kester, I was in no mischief. I
went up yonder to see Naunty Marget."

" Marget or Lethwaite, housekeeper or master,
it's no odds to me. Thou's feel t* weight o' my
hand yet, an I catch thee stealing off to Weari-
thorne, hearkening an' gossiping wi' a wheen
ne'er-do-well gallants as that. Off to thy chamer,
now, and keep away fro' Wearithorne, or we's
make a moithering mess between us, thou an' L
Now, mind; dunna let my warning leak out o*
thy silly head."

For the instant I thought to set him at defiance.
But there was no mistaking the scowl that drew
the shaggy grizzled brows together, the clenched

I ■■

^i 'Hi

WEARITHORNE.

grasp that tightened on the arm of the chair, as he
raised himself slowly. " Thou's feel t' weight o' my
hand yet."

I did not wait for it. I brushed past him, out
through the open door, before he could lay hold
on me. I heard him stumbling about in the waning
firelight, and cursing me while he stumbled, for I
had snatched up the one dim candle on the table
as I passed, and slammed the door behind me.

My " silly head" was puzzling greatly over it, as
I obeyed at least one part of his warning, and went
up-stairs to my chamber under the roof. There
are but the two stories beneath this old peat thatch.
There is many a nook and cranny, however, for the
lodging of the wind; and just at an angle in the
wide stone stairs, that same free guest rushed past,
and blew out my candle.

Many a time, dreading the dark, I would have
stolen down-stairs again after a space; for Kester's
rages usually soon cooled into the contemptuous
indifference with which he would suffer me to creep
back, as if unobserved, to my old seat in the chim-
ney-nook.

But to-night I did not dare return, and I threw
my latticed window wide, and leaned out for some
break in the gloom. But clouds had gathered;
there was not even the pale spectre of a shrouded
moon to break up the dull gray, and on the moor
the low, red glimmer in the peat-huts was already
smothered for the night. But presently I caught

WEARITHORNE.

a far-off twinkling light among the limes over the
moor, — a friendly glance from Wearithorne.

For Wearithorne was my old friend ; never
Wearithorne to me, but always a sure haven of
restful dreams, such as the weary never have. Yet
the owners must have found reality in the name,
certainly, — the Weary Thorn or stronghold; for
it had been left to itself more than twice or thrice
for a long stretch of years since its first building,
which tradition tells of, by the knight who, weary
and restless even in his grave, is said still to haunt
the north terrace sometimes on a stormy night.
But to me Wearithorne was just an old, dear,
peaceful refuge. Afterward, it might have its
aching memories; but that night of which I write,
I knelt on and watched its cheery light. Would
Kester have me shut even that out ?

It shut itself out. But it lingered awhile first.
It had been shining there like a star. There were
no stars then, below or above. But Kester must
have found another light, for there was a pallid
checker thrown from the house-place across the
court beneath. How unusually late Kester was
sitting up!

I dare say I had been there long enough for
him to think me fallen asleep, for just then he
came out into the court, closing the house-door
cautiously. If he had given it a bang behind him,
my curiosity would never have awakened ; but as
it was, it started into full life when I saw him stand

Ilil

'llii ,

I !

WEARITHORNE.

looking up at my window, from which I had
involuntarily drawn back, and then, with delib-
erately noiseless tread, take his way across the
court.

I watched. He went to the scar's brink, just
where my wonted path to Wearithorne stoops like
a ladder to the cleugh of Helbeck Lund. Few
could have taken that way down the Hag's steep
face, save in the giddy plunge the foamy gill makes
there. So burly, heavy Kester turned him about —
for the more circuitous path down the meadow-
slopes behind the Hag, and so round the northern
verge of ]H[elbeck Lund ? I would see. If it were
to Wearithorne, the old clock on the stair must
ring out twelve before Kester could return.

Yet perhaps he had come back unseen by me?
I could creep down noiselessly, and find out, so
that I might not watch in vain.

Rockie just moved his tail and blinked up at
me drowsily from the hearth ; his master's place
opposite was empty, even of his chair. That had
been dragged forward to the old desk I had never
seen unlocked before. But the lid was up now,
and a candle flickered on papers strewn about
confusedly.

All in the same handwriting ; all with the yellow
tinge of time and faded characters. Who respects
a letter when the writer's hand is crumbled in the
dust ? But the soul thus laid bare — Is the curtain
of the grave indeed so dense ? If other eyes than

WEARITHORNE.

mine could ever rest upon these pages, should I
sleep on in the grave and never know ?

Perhaps I ought not to have drawn nearer, but
it was without intent that my eyes fell on a paper,
and saw, in the clear writing that is read at the
first glance :

" My poor little one, who soon will be alone in
the worlft, if you do not come for her "

Kester had come for me when my mother lay a-
dying, — so he had told the neighbors, Marget said.
From whom, then, but from my mother, could this
defaced fragment of a letter be? I had nothing of
hers, not so much as a memory, not so much as a
word wrung out from Kester. Should he, then,
keep these back from me ?

The candle was sputtering low on the shelf above
the desk. So I dropped down on the hearth, to
read by the peat-glow, that only made a circle of
light about me and left the rest in shade. I stole
a timid glance round now and then. But though
at first I started at the scamper of a rat behind the
wainscot, as I read on, the old, lonely, shadowy room
faded far away from me. I was living a new life, —
yet in the shadow of a grave.

There was but little in the packet. What there
was, I mastered, crouching there and never moving
until I had finished all.

I could not read at first. I could but gaze and
gaze, as though I saw my mother's hand stretched
back to me out of the haze of all these years.

I;
ItJIill^

) i

!l;lli

;

;-|.:

\ j

' -■

\ \

WEARITHORNE.

And had I not always been the thing of naught
that I was now ? My slow tears fell in soft self-
pity there where she had pitied me. " My poor
little one." No one had ever said such words to
me before, — not even my one friend Marget. Per-
haps Marget, indeed, never knew I needed them ;
perhaps she thought that, for the life I led, I re-
quired to be hardened, not softened. For herself,
she would have scorned a sympathy that found
vent in words, and believed honestly in the Psalm-
ist's " rather smite me friendly, and reprove me."
And so that tenderness came to me as a revela-
tion. \

My mother! I had thought of her now and
again, — envied the girls I saw kneeling at the kirk,
or walking in the lanes beside broad, comfortable,
cheery, country dames, whose slow eyes would
take on a smile of pride in resting on them. But I
had been wont to put away such thoughts in scorn.
I knew Kester, — I knew, too, the whole country-
side said he and his brother were just such birds of
evil omen as one would look to see fly abroad out
of the same nest. I hated Kester. I believed as
firmly as our neighbors that a curse was over Mal-
lerstang, and no good could come out of it. My
mother was linked with it in my mind ; for what
could she be who could wed a man like Kester ? —
Kester, whom I scorned even more than I hated, —
than I feared. I drew my breath hard, kneeling
in the kirk, when I could not choose but hear the

WEARITHORNE.

solemn " Honor thy father and thy mother." What
honor, but forgctfulness, for mine ?

But I read on now, and envied no one any more.
My mother, in her unknown grave, was nearer to
me than those dames were to the daughters I had
watched with wistful gaze at kirk and market-
place. My mother! Sleeping on, her eyes shut
to the world in which I am alone, surely some
dream must come to her of her little one ; some'
thought must creep out to me from her, even cur-
tained in beneath the turf that haps her from me,
— in her unknown grave.

I read on, crouching in the dull blaze, and
pressing open, on the hearth, those pages where
the glow might fall on them. Now and again my
other hand stole up to brush away tears that would
spring unbidden between me and my mother's words.
And then it fell to my side, and I started; for
Rockie had thrust his muzzle lovingly against it,
edging nearer from his corner. I stroked the
shaggy head close to my knee. My mother's ten-
derness had made me very tender for the moment.

I think even then I would have borne all her
words with me always, though that stained and
faded packet were replaced in the desk. It is long
since I last looked on it, yet I think I could set
down its every line as it was written. But of what
avail ? " Their memorial is perished with them."
To what purpose were it to seek to revive it here ?

Yet they write themselves down as I glance on

WEARITHORNE,

this blank page. I see that letter to Kester, with-
out date or signature, and breaking off as if the
hand that penned it had been stopped by the
sudden clasping of Death's fingers. And I see
the fragment of a journal gayly begun in the quiet
of a country life. In the smooth and even flow of
such a life the shadow of a passing event is re-
flected far, as on a placid river a sail throws its
magnified semblance nearly across from bank to
bank.

A passing event ? Nay ; but it brooded, — deep-
ened, — ^presently darkened every page with its un-
defined shadow of evil to come.

And here a hundred wondering thoughts rushed
in to interrupt me. What was Kester's brother,
that my mother, such as she was written down
here, could have been deceived in him for an in-
stant ? Where was the Hall at which he could be
a guest ? Could he have made his way there as
an unknown adventurer ? If I dared ask Kester !
If!

After this were briefer and brief'^'r 'entries. No
more glowing glimpses of the fells, or of the deep-
ening blush of the ling over the moo/; no more
jotting down of legend, ballad, or romance; for
the girl was living her own. So do we all, — a
true romance, even though it seem the dullest
prose to passers-by, who read by snatches, as some
gust whirls an open leaf. But we can never tell it
to another. It would not be our own if we could

WEARITHORNE.

hold it out from us, and scan and criticise, and
point the moral, as if the experience that made it
had not grown to be a part of ourselves.

And then the darkness of the valley of the
shadow of death on the last page :

" So near the end, and so alone, save for the little
one. * Nothing but harshness for me at home, —
no love any more,' I wrote above. The words were
prophetic ; but it was I threw off the care I have
lived to see was the truest then.

" I have not even heard of my forfeited home —
of the old man — for this year past. I have made
no inquiry, since I dared not venture back. But I
have written to Kester to come to me, and I must
hope he will undertake my errand, faithfully, as
one will keep a dying message. If he will take
my little one to my lost home, — if he who was as a
father to me, lives, and will be a father to my child,
— I think I should know it, even in the grave.

" It is for him this last page is written, — to him
I will send this journal, brought with me when I
left home. For no other eyes than his. I would
have no one else know how my husband and the
father of my child forsook me, when for him I was
disinherited."

That last part, — so unlike the blithe beginning, —
and, she said, " for no other eyes than his." While
still I knelt there on the hearth, I tore it from the
rest, and dropped it on the embers. No other eyes
should look on it henceforth.

WEARITHORNE.

H t:

III

I watched it smoulder and flare up, then fall
back to ashes black as the record it had borne.
She said, " I would have no one know." In her
words was none of that fierce anger throbbing in
me as I flung the paper to the flames. I forgot the
traitor to her was .my own father. I think I have
never rightly remembered it. I remembered only
he was traitor to her, — more cruel than even Kes-
ter to me. Kester — Kester's brother, — how could
she have ever linked her fate with theirs ?

The journal had been difficult to make out. Not
that it was illegibly written, but that where her
lover's name and every other name of person or of
place had been set down, the word was erased, and
so roughly that oftentimes the sentence or the sense
of the page was obscure. There was but the one
exception, — the one mention of Kester, — probably
overlooked, since it vi^as less legible than the rest ;
and I had to stoop nearer to the fire to decipher it.
No other names remained, but were erased so
roughly that one could hardly think it the work
of her hand. There were, moreover, blurs and
marks upon the pages, that made me suspect Kes-
ter of fingering them. Could he have any motive
in blotting out those names ?

The very thought of Kester startled me. I had
forgotten him this while, but I sprang up now, and
with a complacent glance at the candle, which
would be burnt out in another moment, I went up
to my own room.

WEARITHORNE.

Perhaps Kester would come in in the dark, lock
his desk, and never discover the l^jSs of the packet
until — well, I knew Kester went but seldom to
that desk. He was not much given to reading
anything whatever, and he might not know of the
loss for any length of time, i bolted my door fast
upon his anger for that night, at all events. After-
ward, if he did miss the letters, 1 would own to
having them ; for were they not more mine than
his ? But it was as well to put off that evil hour
with a fast-drawn bolt.

I listened for his coming after I was safely there.
I had lost my interest in his walk, to Wearithorne
or not to Wearithorne. I was waiting only to learn
whether he would discover the loss of my packet
at once.

The clock struck twelve. I had thrown myself
upon the bed, hiding those papers under my pillow,
leaning my cheek upon them, listening again and
over again, between sleeping and waking, to the
words they spoke. And I had fallen asleep, per-
haps in the first doze, which always seems to have
lasted so long when one is awakened from it; when
I started, open-eyed at once. Was that a creaking,
an ascending foot ?

I lay awake and listened a long time after that,
and then I felt assured it must have been Kester's
step on the stair which had aroused me. Where
could he have been, then, save at Wearithorne ?

ii ! „!i;

'i-i

ll! ii|l ; •;

III.

— the shattered panes patter to the dreary rains,
"Deserted!"
And the wind is whistling shrill, curtains through, the spider still
Droppeth to the window-sill ;

And the hospitable door standeth open evermore.

Deserted.
Yet guests enter even there, — undeineath the great stone stair
Deaia-owl hideth from the glare.

WAS I: — must I not be — dreaming? What
could it all mean ?

Kester had been calling me most vociferously-
some ten minutes before. And I, with a guilty-
conscience concerning the porridge, which I had
quite forgotten since Letty left it in my charge as
she went down to her own cottage, had crept away,
hiding myself in the shippon, if not out of reach
of Kester's voice, at least beyond that of his heavy
hand. Let him fume over the porridge, which was
smoked, perhaps. That he should be suppered
thus unsavorily, concerned me just as little as that
I should go supperless concerned him. For not a
doubt but that Uncle Kester would make haste to
throw out the last drop of which, scorched or not
scorched, I might perhaps have managed to make
my evening meal, keen-set as I was with my late
ramble and with fasting since a noontide dinner.
(40)

WEARITHORNE.

But, yet, what was hunger, compared to the need
of keeping out of Uncle Kester's sight until his
wrath should have time to cool down ?

So I had ensconced myself in the shippon, by
way of a reprieve, at least. And, perching myself
upon the window-ledge in the remotest corner, I
was knitting away slowly, in the dark, with a feel-
ing of some sort of companionship in my work in
this lonel)'' place.

Fo'- it was very lonely now, and quiet. Some
NA\.k J -go, if I had crept here in the \veird, long
dusk, th'j rocky floor and the old rafters would
have given back the patient tramp of auld Crom-
bie and Snowdrop, of Lightfoot and the others,
that, since now the summer days came on, had all
been turned into the meadow-lands beneath the
Hag. Poor dumb beasties ! Many's the time,
since I were a little one, I've stolen out here in the
gloaming, and set the horn lantern down upon this
window-ledge where it made a mi^-ty circle of light
through the -o/^ty atmosphere, hazy with the warm,
fragrant u \< "■ u^ the slow kine ; many a time
have I crept t.'' near to you, where you stood
quietly ruminating, and have laid a rough littlt head
on my two hands upon your shaggy neck, in the
dumb, half-conscious reaching out after som.ethuig
like affection. To this day I can never ^-lake my
vv'y in the twilight over the strip of cobled pave-
ment, leauiig from the house-place and into the

shippon, v;i '; -i t Pjcling again that aching empti-

WEARITHORNE.

ness of the child-heart which had not only no love
to receive, but none to give.

But that evening it was lonelier in there, and not
so lonely. Not a sound broke the stillness around
me, unless it were the occasional flapping back,
upon a broken hinge, of the shutter of the unglazed
window which let in the hoarse, deep mutter of the
Helbeck in the gorge beneath the Hag. But to
me there came other soi ; han of that brawling
voice of the stream below,-- ones that found their
echo somewhere, while I stopped to listen, my
bands falling idly with the knitting in my lap, and
my cheeks flaming with a sudden flush, as though
I were not alone here in the dusk ; as though some
one were looking down :mtil my lashes drooped
again ; as though some one were speaking, — com-
mon words enough, perhaps.

Weeks had gone by since I was last at Weari-
thorne, the evening of the Master's home-coming.
In those weeks, more than once and again, by beck
and syke, along the pasture-lands, and in my er-
rands to the shop auld doited Bess made shift to
keep upon the Sedbergh pike, had my path been
crossed, by strangely-frequent chance, with the ram-
bling path of Wearithorne's master. Indeed, only
last evening

" Nannette, ye nowt ! An ye be ben, an' dun-
not answer when I ca' t' ye "

" Nay, nay, mester," I heard another voice take
up the word, " t' lass is no to t' fore. What for

WEARITHORNE.

d'ye want to shout so after her, as it *ud bring her
up fro' t' vera grave, an she were biding quiet in it?
We're none wanting a rush o' a lass i' this matter
o' ours, I reckon," was added, with a grim chuckle,
which I recognized at once as Adam o' Linn Brig's.

" I'm none wanting her," Kester said, sullenly.
" I'm nobbut wanting for to win at her, if so be
she's bound for hearkening an' spying hereabout."

" Eh, but what ails ye at her, Kester ? T' las-
sock's well enough ; it's very pretty behaved she
is, an's bonnier than's good for my Laui^ I'm
feared," he added, in an undertone. " Not but
what I'm none so set again' t' marriage, neighbor,"
quickly, as if in answer to something in the other's
face: " it's t' missus. But let a-be, let a-be; if we's
win through this job thegether, as is friendly, who
knows what we's do for to be more friendly and
neighborly still ?"

** Look ye here, Adam," returned Kester, bring-
ing his stick with heavy emphasis down on the
stones (I had peered out cautiously from my win-
dow, and saw them just a hand's-cast off, Adam
having swung himself on the stone wall fencing in
the farmyard, and Kester standing before him),
"it'll be best wi'out melling wi' yon lass. Not
but what I'd be main glad to get shut on her, and
'ud wish your Laurie joy on his bargain, — which
is, mayhap, no worse than another, for women's
kittle cattle althegether. But a bargain's a bar-
gain, and there were no question o' t' lass i'

/■ '

WEARITHORNE.

\%.

li I

> I

\\:\

ours. I'se go w'i* ye t' length o' yer own foot i*
this mill-business, by reason that I hate yon Leth-
waite. You and t' other chaps get shut o* t' mill
as 'ud steal t' common away fro' ye, — that's yer
side o' t' bargain. And I get my grudge on yon
Lethwaite, — that's my side. And so we's leave t'
lass, as has naught to do wi' it."

I pressed back closer into the shadow, for I
could hear how Adam swung himself heavily to
the ground. He might pass this window, going
homeward down the slope behind the Hag.

" Ye's come down now, then, Kester, and see t*
other fellow^, an' tell un yersen as how it's a' done,
— leastways, ready for making an end on't itsen ?"
Then, with a hard laugh, —

" I'se warrant yon chap at Wearithorne ill dreams
the night, for all he thinks to come blithering an'
bothering about i* t' dale, ..n' to ruin us a' wi'out
any trouble to himsen. We's gie him his pains
for^his payment, an' quarry his building-stone for
him to boot. He'll happen wake to think as t*
crack o' doom's come for sure, an' t' devil's grup-
pit him afore his time."

Kester's laugh was always a sneer.

"Ay, ay. Folk say as it's a sly mouse sleeps i'
t' cat's ear, but I am thinking it's a daft one."

Then the slow and tramping tread, which had
learned its slowness and its weight on plowed
fields and rough moorland pastures; and then
silence and solitude.

HI!!-

WEARITHORNE.

They were both gone down, — not a soul up here
on the Hag but only me.

I listened for a long, long pause ; and then I
lifted myself from my crouching posture in the
shadow, and pushed my hair back from my tem-
ples with my two hands. There was such a pressure
there, — such a weight of dulness. And I must
rouse myself to instant thought. There was no
time to be lost.

" I'se warrant yon chap at Wearithorne ill dreams
the night," had said Adam o' Linn Brig ; and " I'se
go wi' ye t' length o' yer own foot i' this mill-busi-
ness, by reason that I hate yon Lethwaite," had
been Kester's words. What could they mean?
Some great injury to the Master of Wearithorne.
But at Wearithorne ? or at the mill ?

As this last queiy put itself to me, I sank down
in a helpless, trembling terror on my old seat in
the window. At the mill ? And Miles Lethwaite
told me, only last evening, that for the past three
nights he had been going, secretly, not to alarm
his mother, to spend them at the mill; for now
that the building was fairly under way, he thought
best to keep some watch upon it, as the whole
project seemed rather in disfavor in the neighbor-
hood. I had turned away somewhat abruptly from
the subject then ; for with no one was it in more
utter disfavor than with me. But if I had only
questioned him, — if I could only know

I started to my feet. If I could only know !

/■■•

1: ^;ii

WEARITHORNE.

And was I to sit trembling there, and Miles Leth-
waite unwarned ? Was I to tarry, shivering over
my own fears, when this very moment it might
be

The thought had not had time to complete itself
before I had flung wide the shippon-door, had
crossed the broad rock-level which spread like a
courtyard before the house, and was making my
way down from the cliff.

It might be called rather a ladder than a path
which clambers down the face of the scar, or hag.
For the space of a few yards from the summit it is
smooth enough, — too smooth, did not matted ling-
and whin -bushes offer some stay. But then it
stoops beneath the brow, and only jutting ledges
form a broken sort of stair down to the cleugh of
Helbeck Lund. The place is weird and fearful as
its name, — shut in by gaunt walls that here are
rent in a chasm, there stoop away into a dim,
cavelike cleft, — never open out to yield more than
a wishful glimpse of the wold beyond. Into the
very heart of this fastness has stormed the torrent,
only to fall, broken, groaning, struggling, on the
cruel crags below. The lingering light creeps with
a lurid glint from gash to gash, leaving the un-
touched glo m the deeper from the contrast. The
few long larches in the rocks mingle their wailing
sough with the frequent becks, flinging themselves
in a wrath-white mist down the cliffs and into the
torrent hurrying to escape through the defile to

WEARITHORNE.

the head-waters of the Yore, — flinging themselves
down where the vines toss their long arms after,
and the red wild currant-bushes and the yellow
star of Bethlehem draw back from the wind upon
some turfy corner of a leaning crag. And past
them, down through this dismal place, and over
the slippery stepping-stones, I make my way, and
now, at last, am on the open moor.

Dreary and desolate enough, that opening of
Swaledale toward the western boundary of Hol-
low Mill Cross. So bleak and bare, where the high
moors stretch away on either hand, that cheerful
thorpes and villages stop short upon its edge, and
leave it to the few and straggling peat-diggers to
rear their huts, so many dingy tufts, upon the heath.
Hardly anything moves across, unless it be the
darker shadow of a cloud ; and it might seem they
all forgather here, driven by both east and west
winds, and in keeping with the mists that brood
above, upon the mountains round. The winds
have but a barren tract to wail over ; but bent and
reeds to whistle through, that here and there con-
ceal some pitfall of an inky pool. In this desolate
expanse, the home-grounds of Wearithorne show
like a wooded island in a waste of storm-dark sea.

But Wearithorne, with its gay lights flashing,
starlike, out through the cloudy lime-avenue, is
left far enough to the eastward, and I keep on my
way, fronting the wind, which has veered round to
the west, and is beginning to blow a drizzle in my

i«-"

u> I

r •

WEARITHORNE.

face. That is only since I began to cross the
moor, and I came down unprotected against such
a change. But I never heeded that ; only it is such
a weary, weary way ; and how can I tell but that
even now my warning may be late ?

I dare not suffer my thoughts to dwell for a mo-
ment on that fragment of a conversation overheard.
Faint heart must not flag until the errand is dis-
charged. And so I hurry on, — stumbling, some-
times, in the tangled ling, dragging my steps
sometimes on a boggy verge, — frightened and
shivering and drenched, in the mirkness of the
fast-fallen niight.

It is almost an instinct leads me on now, so that
I hardly deviate from the right path. Once or
twice I lose it, but fall into it again, by the blind
leading of memory, perhaps. And now at last

There is no moon up yonder, to show me where
I am. The clouds have buried her too deep for
that. Yet — as when some sweet soul is hidden
away from us on earth — the darkness is less dark
for her shining even somewhere beyond sight.
And the moon the rain-clouds had hapt away, still
lit the dusk enough to show me where I was.

An outcropping of granite rock upon the moor-
land edge, part of it rent away in a small quarrj'-,
and the stone therefrom raised to some little height
in the walls of a not yet half-finished building.

I knew the spot so well, from many a long ram-
ble over the moor, that I was at no loss now among

WEARITHORNE. 49

the ruins which strewed all the ground. There was
a fringe of low, wind-stunted trees, off on the quarry
side, and from these the outer wall of the old castle
swept in a broken circle, broken yet more by the
fallen, scattered stones having been used in great
part for the mill in course of erection. In the
midst of that circle, and adjoining the mill, rose the
old castle keep, in a square buttressed mass, which
had boldly stood against the shock of time ; and
although the upper story was half crumbled in, yet
the two lower ones still held their own, upon their
solid sloping base of some dozen feet or more.
The topmost wall thrust up against the shifting
clouds a splintered pinnacle, which seemed to catch
and hold one passing glint of moonlight while I
watched. And here before me, when I had gone
round to the farther tree-girt side, a steep stone
stair, of a score of steps, which I had counted over
wellnigh a score of times in my rambles, led up
to the first story.

I had paused at the bottom of the flight. And
how one loses courage in a pause ! As I set my
foot on the first step, such a rush of cowardly
second-thoughts crowded upon me that I drew it
back again, and lingered, leaning on the wooden
hand-rail which led up on either side of the flight.
Such a rush of false shame, of poor, paltry woman's
pride ! as if it could ever shame a woman to be
leal and brave, and to forget herself, if so she might
bring aid to any one.

.iV

WEARITHORNE.

But the voices in the twilight up at the Hag were
dying away from me ; and in their stead came a
taunting whisper of what Miles Lethwaite would
say, — how look at me, coming hither all this way
by night, on a fool's errand ; for it did seem worse
than folly now, as I looked back. Could 1 have
taken up mere vague threats ? What was it Kester
had said ?

I could not remember. For my life, at that one
instant, I could not have recalled one word, al-
though they came back to me clearly enough after-
ward. But as I stood there trembling, all my cour-
age gone, tryihg to collect my thoughts as I

stood there, suddenly it was as though that sneer-
ing laugh of Kester's rang out beside me, and then
followed a hoarse chuckle, which I knew for Adam
o* Linn Brig's. For one instant I shrank back, be-
lieving that I heard them for the second time, and
here. But the next moment I knew they were a
vivid memory, speaking as plainly as words might,
of the hurt it was in the minds of these two men
to work on Miles Lethwaite.

At that, with firm, quick step, I straight ran up
the stairs, then groped on through the open door-
way, which had lost its door long years ago ; and so
round the square hall, which filled the whole of the
lower story ; until I found the stair.

I knew how it mounted up, round the wall, in a
long, steep, winding way. I had been there once
when Nance of Swaledale and her band had pitched

WEARITHORNE.

their gypsy tent among the ruins below, and I
had forgotten neither the ascent nor the great
iron-studded door at the top. And now that I had
won up there again, I tapped at it with resolute
hand.

There was no answer. I began to wonder whether
I could have come all this long way for naught.
I had seen no light from the outside

Yet, as I stooped down nearer to the door, there
was a narrow streak of light across the threshold,
and I had hardly lifted myself erect again before
the heavy door was unbarred, and Miles Lethwaite
an ' I stood face to face.

t lantern he was holding upraised hardly suf-
hced, in the great square room, to light up the
glooni of gray stone walls and floor. But one
glance, and that of the briefest, took in the barren-
ness, where was no furniture, ei cept a large arm-
chair, and a table, with a book flu::g down upon it,
in the farthest window. In that window and the
other two, deep loopholes all, were improvised
plank shutters, where it was clear that, before they
were placed there, wind and weather had had free
access. For dim though the light, it was enough
to show the moss and weather-stains and lichens
on the walls, and on the floor leaves whirled about,
or rended branches tossed in by the wind. Over
yonder, cobweb tapestries swayed down black and
heavy, with here a faded leaf, and there a twig, or
skeleton of unwary insect. I felt myself not alto-

.i|i! \

:■ &

'111 %

.A \

WEARITHORNE.

gether unlike the silly fly that buzzed into the
spider's parlor, as Miles Letbwaite paused, look-
ing down into my face with a long, incredulous
stare then drew me in and shut to the door.

"Nannette, what is it? What has Iiappened?
What can have brought you here ?"

'* Nothing has happened, but "

I was shivering like a very leaf in the blast, and
I could not command my voice to answer him.

He wheeled forward his chair, and made me sit
down, and I drooped my forehead against the arm
of the chair. I was struggling in that pause to be
calm, to be clear in what I had to say. And yet,
for all my struggling, the fear of him, as he stood
beside me, overpov/ered every other thought. The
fear lest, looking up, I should see a lurking doubt
that — yes, that I had come hither out of the mere
charity one would show to a stranger. For he did
not know, I was saying to myself, choosing to forget
how full of terrors the way had been to me, — he did
not know the lasses of our dales, nor how fine-lady
fears were set at naught by them. And he might
think

And he, standing beside me still, touched my
bent hoad, with a light, passing touch.

" Poor child ! you are wet through. And I have
no fire, not even a glass of wine to drive away the
shivering cold."

I lifted my head, wringing out the dripping
masses of hair, loosened by wind and wet, and

WEARITHORNE.

'il

twisting them together as I fronted him, rising to
my feet, — ^

" It's been but dree work, Mr. Lethwaite, win-
ning here through night and rain, and it's but
woman-like, they say, to shake at fears past. I'd
none have been for coming out, you'll know, but
there was cause ; it's not for Mallerstang to be un-
friends with the House, — ae neighbor must needs
serve another, — and "

" I understand," he put in, in my pause of hot,
blus!?ing confusion. " You would come to me as
a neighbor, and none the more readily than to any
other neighbor in the dale. Is that it, Nannette ?"
he asked, with a proud, vexed ring in his voice.
" And now, how can I serve you, since you have
come to me instead of to Adam o' Linn Brig,
or "

" I'd none have come to you instead of to Adam
o' Linn Brig," I interrupted him, stung into sud-
den anger by the tone of his last words, — ** never,
if it wer to ask you to serve me. And you can
lightlie ine, to think me the lass to be wandering
over the moor this gate "

" How can you so wilfully misunderstand me ?"
he said, coldly, in the first breathing-space of my
burst of indignation, " By what do you judge me
the coward to insult any woman who has come to
me for protection ? For I suppose Kester "

Kester? Did Miles know? did he suspect? I
asked him, hurriedly, —

WEARITHORNE.

"Whatof Kester?"

" Only," with a thrill of pity in his voice, " that
the whole country-side rings of his harshness to his
?ittle niece. It is said she has been even turned
out of doors at night in his mad rages."

I shrugged my shoulders.

" Turning out of doors makes no bruises. But
he has not turned me out to-night. It is no an
errand of my own, but yours, I am come upon."

And, clearly as I have written it down here, I
told him all I had overheard, but suddenly be-
thought myself in time to keep back names and
place; ^d Mil^s Lethwaite, looking in my face,
forbore to question me.

I had a sharp struggle with myself in that brief
pause I made in the midst of my story. A hard,
hard struggle. For it was not until I myself had
wronged — cruelly wronged — another, not until I
yearned in vain for forgiveness, that I learned to
forgive. But in those innocent days of mine I
was very hard, very bitter and unsparing. Did
Kester merit at my hands that I should cloak his
guilt ?

In the midst of the question came words of Kes-
ter's to-night. Scarcely words of kindness, for he
had said he would be main glad to be rid of the lass;
but something like forbearance he had shown in
his bargain with Adam o' Linn Brig. And Adam,
— had he not defended me, after a fashion ? I was
little used to any form of kindness, and this touched

■fa.

WEARITHORNE.

me strangely. And so I told my tale, without a
name.

Until I had nearly ended my story, we stood look-
ing calmly in each other's eyes. But when I came
to those words of Adam o' Linn Brig's, — "and
quarry his building-stone for him," — Miles started,
and averted his gaze from me upon the floor. I
saw the grave frown deepen, and the brows knit
themselves in thought. Presently he said to me, —

" I can't quite make it out. I have had a watch
kept, and the workmen here all day, and no one
has been seen about. Now, if these men, or one
of them, could have gained access to the sort of
cellar under the stair, — but that is impossible. I
have had it strongly secured, and the key has
never left my own keeping."

But I was puzzling over some indistinct remem-
brance ; and at last it shaped itself :

" It seems to me, when Nance of Swaledale was
gypsying about here with her band, I heard — I
heard it said, that when he was a lad — that is — I
mean there had been years ago a secret approach,
entering underground into this keep ; and if any
one who knew of it "

Miles Lethwaite's face had gone quite gray and
stern ; and he cut me short by grasping my hand
hardly gently.

" Come with me," he said, in a quick, harsh
tone, — so harsh that I looked up at him wonder-
ingly, thinking I must have angered him.

"•"TT""""'"

'/•'

WEARITHORNE.

But he did not answer my look ; he did not so
much as glance my way. He had drawn me to
the door, with a determination that would not be
gainsaid, and now hurried me down the stairs and
out of doors.

I asked him breathlessly what it all meant, when
we had reached the foot of the outer flight. But
he gave me no reply just then, drawing me on
still farther, until we gained the shelter of the
fringe of trees.

" I cannot tell what it all means. I must go back,
Nannette. Give me your word to remain here in
this spot until I return."

" I'll none stay !" I cried out. " Why should I
have come here to-night, if, after all, you are going
back ? — into some danger, I know. You are throw-
ing your life away, — yes, your life — your life ! for
you do not know how we dales-people can hate, —
you do not know "

" I know how true you dales-people can be,"
he said, with a lightness which it did not strike
me at the moment was forced. "And so I shall
trust you, if you give me your word to wait
here."

I looked up at him wistfully. If the moon would
only peer out now, and let me see if he were really
as careless as he appeared, standing there before
me. But the moon would not give me any an-
swer ; and Miles Lethwaite was waiting for mine.

" Very well," I said, with some impatience. " But

WEARITHORNE.

only for a moment. I'll none wait longer. I must
be up at the llag."

" Only for a moment." He did not wait for my
last words, but was gone from me before.

I had sunk down on the trunk of a fallen tree,
upon the sodden ground. It was still raining
slightly, but I was past caring 3r a sprinkle more
or less. Yet I waited there in a very dissatisfied
mood. Dissatisfied with myself Why had I
promised to loiter even for an instant, now that my
errand was fulfilled, my warning delivered ? Dis-
satisfied with Miles Lethwaite; for, although I had
been in haste to give the warning, I was just a little
disappointed by its being so promptly heeded.
My hero was always a sort of Jack - the - Giant-
killer, who would have been well pleased to beard
Kester and Adam and half a dozen others of our
dale giants together in their den ; and would never
have thought of yielding up his own castle before
the phantom of a voice. And Miles Lethwaite, —
I would have thought

What, I did not finish to myself; for a new idea
flashed across the other, and with such vividness
that it startled me from my seat.

Miles was no coward ; he had gone back. Had
he seen anything, heard anything, that he had
brought me away, and then returned to brave the
danger there ?

Probabilities and improbabilities were forgotten
with my promise ; and I found myself presently

WEARJTHORNE.

half-way up the outer stair of the tower. I went
more cautiously then, — hiore timidly. All was so
quiet, — so ominously still.

So still. But just as I set foot upon the upper
step, there was a sudden violent crash, as of some
hurried fall. And when I stopped on the threshold,
aware of a heaviness like smoke in the air within,
I saw, out of the haze, Miles coming quickly to-
ward me, with the lantern he had first brought
down from the upper room.

He extinguished it as he came near, and set it
down. Therefore he was close upon me before
he observed md Then, —

" Nannette," was all he said.

I have heard words from Miles Lethwaite's lips
since then, which even now, in the mere memory,
have power to stir my very soul. But never a
word which, in the utterance, shook me like that
" Nannette."

Before I knew what he would do, he had his arm
about me, and had lifted me, easily as if I were no
burden, to the foot of the entrance-stair, and to
some little distance beyond the circle of ruins.
And then he released me only to draw my arm in
his, and to lead me rapidly away across the moor.

Frightened, I knew not why, — submissive and
subdued, — I yielded myself to his guidance. I
did not question him ; and it was not until after
some moments that he stopped and looked down
into my face in the gray dimness.

WEARITirORNE.

" How could you frighten me so horribly, Nan-
nette ?"

I drew my hand from his arm in the pause. I
had a sense of the unbecoming in being on such
terms as this with the Master of Wearithorne. To
forgather with its housekeeper had been honor
enough for me.

" I don't understand " I began.

" Listen," said he, interrupting me.

He had caught my two hands in the strong grasp
of his right, as he stood fronting the tower.

Nothing to be seen but the gray moor, the gray
sky, and a great blot of darker gray on moor and
sky, more distant for the darkness of the night.
Nothing to be seen, nothing heard, for a long space
of waiting, so it seemed.

A long space, — two or three moments, — as long
as life, it seemed to me. For although Miles Leth-
waite said no more than that one word, " Listen !"
yet there was a heavy foreboding, a sense of dread
and fear and of fast-coming evil. The very air had a
weight in it; the bleak waste of moor and sky was
gloom-enshrouded. Fast though Miles Lethwaite
kept my two hands, they trembled in his hold.
Till, all at once

A heavy crash, — a long, deep, heavy, awful roll,
that boomed back from the far-off mountain-sides
like thunder ; and a flash of flame, more lurid than
lightning, gashing the gray gloom across the
moor, — as transitory as the lightning, leaping up

I)! I

WEARITHORNE.

one moment with a wide, fierce blaze, then sinking
down again.

And then, — where was the tower, which had
darkened against moor and sky ?

Presently it was Miles Lethwaite who broke the
dreadful hush that followed :

"There was nothing to burn; no fuel for the
flame," he said, in a strange, suppressed voice.
" But see, Nannette, they have quarried my stone
finely for me."

" They !"

" I had powder stowed away in the cell there,
for the blasting of the granite. I raised the trap-
door just now, to find a brushwood fire bursting
into full flame as the air rushed down. Some
one had kindled it, with some arrangement like
a slow-match, perhaps, through the underground
entrance. I knew it could take but a moment
to reach the inner door, where the powder
was stowed away. And so they have blown
up the whole concern, my project, mill, tower,
and all."

" They !"

I understood all now. I wrenched my hands
out of Miles Lethwaite's hold. Kester ! it was my
own blood — my very own — had done this thing.
Shamed and humbled, I shrank back from the
wronged man. It might have been even murder,
— and it was Kester's work !

Miles did not heed that sudden gesture of mine.

|i^:!

WEARITHORNE,

He had gone on, still in the same tone of sup-
pressed passion :

"You must give me up the names of these
scoundrels, Nannette."

" Nay, I'll none do that," I broke in, sullenly,
turning from him, and beginning my homeward
walk. " It's for you to find out, if you will, — I'll
none bear you witness. What did you look for,
Mr. Lethwaite, — coming here and putting about
all the prejudices of the country-side?" I went on,
indignantly, as he fell into the path beside me.
" You might have been ware of the consequences.
We dales-folk are none for mills, at the best ; and
to set one down just here, with one foot on the
common and the other on the old castle ruins
we're proud of, in our way "

" But, my little, daleswoman," he answered, as
if something in my speech amused him, in spite
of his wrath before, " is it not better to make the
old Lethwaite stronghold a refuge in time of
trouble for the estate, than to let the whole pass
into the hands of strangers ? It may lower a Leth-
waite, as you once told me," he added, with a proud
lifting of the head, "to turn miller; but an empty
purse must needs be filled, you know. And you
know, too, I trust, that I would not raise one stone
upon another on a foot of ground not mine."

" An empty purse !" I had echoed, involuntarily.

" An empty purse. You have heard, perhaps,
that it was once well filled. But I have had losses

WEARITHORNE.

since ; and other losses still are imminent, I fear.
This spot was the most available for building, and
the tower, and those stones of the old wall which
were altogether broken down and scattered, made
the cost much less. And now, Nannette, do you
expect me to sit down quietly under such a wrong
as this to-night? This, which may mean ruin?
Or will you, in simple justice, give me these men's
names ?"

There was a long silence before I replied, — a
silence during which we were still walking on
rapidly across the moor, toward Mallerstang Hag.

At last I spoke ; very humbly, very low :

" It is simple justice, this you require of me. But
how is it possible for me to obey you ?"

I broke off there. I hated Kester ; but such re-
venge as this ?

" If I have risked anything to save you to-
night " I cried out, passionately.

He stopped me. I have no doubt that in that
wild outburst of mine, that quivering, desperate
voice, he heard and understood the truth. The
whole dark, shameful truth.

" I owe you my very life, Nannette. I cannot
thank you for such a risk as yours ; but I can be
silent from all questioning."

The words were few, and quietly enough spoken.
But they were very full to me, — so full, that any
words after them must have seemed empty and
vain. And so we went on in almost utter silence.

WEARITHORNE.

the whole way, round to the slopes behind the
Hag. For it was too dark now for my path through
Helbeck Lund. We turned into the longer path
about; and then I would suffer him to go with
me no farther.

" We must part here," I said. " And, Mr. Leth-
waite, you will promise me that no one shall know
of all this; no one shall know how you were
warned away froni the tower ?"

" Only my mother, Nannette. My life is worth
much, very much, to her; and she must know
what you have done."

I shook my head in silence. But he would not
take my refusal so.

" For a mere whim, Nannette, to be so unkind to
me, so cold! For a mere whim, to deprive my
mother of knowing "

I interrupted him. The cold, proud smile of
Mrs. Lethwaite, as I had been used to seeing it in
her picture, came between me and his words, and
gave me courage to keep to my point, — for my
own sake, I said; and so I wrested his consent
from him. And then I added good-night. I
would steal up to the Hag alone ; no fear that I
had been missed all this while. And Mrs. Leth-
waite must have heard the explosion, — all the
country-side would be agate, — and she would
be sadly alarmed and anxious until he came to
Wearithorne.

Still, he had not moved, for all my urging.

I ;

WEARITHORNE.

" One moment, Nannette."

But I had sprung to a grassy crag beyond reach
'of his outstretched hand, and I did not stay or
loiter at his bidding.

I hurried on, without a pause, until I had nearly
gained the ascent, and the dull range of the un-
lighted homestead rose above me on the edge.
Looking back then, where lifting shadows let the
moon go free for a brief space, I saw him still
standing below and gazing after me.

■■w^

IV.

Beneath the rose, beneath the rose,

The sloping shadowy banks between,
The laughter-trilling brooklet flows
She wandered in the noon repose '

From yon green bowers where maidens glean,
And village-lads, the vintage-rows.

Dark eyes that shy through fringes gleam
Their answer to the young knight's vows,
Nor heed the shadow on the boughs.

Nor hollow murmur of the stream-
Si luli fingers fast which his inclose
Be:, ath the rose, beneath the rose.

VINTAGE-ROWS and purple harvests !— there
is a glow in the mere words, of which our
north-country dales know nothing. Yet these, too,
are gay enough sometimes in their own way, — even
our Mallerstang itself, one morning some two sun-
shiny months after that night of the finding of my
mother's letters.

I remember that morning so well. Nay, as I
look up from my seat in this deep window, I do
not remember ; I am living it again.

Sunset now is slanting up the cliff; but then it
was the early sunlight fell across the broad rock-
level to the rambling old farm-house, buttressed
with projecting stones at every gable, and crouched

6* i65)

WEARITHORNE.

low that the winds may pass overhead, and not
wrestle with it as they wrestle with the few bare
trees, and even the T/hin-bushes on the clifif 's steep
northwestern side. Crouched low, its deep-set,
diamond-paned windov/s glittering irregularly all
over the irregular face, and glaring back at the
sunrise, like red, sunken eyes, ovt from beneath a
shag of thatch, which red moss here, and green-
and-golden vetch and lichen there, had patch by
patch undertaken to repair. For Kest^r was a
having man, and spent nor penny nor time but on
his sheep and horses and horned cattle pastured
on the slopes behind ; and on dairy, shippon, and
barn, — the only straight line in the farm-house
building, — with the farm-yard about them, where,
until the summer days come in, the sober kine are
standing about in dull content. But a discontent
that farm-yard was to me in those old days. The
crag itself is so grand ; the house picturesque in
its quaintncss ; passing beautiful the moors away
beyon J the rugged cleugh in front ; the glorious
gray-and-purple fells that topple one above an-
o<iii?r in the rear, behind our pasture-slopes. But
that farm-yard thrust its homeliness in my face, till
I would turn aside to yonder pile of Druid-stones,
the circle of wh'ch had been long since broken ''nto
for the building ot this house. Since first I found
my way into the library at VVearithorne, and filled
my silly head out of the old romances there, yon-
der gicat squai'e mass has been my donjon-keep;

WEARITHORNE.

those lower ranges are wassail-hall and ladye's
bov/er, where ivy curtains the empty casement-
space; and the banner is that one pine, — the
only tree above here on the cliff, which yet is not
all gray, thanks to the ivy knotted everywhere.
Those old, old dreams ! The days are weariful in
which one dreams no more.

Just behind Mallerstang Hag is a declivity, and
then a rise to the height of Moss-Edge, a long,
narrow summit, where we always cut our peat for
firing. About its base, and stretching out to east-
ward, our pasture -fields are of those billowy slow
swells and hollows which in my fancy have always
been associated with a heavy but not stormy sea.
Th'jre are no abrupt, breathless descents here, as
on the face of Helbeck Lund. All is gentle, calm,
and peaceful, although in reality the declivities
sink to low valleys, and the summits rise to no
mean heights. With the sultry shimmer on the
downs, and the blue haze of distance oi' thj high-
est fells, and white sheep browsing over down and
fell, one might imagine the billows of the sea,
shifting slowly, calmly, one down-sinking for an-
other still to take its place. At least, I remember
to have heard Kester say so once ; and he, being
far enough from imaginative, and having been a
sailor all his youth, I am inclined to think must
have been exact.

But this day the browsing sheep were not scat-
tered over down and fell, to break the purpled

1 1

WEARITHORNE.

heather with a dash of white, like foam. They
were all gathered where the slow, cozy stream,
which we of the dales call a syke, wirds sullen and
broad about the base of Moss-Edge, hiding through
the reeds and snowy overstooping burtree boughs.
And Davie o* Burtree-syke, who lives just at the
southern base of Moss-Edge, where the stream is
creeping northward before it turns due west with
fuller sweep and greater haste to lose itself in the
torrent of Helbeck Lund, — bluff Davie w:s there,
and Adam o' Linn Brig with all his household,
and two or three households more.

For it was the busy season, and my one gay
yearly festivity, our own slieep-washing ; for Kes-
ter would never let me to the sheep-washings and
shearings at Linn Brig and elsewhere. Even
Kester's unpopularity was set aside now, and the
neighbors flocked to his r'ub, as he in his turn
went to theirs, and hi^ f oors were set wide, and
his table groaned with the weight of a mighty
banquet. There was true thrift in that, and Kester
knew it.

Letty and I, and Adam's Elsy, and Hie Nanny
from Rivelin, had been busied in the noontide rest
with bearing round the cans of sweetened rum-and-
milk to the tired men. Nanny and Elsy were smiling
and nodding, with a jest and a gibe for every one,
and a box on the ear, perhaps, for a saucier or a
bolder lad. But, in spite of my girlish satisfaction
at the merrymaking and the rustic court paid me

I •

WEARITHORNE.

ter

by Laurie o* Linn Brig and one or two others, my
anticipations were never altogether pleasurable.
For Laurie and the rest did not appear to have
spirit enough, as I thought, — perhaps, indeed, lik-
ing enough, — boldly to run counter to the prejudice
against Mallerstang, and join the lonely lassie on
her way from kirk or fair. They had been rather
blind some Sundays past, upon the road ; it was
not to be desired now that they should glance with
any show of bashful admiration.

And to-day, especially, something in the whole
scene jarred upon me. Perhaps, as Kester said,
my visits to Wearithorne wrought m^ little good.
The companionship of the men and women of the
book-world there wearied me with the life and
manners and surroundings which fell to my lot.
And then, in these last two months, glimp'^es into
another than that book-world, or than this of a .laller-
stang, were opening to me. Faint, far-away glimpses
into that other world, — Fool's Paradise it may be,
yet the wisest ones have crossed its boundaries and
stumbled blindly into it. And I, who was never
overwise, loitering along the adjacent border-land,
might well stray unawares across. Friendship, —
Miles Lethwaite's friendship

I lifted my eyes suddenly, with something not
far removed from scorn, upon young Laurie, as I
was roused from my reverie by a compliment of
the broadest. And forthwith I raised my empty
can upon my head, and followed the syke's beck-

i--"

9
1 1

WEARITHORNE.

\ '.

oning, round a clump of drooping alders, beyond
sight and sound of the merrymakers.

It was meet for taking up a broken reverie
there, winding slowly and more slowly with the
windings of the broadening, reed-fringed stream,
and plucking handfuls of the blossoms under-foot,
when I would stoop from the level sweeji of sun-
shine over the outlying pasture-fields.

And to-day still reverie and idle thoughts were
bound together with that journal of my mother's.
These two months it had been my constant, secret
companion, and now I had drawn it forth, too
precious ever to be laid out of my own safe-keep-
ing, and, in turning over the earlier leaves, had
chanced upon a ballad there. There was a ring
about it like the ring of an old air I had heard
Marget sing, — a wild air of these dales, — it almost
seemed the sullen beck took up the refrain :

Over the moorland the river is creeping,

Darkly and sullenly, down to the seaj
Only a chill under-cun-ent is threeping,

There where t'.e rushes are shivering dree.
Shivering, quivering through the late gloaming,

Sweeping their tarnished brown garments aside,
Shuddering back to make room for one coming, —

Weird for that chuckle thrills on through the tide,-
Bowing the head, —

Rustling apart to make room for the dead.

Over the moorland the gowans and heather
Nod their gude-morn

WEARITHORNE,

" Gude-morn !"

The salutation behind me was so sudden that I
nearly dropped the milk-can from my head, with
the great start I gave. I turned, my arm upraised
to steady it, and stood face to face with Miles
Lethwaite.

As well as I might, beneath that odd head- gear,
I made my stiff little courtesy, and would have
gone my way past him without more ado. I
had come to the path which crossed over from
Stockdale to the upper edge of Helbeck Lund,
and so on into Swaledale. That way led his steps
to Wearithorne ; I would fain, in my shyness, that
they had passed straight on, nor paused for me.

But they did pause, and fell in with mine along
the margin of the stream.

" I could wish I had not given you gude-morn
just then," he said; " you have cut short your song
so suddenly."

" It's like Marget may pleasure you, if you bid
her," I returned. " It is an old tune I've heard
from her since I was a little one."

" And you like the old songs dearly well ?"

" 1 hey are ^<ty sweet, I think."

" I think so too," he said, looking at me. " But
do you like the old rhymes better than the new
ones ? Those, for instance, you were reading in
the library that evening when I came upon you
unawares ?"

The allusion turned me hot and cold in a breath,

WEARITHORNE.

half minded to brush past, and so escape facing
him.

'* No, you are not to flit from me so," he remon-
strated. " Surely I deserve better at your hands,
if only for the meekness with which I that evening
received that sharp speech of yours about the err-
ing absentee master of Wearithorne."

'* I'm main and sorry," broke from me, impa-
tiently, "that you did at last remember Weari-
thorne. You might have left me yet a little time
to be as happy as I could."

"And how does my home-coming mar your
happiness?" '

" Wearithorne was the one blithe spot in my
life," I answered, with as much resentment as if
Wearithorne were mine and he had robbed me
of it.

" Poor child ! what life can yours be, when a
lonely hour in a dark old library is the one bright
spot in it?"

" What life ?" I reiterated. " An you have heard
old Kester's name, you might know fast enough
what life."

If I brushed one unbidden tear furtively away,
I am afraid I was caught in the act. He was
graver cis he said, —

" Why should Wearithorne be less to you now ?
Nannette, it should be more to you. Only let me
tell my mother how but for you, that night "

" No, no. I hold you by your promise then."

WEARITHORNE.

He yielded slowly and reluctantly.

"At least you will come to Marget, as usual?
Surely, you know the library is open to you. And
my mother will welcome you there."

If there were a half-pause of doubt — the slight-
est of slight hesitations — in the close of his speech,
perhaps he hardly knew it, so quickly my words
came in as an interruption :

" You are very good. But I could not go, of
course."

He bent his head for a glimpse of the face
under the broad black shadow of my hat. But he
would not find any false pride there. Some intui-
tive feeling kept me back from throwing myself
on Mrs. Lethwaite's gratitude. And, gratitude set
aside, what could I expect from her ? I was not
overwise in those days, certainly; yet I knew a
gracious welcome from the mistress at Wearithorne
was not to be looked for by a Nannette o' Kester
o' Mallerstang, going in and out of the library on
the rash permission of the young master.

" You are a sunny-tempered little soul, as you
are proud," said Miles then, watching me. " But
if you will not come to Wearithorne library, Wea-
rithorne library must come to you."

"That it must not ; Uncle Kester '11 never like it."

Miles Lethwaite looked at me steadily and
significantly.

" Why are you so sure he would not like me ?"

" He, — he likes nobody at all."

I- *

WEARITHORNE.

" Not even his niece Nannette ?"

" Not even his niece Nannette."

" A singular Uncle Kester, indeed. But for once,
this evening, only to bring the book."

I shook my head.

" This evening Uncle Kester '11 be no that good-
humored, seeing all the rum-and-milk, berry pasties,
and good legs of mutton and sweet-pies have stolen
out of his larder the day. Even I shun crossing
Uncle Kester when he has been whiles so over-
hospitable. But, — could you bring the book here
instead ? and leave it for me, in among the ferns,
just here at this old hurtree's root?"

With the request came the sense of its hardi-
hood. But I was reassured by Miles's

" Not leave it, — you must come for it, and we'll
make it an hour earlier than sunset, then."

We were walking on together silently, retracing
my path now ; and there where I had idly droppc j
them, a knot of daisies and purple loosestrife lay,
and campion-pinks, and the pimpernel that shuts
its blue eyes fast when rain is gathering.

" The world may find the spring in following her,"

Miles said, as his glance had followed mine to the
bloom-strewn sod. " Only, it is a very April-spring,
Nannette, I find in you."

" Naunty Marget calls April a right-down silly
month," I put in, " laughing at the sad, greeting at
the glad, like the Bible-children in the market-
place "

WEARITHORNE.

The word was cut short ; for in the midst, my foot
slipped on the oozy bank ; and, in putting up both
hands to save the milk-pail, I dropped the packet
all this while held hidden in the folds of my kirtle.

Miles Leti»waite stooped for it. But I was before
him, had caught it up, and with a glance half con-
fused, half laughing, over my shoulder, I sprang
past him.

He was too quick for me. He stood before me
in the narrow way. Between the water and the oozy
bottom-land.

" Not so fast, Nannette. I'll not steal more of
your secret. ~ I've seen a corner of it peeping from
the folds of your dress ever since we turned."

" It's no a secret," I began, then colored and

hesitated, remembering that it was.

" Pardon me," — and I could feel how he was
watching, — " I did not mean to annoy you."

"You — you do not annoy me." And then I
lifted my head.

I knew what he imagined, and my thought
flashed back to Laurie and his fellows with swift
scorn. I never stopped to consider what mattered
to me anything Miles Lethwaite might imagine.
He should not think that of me. And as I looked
up into the bronzed, bearded face above me, there
was something in it gave me sudden courage. I
was not afraid of him ; and I was afraid of Kester.
Might not this man help me, by his counsel at
least, and his judgment ?

WEARITHORNE.

" It is no secret," I said again, " but a perplexity."
And I held my packet, journal and letter, out to
him.

" A perplexity in which I can help you ?"

I nodded. " I think you can. I'm feared to
question Uncle Kester."

It might have seemed strange to Miles Leth-
waite that I should have turned to him so almost
without hesitation. For he could not understand
how he was never a stranger to me ; how I had
spent many a half-hour of my lonely life, looking
up dreamily and wonderingly to the boy whose
glance met mine in the library at VVeariti.orne.
And when I raised my head just then, and met the
same frank, earnest eyes, it was as if I had come
to an old friend for aid.

The explanation I had to preface with was brief.
And then he loosed the riband, leaning on his arm
beside me, where I took my seat on a mossy knoll
above the stream.

He read on without comment till he had ended
all.

" What will ever Uncle Kester say ?" I sighed,
folding the papers together. " He'll flyte at me
so

" Stay," Miles said, detaining me as I knotted
the faded riband fast again. " It is not clear to
me that any one of these belongs to Kester or to
you."

I half rose.

WEARITHORNE.

Ibe-

" If you think I would deceive you—
gan, hotly.

He turned round on me his grave face, in which
there was a something — ^a sudden shade of care, a
troubled thoughtfulness — unwonted there.

" You know I do not think that, Nannette. But
there is more in this matter than one can see all at
once. Have you confidence enough in me to trust
them all with me ?"

I put them all into his hands without a word.
Neither did he say anything to assure me of their
safety.

There we lingered, he and I, together. It did
not appear to suggest itself to either of us that
time was wearing on, or that there was any reason
for our going our several ways. In truth, it was
so sweet down there. The beck was winding its
green riband out at our feet, — winding it slowly, in
among the stooping boughs and reed-fringed banks,
as loth to draw away into the shadow of the cliffs,
whose dark reflections must blot out the smiling
of the sky. Miles Lethwaite had pushed his hat
lower on his brows, and was looking from its covert
straight into my face, where I sat on the knoll
somewhat above him. And for me — I could but
look away — could not keep back the hot flush I
felt coming and going in my cheeks. And through
the hush, the burn,

" As through the glen it wimpl't,"
7*

WEARITHORNE.

rang out faint and low some hint of a time to come,
when he and I should have traced out my mother's
•story, as the winding of the stream from the hid-
den spring into the outer sunshine. And then, —
then, if my mother were indeed as she seemed
written down, would I, because of being Kester's
niece, be so far from the Master of Wearithorne
that we should not clasp friendly hands ?

For as yet, if in the gurgle any chime of bells
rang "out for another hand-clasping, it was but very
faintly, and I did not understand even while I
listened.

At last Miles spoke :

" Nannette, what have you thought about these
papers ? What have you imagined they led to ?"

" If you only wouldn't ask me !"

" Yet I do ask."

" I think they are written by my mother, and I
think — you will laugh, perhaps. Colonel Lethwaite,
but I do think my mother was a lady. How she
came to marry Uncle Kester's brother, that I
cannot tell. But I feel sure, at least, she was a
lady."

" And if you should be disappointed, Nannette ?
If these letters, after all, lead to nothing for you ?
If Kester should some way have gotten them in
his keeping, not from your mother, but from Wea-
rithorne ? I do not say it is so ; but it strikes me
as more than possible."

It was such a sudden blow, the mere suggestion

WEARITIIORNE,

of that possibility, that for the moment I forgot the
paper I had burned, — the paragraph with Kester's
name, which linked the whole with Kester. I
looked up to Miles piteously, my lip quivering as
I tried to speak. Looked up, but could hardly see
his face for the swift tears in my eyes. So I was
taken altogether by surprise when he suddenly
stooped and kissed my quivering mouth.

I dashed away the tears with a hand which
trembled only in my wrath. I sprang to my feet
and stood facing him, no longer embarrassed, but
startled out of all bashfulness. This was the gen-
tleman whom I had trusted ? Why, even Laurie
would not have been so rude as that.

Miles, too, had risen, and stood before me, his
own color heightened as that which burned in my
hot cheeks, but his eyes looking straightway into
mine. Straightway, and frankly, as if he was by
no means ashamed of what he had done.

" I could not help it, Nannette," he said, boldly.
" There's no use in expecting a fellow to help it
when you put up such a face as that, and so like a
distressed child's. Could I help seeing it is lovely ?
and could I help loving it ?"

I forgot all about the letters, — forgot everything
but my passionate indignation, — and turned from
him without a word. I sprang in among the alder-
boughs; sprang past him when he would have
stopped me. So near the dub was our quiet
trysting-place, that a few swift movements brought

tili

WEARITBORNE.

me in full v'v v. I was very sure he would not
follow me there.

And presently I, watching", saw the alder-boughs
round the green cove shake as with one brushing
through them. Then I knew that he was gone.

For not a sun o'er earth e'er rose or set,

But traced some furrow set by sin or sorrow :

The past's pale ghost still haunts the coming morrow,

The shortest life hath something to forget.

DAYS had worn away, and Sunday with them^
and even then I had seen nothing more of
Liilcs Lethwaite. The Lethwaite pew was in the
moorside kirk of Bowbridge, not far off upon the
Swale ; while Letty and I were wont to repair to-
gether on our shaggy dun ponies all the long way
to Sedbergh, — I having a fancy for the humble old
Firbank chapel on its rocky ledge hard by ; Letty,
half Friend, half " Methodee," as she was, stopping
at the meeting below, where alone of all the coun-
try-side the " pure word" was dispensed.

So long ago, that common words in speaking of
those days have a far-off echo in them. Yet how
the time between vanishes, while I am glancing
over this book, worn and faded now ! — not only
worn and faded, but bearing some stains of long
ago. For it lay on the marge of the syke, under
thu* burtree, for days and nights, — so did my wrath
hold out. But on the Thursday after our sheep-
washing, Kester sent me up to Moss-Edge for the
pCdts. And as I crossed the syke, I could not

(8i)

WEARITHORNE.

\ \

i \

choose but wonder if Miles had come there again,
— had brought the book he promised. So, before
I thought I had fairly determined what to do, I
found myself following the course of the stream,
until I came where Miles and I had parted.

And the book was there, just peeping out from
among the ferns. The dews had soaked it where
it lay ; the dainty binding was defaced and blurred ;
and as I opened it, two leaves were shredded out
beneath my touch.

I went away with it guiltily, as if it were a friend
I had hurt by my neglect. And so I bore it up the
hillside and laid it down upon a rock to dry in the
sunshine. As I turned the leaves, a marginal line
caught my attention, and I bent above the open
page, — the same over which I was crouching on
the hearth in the library at Wearithorne, when its
master coming home had found me there, poring
over that fragment of the " Eve of St. Mark,"
much as the Bertha of whom I was there reading
pores over her " curious volume, patched and torn."
Here and there in the poem a stanza underlined
hinted how Miles Lethwaite had stood and watched,
while I

" Leaned forward with bright, drooping hair,
And slant book, full against the glare."

And then on the margin, — happen no eyes but
mine could trace them now, so blurred the pencilled
words, — two lines from the poem over the leaf:

Jiiii

Oil!

WBARITHORNB.

** What can I do to drive away
Remembrance from my eyes ?"

Had Miles written that when he came to the
syke and found I had failed to keep the tryst ? 1
would not say yes, even to myself Yet I bent over
the page, until with a sudden flush I sprang up and
remembered that in this way hardly would the
peats be stacked.

It was pleasant work enough, this that I had
before me all the day. This fell belonged to Mal-
lerstang, so Kester went shares with no one on it,
as many of the neighbors did upon the fells ; but
the who'c " peat-pot" of Moss-Edge was his in his
own rigiiL. It was his custom to go up for a sum-^
mer day to cut the peats, and then send me on the
next, to follow the traces of his spade, and to prop
one piece of turf rooflike against another, that the
wind in blowing through, might dry them. It was
easy work enough, — merry work enough, too,
sometimes it was made, — for I had seen Bessy o'
Stockdale and her next neighbor Elsy following
their brothers' spades on Shunnor Fell, and mak-
ing a frolic out of the long day's labor. But Kes-
ter and I never worked thus together. The sight
of me often irked him ; and he would rather come
hither done to do his part of cutting, and send me
afterward to my lighter task of setting the peats
up. That which Kester preferred in this, I too pre-
ferred assuredly. So many hours in sullen silence
would have been formidable; but upoij such a morn-

WEARITHORNE.

ing as this to wander forth over the lofty heath,
and bide all day long in the open air, with only the
lark floating above me, or the bees' hum in the
ling, — that, indeed, was worth a whole week's bend-
ing over knitting, which would never grow familiar
in my hands.

It was so pleasant to be wandering there over the
broad, flat moss, — to breathe the breezy aromatic
scent, — to watch the shimmer of the vapor rising
in the sun across the black peat-pot,-— to leave my
work and idly stand upon the brow, leaning over the
stone wall which here divides the peat-moss from
the highest in-take up the fell-side, where the sheep
were pasturing.

I never go there now but that tranquil day is
over me again. I am listening to the lo wings from
the pastures round, — to the gurgle of the syke
glinting down through the burtree thicket in the
westward hollow between Moss-Edge and our
Mallerstang Hag. I see, as I saw then, Letty's
bit cottage nestled close beneath the Hag, with its
one spreading apple-tree, and its half-acre of prawd
potato-ground ; and opposite, the white, broad farm-
house of Davie o' Burtree-syke. And I see, too, all
the lights and shades where Eastern Stockdale
sweeps its billowy undulations to the fells that bar
them back, with views above the lesser, nearer
heights, of Houghill and Bowfells to the southwest,
Shunnor and Lovely-Seat to the east, and between
their broad, full swells the cloudy brows of

WEARITHORNE.

" Penyghent and Ingleborough,
The highest hills all England thorough,"

according to our proud dale rhyme.

But all at once I started and drew back from my
place on the wall. For moorland and fell and beck
no longer were all my own in their unbroken soli-
tude. There was some one coming even now,
around the northern base of this same fell.

I would have known him even at a greater dis-
tance. Would have known him even had he not
ridden along that syke as perhaps no other mari
would ride, checking his horse and coming slowly,
thoughtfully along, in the self-same track I had
taken when I met him there. He neared that bur-
tree clump, — when suddenly he flung himself out
of the saddle, and I saw him treading down the
ferns here and there, as though to find out anything
that might lie hidden in their keeping. I knew well
enough he would find nothing. And then, remount-
ing, he looked back, toward a wreath of smoke
from Mallerstang chimney, "a frown upon the
atmosphere." Looked, and, taking off his hat,
waved it with a triumphant flourish.

He did not think that wave might have been
answered near at hand, — here on the fell's brow,
in the midst of the dark lines of peat. But he put
'-^^urs to his horse and dashed off at full speed ;
and I caught one glimpse, and then another, as he
passed up Stockdale toward the road to Hawes and
Askrigg.

WEARITIIORNE.

I I

It was Thursday, market-day at Askrigg ; and,
accustomed to the habits of the country-people
round me, I leaped to my conclusion. He was
bound there, and was safe for all day, since the ride
was long. And I, — should I lose such an oppor-
tunity ? I would not go near Wearithorne while
I might meet him ; but now that he was away, why
should I not see Naunty Marget, question her, and
beg her to question Kester about those letters and
my mother?

Those peats had not the power to hold me back.
No sign of rain in all the sky, — to-morrow would
do as well for them, besides giving me another
breezy hill-top holiday. I was not sufficiently in
awe of Kester to be bound down to any task by
the thought of him.

And so I turned my back on the sods awaiting
me, and straight went down the fell-side, to the
margin of the syke.

I too followed it ; but i*" the contrary direction
from that which Miles Lethwaite had taken, I too
paused when I came to the spot where he had dis-
mounted ; but not quite with the purpose he had
had. I stooped and laid the book near where he
had stooped to look for it. The hoof-print of his
horse was yet upon the oozy sod, and there I deftly
bent down the ferns around, not to conceal, but to
make it appear they had concealed, the book. I
too waved my hat; not toward Mallerstang, but
in the direction of the road by which he had gone

WBARITHORNE.

by. I did not altogether fancy that triumphant
wave of his. Now, if luck would but have it,
that he should return this way ! If Hob o' the
Hurst, or any other of the canny " fairishes " of
these haunted wolds, would but direct Miles's
glance, and while it yet was light enough to see !
I could but trust to such luck and such friendly
offices.

The way by which Miles had come, though quite
as direct for his ride as the regular Swaledale road,
was somewhat longer to Wearithorne than my
wonted path through Helbeck Lund. But what it
took in length it made up in ease ; and I was soon
across the open ii\por that stretched between Hel-
beck Lund and Wearithorne ; soon on the avenue
to the House.

They were so bright, those glowing lines of
limes, that I forgot half my dulness as they arched
above, and made the air musical with bees and
heavy with the scent of light-winged blossoms.

But about the house there was a gloom now as
of those old days passed a^ay, — a strange hush
over all the place. No door set hospitably wide ;
shutters were closed here and there. A something
of foreboding stule over me, and very quietly and
timidly I went round to Naunty Marget's wing, to
find it closed ; and when I opened the door, no one
within.

No sound as I passed in. I began to think the
house was left unto me desolate.

WEARITHORNE.

I went through the kitchen into the dairy, back
again, and into the library at last.

But, as I stood there wondering, I heard a step
without.

Naunty Marget's step ; but it was not like her
to draw back with so agitated a start.

" Well-a-day ! Who'd ha' thought o' seeing the
lass here ?" And her voice fairly broke down, and
one tear after another coursed its way down her
wrinkled cheeks.

1 drew her, unresisting, into the library, and
seated her in an arm-chair, taking from her the
tray she was carrying. There were the remains of
an invalid's breakfast upon it ; thus much I took
in at a glance before I set it down. Illness, then,
perhaps, — but not death, — had crossed the thresh-
old before me. I knelt down at Naunty's side and
took those withered hands, so strangely passive
now, wont to be quick and helpful and full of
energy, in both my own.

" Naunty, what is it ? You must tell me, — you
must let me help you."

But the hands were wrung from me, — wrung in
a passionate, helpless anguish.

" Thou canna help me, bairn ; thou mun go back.
Thou's no call here, — not thou, not thou, o' a*
ithers."

"And why not I, Naunty? Do you thiu c I'd
leave you in your trouble ? Is it the fever ? Is it
Mrs. Lethwaite who is ill ? Come, tell me, — bet-

WEARITIIORNE.

ter sune as syne. Because, if you do not, here I
stay in any case."

And as I knelt there still at her side, I folded
my arms very resolutely, yet with something of an
appalled sense of my hardihood. For certainly I
had never before ventured to brave Marget ; and I
would not have been surprised had she taken me
quietly by the arm and marched me out of doors,
as I had seen her do a froward child.

But she did nothing of the kind. She only
turned her head and looked at me fixedly. And
then she rocked herself to and fro in great distress
and indecision, half moaning to herself the while.

I caught the burden of her murmured words.
They were strange words for Naunty Marget, who
never faltered in all her life before, I dare avouch.

"What mun I do? What mun I do? What
luck could weise the bairn the gate here ?"

"Mrs. Lethwaite is ill, Marget?" I asked her,
suddenly.

" Ay, she is ill."

" And Colonel Lethwaite, — he is away, and does
not know it ?"

" No, he kens na it."

" And, — Marget, the servants are all gone ?"

" A' but Mally ; she's a-gate."

Now Mally, leer and careless Mally, was more
than Letty's half-sister in helplessness on an emer-
gency. Therefore it was easy enough to come to
the conclusion which prompted my next question :

WEARirilORNE,

" You have been sitting up all night with Mrs.
Lethwaite, Naunty?"

What a start she gave, and how her lips moved
with a swift denial! But that denial must have
been a falsehood, for it could not pass the thresh-
old of those lips.

She might have known she could not break
through the habit of truth at this late day. But
she merely attempted it faintly, and sat mute. The
attempt suggested my next words :

" Mrs. Lethwaite does not wish her son to know
how ill she is?" I went on, in my cross-examination.

Marget said never a word, and so that question
was answered. I did not care to put any more.
I would make my comment on them now.

" You know well enough, Naunty, that, with no
one but Mally about you, you cannot keep the
knowledge of Mrs. Lethwaite' s illness from her
son. You cannot do everything for her yourself.
What you have to do, is just to let me stay and
help you."

" Ne'er be in me, then," she said, sullenly.
" Thou's niver win at her."

I spoke no more, but I deliberately untied the
riband of my hat, and rose, and laid it on the
table.

She looked up at me in amazement. " What has
come over the bai-n?" she muttered; and then, in
a changed voice, " She doesna speak of hersel', —
thissen's none her way. It have been put intil her

WEARITIIORNE.

heart, and I munna stand in her h'ght, poor bairn.
It's no for me to keep a' the keys at my own
girdle. I'se nobbut stand aside and let things go
as they will ; I durstna direct them."

There was no more opposition to my will, but
she sat a moment still in silence, and then said, in a
firmer tone, —

" Ye mun know, dearie, yesterday there came ill
news. The great Lunnon house where the Mais-
ter's money were, has failed ; there is ruin at the
door."

" Oh, Naunty, ruin ? Must Wearithorne be sold,
— pass away from the Lethwaites ?"

" Out no ! None so bad as thattens. But a'
nobbut Wearithorne mun go, and we make shift to
be near and saving. The news came yester-morn,
and Mrs. Lethwaite paid that fine French maid o'
hers at after, and packed her off with a' the ithers
but Mally and me. She can keep us two, poor
leddy."

" And it is this that has made her ill, Naunty?"

She looked at me, and her lips moved. But,
after all, she was silent for a moment. Then she
said, —

" She seemed to bear up well, just at the first.
A' yesterday she went about, a bit pale like, but
calm an' douce, and thp' fnll o' thought for ivery-
thing. But last evening sJie and Maister Miles
were in the library in th-.- gloaming, and presently
she came to her own chainer, for a' the world as

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(716) 872-. 503

1 1

WEARITHORNE.

white and scared like as if she'd trysted wi' a
ghost. And then she fainted dead away, and when
I brought her to at last, she bade me mint nothing
o't to Maister Miles, but say as she were weary and
had gone to rest. Poor dear," she added, under
her breath, — " poor dear, to rest ! And I watched
by her a' the lee-lang night."

What Naunty Marget had heard in her vigil
through that lee-lang night I did not know then,
nor do I now. Word of it has never crossed her
lips nor mine. But I think she caught from her
mistress's incoherent speech just a hint of the
truth. A hint, of some wrong done to Nannette of
the Hag. More than that I do not believe she
understood. If she had guessed what that wrong
was, and whose blood ran in my veins, I doubt not
she would have been altogether true to me. As it
was, her love for me must have been strong, when
it could make her " stand aside and let things gp
as they would ;" when she " durstna direct them,"
even though undirected they might bring harm to
a Lethwaite. My poor auld Marget ! At this day,
and looking calmly back upon it all, I can see that
it was pain and grief to her not to be altogether
true to me.

" Ye see just how it is," she went on, with obvi-
ous effort : " Maister Miles he be gone to the law-
yer at Askrigg for to settle up the business some
gate. An' the mistress she wunna ha' him ken
she's no that well. It's oftentimes she dunna come

WEARITHORNE.

down o' morning, and so the Maister dunna think
strange. I reckon mysel' she's getten a shock she
wunna be the better of so soon as she believes ;
but she thinks she's be up again to-morn. I'se sore
wore out wi' watching a' the night, and '11 be the
better o' your help, lassie."

" I'll go now, then," I said.

But she put out her hand to detain me, and a
frightened look came into her eyes. Yet she
checked herself, and said, —

" The drops ye mun gie her, an she bids ye, are
on the bit stand by the window. Happen, as the
room is darkened, she wunna ken the bairn from
me.

This was added half to herself, as if in self-justifi-
cation for suffering me to take her place. But she
did not withdraw the permission, and I went away
to my post.

The room was very dark, as she had said, and
the invalid in a deep slumber, so that I had sat a
long time in the window unobserved. Even when
she stirred at length, and called in a faint voice for
Marget to give her the drops again, I obeyed
in silence, and without her observing that it was
not Marget who came to her.

But presently, still without moving, she bade me
bathe her forehead with the cologne on the dress-
ing-table. And I had but touched her brow lightly
twice or thrice, when she put up her hand and
caught mine.

WEARITHORNE.

" This is surely not Marget," she said, turning to
look at me. " Is it you, Mally ?" Then, as her eyes
grew accustomed to the dim light, she said, fret-
fully,-

" I told Marget I would have no other servant
than Mally. Mally surely ought to give all the
assistance she requires. One would think things
might go right for just one day, when one is ill."

" But I'm none your servant, Mrs. Lethwaite,"
said I from my window to which I had retreated.
" I only came to see Naunty Marget, and I reck-
oned you would let me take her place for an hour
or so."

" Naunty Marget ? I did not know she had a
niece."

" No, madam, but she has been rare and kind to
me, and I've aye called her so. I am niece to Kes-
ter o' Mallerstang Hag."

" Kester !"

The name came from her in a low, frightened
gasp. She raised herself upon her arm, crying out,
breathlessly, —

" Come here, girl, — put the window open wide,
and come here, quick !"

I hurriedly threw the shutters wide, — the sash
was already raised, — for I thought she was faint for
air, Marget, — if she were but here! But Mrs.
Lethwaite caught my arm as I was passing.

" Don't call any one," she said, faintly. " Don't
leave me."

WEARITIIORNE.

I knelt beside the couch, and raised her head.
She was gasping painfully for breath, and with my
free hand I moistened her brow and cheeks and
lips with the cologne. She was staring up at me
with a horror-stricken expression which alarmed
me. Then her eyes fell, and she lay awhile silent
and motionless. But just as I began to hope her
fallen asleep, she spoke again :

" Do you know if Colonel Lethwaite is gone
toAskrigg?"

" I heard Marget say so." '

" And he cannot be here for some hours yet ?"

"Hardly before sunset, I should think, an he
has aught to detain him there."

"Then, Annot "

" Nannette, my name is, Mrs. Lethwaite." I do
not think she heard. She went straight on :

"I must speak to you before he comes. Go
and lock the door first, that we may not be inter-
rupted."

I obeyed in silence, wondering greatly as I did
so. Strange as it seems to me now in looking
back, I had not the faintest suspicion of the sub-
ject upon which she wished to speak to me.
Had she taken some fancy to me, — was perhaps
going to offer me Mally's place and feared the
girl might come in while we were talking it over?
I drew the bolt more noisily than was at all neces-
sary, and came back to my place with something
of indignation. If that were what she had to say

WEARITHORNE.

to me, she might as well leave the door wide, for
Mally certainly would have no reason to complain
if she should overhear my answer.

But the first words startled me:

"Annot, you know my son Miles?"

The blood rushed to my face, and a hundred
wild ideas to my brain. The one that remained
when I faltered out my " Yes," was that the lady
was about to rebuke me for presumption.

Yet, through all my confusion, there came a
glow of satisfaction at the thought of that volume
lying among the ferns upon the margin of the
beck.

"And what do you think of him, then?" she
asked next, after a pause.

I had not put that question to myself, and it
was not likely I would be prepared with an answer
for her.

"Come here, — near me, Annot, — near, where I
can see your face."

"Mrs. I-,ethwaite," I broke in, passionately, "an
you have aught to say to me of your son, you
must say on. I will listen. But an you think to
spy upon me while you speak, you are mistaken
in me. Your son will tell you how we parted, —
he 'will do me the justice to tell you I have
played no such daft ploy as to seek to lessen
the distance between us. You have no right to
think "

"That you love Miles?" <

WEARITHORNE.

The question fairly took my breath away. The
indignant denial died upon my lips. I sat there
voiceless, breathless, bewildered, and trembling, —
powerless utterly to refute that which she had
said. For her words were as a revelation to me.

"Annot "

"My name is no Annot," I broke in, bitterly.
"I am just Nannette o' Kester o' Mallerstang.
Look at my hands, Mrs. Lethwaite," I said, brav-
ing her utmost scrutiny, and coming forward in
the light: "they are sunburnt and toil-hardened.
Look at them beside your own! Do you think
I am blind to the difference? Do you think I do
not know that like joins hands with like? And do
you think these hands are so weak and so un-
certain, they will stretch out for that beyond their
reach?"

She caught my hand in hers, and looked at it,
and then wistfully up into my face.

"At least," she said, in a quivering tone, "the
little hand — sun-browned it is — not over-gentle,
and not so ft as it should be, — but it does not
look as if it would clutch so tenaciously after its
own rights that it would not heed how it defaced
and spoiled the life of others."

"I do not understand you," I said, coldly. "An
you mean I'll spoil your life by seeking to have
any claim on your son, you may rest satisfied.
It's like, the word he has spoken was a mere
nothing, with which gentlemen may dare to

WEARITHORNE.

lightlie simple country-lasses. I set no store by
it. Only" — and I felt the angry blood rush to
my brow again — "bid him ken how it needed not
his mother to come between and part us; for
before s^he spoke I had put away from me "

" Softly, little one," — she drew me, passive, down
upon the low seat by her co.uch : " you must
not let his mother's awkwardness work hurt to
Miles."

I stared at her. Could I have heard aright?
Was this proud mother wooing the peasant-girl in
her son's stead ? She must have read incredulity
in my face, for she said, quickly, —

" Cannot you understand his happiness may be
dearer to me than any pride of birth or station?"

"No," I answered, looking full into her eyes.
"I cannot understand it; and I don't believe it."
For I saw she quailed from my gaze, and I was
not blind to the forced smile on her lips. The
very clasp of her soft fingers over mine was shrink-
ing and reluctant. This woman was constraining
herself to act a part, and it went hard with her.
She was too proud to throw herself into it fully;
she could not repress all betrayal of her shrinking
from me ; and as I said out my abrupt speech, I
could plainly see she quailed.

"An Colonel Lethwaite knows of this '*

" He does not know," she faltered.

"Then he can speak for himself, — can have my
answer from myself But," I added, rising, " as I

WEARITHORNE.

misdoubt he has anything to ask which will re-
quire an answer from me, I think you will find
it wiser to be silent on what we have said."
"And this is all you have to say to me ?"
"All. But this," added I, in an after-thought:
" you will say to your son, touching some papers
he has of mine, that I wish him to return them to
me. I shall learn all I want from another person.
I'll not be beholden to him for aught of trouble
about them." '

" Those papers," she said, with evident effort, —
"my son showed them me last evening in the
library. What are they, do you think?" Then,
quickly, as she interpreted aright my surprised
glance, "Surely you cannot count it strange they
interest me, when my son loves you, — ay, for all
you say?"

" They are written by my' mother's hand, and
they show she held another rank from mine. I
believe that of them. I believe, too, I shall track
out through them her name and her life."
"How will you track them out?"
" I'll never rest until I do it, Mrs. Lethwaite."
" It is hardly a woman's work, dear. Why not
keep them until you are my son's wife, and then

let him "

" Mrs. Lethwaite," I cried, suddenly, " those
papers are something to you. The reading of
them was in some strange way a shock to you.
Their being mine makes you not wish — but

100

WEARITHORNE.

seem to wish — me married to your son. What
does it mean ? You would do well to tell me the
truth. For I will find it elsewhere."

A sharp moan, as of some creature entrapped,
forced her white lips apart.

" What motive you may have for this," I went
on, pursuing my advantage, " I cannot of course
tell now, but I will fathom it, — that I give you my
word."

She grasped my dress as I was passing her.

"Stay, — for Heaven's sake, hear what I must
say to you !"

It was impossible to turn my back on her appeal.
I stood still beside her, but did not offer to sit
down.

" Say on," I said, " but, I warn you, speak the
truth. Your words will be spent breath else.
Don't dream I did not see you were playing me
false, even now."

She turned her face from me, but she answered, —

« I will "

"The truth, Mrs. Lethwaite; I'll none be de-
ceived. It shall go hard but I will find some one
who will read it for me in those papers. Keep
silence if you will ; but, if you speak, you shall
tell me all."

" I will," she moaned. " The whole truth, which
I had not thought to utter to a soul. I would
rather die than speak it, but I would not rather see
Miles ruined. And if you take those papers from

WEARITHORNE.

lOI

him, and put them into other hands to be pushed
to the uttermost, you will surely ruin him."

" Ruin him ? But how ?"

" Will you force me to say every word ? Can
you not understand ?" she stammered, with white
lips.

I would not understand. I would have the
whole truth from her. The whole truth.

" They prove Wearithorne yours, my son beg-
gared. Worse than beggared; for the fortune I
brought has all been lost, and it is only through
this estate we can hope to pay off heavy debts* the
sudden loss involves us in."

" Wearithorne mine ?"

" Is it possible you cannot comprehend ? A law-
yer would not be so dull," — impatiently. "Those
papers you gave Miles, if sifted, prove you the
daughter of Annot Lethwaite, who must inherit
the estate before Miles, to whom it was willed in
default of any other heir."

" Go on."

I saw she had nerved herself to tell me the story,
and I would have it from her lips, even to the
uttermost.

" Annot Lethwaite," she went on at my bidding,
"after her rash marriage with one Fraser, — of whom
nobody knows anything, but that he resigned sud-
denly from the army somewhere in the colonies, to
avoid being dismissed, — was disowned by her grand-
father, who yet in a death-bed repentance left the

I02

WEARITHORNE.

whole estate to her, or to her children if she had
any, and to my son unless they appeared. The old
'man died in the full belief that he had no other heir
than Miles."

I could easily credit that. Marget r.ad often told
me the old Master of Wearithorne was dead some
months before Kester brought me to this neigh-
borhood. But I did not think of this now. I was
dizzy and confused. There was but one thought
clear in this chaos. Kester, — what was he to me ?
I put the question shrinkingly, I so feared the
reply.

" Nothing," Mrs. Lethwaite answered me. " He
knew your mother as a tenant's son might know
the young lady of the Hall. And it was his sloop
which carried them away to Scotland. And when
she died, she trusted him to bring her child here,
to claim the estate of Wearithorne."

" And why did he not claim it for me ?"

She was silent. It was not until I had repeated
my question that she said, very low, —

" Can you not understand ? Mallerstang, — Kes-
ter Holme coveted it, — and I It was the price

of his treachery to you."

'* Then Kester never bought it ? Did your son
suspect this, Mrs. Lethwaite ?" for I seemed com-
ing to an explanation of Kester's unsparing hatred.

" He has suspected, not me, but Kester. He
thinks I have been defrauded, and has tried to get
from Kester some clearer account of the bargain

WEARITHORNE.

103

than mine. Kester has kept me in perpetual
terror," she ended, with a weary sigh, " ever since
that first unhappy night I came back to Weari-
thorne."

" And Kester, then, is nothing to me ?"

" Nothing."

I could have found it in my heart just then to
thank her, as if hers were the boon of parting me
from Kester. But there was a sudden revulsion of
feeling when she leaned forward and touched me.

"Why have you told me this now?" I arled,
coldly.

She only looked up at me piteously. But I had
no pity for her. I had been aching too long with my
own grievous hurt to feel another's just now. And
she knew I had no pity, and she faltered, —

" It is because Miles suspects, — not the whole
truth, God of mercy, not the whole! — but that
these papers give a clue to Annot Lethwaite and
her child. He does not know she was your mother,
but thinks the papers must have fallen into Kester's
hands, not through your mother, but in some other
way, from the House here. Miles suspects ; and
Miles is not one to shut his eyes and keep the
estate."

" And if his eyes were opened he might see your
guilt as well as his loss. And still I do not see
why you have told me this. I am sure you do not
expect me to forget, — to go back to the old life, —
the old wretchedness ?"

104

WEARITHORNE.

"If you were his wife, — if you withheld the
papers, — if you spared to ruin his mother "

I said not one word in answer. I knew she was
looking to me for it, though while I stood still
there beside her, my eyes were fixed upon the
floor. If I spared !

Presently she said, in quivering tones, " Annot,
if Kester is not. Miles is of your blood."

"I see that. Well?"

" And for his sake you will forgive ?"

I drew away from her, and began to pace the
floor restlessly. Forgive ? I was possessed with
a wild desire to turn upon some one, — to bring
down retribution for my long suffering.

" Forgive ? I'll no harm your son, Mrs. Leth-
waite," I said. " I'll no touch one acre of the lands
he has thought his "

" Oh, Annot, how can I ever thank you ?"

" Stay, and hear me out," I interrupted her.
" I'll no touch one acre of the lands he has thought
his. But for you and Kester, — you both shall feel
how I have suffered."

" What do you mean ?" she questioned, faintly.

I stopped short in my restless pacing of the
room, and came and stood beside her. ** See," I
said, putting out my hand again upon her own, as
white as the fair coverlet on which it lay, — " is this
the hand of a Lethwaite ? An hour ago I said it
was not fit to mate with such an one as yours ; is
it whiter, smoother, softer, since ? And is it this

WEARITITORI^E.

105

only, my life has marred for me ? Do you think
naught but my hands are grown hard in it? Do
you think a word of yours can make a Lethwaite
of me ? It is dree work you have wrought, — work
past your mending."

Her other hand stole up, and covered her face
from me, where it lay upon the pillow. Other
than that stealthy movement, she made none.
' I went on, more vehemently still :

"A very dog will turn and rend again when
he is trampled down. And in what am I better?
Not in the rearing, certainly. An Rockie, up
yonder at Mallerstang, has been banned and cursed
at, flung out of the road, beaten, frightened, till he
has cowered shivering away out of sight and hear-
ing, — I have no less. An he had a caress, or a kind
word, so had not I. An he had a full meal now
and then, and lay down in satisfied content, it was
never so with me. I was cursed and hated, —
starved in heart and brain. I could rather forgive
Kester even every blow he has struck me, than
forgive you the blank and hopelessness of all these
years. If every softer feeling has been crushed
out of me, to you and Kester do I owe it all. Can
you look for aught from me, than that I should
discharge my debt 'n full to both of you?"

I stopped short, less for an answer, than that
breath failed me ; less that I had poured forth
all my wrongs, than that I lacked voice to tell
them in. And no answer came to me. When I

io6

WEARITHORNE.

looked down on my enemy before me, there was
something in the listless drooping of the arm
across the face, in the white parting of the lips,
that startled me. I sprang to the bell and rang
it wildly. It seemed an hour's weary while be-
fore Marget came in, and found me kneeling by
the couch, trying to chafe some life into the poor
cold hands.

Not that there was any pity in me, even then,
for the guilty woman before me. Only a certain
remorse and a vague terror of death. It did not
tend to soften me that Marget sent me straight-
way from the room. I do not know if she meant
to be harsh ; but probably she blamed me, as well
she might, for the state in which she found her
mistress. Certainly she ordered me out, very
shortly and authoritatively. But I crept back to
ask, with awed and bated breath, —

"Will she get better, Marget? Is it a swoon?"

She turned upon me sharply:

"What iver art doing here? Hast not done
mischief enow e'enow, but thou mun still be lin-
gering? I'm woe for ye, lass, — an ye ha' killed the
mistress wi' yer pingling clavers, it's over late to
take the rue That wunna lift her fro* the narrow
bed back to her son. Nay, whisht! — away wi'
ye ! — go thy ways back to Mallerstang. There's
trouble enow i' the house the day, — I wunna ha'
ye add to 't."

This last drop of bitterness I owed yonder

WEARITHORNE.

107

woman, too, — that my one friend should turn
from me to her.

Marget never heeded that I did not obey her,
further than to move away to the dressing-room,
just within which I crouched down, out of sight.
Mally was there to help her now ; and, for all my
anxiety, I was not quite able to brave Marget's
anger. Out of sight I crouched down, waiting,
listening to footsteps coming and going, — taking
no note of time, in my one long, breathless dread.
For the footsteps were as stealthy, the voices
were as hushed, as in the chamber of death.

Until there came a heavier tread, — a stir, — a
suppressed murmur.

I pushed the door wider, and pressed forward^
and glanced within.

Everything about the room is engraved on
my memory in lines of pain time has no power
to blot out. The flushed, unresting face upon
the pillow, — Marget bending above, — Miles, his
bronzed face of an ashen pallor, his lip quivering
suddenly, as the sufferer's high, sharp voice rang
out, —

"Miles too! And I have ruined him, — the
shame, the shame ! — he'll never bear "

"Eh, but begone, for Heaven's sake, Maister
Miles!" I heard Marget whisper: "ye see the
mistress gets mair an' m?j'r r»v*- o' her head when
she sets eyes upon y^. Go; an there be any
change, I'se come for ye, poor lad."

io8

WEARITHORNE.

He did not go ; but he drew apart, into the
shadow of the curtain, in the recess, out of sight
of Mrs. Lethwaite. I was so near him I might
almost have touched him with an outstretched
hand; but he never saw me. His eyes were fixed
upon the ground, and about his mouth were such
lines of suffering as I had seen nothing of before.
For I was not used to the sight of emotion, be-
yond that of anger sometimes in old Kester. And
what was this I had done? Had my harshness
given the death-blow to this woman? Had it
brought thi^ pain to Miles Lethwaite's face?

" Poor lad !" had Marget said, — ruined in sub-
stance, spoiled of even his mother's love and of
his faith in her. Was it I who should work him
this? I?

I stole out from my place. But, softly as I drew
near, Mrs. Lethwaite's eyes unclosed and looked
straight up to mine, with such unutterable horror
of fear in them that I was prepared for the cry
panted forth :

" Have mercy ! — Miles, — if he should know "

" She's wandering," Marget said.

But was this wandering ? She never moved her
eyes from mine ; they never lost that agony of
dread. But there was recognition of me, too, — or
so I thought. And, acting on the impulse of this
thought, I stooped suddenly, and with my lips close
to her ear, I whispered what I had come back to
say :

WEARITHORNE.

109

" Miles shall not know. Only trust all to me.
I will — ay, I promise to destroy every one of
those papers. Miles shall never know. Will not
that comfort you ?"

Poor soul ! That comfort found its ,way even
then, in her disordered brain. She repeated the
words after me, in a wondering sort of way, under
her breath, faintly, and so low that only I, bending
down to her, could hear :

" Miles shall not know, — shall never know."

Repeated them over and over again. And they
calmed her, and she lay upon my arm, still look-
ing up into my eyes, still clinging to my hand,
until her gaze grew less and less wild and strange.
And in awhile she fell into a troubled sleep, still
resting on my arm.

Miles quitted the room then, at Marget's second
bidding. As he passed my chair he lingered, — he
even spoke my name in a low voice.

But I would not look up. A passionate indig-
nation throbbed within me. It was as though they
were all leagued against me, — all, — Marget, Mrs.
Lethwaite, Miles, — and that promise of mine to
Mrs. I '"♦^hwaite was as a fetter binding me down
hand and foot.

And so, unanswered, he passed out.

At first not even pity and remorse could over-
come the repulsion with which I felt her resting on
me. But in the long watch that followed, during
which I dared not move for fear of breaking the

¥Wr

"" fW

IIO

WEARITHORNE.

light, uncertain slumber, — in that watch, it almost
seemed that she was changed to me.

If one would lose the spirit of enmity, let one
not receive a kindness at a foe's hand, but do one.
Let a woman watch alone in the stillness, above a
sufferer's couch, and see what wrath can survive
that. The helpless droop of the poor head upon
my arm, the yearning appeal of the eyes upraised
to mine, — truly, when my enemy fell into deep
unbroken sleep at last, and I ventured to lay her
down upon her pillow, she had conquered. She
had conquered, — she, and not the thought of Miles
which had brought me back to her. She, — pity
for, I had almost said sympathy with, her. And in
the days that came after — the days she filled with
cruel wrong — I never more was able quite to put
away the sense of that head lying helplessly
against my breast, of those wan eyes pleading so
to mine. For we may forget a kindness done to
us, — may even repay it with yet further injury; but
a kindness we have done will throw some gleam
of sunshine into our darkest thoughts, and brighten
them with something of forgiveness for the one who
works us hurt.

When I had laid her softly down upon the pil-
low, Marget came and drew me away.

" Go now, bairn, — go," she whispered me ; " I
wunna ha' her see thee here when she wakes. It's
over late now, and thou mun be home."

Passively I obeyed, and left the room. There

WEARITHORNE.

Ill

was no good-night exchanged between Marget and
me. It would have been a farewell had I spoken
it. But I had no heart to sav the word. Some-
thing had come between us ; the old familiar tone
was gone, and there was a soreness on my part, as
if she had not been true to me. But, indeed, if
truth to mc involved falsehood to a Lethwaite, I
had little right to look for it.

I had almost forgotten Miles Lethwaite the
while. But I must find him now; must claim
from him those papers I had promised to destroy.
Should I find him in the library?

Going in, again for one instant I forget Miles
Lethwaite. For, as I enter, the sun's rays, slant-
ing through the west window, fall so full upon a
portrait that I pause to look at it.

I find more in that pictured face now than I
have ever been able to read there before. More
than pride, than coldness. An unscrupulous will
in the slight yet firm curves of the lips, — a will
which had not hesitated to sacrifice me when oc-
casion served. Would it ever hesitate again ? For
it is not hard to understand that her agony but
now was not remorse for the wrong to me, — was
rather fear of the retribution to follow after wrong.
And back upon me come, as though written down
in the soft lines of that fair face, the wrongs I have
suffered, — the wretched days of Mallerstang, — the
nights when I have sobbed myself asleep in childish
fears and dread and loneliness, — the Hopes and

112

WEARITHORNE.

longings all a dreary blank. There is not even
any comfort in the memory of the hours here at
Wearithorne, — how they were stolen from old
Kester, — how they were paid for in blows when
I returned at night, or in words wellnigh as hard
to bear, when something in my face, as I grew
up to womanhood, made his hand fall and his
voice rise instead. And Marget, — that is still the
bitterest thought of all, as I stand there and
watch my enemy's haughty smile fade out in the
dusk.

And then I see there is a candle burning in the
secretary's dim recess, — the secretary lid is down,
and his chair drawn up to it. A packet of letters
tied with a green riband is pushed aside, as if he
had laid it there ; but he is not heeding it. His
arms are folded on the desk, and his head is bowed
down upon them.

He does not stir until the rustle of my dress
comes close to him. And then he raises his head
and looks at me.

Whether I were Marget, or Mally, or Nannette,
he would never have heeded at that moment. I
know that at a glance. There is nothing in his
haggard eyes but the speechless agony of sus-
pense; and I see the firm lips quiver under the
brown beard, — quiver, without one audible word.
But I know well the question they would put.
And I answer it:

"She is sleeping quietly and peacefully. The

vV',

WEARITHORNE.

fever has almost passed away. She will awake
restored. You need not fear."

"Nannette!"

The shaking voice is an appeal I cannot with-
stand. I go swiftly to him, — laying my two hands
in his right outstretched to me.

He draws me nearer, with that strong right
hand, and with those earnest eyes. Until I kneel
beside, and hide my face from him, upon the desk
where his was bowed but now.

His large palm closes over my two trembling
hands. But he makes no other sign. Perhaps
his thought is not half with me even now. But

that I am something to him at such a moment

Nay, something? By that firm clasp in which he
holds me fast, I know

He interrupts me, saying, still in that shaken
tone, —

" Glad tidings of great joy. The angels always
brought them, you know. And my little Nan-
nette has come to me in my hour of great dark-
ness. She will never go away again?"

I lifted my head. But before our eyes met, I
caught the proud, still glance of Mrs. Lethwaite
from her place on the wall opposite.

In my excited mood, I could almost fancy her
lip curled with a more scornful, sneering smile.
Was she to stand between us?

Perhaps Miles felt me tremble. For he re-
peated his question, forcing me to look at him.

lO*

114

WEARITHORNE.

But I hardly saw him. I saw, instead, the dis-
tance that lay between us, now that I was never to
be Annot of Wearithorne to him, but just Nan-
nette o' Mallerstang. What if he shourd remem-
ber this presently ? — it is so easy to stoop lightly,
on the impulse of a moment, to a thing he knows
within his reach.

" She will never go away again ?"

It was not that voice, tender and true, I answered,
but the fear which had been whispering to me. For
I rose up, disengaging myself, and replying, in de-
fiance of the tears still on my lashes, —

" Ay, but she must go away, and that at once.
You see, I have forgotten Kester," — I could not
bring my lips to utter " Uncle Kester" just then, —
" but one cannot forget always."

He looked at me, disconcerted and puzzled. I
knew I had perplexed him, — that he could not tell
whether I had not understood at all ; or whether I
had come to him at his appeal, in the mere sym-
pathy of a thoughtless, childlike impulse. That was
as I would have it. If he really cared, let him speak
again. Not to-night, but in a cooler, calmer time.

As I half turned aside, my glance fell on the
packet. I put my hand out for it, saying, with ap-
parent carelessness, —

" An it's your will, I think I'll talie my letters
back with me."

But he intercepted me.

" Leave them with me, Nannette, a short while

WEARITHORNE.

longer. I meant to take them with me to Askrigg
to-day, to mail them there for my lawyer in Lon-
don. But on second thoughts, and at my mother's
suggestion, it seemed safer to write to him first, to
insure his receiving them. You must let me hold
them till I get his opinion as to what is best to do."

*' No, no," — still carelessly, — " I've changed my
mind. I'll not play at bogle-about-the-bush with
such a slender clue as that,"

" But it is no slender clue. I at least am bound
to follow it up."

" Will you give me my own letters. Colonel Leth-
waite ?" cried I, waxing impatient. " If I list to take
them, who is to say me nay ? I'll make shift to
rest satisfied as I am. What matter if my mother
were a lady ? That will never make me any other
than just Nannette o' Mallerstang."

" It will not make you any other," he said, very
gently. " If it could, I would regret the day that
ever placed those letters in my keeping. But I
will tell you frankly, Nannette, I do not think they
are your mother's. I more than suspect the clue
leads altogether another way."

" Another way ?" I faltered.

" Nannette," — almost pleadingly, — " you do not
imagine it is not painful to me to gainsay you ? It
is painful every way. If I am right in my belief, it
may be I shall be utterly ruined. And if I am
wrong, — if these papers put you in possession of
an estate, — do you think I shall feel nothing, see-

Ii6

WEARITHORNE.

ing you removed apart from me ? I am a poor
man this day : do you think I am generous enough
to wish you a rich woman, parted from me by wide
lands and all the troops of lovers they will bring ?"

I had nothing to answer to that. He went on,
not waiting, indeed, for any answer :

" But all that is nothing to the purpose. What
I have to consider is this : the papers certainly do
furnish some clue, and I have written to a lawyer
that I hold them. I am responsible for them, see-
ing of your own free will you gave them into my
keeping."

" But I who was free to give, am free to reclaim."

The packet lay before me, still knotted with the
riband, but bound about with a strip of paper too.
If I had looked closely enough to see what that
strip was, — but I hardly noticed it at all, in looking
at him. while he spoke :

" I am sorry if you are angry with me, but that
will not alter the case. A heavier responsibility
rests upon me in those papers than you know.
They shall be returned to you ; but first, that re-
sponsibility I mean to discharge."

Perhaps it was a strange sort of smile I forced
to my lips ; but I did force one, and pushed the
papers back to him, and said, as lightly as I could,
that he must take his own way, — I could see it was
of no use to combat his will.

"Of no use at all," he said, lightly in his turn;
then earnestly, —

WEARITHORNE.

ii;

" Why are you so unkind to-night ? You n?ust
know how your distrust pains me."

I answered nothing. He said again :

" You yourself gave me the papers willingly
enough. Why have you changed ?"

And still no answer. And leaning forward on
his arm, and looking in my face, he asked me, —

" Because you have not forgiven me that morn-
ing by the syke?"

I turned away my head :

" If I had been one of your grand ladies, — if I
had stood side by side with you, instead of below,
— you would never have done that."

" " ATOuld, Nannette."

Ac that thrill in his voice I flashed up one glance
at him. It answered me more clearly than his
words had. He added, after a pause, —

" And then, too, you were such a child in your
tears. Nannette, if you knew "

But I was not to know ; for Mally's entrance cut
him short. She brought more lights, and pro-
ceeded to draw the curtains. I felt her curious
gaze, as she passed close by me where I stood be-
side the secretary. Miles observed it too, for he
frowned over the letters, and pushed his chair back.

"That will do, Mally," he said, impatiently.
" Take your candles out to the dining-room. I
shall not be in here again this evening."

" Please, sir," the girl asked, " then shall I no
bar in the windows for the night?" <> '

Ii8

WEARITHORNE.

" Very well," abruptly.

"And wunna ye be fain for dinner now?" she
persisted.

He turned to me, asking, in a low voice, if I
would stay. Then, as I hurriedly shook my head,
he said to Mally, —

" Just put off dinner for an hour yet."

She lingered, adjusting first one piece of furni-
ture, then another. I saw she was curious to dis-
cover why I was here with the Master. He saw it
too ; and once I divined from his sudden flush and
gesture that he was about to order her out angrily.
But he checked himself, rearranging letters and
papers, and thrusting that packet — I saw where he
thrust it — in the lowest of the left-hand shelves.

Suddenly he turned to me, — that book still lay
upon the secretary.

" My horse's hoof struck on this, down by Bur-
tree-syke, this evening. It can be no one's but
yours, and you must let me return it to you."

I could not keep down the burning color from
mounting to my very temples, but I did summon
hardihood to play my little hypocritical part of
surprise and regret at the weather-beaten appear-
ance of the volume he put into my hands. " It
looks indeed as if it had been in the very * drip of
summer rains' it sings of," said I, glancing over
a page, and warily avoiding that which he had
marked.

He had put the lid up again before he gave me

wmm

WEARTTHORNE.

119

the book. But he had not remembered to remove
the key. As I saw it still in the lock, a wild idea
flashed across my mind, — an idea I caught at heed-
lessly, and which banished every other thought.
He had come nearer to me where I stood beside
the light, and I took up the candle and moved
away to a sofa between the windows. There I
seated myself, supporting the candlestick on the
back of the sofa. That he was surprised by my
sudden defiance of appearances I could see by his
slight glance toward Mally, who had not yet
quitted the room. But as she closed the door
behind her, he came and took his seat beside me
on the sofa.

What I said to him I do not know, and I
hardly knew then. My brain was giddy with the
thought that had driven me to the sofa. I was
breathless, impatient, — turning over the leaves at
random, — making random comments on them,
too, and reading aloud, here a line and there a
line, after an aimless, disconnected, witless fashion
enough, I dare say. At least, I know my wits
were wandering very far, and my laugh startled
myself with its unnatural ring. I saw Miles look-
ing at me in a mazed way.

"What do you mean by mocking so, Nannette?
But mock on, if you will, at rhymed and written
love, so you believe that mine "

The start with which his words brought me
back from my own thoughts was involuntary

,1 LiWIII I III WI^P

1 20

WEARITHORNE.

enough. But that in that start I should have,
let the candle fall to the floor, broken and ex-
tinguished, — if that were involuntary, at least I
made no movement to avoid it. And Miles and
I were left in darkness.

Of course the accident cut short his sentence.
He had started forward in the impulsive attempt
to save the light, as it shook in my hold. And I
drew myself away, and had glided across the
room, as he exclaimed, —

"Nannette, where are you? I cannot find
you."

I knew so well the place of every article of
furniture about that room, that I need hardly
have knocked over his chair before the secretary,
as I made iome incoherent reply about a tinder-
box. But the truth wi.3, the falling of that -hair
came in most opportunely to drown a slight grat-
ing noise there at the secretary.

"A tinder-box ? One moment, — I can strike a
light," he answered me.

I had the lid of the secretary down. But it
was hurriedly put up again, the key and the
packet hastily concealed in my dress, and I stand-
ing near him, when he stooped for the candle. _

But I had done my work right well. The
broken wick just sputtered, and the spark went
out.

"What matter?" I said, carelessly. "I have
my hat, and you were going to the dining-room,

WEARITirORNE,

121

— ^you'll no distract Naunty Marget by putting off
dinner?"

"Ay, but I will. You do not think I am to let
you go back to Mallerstang alone?"

"^ut I am going up to Mrs. Lethwaite first." '

"You will let me know, then, when you are
ready." And he followed my groping way out
into the hall.

But I had not taken more than two or three
steps up the stairs when he stopped me :

" One moment, Nannette."

He had come forward to the balustrade, while I
paused above him. No light burned there, either;
but it was less dark than the library, though dim
enough. But Miles Lethwaite's face was very
clear to me, — is very clear to me now, in the
dusky hall, with the full moon peering in at the
narrow loop-hole windows. I see how the moon-
beams fell through the small, round panes, in tes-
sellated figures, on the stone pavement, crossed
now and again by the shadow of a lime-bough
without. I see the mirk corners, the rude arch over-
head, the great stone stair, with its quaintly-carven
balustrade, — and across that balustrade. Miles Leth-
waite's earnest face turned toward me, over the
mediaeval grin of the dragon that curls its ampli-
tude of scales about the abutment at the stair-foot.
Miles Lethwaite's face

" I want you to think over what I have said to
you to-night," he went on. " I shall not ask you

/••'

122

WEARITHORNE.

now what you think of it. I only beseech you »

Nannette, I believe, with all my soul, you are truth-
ful, ftank as a mere child. I have been perhaps
overhasty for you. I cannot look for you to
know your own heart certainly so soon. But you
will try to know it? You will be honest and
open with me? Nay, then, I will not keep you
now."

For I had made an involuntary movement which
he took for impatience. It was not impatience, —
it was pain, — indecision. Honest and open ? And
what was I doing ? Must I not tell him ?

" I have been selfish," he said, his whole face
changing as he saw me leaning there before, iiim,
downcast and drooping. " I forgot all the watch-
ing my darling has had. If anything could have
made her dearer, it must have been this watching
by my mother's side."

" You love your mother very dearly ?" I asked,
breathlessly.

" As one loves the one sure good of one's life."

" And how if you should ever find her — not
sure, — not good "

He smiled, for all reply. But when with some
impatience I put the question again, he answered
me, gravely, —

" You have told me you cannot remember your
mother, Nannette, so you do not understand."

Ay, but I did understand. I dared not tell him
then. Without another word, gropingly, wearily,

WEARITHORNE.

123

I turned away. For his sake, as for his mother's,
my lips were sealed, my promise must be kept.

Miles let me go. But when I glanced back mid-
way in the ascent, I saw him standing still where
I had left him. It pained me, I could not have said
why, to see how he watched.

I did go up to Mrs. Lethwaite's room ; but not
to see her lying there with closed eyes, as I had
left her. It was Mally sleeping at her post, — no
slumberer was on the bed. But as I crept noise-
lessly to the door of the dressing-room, the outer
door of the chamber was opened as noiselessly, and
there was the faint gleam of a shaded lamp, and
the flitting out of a white dressing-robe.

As I stood still there in the shadow, she passed
the outer door of the dressing-room. And as she
passed, I caught from the hand upraised to shade
the lamp the glitter of a bunch of keys.

Why my suspicions should have been so quick'y
roused by that, I do not know. But roused they
were ; and her stealthy way of peering forward into
the hall, where darkness showed the housekeeper's
preoccupation, did not give the lie to them.

And so I followed, cautious as herself, — drawing
back now and again round an angle or into a dusky
alcove when she turned with anxious glance behind
her. For I would know whether indeed she meant
me this treachery.

She was ghostly as any wraith, in that white
trailing robe of hers, and she glided on as stilly,

124

WEARITHORNE.

one transparent hand shading the night-lamp, the
other catching by balustrade and wall, until she
reached the library and went in.

She had not altogether closed the door behind
her, and I pushed it wider, standing on the thresh-
old.

She was leaning heavily against the secretary,
holding the lamp high, while one after another of
a bunch of keys she tried to fit in the lock. I
knew her meaning well ; yet, for all, I could but
watch her admiringly. The slight yet stately
figure in the flowing dress, — the shapely head,
with its half-knotted, half-fallen mass of golden
hair (we Lethwaites have many of us those goldi-
locks borrowed from the far-off Annot, the Scots
peasant-girl), — the dark-blue eyes kindling in her
eagerness, and the proud lips scarlet as the fever-
flush on either cheek. My enemy was fair and
soft and lovely. Nature does not always set down
her index clearly feature by feature, but blots out
with a soft line or a flush of color the ugly list of
traits which we would write upon the face.

Mrs. Lethwaite heaved an impatient sigh, as one
by one she let the keys fall back upon the ring.
Would not one fit ?

One, at the last. It turned easily enough in the
lock, and she let the lid down.

Ay, she had stooped straight to the lowest of
the left-hand shelves. There were but two or three
loose papers on it now. She unfolded and glanced

WEARITHORNE.

125

tof

the

over them rapidly ; then she let her hand fall to
her side, in still dismay.

I waited until then, and then I left my place, —
not noiselessly, for I had no wish to startle her, —
and stood before her as she turned.

The speechless shame in her down-falling eyes
would of itself have told me what she had come
there to seek.

" And you could not even trust me ?" I said to
her, bitterly. " You are not satisfied to let me rob
myself, but you must rob me. I have the packet
safe here, Mrs. Lethwaite. You may go back and
rest, — I shall keep my word to you."

She did not think to answer me, — ^what could
she say ? She only moved to obey me.

But so shaken was she, so unnerved by all the
full hours had brought her, that in taking up the
lamp, her trembling hand let it fall. There was a
quick, sharp crash of broken glass, and we were
left in darkness.

The crash must have sounded through the door
she had left ajar. For I heard another open, from
the dining-room, I felt assured. *

" He is coming," I said, hurriedly. " Go out to
meet him. Don't let him come in, — say some-
thing to him, — anything, — only don't let him find
out I am here. All will be well then. Quick !"

While I spoke, I had locked the secretary, and
thrust the bunch of keys into her hand. She had
just time to reach the door and close it behind

II*

126

WEARITHORNE.

her, when I saw a flicker of light creep across the
threshold, and I heard Miles say, —
"You here? What has happened?"
And she answered him, — I heard her laugh, —
" Very little. Miles. Only Mally has let fall the
lamp on the library floor. You must not say any-
thing of it to her," she added, in a prudent after-
thought; "she is distressed enough about the
carpet already."

"Hang the carpet! Marget told me the girl
was sitting with you. How came she to leave
you ? Did you need anything, and come down to
find her? My poor little thoughtless mother, you
must be taken better care of. I'll have that maid
of yours back."

" Nay, you shall fill her place. Miles, and take
me to my room. It was not Mally's fault, dear.
I sent her for — a scent-bottle I had left in the
library, and she was so long, I thought she did
not quite know where to find it."
" Was not Nannette with you ?"
" Nannette went home some time ago."
" Went home alone?"

I heard them mount the stairs together, and
again Mrs. Lethwaite's voice at her chamber-
door :

" Do not come in, Miles. Say good-night here."
Ay, do not come in and find poor Mally sleep-
ing at her watch. " Say good-night here."

I do not wait for more. I steal out, and across

WEARITHORNE.

127

the court, noiselessly as any ghost might do. And
then I hurry on, with swift foot, yet oppressed
by the sense of falsehood. How lightly it had
fallen from her lips ! but it weighs hard upon my
conscience, that falsehood I have listened to quietly
enough, spoken for me.

And now I have reached the edge of Helbeck
Lund, where the beck flows about the moorland
edge. Beneath my foot the rocks shelve fast to a
black abysmal pool, from the neighborhood of
which the very pines themselves straggle back
beyond dark crags upon the farther side. It is
a dismal spot to stay in, but time wears heavily
until I have discharged my promise.

So I sink down on a ledge that overhangs the
water, and begin to loose the band about my let-
ters. My letters ! — and I feel as guilty as though
I were a midnight thief who had stolen in and
robbed the Master. My fingers tremble so that I
can hardly loose the knot. Something fluttered
beyond my reach in the night-breeze. Only a
crisp strip of paper binding these together. The
riband would have gone too, but I grasp at it.
For it would be a clue. I must take surer care of
the letters. And one by one I tear them to mere
shreds, and, stooping, place the handful on the
hurrying current of the stream. It will carry them
forever far beyond the ken of Miles Lethwaite.

My task is done. I rise, setting my face home-
ward now. Slowly and wearily. It is all done.

Tn^

128

WEARITHORNE.

And though I know not yet the fulness of that all,
the rugged way is harder than I have ever known
it in the days gone by. Harder and drearier, —
beset with strange sounds in the rustling of the
wind, and the startling grating of some bough of
shrubi or tree against the walls of Helbeck Lund.
The waters darken more and more, yet with no
distinct overshadowing. Down from the blasted
pine above me, clatter and grate two last linked
cones, until the ripple closes over them blackly..
Only that break in the stillness, — or if a gust just
stirs the branches overhead, it so soon dies. Only
that, — but the beck hurrying on with its strange
moan, as of some wild, fierce creature in pain and
terror of escape.

I strive to summon back the fleeting sense of
triumph with which I stole away from Weari-
thorne with those papers in my possession. I
strive to rejoice that I have made a great sacrifice
for Miles, and that my hand has turned aside a
heavy blow from him. But I can remember only
my deceit. And when I steal up to my chamber,
past the house -place where Kester has fallen
asleep over the fire, — when I lean from the win-
dow and watch the turret-light which flickers out
above the limes from Wearithorne, — somehow my
ear is filled with the hoarse moaning of that beck.
What is there in it? Yet when my head is on my
pillow, waking thoughts and dreams go on to that
dreary monotone. ■■

VI.

It faded slowly, the crimson flushes
Wavering long on the sedges there,—

Adown the green hollow, amid the rushes
The burn glints on through the alders fair ;

And there below me the moorland purples

And shines and glooms to the broad white sea :

But now as then though the moor-cock hirples,
His note no more rings the same to me.

K ESTER had given me leave to take Brownie
and ride to the Hawes market the Tuesday
after that evening at Wearithorne. He was rare
and indulgent that day, for we were yet in the
midst of our second cheese-making. Letty was
nearer midsummer than May, in getting to it ; but
for me, I was wont to be fain for the cool dairy, in
among the fragrant white-brimmed pans ranged
where the floor was hollowed in the rock. But
that day I had had enough of the setting of the
milk and the pressing in the cheese-vat, — enough
of the salting of the curd and putting it back into
the press for the night. It had stormed heavily
yesterday, and the air was so fresh and sweet with
rain and sunshine that I had grown restless within-
doors. Then, too, I had much finished knitting-
work upon my hands, and was more than usually

(129)

/■I

130

WEARITIIORNE.

desirous of changing the coarse ribbed textures of
gray and blue — the jackets and bump-caps of my
weary winter's industry — into dainty ribands and
a bit of real lace for the bodice of my Sunday
gown. Last Sunday I could not find it in my heart
to go to the kirk at all. But next Sunday I would
brave everything, and venture to the moorside
chapel. I must see Miles, — meet his glance, cold,
or angry, or contemptuous, as it might be. I had
avoided him all this week, even stealing away
down to Moss-Edge Hollow one evening when I
spied him climbing Helbeck Lund, only to meet
Kester at the Hag. Miles must have found out
the loss of the packet ere this ; and I never
imagined he could fail to suspect me. I shrank
guiltily from meeting him ; but at the kirk could
be no danger of his taxing me; and I could judge
at a glance how to be prepared to meet him.

I had been to Hawes, — had quit myself of my
heavy bundle, and received in return a package for
which there was ample room in my apron pocket.
So I was left free to clamber followed on a more
prudent footing by my faithful Brownie, along the
ways which bordered on the Svw de, and which re-
quired here and there, besides the wary foot, hands
quick to catch at rocky wall or overhanging shrub
when once the regular flagged path was deviated
from. To-day I could not go quietly along. I was
restless and impatient ; and when the roar of Har-
draw Force drew nearer, sounding through its

WEARITHORNE.

131

echoing walls, I hurried thither, knowing the fall
of water would be grand indeed, after the swelling
of last night's storm.

I had been there some time, sinking down upon
a rock, and hiding my face in my hands, after the
first glance. There was something in the clamor
of the waters which drowned the voice of care
within me. I sat there, listening idly, as if I might
listen thus forever, and so forget.

The rushing cataract had swept down rocks and
rent trees from the mountain-sides. They ground
against the crags, and fell with separate splash into
the swirl below. Fell now and again like a foot-
step drawing near, — the fall of some sharp tread
upon the path behind

I started up.

For there was a tread upon that path. The
rent walls here shut me in, as in a cave, down
into which, a hundred feet below, thundered the
force in one free leap. Long ledges crept behind
the curtaining cataract, and then swept up to join
the old Roman road that still keeps its foothold on
the cliffs above. And there a horseman was ap-
proaching along the flagged way, which, though
over-smooth and slippery after a rain, was often
thus used rather than the rugged modern road.

He threw his bridle over a projecting shrub near
where I had tethered Brownie, and came forward
to meet me. To meet me, who cast a troubled
glance around, and then, seeing no possible escape,

r <

132

WEARITHORNE.

resumed my seat and waited with bent head and
quivering breath.

I had not long to wait. He was at my side, was
speaking my name in a glad, quick tone that had
no displeasure in it.

" I thought I should never find you again. I
have tried to meet you everywhere, — even ventured
up to your Hag, with such a reception from your
courteous uncle that I resolved net to go again,
lest the visit work harm to the niece. But to-day
I was thoroughly out of p:itience, and broke that
resolve."

"To-day?"

" An hour or two ago. As luck would havf: it,
I again met Kester, — in better humor, for although
he scowled on hearing I had a message from my
mother to you, yet he growled out the information
that you were gone to Hawes."

" A message from your mother ?" I said, quickly,
looking up at him for the first time.

" Well, yes, — I suppose I was free to say a mes-
sage, when Kester would call mc to account.
She was asking Marget this morning if you had
been up at the House. I am sure she would
wish to thank you for your kindness to her."

"She'll be bravely again?" T asked. Not, it
must be confessed, altogether because I cared to
know, but because the question seemed a natural
way of filling up the pause.

" My poor mother has been sadly shaken by

WEARITHORNE.

133

her illness. She was unnerved last night and this
morning by a household trouble. I took it upon
me to interfere in her province, and dismiss Mally
rather abruptly yesterday, and my mother was quite
upset by it."

" Mally ? Oh. I am sorry for that!" I cried. ' I
hardly know her myself, but she's half-sister to
our Letty, and troth-plight with Davie o' Burtree-
syke. I think she was laying by out of her wage
for her wedding bravery."

** Laying by on rather an extensive scale," he
said, gravely. " She robbed me of a large bank-
note."

" Robbed ! Why, Letty knew iiaught of it this
morning, I'm sure."

"No; for the girl begged for silence till she
could get away, out of sight of all who knew her.
It need not have been mentioned at all, but that
Marget knows, and the gardener was brought up
about the loss."

" Pool lass!" I said, with a strange sort of fellow-
feeling. True, I had robbed myself in robbing
him. " Could you no forgive her after she had
confessed ?"

"She would not confess; but still persisted she
had found the note on the moor. Whereas, thert
has been no one but Marget in the house, and her
honesty is above suspicion. Besides which, I have
not been able to find the key of the secretary,
where the note was, since the evening you were at

134

WEARITHORNE.

Wearithorne, Nannette. I had the note in my
hand then; she was watching, and must have
looked where I put it. My mother found her in
the room again, too, that same night; and I re-
membered afterward I had left the key in the lock
of the secretary. Why the girl was mad enough
to deny the theft, I can't see."

I was sorely puzzled. How could she have
stolen that note, while I had the key ? But then

the key Mrs. Lethwaite had A vision of

merry, comely Mally rose before me, and I said,
regretfully, —

"I am so sorry! Poor Mally, she was that

pretty Do you think Davie could forgive

her? Where, think you, she'll be gone ?"

" She would only say she could find work in
some factory; she has worked in one before, she
told me. But, wherever she may be, she is in no
want. I took care of that. As for her, her only
care seemed to be to leavs no clue behind her."

" I am so sorry ! But could you none have
forgiven her, Colonel Lethwaite? You had your
note again "

" Nannette, how shall I tell you why I could
not forgive her ?" he asked, after a pause, as he
threw himself on the rock 'at my feet, leaning on
his arm, and looking up at me. " How shall I tell
you ? It was not only the note. The note was
folded round that packet of yours, ready to be
sent to London with it. The girl must have been

WEARITHORNE.

135

hurried, and just seized the packet as it stood, —
kept the money, and destroyed the papers. Per-
haps that is why she won't own to the theft, but

still persists Nannette, for God's sake, what

is it ? Are you ill ?"

For I reel suddenly in my seat, and all grows
black before me. But I have just strength to lean
against the wall, back from his outstretched arm.
I am dizzy with the w^hirl of the raging torrent, —
dazzled with the iris-sparkle of the sun-touched
spray. The stooping slirubs and jutting rocks

seem tossing about there in the eddy If he had

not caught me back

" Nannette, I had not thought you cared so
much. How shall I ever forgive myself for s»ich
a loss ?"

" Mally," I strove to say,—" Mally,— I "

" My little tender-hearted darling!"

The words stab me so, that the sudden pang gives
rv'e: strength to raise myself almost fiercely. He
i cc not understand me, — how, indeed, should
); j ? — but interprets the gesture his own way.

*' i'.-)^ must not be angry with me, Nannette, —
the girl is not worth that. Why, she did not
show as much emotion at her owa detection and
dismissal, as you are showing now for her."'

It is not so much those words that rouse me
to self-control, with the quick sense of danger, —
;iot so much those words, as that I, facing the
vvateriall, see a shadow steal across the sunshine

r '

ill'

136

WEARITHORNE.

dancing on the stream. A shadow, indistinct and
broken by the falling mist ; but, as I think, the
shadow of a man. And, listening intently, I hear,
or fancy I hear, a tread which mingles with the
rushing of the waters.

There is nothing strange in that. I am not the
only one of all the country-folk who would go
even out of the . v to see Hardraw Force after
such a storm as ^ last night. And I know
there is a turn in the rock just where I first saw
the shadow, — a turn which leads behind the water-
fall pouring over its projecting bed above, and
creeps under by a long ledge that sweeps round
to this side. I watch a moment ; but when no one
comes forth along that ledge, a sense of insecurity
steals over me. Who knows? — might no one
creep within hearing of us here ? That which I
have to say to Miles must be said to him alone.

And so I rise, and murmur something of time
pressing. He rises too, and follows till we reach
the regular path, where we both mount our horses.

We ride on, now through the open lanes, now
deep in the heart of dells, where dogwood boughs
fling white rents across the gloom and the breath
of birch and brier-rose steals out to us. Only the
steady tramp of the horses is heard through the
rustling of the wood, the summer hum of insects,
the distant outpouring of a lark's song. And now
we are upon the meadow-lands of Stockdale, pass-
ing there a tumbrel-car drawn by its four horses

WEARITHORNE.

137

in a line, the blue-smocked driver knitting away
too busily to give us more than one brief curious
glance as we pass by. And here an urchin or
two, laiking and making holiday with mimic mill-
wheels in a tiny stream.

Brownie will not go at any steady gait to-day.
I throw care behind me in a mad gallop most of
the way. Miles follows my lead, after a vain effort
or two to make me talk.

I cannot talk. I am striving all the while to
come to a determination. Slu '1 I confess all to
Miles now and here? — or am I not rather bound
to see Mrs. Lethwaite, — to let her be the first to
confess, if so she choose ? Striving, not the more
successfully that, whenever I glance toward him, I
meet his eyes, keeping back nothing, but telling
their full tale. For Miles did not know me. Even
my shrinking from him he interpreted after his
own fashion, my unreasonable tenderness of sym-
pathy with Mally — as he judged it — making me
yet truer woman in his sight. And how can I
bear to undeceive him ?

I do not know what impelled me to glance back
at that moment. Mere instinct ? For, as I did so, I
saw a man in the distance, crossing the Hawes road
into the thicket. It was but an instant; yet it was
enough for me to recognize Kester. I could under-
stand now why he told Miles which way I had gone.
He himself had followed to spy upon us. I could
at least be thankful he had discovered nothing.

12*

r I

138

WEARITHORNE.

Miles stopped my wild speed after that. He
caught my bridle, and said to me, —
' " Nannette, you are not going to gallop after
this mad fashion till we are at Mallerstang? I have
something to say to you."

" I can hear you very well. Brownie is restive :
let the bridle loose, pray, Colonel Lethwaite."

He only drew it tighter; and while Brownie,
glad enough to stop, fell into a walk, Miles said,
with clouded brow, —

" Is the pain you keep me in nothing to you ?
You, so tender-hearted for others, why are you so
hard to me? Nannette, you shall speak to me!
You cannot go back to Mallerstang and leave
me so."

" I'd none go back to Mallerstang now, an I might
go on first to Wearitborne. I have an errand there,
to Mrs. Lethwaite."

" She knows nothing further of the girl," he said,
answering, as he believed, the meaning of my
hesitating speech. " I shall be more than glad,
however, to have you come to Wearithorne.
But, Nannette, I have asked you a question, — I
suppose you will let me have my answer at the
House ?"

I made no reply other than an inarticulate mur-
mur, which perhaps he took for a yes. But I dashed
off at once, and we rode full speed together, all the
way to Wearithorne.

"An it's about Mally," Marget said, when I

WEARITHORNE.

139

told her I must speak with the mistress, " Letty
mid ha' done better, an 'twere her sent ye. What
for dunna she come hersel' ? But dunna bide a
minute, lass, — the mistress be no that well, and
mun be quiet."

Mrs. Lethwaite was lying on the sofa in her
dressing-room. She did indeed look no that well,
but she sat up when I came, and put her hand out
to me, as quietly as if she had been expecting me.

As indeed her first words showed she had. I
did not feel free to take the chair she offered, and
stood leaning against the back, when she began :

" I knew you would be here. Is it not wretched,
— this that has grown out of your coming that
dreadful evening ? Miles would not listen to me ;
I tried to save the poor girl all I could."

" All you could, Mrs. Ldthwaite ? Did you tell
your son everything ?"

" Everything ? What do you mean ? When
you charged me not to let him know you were
here!"

" Everything, Mrs. Lethwaite. Not only that I
was here, but why I was here, and why you went
down to the library."

She sank back on the sofa, gazing at me incredu-
lously.

" You know, Annot," she said, slowly, " I could
not tell him that. Where were the use of your
promise to me then ? If he understood you and
I were both in the library that night to take those

/■ »

I40

WEARITHORNE.

letters, he would understand the rest fast enough,
and what interest I at least had in them."

"He would, — and he ought, Mrs. Lethwaite.
Mally shall not be ruined for us."

" What would you do, then ? Break your word
to me, and lay bare all my guilt to Miles ?"

The voice was so wild with terror — she turned
so white and red all in a breath — that I was fright-
ened. I answered her, quickly, —

" No, — my word to you is given, and the papers
are destroyed. It's no for me to tell him, but for"^
you."

She laughed, — a short, hard laugh :

" For me ? And do you think I have kept the

secret all these years, — have risked so much, suf-

. fered so much, — to give it up to-day when the

proofs against me exist no longer? You must

believe me weak indeed."

" Strong, to bear the burden yourself. But weak
or strong, I tell you, Mrs. Lethwaite, Mally shall
not bear it."

" The papers are destroyed." I think those words
had brought back her courage. For a flush came
into her white cheeks, and she said, scornfully, —

" Are you prepared to take it from her, then ?
For I am not. But if you will, you may tell my
son how you tampered with the papers in his pri-
vate secretary. I shall have nothing to do with it
/ am not weary of Miles's love."

I brushed past her, without another word. But

WEARITHORNE.

before I could reach the door, she was there first,
— was leaning against it trembling, stretching out
imploring hands to me :

" Annot, what would you do ?"

" Let me pass, Mrs. Lethwaite."

" I dare not. I will not let you ruin me, — your-
self. I will not let you ruin Miles."

" I will not ruin him. Everything shall be his.
But I will clear Mally. I will show him what you
are, — into what you would plunge me," I answered
her, in the white heat of quiet wrath.

" And will that serve you in good stead, — to have
no mercy on his mother ? I tell you, Annot, it is
not loss of the estate, it is his mother's shame
would ruin Miles."

There was a thrill of triumph in her voice that
made me long to thrust her from my path, and to
go down and tell Miles all. But in spite of myself I
felt she spoke truth. Ruin Miles ? Mally's ruin
was but a dim shadow, seen against the midnight
j^loom I might bring down on him.

If Mrs. Lethwaite saw her advantage, she was
wary in not showing me she did. She clung lo my
hands, to my dress, she besought me to spaie her
only for Miles's sake. And I remembered no more
any suffering save that which would be his.

" Would be." " Must be" had changed to that
already. And now, when I caught a footstep on the
stair, I stood no longer hesitating.

*' Let me go, Mrs. Lethwaite : he is coming. I

142

WEARITHORNE.

dare not face him now. Nay, let me go, — have I
not given you my word I won't betray you ?".

She stood aside. I heard that step again. I
had the door wide in an instant, crossed the
corridor, and fled down the other stairway at the
opposite end of the hall. Only to brush against
Miles Lethwaite at the foot.

" I thought you were coming up the other way,"
I cried, taken unawares.

" And meant to avoid me by this ? That was
Marget who passed me here. Nannette, is it so ?
— do you really wish to avoid me ? — do you object
to my going with you back toward Mallerstang ?"

I looked at him, — and I heard Marget's heavy
tread again. Here, where we had parted on the
stair that night, he was standing before me ; I saw
he did not mean to move until he had more than
just that one answer. And I suspected Marget
was coming down to interrupt ; I knew she would
not think it canny in me to be lingering here with
the Master. I'd not face her.

So, in a moment more, we were walking together
under the limes. Miles insuring against such a wild
gallop as our ride hither by passing his own horse
without so much as a glance, as we crossed the
court. I did not let him mount me upon Brownie,
as he proposed, meaning to walk beside me ; but
we both went on, on foot.

I never now tread the path I trode that day with
Miles ; but I know it as if I had crossed it yester-

WEARITHORNE.

143

day. I think the lonely seas must be like our
moors ; taking their tone from the skies, and gloomy
or bright as those are frowning or smiling. A
drear, heart-breaking, hopeless stretch I have seen
that same heath. But certainly, that gloaming,
over the undulating sweep, broken here and there
by a stooping hollow with the peat-tinged quiet
waters of a gill, there was a cloudless sky. A sky
so cloudless and so soft in its gray-blue that it
hardly caught a glance, and seemed all emptied of
its majesty. It paled yet more where the moors
rounded like a globe to the horizon, and the sun-
rays and the yellow gorse in-wove with purpling
ling. I remember all so well, — the faint sweet
marish odors as we crushed the grasses under-foot,
— the hum of insects in those grasses, — the whirr
of wings and twitter of the nestward flight of birds,
— the hoarser breeze-borne din of rooks in the
oaks behind Wearithorne. These sounds filled up
our pauses as we walked ; the moorland was not
drear that hour.

I looked back then, and brighter than elsewhere
the sinking sun was turning all those honied limes
of Wearithorne to gold. And brighter than else-
where, as I glance back to-day, the glow of mem-
ory falls upon that hour when the last red troubled
flush of sunset sank away into the dull gloom of
after-life. Looking back! There is but a mirk
comfort in it, after all. There are always more or
less of tear-mists hovering between us and the far

144

WEARJTHORNE,

horizon of tlic past, even when that past has been,
as mine before that day, an even surface, unmarked
by those bold, sunny heights and sinking, darksome
clefts where one most naturally expects gathering
mists.

We went on at no laggard pace, however. If I
had dared, I would have sprung on Brownie, would
have snatched the bridle from Miles's hold, and
never drawn rein till I was safe under the shadow
of Mallerstang. But I do not dare. I must linger,
and hear what Miles has to say to me. And he is
not long in saying it :

" I told you I would wait for an answer to my
question. Do you mean not to give it ? Is it to
be always so between us ?"

" Always so ?"

" You know I love you, Nannette, — is that why
you are so cold to me ?"

" It is you are cold, — hard as the nether mill-
stone, — it's fearsome !" I cried, vehemently. " Have
you ne'er done wrong, that you can no forgive?"

" Nannette," with passing tenderness, " have I
frightened you with Mally's story ? Do you think
I shall be cold — hard — ever to you ?"

" An 'twere I had done what you say Mally has,
and you were Davie, troth-plight with her," — I
say it faintly, stammeringly, — "you — could you
forgive ?"

" But you are not Mally. Why make such an
uncomfortable pretense ?"

WEARITHORNE.

145

I look up in his face despairingly. Would he
never suspect anything, unless I put it in cruel
words ? I could not put it in words.

" What if you ever found I had deceived you ?"
I asked.

" I shall not be afraid of your deceiving me."

" But if I should ?"

He was silent. I persisted in my question.

" Why do you say such things ?" he asked me,
lightly.

" What do you think, — will Davie aye forgive
yon lass ?"

" Not if your forgiveness means love, Nannette."

"Eh, just hearken to that! And you are not
hard, — not you !"

" Not hard," he answered me. " If this had been
a swift temptation which overcame the girl, — but
it was not that. She had time enough to think,
time enough to remember."

And I, — had I not time enough to think, time
enough to remember, how my guilty silence was
condemning the innocent ? And I went on :

" If — poor heart, if she deceived him for his own
sake, — because she'd have helped him ?"

" Worse and worse."

" It may be worse and worse, — it may be des-
perately wicked," I cried, with a sob in my voice,
which I wonder now did not bring ,my pleading
home to me, even to his unsuspecting ear, — " it
may be worse and worse, but it was done for love

ri '

146

WEARITHORNE.

of him. And what is love, if it cannot atone for
all things?"

He looked at me gravely. He said, —

" If a man still loved a woman through his scorn
of her, — I do not say it is impossible, — the love
must be a mere ignoble thing of passion and of
habit. Not the love, Nannette, which I bring you."

I had no answer to the sudden pleading of his
voice, and the hand outstretched to me fell at his
side without response from mine. How could I
answer him ? Even the half-confession which was
on my vacillating lips but now, must implicate Mrs.
Lethwaite, — must harm Miles, — must — ay, that was
it — must injure me with him. I set them fast to-
gether. Hay, what care had I for Mally ? She had
borne her trouble not so heavily. Miles said; while
I

" Nannette, you do not love me, after all ?'

The words were not spoken until after a long
pause. So long a pause, that during it the way
had gone by unobserved, and when his voice
startled me into looking up, I saw we had reached
the b'jck under the shadow of Moss-Edge, and I
was almost home.

Not love him, after all?

" Do you then care so much ?" I asked.

" Care so much ?" he repeated, with subdued
passion ; " I wish to Heaven I did not care ! — I doubt
yc. are worth my caring; but if all this is mere
vain coquetry, at leabt tell me so now."

WEARITHORNR.

»>

I had iiot meant to tell him, — it must have been
something in m^ suddenly uplifted face that gave
his doubt the lie. But I drew back from him.

" Stay, — if— if I do love you, there is something
parts us as yet, — for a time." ,

" Nothing shall part us."

Nothing ? But what if afterward he ever learned ?
I did fear Miles Lethwaite, — the darkness in me
feared the light. It seemed no easy thing now,
here with him, as it had seemed while up there
Mrs. Lethwaite's hands clasped mine, to hold my
peace for her sake or for his, — to suffer Mally's
ruin and yet put my hand in this man's as a wife
should. My right hand, with a lie in it. Would
he ever forgive me if he found it out ? If I dared
tell him now, — if Mally could be righted

And Miles ruined?

Ay, ruined every way.

For what had Miles said ? How his tone, his
words, came back to me ;

" You have told me you cannot remember your
mother. So you do not understand."

But by the remembrance of that hour when,
crouching by the fire-light in the hou^e-place, I
first read my mother's journal, I did understand the
blow the truth confessed must deal him. And for
me, who had schemed to deceive him, to act out
my little part there in the library, to creep back

like a thief in the night after that packet For

him ? " Worse and worse," he had said to that.

f t

148

WEARITHORNE.

And if he could not trust me after that, must he
not yield Wearithorne to me the heiress, and go
forth from it ruined ? Ruined every way, perhaps,
if I now told him all. And instead, I clutched at a
vague hope. I would put him off now, merely for
the present ; and who knows what time might do
for me ? It was a weak temporizing, — the vaguest
of all hopes, that by waiting I might hear good
news of Mally, and so keep my secret with a quiet
heart. I was as one who tries to stay a drifting
boat just where diverging currents sweep. I might
have rushed on confession, as over rapids, which
must ruin me or Miles; or I might have turned
determinedly, and floated down the smoother-seem-
ing tide of silence, a? Miles's wife. But to wait
between the two, — to yield to neither current, — I
was mad enough to dream it possible.

And so, when he said again, —

" Nothing shall part us "

** Can you no have patience with me ?" I cried.
" Can you no wait a little, little while ? I can tell
you nothing now, but that there is something stands
between us yet."

" It is Kester ? Are you going to suffer him to
part us ?"

I answered him with a pitiful evasion :

" I'm none going to suffer any one to part us.
An you'd but wait, — but trust "

My voice shook there. I, to require of him to
trust me, when I meant that he should wait until

WEARITHORNE,

I could deceive him with a stiller conscience ! I
think my shame must have glowed scarlet in my
jheeks, when he replied, —

" As to trusting you, that is as easy as to trust
my own good faith. But this is a hard thing you
ask of me, Nannette, — this waiting. How long is
it to last?"

" I can tell you nothing yet," I cried out, des-
perately, " but that we are parted once for all, unless
you can have patience with me."

" Nannette," — catching my two hands eagerly,—
"why should ;*:here be a mystery between us?
Why should you not be frank with me, and let me
help you ?"

I shook my head, looking up at him speech-
lessly in my terror. Would he wring the truth
from me, whether I would or no ?

" My darling has dwelt morbid^ upon some
trifle, till it has grown out of all p >portion to
the truth," he said, tenderly. "I take it ipon
me without hearing it, since you so shrink frc m
speaking."

" A trifle ? Look at me. Miles, — ^tell me what
trifle I would suffer to wrench me apart from
you, when it is like wrenching apart body and
soul!"

He must have seen in my face that I spoke
truth ; for he urged me no more after that. He
must have seen it in my face, he stood so long

time looking down into it silently.

13*

It,

f I

150

WEARITHORNE.

" Nannette, it is Kester, — it is your fear of him,
stronger than your love of me. Why should you
stay in his power ? Only come to me "

Again I shook my head for all reply.

And then he said, with slow effort, —

"What would yoi^ have me do, then ?"

A great dread rushed upon me. It was cruel in
its selfishness, perhaps, — but for my life I could
not have kept back its utterance :

" Only do not forget me."

He smiled a weary, haggard smile, not looking
at me. And then we both with one consent re-
sumed our walk ; for we had stopped short on the
margin of the beck. ,

We went on silently until we neared the north-
ern base of Moss-Edge, where Burtree-syke sweeps
round to enter Helbeck Lund. Not far off was the
cove where once before we had parted, I springing
away flushed and angry from his kiss. Perhaps
Miles too remembered it. For when I paused
there, he but took my hands in his. And then :

" Nannette," he said, " I do not ask more, si.ice
you shrink from it. I trust you. But in your turn
remember this. It is impossible to me to forget
you. It is impossible to me to love you less than
now, and how I love you now you know right
well. I will give you time, — will come again."

" No," I interposed, hurriedly, " you'll no come.
You'll no give me the battle to fight over again."

" Not come ? Never come ?"

WEARITHORNE.

ISI

I was silent. I had not dreamed of putting
away the future from me.

" I will not deceive you, Nannette. No words
of yours could make me promise that. But my
affairs and my mother's health require that we
should go to Lond'^n for the winter. We leave in
a few weeks, and J will give you till then."

" Until you come back in the spring," I cried
out, eagerly ; " you'll no seek me once till then."

" So be it," was the slow answer. " I will wait,
— wait a long time, if you will."

What was a month — a winter — to make or mar
all Mally's and my future ? A dreary foreboding
crept over me. A long time ? I faltered out, —

" All a life. Miles ?"

" No, for my love is stronger than the thing that
parts us, let that be what it may."

Even I then hardly knew how strong that thing
was. I had stepped, as he spoke, over the cross-
ing of the stream just there. Our hands^fell apart
as I did so. For a few paces we walked on, on
either side of the syke, slowly, sadly, looking in
each other's eyes the farewell we could not speak.
TSien my path turned up the side of Mallerstang,
and I followed it.

So we were parted.

/ t

VII.

I *Tis but a summer's day, I ween.

This mom the sunlight tangled through
The forest-boughs that crossed the blue,
And we were wandering, I and you,

Where all the fulness of that sheen

Smiled on the daisied turf between.

'Tis but a summer day, I ween.

To-night the moonlight, smiling cold,
jj Just peers from out her cloudy hold, —

The daisies now no more unfold, —
One moonbeam trembles, us between.
The ghost of what the day hath been.

'Tis but a summer day, I ween. » / «

Why should we strive to make it more ?
It must be so, and was of yore, —
The night comes, and the day is o'er,
And hopes that glowed with sunny sheen
Now flit like moon-pale ghosts between.

K ESTER came home soon after me, for all the
world like a thunder-cloud, lowering and
sullen with the pent-up wrath which was to break
in storm. I was in no mood to heed his black
looks, as he flung himself into the great arm-chair
on the hearth, where winter and summer he was
wont to sit. Letty was giving her last glance to
the porridge ; and when she took her basket on
her arm, prepared to depart, I followed, round to
(iS2)

WEARITHORNE.

»-u»-

151

the shippon-door in the rear, with a last question
about the morrow's churning. *

As I lingered idly in the doorway, watching the
dusk creep slowly up and up from the deep-shad-
owed meadow-land between Moss-Edge and the
Hag,— creep slowly up and up, as the last gilding
of the sunset faded out upon the opposite cliffs, —
I saw a man advance out of the shadow.

At first my heart beat wildly and fast ; but almost
stood still when I saw it was not Miles, but Mally's
lover, and he had joined Letty. And now at last
Letty must hear the story of the theft.

Yet it was not of Letty I was thinking ; of Letty,
with her cold, still ways, her set and formal saws,
and pious phrases to improve the occasion for
whatsoever befell any one. " It's none to be
helped," was, to her stolid philosophy of insensi-
bility, sufficient and good reason to cease lament,
for herself or others. Ah, it is those things which
can be helped, over which it is weakness to grieve,
for strong will, not tears, will set them right.
Letty would not grieve overmuch for her young
sister. But that man

If only I might see his face. I could see he was
walking along dejectedly enough, head bent, and
hesitating gait, as if in his perplexity and grief he
did not heed his way. And a great awe crept over
me. This man, — this lover of poor Mally's, — what
though he was middle-aged, uncouth, rough, — was
it the blow I had dealt, he staggered under now ?

154

WEARirilORNE.

I could not answer the question, yet I could not
put it by. I stood and watched them, till they
passed on, out of sight. I had seen Letty give
one passing start, which checked her footsteps for
an instant ; but she then went on at the same pace
as before. Surely the tidings could not have
moved her very greatly. Yet there was a great
awe upon me; and I went slowly and wearily
within-doors when those two had passed behind
the nook where Letty's cottage hid from sight.

Kester scowled at me as I drew near. But a
heavier gloom than his displeasure was upon me,
and I went about my household duties, recking
nothing of him. There was no word between us ;
and when the porridge and the oat-cake were upon
the table, and I bade him to it, I received no
syllable in return, the only answer being the
grating of his chair as he drew it forward over
the stone floor, and the speedy disappearance of
the dainty little sad-cakes Letty's skilful fingers
had prepared.

There was silence throughout the meal, which
indeed I only forced myself to taste, when I saw
Kester's eyes upon me curiously. I made a feint
of busying myself with the porridge ; but Kester's
" humph !" as he rose at last, and passed by my seat
on his return to his own place on the hearth, showed
he had seen through my effort. He did not s'\y
anything for some time thereafter: not until I had
put everything by in its place again, and, all my

\ •

WEARITHORNE.

- ii».

155

lich
saw
feint

ster's
seat

owed

household duties finished, had taken my accus-
tomed place in the chimney-corner Avith my knit-
ting. But the monotonous click, click, annoyed
me inexpressibly. My hands fell in my lap ; and,
after a time, I laid my woiFk aside, and went and
stood in the open doorway.

It was such a clear, bright night, — for it was
night at last. The very breath of the pure air
upon my brow gave me new life. I would just
wander forth to the scar's brink

I had not taken three steps before a heavy hand
was laid upon my shoulder. Kester whirled me
back with his strong arm into the house-place, and
then, slamming the door fast, and leaning against
it, he assailed me with such a storm of abuse, I
wonder at myself now that I did not quail before it.

But I stood there in the patience of indifference,
until his wrath had exhausted his words. Exhaust
itself it did not ; but he came to a stop at length
for sheer want of breath.

"What is to do now?" I asked him, quietly
enough. "What have I done but stand an instant
in the court for fresh air ?"

" For fresh air, forsooth ! Ye good-for-naught
madling, to think to deceive me that gate! In the
court ! Was't in the court thou were the day ?
Was't for fresh air thou were daikering by Har-
draw Force ?"

" The Master of Wearithorne met me there," I
forced myself to answer as carelessly as I could.

r •

156

WEARITHORNE.

" It was no tryst, none of my seeking, and it is no
like we shall meet again."

" Nay, that it isna," he said, scornfully. " I'se
take tent o' that. An I see aught more o* 't, I
promise thee I'se fettle it. An naught else wunna
serve ye but such bonny behavior as that, I'se ha'e
ye bound out fast enow i* Manchester. There's
factories there as '11 tame down the spirit o' any
hussy whatsomdever, wi' their click-clack wheels
and such like running gear. So mind what I say,
lass, — ye'sp flit fro' Mallerstang that day I see thee
forgather wi' that callant again."

" Nay, I'll no flit fro' Mallerstang, at any odds."
There was something in the quiet assurance of
my manner which startled him. He looked at me,
puzzled by it.

" I'll no flit fro' Mallerstang," I said again, more
positively than before, as I watched the effect of
my words. " Kester Holme knows well he has no
right to send me here and there, — he has no power
whatever over me. Let him remember this. I
mean to bide here quietly — silently — so long as I
am left free and at peace. But if I am not so

left "

" Ay, and what then, thou saucy witch ?"
I could see he was greatly startled. I could see
the ruddy hue had left his weather-beaten cheek,
and his lips were set together after the effort that
one sentence cost him. For I had never before
braved him thus within his reach. I could see he

WEARITHORNE.

157

was perplexed with wondering what I could have
heard from Miles Lethwaite; and yet he spoke
with would-be carelessness, lest after all it might be
I knew nothing, and this was but a new phase of
my wilfulness. ,^ ,

"What then? Kester Holme, you had some
papers bound with a green riband "

My voice shook there ; for he glared at me, and
for the moment I was in bodily terror. In truth,
in thus setting him at defiance I was daring more
than I had thought. The power of a bold, bad
man thus brought to bay, — what should hold him
from silencing my mocking voice then and forever ?
Who could ever know the secret of the lonely
night here?

As my eyes sought the floor, they fell upon a
stain in the soft white stone, beside my foot. Here,
half a century ago, on one morning after a wild
night, a pool of blood was found, and a thick clot
of golden hair ; but never a trace more. I looked
down at the spot and drew my foot back from it.
Kester, — did he see it too ? And what should
stand between me and a fate like this ?

Silence fell ; deep, awful silence. Through it
came the slow tick of the great clock on the stair,
— the shriek of the wind about the northern gable,
— the sharp whirr of the gases pent up in the peats,
as they blazed and flickered out, and left the shad-
ows to grow longer, creeping hither about me and
Kester, but not blotting out that stain on the white

158

WEARITHORNE.

'1 M !

I iil

stone. And then the hush was broken by Kester's
voice, hoarse, and deep, and indistinct, as the first
muttering of a storm :

" Papers bound wi' a green riband, had I ? Eh ?"

I could not answer. I was speechless, breathless.

" Ye'll none hae getten thoe papers ?" '

No words could hold a direr threat than those.
How should I answer them ?

In the brief pause when this thought came to
me, I could not drop my gaze from Kester's lower-
ing scowl. I could see he was watching me in
fury hardly held back for the moment. And as I
still stood voiceless, shivering and ready to sink
and cower there before him in my abject terror, he
strode across the space between us.

Only the nearness of the peril could have roused
me to such sudden strength. For I thrust the
great heavy oak table between us, as if it had been
a toy, and with an instant's respite there, behind it,
faced the danger before me.

The danger, — Kester's fierce, keen, cruel eyes, —
the scornful smile in them, — the unsparing look
that watched me as a cat a mouse. I might elude
him for the instant, — after that, I was his prey.
'Twas but to reach out after me

Everything — all the past, all the future — came
to me as one swift thought. The past, — I owed
Mrs. Lethwaite little faithfulness, yet I could not
betray Miles's mother to this man. The future, —
Mallerstang was drear and lone, and yet no other

WEARirilORNE.

159

spot could ever be home to me ; was it not, too, in
sight of Wcarithorne ? And how to keep Mrs.
Lethwaite's secret and my home ? • .

But I forgot it all, — Mrs. Lethwaite, my own
home, even my fear and dread of Kester's violence,
— when now his mocking taunt fell on my ear :

" Are ye for telling me where is the packet now?
Eh, but we'n getten a braw lass here, — a rush of a
lass as can brave auld Kester to his face and ne'er
a bit shivery nor feared, — not she !"

" And if I am," I cried, letting go prudence,
everything, in my unthinking passion, — " if I am
feared, it shall profit you nothing. It's just my
poor, weak body that's feared, — it's not myself.
For what have I to dread ? What but the fear-
some blank life is to me ? Nay, you can make my
body shrink and shiver, — you can make it cry out
with pain, — you can strike it down dead, if you
will. But you'll no make me, myself, tell where
that green-riband packet is."

" Will I no ? We'se see."

He flung himself round to get at me ; but that
barrier stood me in good stead. I flitted round it,
from his reach.

And then a quick thought struck me. I hardly
so much as glanced round, while I spoke again :

" I wonder how you can fashion to forget that
packet, Kester ? I could forget it, happen, an you'd
let me bide in quiet up here at the Hag. But it's
beyond your reach, — nay, an you killed me, you

/■I

160

WEARITHORNE,

would never win at it. And I ware yov. of it,
Kester, — I ware you of it, an you'll no let me
be."

I knew the words would goad him into rage
greater than before. And thougii, even as I stopped,
with furious strength he dashed the heavy table
from between us, I was not unprepared. For I had
edged nearer and nearer to the door, — it was swift
work to fling it open and rush out.

I could hardly have been afraid of Kester's
heavier movement overtaking me after that. Yet
I sprang half-way across the court, listening ibr the
sound of his steps after me.

But I did not hear them. I stopped shor*" rn the
brink, listening instead to the loud shutting r / the
door, and to the heavy bolts drawn behind me.

Was I turned off now, once and forever? Yet
I war. glad to hear those bolts grating between ine
and the peril I had been in.

Yet it was no light thing to pass the night out
here alone. I crept noiselessly round to the other
side of the house, tried door and window, but in
vain. They were all fast, as I might have known,
but that I bad hoped against hope. For it was
methcdical Letty's way to secure evciything but
the h'^use-place before slie went t< her own home.

When I came back, and paused in the court-
yard, it was with no thought of the morrow, or
of the morrows after that I only thought of the
long night to be passed unsheltereo. And Marget ?

WEARITHORNE.

I6i

But half true to me as she had been, yet I turned
to her now as to a sure refuge.

The early moonlight md the last lingering of
the late twilight were enough to guide me while I
made my way down through Helbeck Lund, over
the moor, and under the limes that shelter Weari-
thorne.

I never thought to find any one with Marget,
she was so usually alone. And I had crossed the
court to her pleasant room in the left projecting
wing, before I heeded that the knitting - song
within was not carried by her shaking treble
alone. Some special gossip, then, — Mally's story,
perhaps

I turned away with a fierce gasp of pain.

In the library, the curtains were not yet drawn,
and I could see Mrs. Lethwaite sitting in the soft
glow of the wax-lights. She looked pale and worn,
as the full blaze fell upon her. But very fair, for
all. I could see that presently in Miles's face, as
he came into the room.

He leaned on the back of her chair, and she
shifted her position slightly, and looked up at him.
That long, full look, — I forgave my enemy much
as I watched it and saw the smile come into Miles's
weary eyes. For her love was great. Could mine
ever have filled its place to him?

It was very bitter, gazing in on all that light and
glow. Not many days ago, I would have watched
with as little thought of any part I might have in

14*

/■••

1 62

WEARITHORNE.

it, as one from a mean garret looks up at the moon
and is the gladder for her splendor. But to-
. night

To-night there is an angry sense of banishment
upon me. And still Miles leans against her chair,
— still he stoops to her with words I cannot catch.
And I grow very weary. Perhaps my position is
a restless one, there on my foothold of the knotted
ivy, and half clinging to the w'ndow-ledge. I grow
so weary, — I draw back

It is but a moment ; and then Mrs. Lethwaite
rises and drops the curtains. Is that the instinct
of her enmity ? Shutting me out into the dark
this night, — coming between, as she had come be-
tween to throw the shadov/ of her guilt across my
way ?

A shadow crosses the curtains once or twice; and
then I wa/^^ no more.

/-U-'

VIII.

Sister, hark! atween the trees cometh naught but summer
breeze ? —

All is gone !
Summer breezes come and go, — Hope doth never wander so,—
No, nor evermore doth Woe.

Dear, that hour, — it seemed my tread stamped the grave-mould

on hopes dead ; —

All is gone ! *.

Was I cold ? — I die not weep ; tears are spray from founts not

deep;
My heart lies in frozen sleep.

Sister, pray for me. Thine eyes glea* like God's own midnight
skies;—

All is gone !
Tuneless are my spirit's chords ; I but look up, like the birds.
And trust Christ to say the words.

IS there in every life a time on which one dares
not dwell, — a dreadful monotony of existence,
in which is no hope of the future, no peace of the
present, and dreariest of all it is to turn and look
back on the past? I have read that life is not so
unequally measured out to us as we would think,
— that as the heart alone knoweth its own bitter-
ness, so we cannot say this man has suffered most
— that has wellnigh escaped pain and loss. It may

(163)

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164

WEARITHORNE.

be so; and yet I think few have passed through
so drear a stretch of days as those which widened
themselves out to weeks and months since that
night I wandered back from Wearithorne.

Down to the lonely Helbeck Lund I had crept
back, — had even fallen asleep, beneath the cover
of a rock, through part of the long hours until
daybreak.

At any other time I might have been afraid, —
have started at the grating of a dead branch down
the crags, or the near soughing of the wind like a
deep breath about me. I would have quaked when
the moon went down behind those cliffs, — I would
have listened motionless, and watched with fright-
ened, straining eyes for something to cross the dense
darkness. For though I was sometimes wont to
go to and fro after nightfall, it was seldom without
a sense of superstitious dread. But that night I
dreaded nothing. It was as if nothing more might
ever befall me. And after a time I slept the sleep
of tter weariness of body and soul.

When Lctty came, and I heard the lowing of the
cows up in the farm-yard, and knew Kester must
be gone to the milking in the Moss-Edge pasture,
I climbed up the cliff and into the house, and so
to my chamber, easily eluding Letty's observation
as she sat with face turned from me on her milking-
stool. And when Kester returned to breakfast, I
came down and took my seat at the table in such
a way that Letty never suspected my forcible

WEARITHORNE.

i6s

ejectment last night. - But although I put a bold
face on it, I did it with a quaking heart. It may-
be my seeming boldness served me in good stead;
for though Kester stared much, and scowled more,
he spoke never a word. Never a word then, and
never a word afterward upon the subject. For,
when all is said, I think he was not absolutely
without some sense of justice. I saw that, some
months after.

But first the autumn and the winter passed. Not
once in all that time did I see Miles or Mrs. Leth-
waite, and but twice or thrice Marge*- climbed up
the Hag to visit me. She never asked me why I
came no longer to the Hall. She was changed
greatly to me. No more biting words, nor sharp,
quick gibes; no more taking me roundly to task
for this or that. Instead, she spoke but little, and
that of the country news alone ; and would sit fol-
lowing my every movement with a strangely wistful
gaze. She irked me in those days. It was as if
she would draw my secret out of me, with those
keen eyes of hers ; as if she would force me to cry
out with my pain. How much she knew I cannot tell.
Perhaps she too had pain to bear; perhaps if I
had given voice to mine, and made her sure of it,
she would have told me something I could see
was on her lips to tell me more than once. But,
be that as it may, her coming did but sting me
with a memory of all I had lost. Even Marget's
steady friendship. Marget, Mrs. Lethwaite, Miles,

i66

WEARITHORNE.

— ^all had some one dearer than myself, — and I
stood so alone. And Marget, seeing that I willed
to stand alone, and that her coming was no com-
fort to me, seldom came.

I went no more over the old path across the
moor. I went nowhere beyond Mallerstang and
Stockdale; and, as Miles went *way so soon (I
had contrived to avoid the farewell he came up to
Mallerstang to say to me), I hardly saw him at
a distance after our parting.

It was in early springtime that I heard the
Master was at Wearithorne again. And it was in
early springtime that another change came to my
life. No real change to me, it is true ; yet, for all
that, startling and great enough.

It was the March Cattle-fair at Sedbergh, and
Kester was always a-gate then, whether he would
buy or sell or not. On no other occasions was he
to be found where it was throng with folk ; but he
seldom missed a fair in all the neighborhood, lest
he should miss the driving of a bargain.

And so he had gone over on foot to Sedbergh,
and coming back had left the main road for a short
cut 'cross fells. The early spring twilight set in
with fog and mist, and the storm rose by midnight.
I s-at up alone in the house-place, to let Kester in.
Rain and wind pattered and wailed along the pave,
but his footsteps were not heard. Kester never
came home that night. As the gray morning wore
away to noon, I became more and more concerned,

WEARITHORNE.

167

thinking perhaps he had money with him, and re-
membering to have seen two doubtful-looking men
with pedlar's packs wandering the day before, down
on the road between Kirkby Stephen and Sedbergh.
I took Rockie with me ; and after long two hours'
wandering off the main road, where, of course, if
anything had happened, he must have been seen
ere this, — after long two hours' wandering over the
gray, wet fells and through the dreary, hopeless
drizzle, Rockie and I found Kester Holme.

There at the western foot of Barfell. Lying on
the heather-bank, face downward in the ling.

And that was all was ever known of that last
night of Kester's life. Whether the mists closed
round him and bewildered him, — whether those
doubtful-looking men had met with him, — no one
could say. There was not even reason to arrest
them on the possibility. I only know that the
men who at my bidding bore him home to Maller-
stang found no money about him. But I cannot
say. Kester was sure-footed mountaineer enough ;
but the mists upon these fells lurk on the edges of
the overhanging cliffs, and many a year have swal-
lowed up their prey.

It is a dreary thing, — a house of mourning like
to that at Mallerstang. Where is the presence of
real grief, there comes the self-absorption which
shuts out the sights and sounds of death. Poor
Kester's face I could not look upon ; and shuddered
as I watched beside the body all the night. And

11 ■

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i68

WEARITHORNE.

then the bier brought in, — the awful sounds that
followed when the coffin was nailed down, and the
poor soul shut out forever from earth. How the
sounds below jarred on me then! They were sup-
pressed, it is true, — less hilarious, and of a graver
tone, as fitted the house of mourning. But still
there was something of merriment, as must needs
be among a throng of good neighbors with abun-
dance of good cheer, and but scant love and regret
for the man whom they were presently to carry to
his other home. I drew a freer breath when Letty
and I stood at the shippon door and watched the
funeral procession winding down the hill. It is a
cruel custom, this, of the women-folk of the house
biding at home. I could not leave one whom I
loved, to go with strangers his last journey, — I must
needs follow him until the turf shuts down between
us, and the rest is Christ's to lead hii on.

Letty told me, as we stood out of view there in the
door, — told me, smoothing her snowy apron down
over her sad-colored gown, and bridling as she
said it, even while the last of the procession could
be seen yet winding down the hill, — that, though
all this had not happened, she could not have been
much longer here with Kester. And when I bluntly
asked her why, regardless of her simper and her
conscious smile, she told me she'd hae getten a
man o' her own soon to keep and fend for, — Davie
o' Burtree-syke was to go up to-morn to speak to
the parson about the speerings :

WEARITHORNE.

169

"Eh, but ye mun come over, lass, to see the
brave new inside plenishing Davie '11 hae getten.
Nobbut I've a deal o' my own, below there i' the
cottage ; but Davie's house is a rare and fine one,
choose whativer ye'd put against it. And Davie,
he's a douce auld-farrand body. He kens my bit
twa prawd acres o' potato ground wad join no that'
ill to his Far-acre field across the syke ; and he sees
it were a kittle cast to be making marlocks at a
feckless lass, i'stead o' taking to himsel' a 'sponsible
body to guide the house. Davie an' me, we dunna
talk a deal o' rubble, but we's *gree reeght well,
for a'."

I looked her full in the face, then turned away,
and went up to my own room, and there wept bit-
terly. Wept long and bitterly, while the time
passed away, and the procession long since reached
the churchyard. I wept for many things. For my
own shamed and darkened life, — for poor forgotten"
Mally, — for all the changed and short-lived memo-
ries of this poor world, where I might well be
blotted out from Miles's thoughts, as Mally from
her lover's. And through all, I wept for Kester,
painful tears of pity for his fate.

And the neighbors said I had done well, when
the will was opened, and it was found he had left
Mallerstang and all to me.

The third day was a Sunday ; and I, restless and
impatient of the quiet of the house, — for Letty took
the whole day to herself, — determined on church-

/•'

I/O

WEARITHORNE.

going. Not because there was any comfort there
for me ; but simply because I must see faces round
me; because I was so shut out from all, in my
drear isolation, that I could not see them round me
otherwise than so.

But before I had made ready for my walk, there
nvas another motive in it. I would go to church,
but not with Letty; I would steal away to the
little moorside kirk, — would see Miles Lethwaite,
myself unseen by him, this once.

Or what if I were seen? I would know in a
glance whether I were receiving neasure for meas-
ure, — whether the cup of bitterness my hand had
suffered to be pressed to Mally's lips, my own must
now drink of.

I would not tread the old familiar way down the
Hag's front, but descended on the Moss-Edge side,
and followed up the syke until it swept round
into Helbeck Lund. I crossed it there, and then
a trickling feeder of the Swale, and was on the
lone moor, gazing, afar off to my left, on the home-
grounds of Wearithorne, the one knot of trees in
all that neighborhood, which for all that bears the
name of Swaledale Forest. In full leaf when I had
seen them last, — now there was in all the gray and
brown of naked boughs and swelling buds but a
break or two of fir-dusk green. I might have known
it would be so ; and yet the change came on me
with a shock, as when one looks on the gray touch
of time in a loved face one has not seen for years.

WEARITHORNE.

171

I crossed the Swale where Bowbridge flings its
slight arrh over. And leaving behind the clump
of cottages, I came to the knoll where the kirk
hides its gray tower in the churchyard yews.

It was a long walk, and I had undertaken it but
late, so that the choir fiddle and bassoon were shrill-
ing out their uttermost as I went in. I entered so
softly that my coming made no stir in the congre-
gation, wont to turn and gaze perhaps more fixedly
than grander folk. And yet they were not inat-
tentive, those simple folk, though here and there
a woman hushed her baby on her breast with a
croon not quite inaudible. But I took no heed
of them that day, more than of a dash of brilliant
color in the dresses, through the "dim religious
light," and of the mingled fragrance of the May,
with the yellow gorse, and the southernwood,
not only " lads'-love and lasses'-delight," but held
to by the hardy hand of many a gray-haired
shepherd.

I stole to my seat in an unoccupied pew near
the door. A pew manifestly encouraging a delin-
quent late-comer such as I ; for it is high, and cur-
tained from observation, while it has a full view of
the uncurtained modernized pews before it. As
my glance wandered over them, I was not long in
finding Miles. .

He was standing during the chant, his head bent
slightly, his eyes fixed on the ground, — fallen into
a reverie so profound that the rustle of his mother's

r t

172

WEARITHORNE.

dress, as she took her seat when the music died
away, roused him with a start.

She gave him a soft smile of reproof, and I saw
him look into her eyes with homage in his own.
Truly she was an angel of goodness to the loyal
son. And I, who knew her well, — even I could
almost be deceived as I sat watching her, and saw
her manifest devotion, and the strict attention she
paid even to the curate's sermon, of which I heard
no word beyond the text: "First be reconciled
to thy brother, and then come and offer thy

gift."

" First be reconciled to thy brother, and then
come and offer thy gift." That same thought had
stood between me and prayer for many a night and
day. Would Heaven accept my gift of adoration,
while I owed Mally the debt of restitution of the
fair name I had stolen from her? And for all, —
for all my remorse, for all my suffering, — I would
not pay that debt. What right had I, then, to
come here and offer any gift upon the altar of the
House of Prayer ? Yet Mrs. Lethwaite was praying,
— not hypocritically, I fully believe, but as if her
prayers were penance for her evil deeds. I, shrink-
ing prayerless in my corner, caught her clear
" We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord," re-
sponsive to :

" That it may please Thee to defend, and provide
for, the fatherless children, and widows, and all who
are desolate and oppressed."

WEARITIIORNE.

173

Her clear, unshaken tone?, It was a mockery
more cruel than that of the Apostle's Christian who
says to the cold and hungry, "Depart in peace; be
ye warmed and filled." For her own hand it was
that had made me desplate and oppressed. And
not me only, but Mally

I forgot Mrs. Lethwaite there, and only remem-
bered my crime. I covered my face with my hands,
and sank back in my own corner. So far my own
in its curtained isolation, that I forgot even the
voices round me. So far my own, shut in yet more
completely by my thoughts, that I started as vio-
lently as if I had thought myself alone in the kirk,
when something softly brushed my hands.

I let them fall, and looked up, trembling at I
knew not what. To find a dimpled arm stretched
out to me over the back of the pew in front ; and
a spicy breath of sweet-gale that just had touched
my cheek.

The little one had clambered up while the mother
knelt at prayers, and had thrust aside the curtains
till her rosy face peeped through. As I looked up
at her now, the roses were all over dimples with
delight. In her innocence of sorrow, she had
thought, most like, that I, with my hands up
before my face, was playing at bo-peep with
her. But some sense of the sacred place was
present with her, for she shook her sunny head
at me.

" Mammy say, * Be quiet wi' 'ee — whisht!' " she

15*

174

WEARITHORNE.

said, in her shrill whisper, laying down the law
for me.

I leaned across to the red, childish lips, which
met mine with brief coy resistance. And then I
knelt there beneath her, and the iittle hand played
with my hair, my kerchief, and fell softly on my
neck. That night, when I let my hair down in my
lonely room, I found a knot of sweet-gale fast in
its braids. I have it now, laid away in my Prayer-
book, at the Litany.

I was not praying then. I only knelt there,
strangely soothed and softened as the time went
by. I gave no heed to what passed round me after
that, until I was startled by the rush of feet, and
lifted my head to see the congregation pouring
down the aisle.

My first thought was of making my escape be-
fore the Lethwaites should come this way. But
too late. The congregation, composed of the
peasants of the dale, made room for them to pass,
and Mrs. Lethwaitc came down the aisle, leaning
on her son's arm, and giving here a smile and there
a nod to more than one pensioner of the House's
bounty. Mrs. Lethwaite is of those who cultivate
courtesy to all men after the manner of the juggler
I once saw at Sedbergh Fair, who, by sleight of
hand and the slowness of one's eye to detect
him, raises a crop of flowers beneath one's glance.
But they are naught The outwa/ i blooming of
true courtesy springs from seeds of kindness fast

L>r-^

WEARITHORNE.

175

bedded in the heart. And Mrs. Lethwaite had not
those.

Me I do not think she saw, as she swept by.
But Miles, by some chance, turned at the door, and
our eyes met. *

With so brief a glance, thr.*- I read nothing in
his. I only saw he moved on more quickly with
his mother ; and I was not slow to interpret that.
The fullest retribution was fallen upon me. The
parting from Miles, — what was that — the never see-
ing him — compared to seeing him turn thus from
me? Fool that I was, to court the blow I might
be sure would fall !

I crept out from my place, the last of all the
congregation. But when I was half-way down the
walk that sloped to the gate, I saw there was quite
a little crowd about it. The Lethwaite carriage
was just driving off, but three or four shandries
and spring-carts waited behind for those of the
country-side who were not too far to come again
to the evening service. Those who were, for the
most part were lingering in the kirkyard, settling
into family conclave round the luncheon-basket,
or lounging upon wall or sunny mound. I, wish-
ing to avoid recognition and comment from the
loiterers at the gate, turned aside into a lonely
corner, waiting.

Very soon the mid-day sun, triumphing over the
lat^ coolness of the morning, made a weariness of
idly wandering among the graves; and I was fain

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176

WEARITIIORNE.

I! I

to rest, withdrawn a space, yet where the babble
of children's voices reached me, though the solemn
church stood half between.

How tranquil it was here! The droning hum
of an early bee that had mistaken the summer in
the sky-blue sweep of violets over the grave at my
foot, seemed a soft echo of the beck that just be-
yond the mossy wall leaped down the sheer steep
that wall overhung, to join the Swale beyond. The
faint flush of the moor broadened about me here;
but farther, Helbeck Lund rose gaunt and bare;
and farther yet, Penyghent and Whernside massed
their burly forms where the glen opens to the
southward. I had followed it to them, forcing my
gaze away from the Lethwaite carriage on the
white road to which the beck dances up gaily, to
shrink coyly back again. And then I had stooped
for a handful of those violets from the grave. I
was kneeling there, plucking at them mechani-
cally, so absorbed in my thoughts that I was just
conscious, not mindful, of some one standing with
folded arms against the outside of the kirkyard
wall. Till now he swung himself over, and it
flashed upon me who it was.

I was not facing him, and so I gathered one
more blossom, and then rose, as if I were not con-
scious of his neighborhood.

He hesitated an instant; then he followed me
out of the gate. I walked on at my usual not
laggard pace, knowing well enough that however

WEARITHORNE.

177

I might hasten he would overtake me, if that were
his will. And he did overtake me on the bridge,
— joined me, and said, quietly, as though we had
met yesterday, —

" You will let me walk home with you?"
"I thought you had driven home with Mrs.
Lethwaite," I said, by way of a commonplace to
reply to his.

" I told her you were here, and I must see you.
Your black dress and your white face would have
haunted me else. I hope you are not angry with
me for venturing to follow you?"

" That the black dress and the white face may
haunt you no longer," I made answer, bitterly.
" You would say a word of sympathy, so that when
you go your way apart, you may forget both. I
thank you. Colonel Lethwaite; but I need no
sympathy. Kester Holme," I added, recklessly,
" was no such friend to me that the color will not
come to my cheeks before many days."
" Nannette, how unforgiving you are !"
"I am unforgiving!" cried I, in my blind pas-
sion. " I have been oppressed, wronged, tempted,
till I'm woe for myself, — there's none else to greet
for me. I am unforgiving! An I'd dared to pray
this morning, kneeling in yon kirk, I must have
prayed those fiery cries of David for revenge upon
his enemies. For retribution, — ay, though it fell
on my own head as well. It is hard, hard, I
shouM suffer alone of all the evil-doers."

178

WEARITHORNE.

■1

\ e

I was not thinking of poor Kcster then, but of
the mother of this man beside me. My eyes were
wandering yonder where her carriage glanced by
ghmpses through the gray avenue of Wearithorne,
as I set foot on the bridge here.

It was not strange Miles should misunderstand
me, — it would not have been strange if he had
shrunk back from me in disgust. But he did not
so. He drew my hand in hi<; arm, with so much
tenderness in his vast pity, that I was not angry
with him for it.

He did not speak at once; and we moved on,
for I had stopped short where he joined me on
the bridge. We had passed some distance on the
moor before he said, leaving rebuke to my own
softened feelings, which he must have read in
humbled look and manner, —

"You can never suffer alone. Your pain is
mine."

My pain? My guilt never could be his, and
that was still the fiercest pang of all.

" Let me go," I moaned. " I am not worth
your care, — nay, you yourself have said it."

" I was mad then. God knows I have suf-
fered enough since to blot out even such words
as those. You forgot them then, Nannette, —
forgive them now. And see, — my darling, see if
in your heart you can find nothing but forgiveness
for me."

Low on my knees since then have I prayed

WEARITHORNE.

179

oftentimes that no such ttirxptation as that might
ever again assail me. For how could I stand
against it? I had nearly yielded then, with the
thought that, Kester dead, and Mrs. Lethwaite
silent for her own sake, Miles might never know,
in taking me, that he took a false-witness to his
arms.

Miles might never know. I looked up into his
face that stooped toward me, — his true eyes, in
which no thought was kept back from me. Could
my married eyes answer them, back with a life-
long lie? Would they never veil themselves in
shame when his should praise me pure and true,
and I remember Mally? Would they not at some
unwary moment yield up all my secret, and then
have to meet his sudden gaze of scorn ?

I bent my head, and swifter than thought my
lips just touched his hand. Just touched it,
humbly, and in homage to his worthiness. But —

" Nannette ! From you !" he cried, almost
angrily.

I wrenched myself free from him.

" Stay," I said, striving to steady my faltering
voice. " I will not attempt to deceive you. I
can not be your wife."

" Can not, Nannette? Say will not, rather."

" Will not, then."

"And why?"

It well might seem to him he had just cause
for anger. It well might seem I had been trifling

r I

1 80

WEARITHORNE.

with him, with shameless coquetry. I could see
chis, so could understand his tone.

" Tell me what you mean," he asked me, pres-
ently. " It is some morbid fancy has taken hold
upon you."

"Some fancy!"

" Tell it me."

If I had but told him, at all hazards, at the first!
But now that Mally was ruined utterly, — now that
it was too late to save her, — that her sister and
her lover were false to her, — now, how could I
tell Miles? And if I were his wife, and if one day
he should see my hand in Mally's ruin, could I
bear the change that surely would creep in his
love, — the scorn of me, — the self-scorn if he still
could love me on? This parting — anything — were
better far than that.

He grasped my hands, and drew me to him,
closer yet.

"Speak out, child. Do not keep me in sich
torment."

The voice was not Miles's voice, in its hoars';
impatience,

" I can not speak out. I dare not tell you any-
thing."

"Dare not?"

His face was gray in its strange pallor. He
searched my soul through and through with those
keen eyes of his that held my own so fast. If I
might have slunk away from them, abased and

WEARITHORNE.

\^-

i8i

wretched that I was ! But I had to front my fate
with what courage I might.

With what courage? I shook and trembled
there before him. j \

" Dare not ? Nannette, have you been false to
me? Can there be anything that binds you to
another man ?"

I was so innocent of such a wrong to him, that
I forgot all else. And he saw I was innocent. For
the cloud had passed from him even before I
answered him :

" None else. I was ne'er bounden to any man."

" Ay. To ifle, Nannette."

I felt my strength all leaving me. I said hur-
riedly, catching at the pledge, as at some stay, —

" Never to you. I — I'll make m^^ vow here now,
— I'll none be your wife."

He lost patience then.

" Is it possible to understand you ? You are free
to marry me, — if ever your fear of Kester parted
us, that is '>ver, and dead nor living can stand
between us. You have kept me waiting in such
pat.ence as I might, till now "

' ' You have forgotten I told you we were parted,"
I interrupted him.

" I remember one thing. It is you who have
forgotten. Till you deny it, I will never give you
up. I remember you said you loved me."

" Did I say that ? But I tell you now "

" For God's sake, speak the truth. What motive

r I

182

WEARITHORNE.

can you have for playing fast-and-loose with me ?
Why did you look at me so, when I turned at the
church-door even now ? No cry could have called

me back more clearly. And why did you

What can you mean ? Your very kiss is here, —
do women stoop thus in mere caprice ?"

" Let me go," I gasped.

I saw then how the angry blood burned in his
brow; and he drew his breath hard through his
set teeth. Presently he spoke :

" I will let you go. But I will have the truth
first. Do you mean you have played me false all
this while, and never loved me? It is this you
mean ? Answer me, — it is this ?"

" It is this."

For my life, I could have done no more than
repeat the falsehood he put into my mouth. I
could not have collected the words myself Only
one thought I could grasp, — one instinct, rather,
— the blind instinct of self-preservation. I must
end this, — escape from him the shortest way, — not
bring down the worst ruin on my head. For if I
do not escape, he will wring from me all the truth.

"You mean, then," he says, speaking in a strange
set tone, " you mean you have trifled with me all
this while ? And now that I am hardly Master
even of Wearithorne, — that po . :rty is come upon
me, — you mean you have given le shy gl- nee and

blush, — ay, and now a look Nannette, if they

did not mean you loved me, then they lied to me."

«■

WEARITHORNE,

183

>»

It is harder than I had thought. That last
strikes home, and I cry out, in reckless bitterness
of pain, —

" It is so easy for you to know all the truth, —
to judge me, — to condemn me as you condemned
poor Mally, innocent though she was."

" You speak confidently."

Confidently ? Desperately, rather. For in spite
of resolves, in spite of fears, I can not part from him
in silence so. I say, —

" Ay, for, — it was I, — I took those papers."

" You !"

He looked at me as if I had suddenly gone
mad. I stood there, clenching my hands together
in the endeavor to speak out, clearly and firmly
and fully :

" I took them. You remember that evening in
the library, when you followed me to the sofa ?"

" I remember."

" I meant to do it even then," — but my breath
failed there, as I glanced at him. *

He did not speak at once. When he did, his
voice was very low, very stern :

** I can not believe it. You, to ruin the girl, body
and soul, perhaps !"

" You must believe it, when I tell you how I
took them."

" That same night ?"

" That same night."

" But there was no time. Mally was in the

• ri

184

WEARITHORNE.

library — and then my mother. I locked the door
just after I took her up-stairs again. She told me
then you had gone home."

He said it doubtingly, as if my story were alto-
gether incredible, — as if I myself had made some
strange mistake. He said it wistfully, eagprly, as
if beseeching me to say he was right.

I hesitated. Then I said, —

" Your mother did not see me in her dressing-
room."

For the woman was his mother. I had looked
up into his set face. I had done harm enough.
Let me at least leave him his faith in her.

" It was before that," I began again, " there in
the library, — the candle did not fall by accident, —
and in the dark I made sure of the papers."

" Nannette, you had those papers when we stood
together in the hall that night ? You had those
papers when I told you how I trusted you, and
prayed you to be true with me?"

" Even then," I answered, steadily. " And I de-
stroyed them, and lost your bank-note — I did not
know what it was then — on the moor's edge where
Mally said she found it."

He turned away from me without a word.

He would have left me so. But I, — I fling my-
self in his path, — I catch at his arm, — I call his
name in a wild sob :

*' Miles, Miles, it was for love of you I did it."

He unwinds my clinging fingers scornfully.

WEARITHORNE.

185

For love of me 1 How often do you think to

deceive me ?

** It is the truth !" I cry. " It was because those
papers might take Wearithorne from you."

" Now we have it !"

He stoops and looks me full in the eyes for the
first time. And he goes on, with slow contempt :

" I begin to understand it now. You had great
care for the Master of Wearithorne. You were will-
ing to wait a month, — two months, — until spring, —
to :3ee if this search after the lost heir would spend
itself And since it has not, — since it is still impos-
sible to say I shall not go forth penniless from the
old place to-morrow or next year, — since it is im-
possible to say that, you are ready at last to say
instead, * I played you false, — I never loved you.' "

" I was false to you then, Miles Lethwaite, —
false to you only then. For I have always loved
you. Nay, but you shall hear me ! You cannot
leave me so."

In my quick movement, — for he is going from
me, quitting me without one farewell word or
glance, — the little knot of violets I had gathered
from the grave falls from my bosom at his foot.
I see his glance follow them. And he sets his
heel upon them, grinding them down ijito the
moist bud. At that, I steal one look up to his
white, prssionate face. It is all over with me
now.

Yet I say, faintly, —

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1 86

WEARITHORNE.

If you could believe me-

»i

" If I could believe you ! What am I to believe?

tl am free to choose, indeed, — ^your words now,

— ^your words ten moments since, — your little

comedy in the library that night, — ^your tragedy

now ?"

Then, when he has no answer, very coldly:

" Nannette, I have been a fool once in my life,
but I am not altogether mad."

I did not answer him one word. Perhaps I
could literally not have moved, have spoken. I
was as one paralyzed by the horror of a blow that
is to fall.'

It was not long in falling. He turned sharply
on his heel and strode away. But while I still
stood there, stunned utterly, he turned again, came
near to me, and took my face in his two hands,
looking full ihto it.

I did not seem to care, — not feel. I heard the
beck ring out beside us there. My eyes, uplifted,
not to Miles, took note of a swallow waving his
flight overhead, the one blot on the blue. I re-
member that slow, floating motion. I never shall
forget the breath of the white woodruff in which
a bee was humming at our feet. They were all so
far from me ; I was so far from myself that I re-
member even wondering what it would be to-
morrow, when I could think, could feel. I even
heard Brownie treading down and croppinfr the
tufted grass along the marge, a few yards off. But

WEARITHORNE.

187

more clearly than that, I remember listening to the
beck, whose gurgle came, a mockery of mirth,
between his words :

"What could one trust, if not such eyes as
these, — so frank a seeming brow, — lips that show
as pure and truthful as a child's ? But I will let
you go, as you have said. And one day, — I know
it even now, — one day I shall find it in my heart
to be glad you have denied me that wretched love
in which is no trust."

I did not blench, not quail. Passive and mute
and still, I never stirred the while he kissed me
on lips, cheeks, and brow. Kissed me, not ten-
derly, reverently, as he had the once before, but
with a passion which left me faint and breathless
when suddenly he put me from him.

I, toq, went my way, slowly and painfully, be-
yond the beck, toward home. I did not heed that
Brownie followed, — that he thrust his head against
my shoulder as we went. Brute sympathy and
love, — we reach out after them with a caress in
our careless hands, in hours of hope, or gladness,
or light-heartedness. But in the dark

It was so dark there in the noontide. I could
hardly see Miles passing by, along the farther
side, where the beck stretched out between. So
wide, it seemed to my reeling senses to yawn be-
tween us as a gulf. No arm might reach across it
now. No passionate word, no cry of pain, draw
either of us over.

i88

WEARITHORNE.

When the weary day wore by to evening, I
roused myself, and went to milk the cattle lowing
in the yard. I had but set the milking -pails
beside the gate, and was stooping to unlatch it,
stretching first my hand to Jetty, with the salt I
had brought for her, when I heard a footstep on
the court-yard rock.

I so nearly faced her, that I did not need to turn
my head, in order to see who was coming. And,
as if I had not seen her, I continued to lean over
the wall, and to give my hand to Jetty. She
should see me as I was, — the milkmaid, not the
Lethwaite.

"Annot!" •

The voice was shaking and irresolute. I turned
and faced her.

"Annot, I have climbed up all this way to speak
with you. Will you not come in with me, some-
where that we may talk quietly ?"

" Say on, Mrs. Lethwaite. Mallerstang Hag is
lonely enough. We shall not be overheard, unless
by Jetty here."

If I was insolent, it must be owned, at least, I
had good cause. Why should she come to seek
me now, — now when it was all too late to save me
from the gulf into which she had suffered me to
plunge ?

But if I was insolent, she was strangely humble.
She came and stood beside me, leaning against
the wall, too, but at safe distance from Jetty's

WEARITHORNE.

189

suddenly lifted horns. I had stooped for another
handful of salt, and kept my face to Jetty still.

"Annot, what have you done to my son ?" Mrs.
Lethwaite asked me, suddenly, after a pause.

" What have I done to your son, Mrs. Leth-
waite?"

"I know he went back to the church to you,
Annot. He came home looking wellnigh as if
his death-blow had been struck him. A mother's
eyes cannot be blinded. * I have come to you to
know why it is so with him."

I did not turn toward her, but spoke very
quietly:

" Your son loves me, Mrs. Lethwaite."

I heard her draw her breath hard. Then she
said, as quietly as I had, —

"Well?"

"And I told him to-day I would never be his
wife."

Another long breath; I knew that was a sigh
of relief. But softer thoughts prevailed, and she
said, presently, —

" Miles loves you very truly, Annot."

" Not more truly than I him."

"How, then, can you bear to make him
wretched?"

"Because I do love him," I answered her. "Be-
cause I have some regard for his honor."

"His honor?"

I turned upon her then with bitter emphasis :

190

WEARITHORNE,

" His honor. Is not the wife's the husband's ?
Is it, do you think, no taint on him to give his name
to a thief and a false-witness ?"

" For Heaven's sake, Annot !"

I could see she was greatly shocked. Perhaps
she had not accustomed herself to face the truth, —
to put it in those words. But I had, and I repeated
them again.

" How can you say such dreadful things ?" she
asked, with changing color.

" Because they are the truth. Because I will
not shame a man like Miles Lethwaite by blinding
my own eyes with a lie. Because I cannot stand
beside him as a wife should, with no concealment
between me and him."

She was leaning there against the stone wall,
averted from me. Yet I could see how ashen pale
she was, how her lip quivered in the dainty profile,
and how the slender, gloved hands trembled, folded
together on the wall. Were softer thoughts for
Miles and me then warring with her care for self?
I did not know the woman even yet. I remem-
bered how she had clung to me in her hour of suf-
fering, how her head had lain upon my arm, her
restless fingers clasped my own. A softer feeling
stole over me, — a wild hope, — and at its bidding I
spoke :

" There is but one way, Mrs. Lethwaite. If Miles
could know all ! If you would tell him all! He
might forgive me then, for your sake, seeing how

- H

WEARITHORNE.

191 -

the wrong was done and unconfessed for you. He
must forgive you, for you are his mother, — you too
sinned for him. Ah I if you would "

My passionate pleading was cut short by the
slightest of involuntary shrugs of Mrs. Lethwaite's
stately shoulders. It said plainly enough that she
was listening with impatience, and with not one
movement of sympathy. And, as I broke off, she
turned her cold face slowly round to me :

" You, then, would deal him a heavier blow than
all ?" she said. " Can you think his mother's honor
touches him less nearly than his wife's ? But it is
in your power, of course, yourself to tell him all.
Only remember, I did not bid you do this wrong
to the girl Mally. You might have cleared her.
All I bound you to was your promise to spare
Miles. It was not for me to betray you. It was
not I lost the note for which she was found guilty.
I had nothing to do with that wrong."

Was it even so ? Before my weary eyes — weary
with striving to find my way through the thick
darkness — flashed back every scene when I had
watched mother and son together, — every glance
of trustful, loving admiration I had seen him give
her. Could there in truth be any heavier blow than
this ? And she had had nothing to do with this
wrong ? Literally, it was true. I had seen to-day
that it was possible to clear Mally without impli-
cating Mrs. Lethwaite. Seen to-day, — too late.
Might I not have seen before, had not self-love

r I

192

WEARITHORNE.

blinded me? Poor Mally! Her part in all this
— her right to exculpation — had been forgotten in
the tumult of selfish personal feeling and in the
longing to shield Miles from pain. And then :

"Your promise, Annot!" Mrs. Lethwaite cried,
her face and manner changing as my silence alarmed
her. " Have you forgotten that? And will you
break it? Annot! Annot! have mercy, — not for my
sake, but for Miles's. You promised me "

"And I shall keep my promise."

I did not think it needful — as it would be vain
— ^to humiliate myself by telling her how I had
already kept it this day. I will not repeat the fer-
vent thanks which followed, — the implorings, striv-
ing to be cordial, yet faltering in every breath, that
I would forget all, would come to her, and let her
show her gratitude all her life long to her son's
wife. They filled me then with pent-up fury, as
even now they make my lip quiver, my hand shake
with wrath while I set this down. It is but a black
record, that which writes down all this time. But
this one whiter line there is in it, — ^that there was
no regret for my confession, but only cold disdain,
as I listened to all her prayers, all her promises
that even as I had kept her secret, so would she
keep mine, — that Miles should never know aught
of his wife

I drew my hands away from her at that last
word, and turned my back on her, and went my
way into the house-place, letting the door slam to

WEARITHORNE.

193

behind me. It was not lady-like ; it was not court-
eous. But what else was one to expect from a
Nannette o' Kester o' Mallerstang? Standing as
I did upon the hearth, yet where the window gave
me a full view, myself unseen, of Mrs. Lethwaite,
I could read that thought in her face.

Her glance just wandered over the homely house;
then to the milking-stool and pail standing where
I had set them down. Then her eyes fell to her
gloved hand, — the hand mine, perhaps, had stained
in her clasping. And, with a faint smile of calm
disdain upon her haughty lips, she moved on,
across the courtyard, picking her dainty way down
the rough steep. Perhaps it was as well, — her Miles
could not long regret a little rustic, rude and sim-
ple and untaught as this.

IX.

II .

Never a moment

Silence, night or day, —
Can there be quiet

Under churchyard clay ?
Will not her footfall

Among the grasses sweep,
And shake my heart beneath.

And wake from sleep ?

TN the light of to-day, as clear and broad it floods
my window here in the sunset and throws its
unsparing glare full on the record, I have written
the last page of my life. It ended there. The
remainder is but such a waiting as of the souls
under the altar, crying, How long ? how long ?

Prisoners of hope. But what is still for me to
hope, — or yet to fear ? When a deluge has once
swept over one's life and covered even its serenest
heights, there is little need of a bow of promise to
tell one at last, from the dispersing clouds, that no
storm again may desolate as that has desolated.
Over the bleak waste now, storm after storm might
roll, and find there nothing to uproot.

In the light of to-day, I have stood face to face
with my past, and have blinded my eyes no more.

Mally, — Mally's wrong The shadow of Weari-

(194)

WEARITHORNE.

195

thorne vanishes from between me and the truth,
like the misty scene of a dream out of which I am
awakened. But the wrong to Mally darkens in the
light, a tangible reality, the darker for the years
that stretch between.

How many years ago ? They would not count
by decades; they have not dimmed the gold of my
hair, greatly faded out the color from my cheek.
The mirror told me that, this morning, when I
sought another answer to my query if I yet were
growing old. Row long ? how long ? I have so
many years to live, with my frame the mountain
air has braced ; my step as active up the mountain
paths ; my pulse that beats as strongly, never flut-
tering, nor failing me. And with my weary heart.

And yet I have no right to so weak lamentation
and complaining :

*« The thorns which I have reaped, are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."

They have torn me, and I bleed; and yet life has
not all been one wide, gaping wound. I have had
no right to expect balm of soothing; and yet balm
has come to me.

It is an easy life I lead. My cheery little maid-
of-all-work comes up day by day from her mother's
cottage which once was Letty's, hard by Davie o'
Burtree-syke's, down in the dale below ; I have oc-
cupation enough in directing my shepherd, and in

196

WEARITHORNE.

the superintendence of my dairy, — which super-
intendence in cheese-making season develops into
more activity; and I aye go up alone to Moss-Edge
for a day or two after the peat-cutting. I have
many a volume of my own, too, now, besides this
stained and weather-beaten, lying always here upon
my desk. And now and then in the lone evenings
Marget brings her knitting-work, and, though the
talk between us is constrained, she manages to let
fall some word of her latest tidings of the Master
of Wearithorne. She came oftenest after he had
gone back to his regiment in India, and that awful
dread of battle was upon us. But seldomer, now
that the war is over, and we are once more breath-
ing freely, and with honors and promotion he is
again in London, where his mother braves it with
the bravest of the ladies there.

But there is yet a greater soothing than the hush
of my daily life can bring. It is the comfort in my
power to give to here and there a suffering soul
around me. Yet in this there is the same pang
which strikes through everything in my whole life.
I never give away a bannock or a half-crown — I
never smooth a pillow for the aching temples of a
sufferer — I never kneel beside a death-bed with a
last prayer for the parting soul — without a memory
of one whose honest portion in this world I stole
away, — whose pillow my hand made all rough with
thorns, — ^whose parting soul, perhaps, may ere now
have fainted away in the worn body, with no friend

WEARITHORNE,

197

to give a word of help or comforting. And yet,
what can I do? Once the path was clear enough,
but when I shut my eyes to it, I lost it.

I tried to find it again, indeed, before I sat down
helplessly in this still life of mine. I went to Man-
chester, — to Halifax, — to York, — spending drear
months in trying to glean tidings of poor Mally in
the factories. Here and there I found MMos had
been before me ; but Mally I never found. The
Hag was altogether unbearable to me in those
days. It was haunted by the mem >iy ot my
wrong to her, and I went forth, hoping to leave
that memory behind me. But it would not be left
behind. It followed me out into the great bustling
world, and, when I thought it gone, made its
presence known in some trivial daily occurrence.
I might have looked that so it would be. There
is a twice-told tale of Naunty Marget's, of the gob-
lin Hob-o'-th'-Hurst, who by his uncanny pranks
drove the old farmer forth at last from the home-
stead. Away jogged the good man, his worldly pos-
sessions all heaped up round him in his tumbrel-
car, — jogged on, and met a neighbor by the way.
" And so. Kit, ye're flitting?" called the neighbor.
'* Ay, ay, we's flutting," cried Hob's voice, with hol-
low echo, from the churn. So we were flitting, that
haunting memory and I, — until like the farmer I
turned and gat me back to the familiar roof-tree,
wearily resolved no more to flee that inevitable
fellowship.

17*

r-i

iq8 wearithorne.

And so the days go on. But aching doubts
will come in now and then, and shake my very
*soul. Doubts stronger sometimes, and with yet a
fiercer pang, since I have set down all upon these
pages. I thought, when I began, to bring out
brighter memories around me. But the darker
shadows creep in closer round the setting sun,
yonder beyond the dusky line of Helbeck Lund.
There is one golden glory lingering yet. One
golden memory of Miles's love. It lights these
pages as it shines across them even now. And
now I close the book. The after-leaves are blanks.
No new page to be turned, until Death's own hand
turn it, writing there : -

J^^e-^ <:2^

•I

T NEVER thought to have turned another page
A in my life's story. I thought it was to flow on
silently to the great Finis. I laid my book away,
here in my desk, and the days came and went, as I
looked for them still to come and go until the end.
But just one week ago to-day

One week ago to-day. How long it seems!
I could believe it years, since I came home in the
early sunset from my ramble down in Helbeck
Lund.

I did not know why my spirits flagged as I
clambered up the steep. I only felt the vague
dulness stealing* over me, and saw that it was
growing dark, and shivered in the chilly air, and
knew the dreary home-coming awaiting me. Not
even old Reekie now, to watch whining for me on
the height. There was a feeble flicker from the
house-place, — too feeble to bring good cheer. No
one to be seen, — nothing heard, unless my own
foot on the rocky court, and the hoarse waters
down below the Hag; or, as I neared the house,
the occasional stamping of the one cow still for
convenience kept up in the straw-littered farm-
yard.

(199)

r^i

. I

200

WEARITHORNE.

A faint flicker from the house-place, — ^the door
of the house-place open wide. I quickened my
pace at that. I had let my little maid go home an
hour ago, and myself had closed the door behind
me after her. How came it open, then? My
threshold was not greatly oftener crossed than
Kester's in the time before.

As I paused on it, I saw a figure crouched be-
fore the low peat fire on the hearth. At the sound
of my footfall, the rustle of my dress, she started
up, staggered toward me a few steps, and fell to
the floor in a half swoon. *

I had dragged forward one of the benches to
the fire, raised the poor shadowy burthen on it,
and was kneeling beside, chafing the thin, cold
hands, before I knew her. For then the lids lifted
themselves wearily, and the ghost of Mally stared
out on me, hollow-eyed and wan.

I do not know what I said, wKkt I did. It was
absolute terror seized upon me. If the girl had
come back in her winding-sheet, the grave-mould
clinging to her shroud and hair, the grave-damps
to her wasted hand, my heart could not have sunk
within me in more helpless horror. Till the gasp-
ing voice roused me :

"Letty would none o* me; and Davie, — I
couldna stay to hae him fleer at me. Fse gae
back the gate I came to-morn, but I reckoned
thou's let mt rest here for a gliff."

I could not answer her. Unless it were an answer

WEARITHORNE.

201

to bring down my pillow there for her, to wraip
her warmly, — she was shivering in the summer
evening air, — and to give her the cup of tea which
she drank eagerly, famishingly, — holding my hand
the while, and murmuring, as she sank back on
her pillow, —

" Eh, but thou's rare an* good, lass, — rare an*
good."

Rare an' good! The faint voice stabbed me
through with an exceeding bitter pang. I could
have bowed down there before her and confessed
all. But I saw she could not bear it. And, as the
lashes drooped again over the white cheeks, I
stole out into the open air.

The girl was more than weary, I could see that
nght well. She shivered, yet there was a burning
heat about her hand, a strange bright glitter in her
eyes, that made me sure it would be morrows
more than one before she could go back the gate
she came. Something must be done for her more
than I knew how to do.

But how could I leave her alone, to go so far as
even the nearest apothecary? And Letty, — if I
went down to her, could she be prevailed upon to
do my errand for me? She could better do it
than my own little maid below there ; and if she
hesitated, at this moment I felt strong enough
to prove to her Mal'"'j innocence with my own
guilt.

With this resolve, I went round to that side of the

r I

: \

202

WEARITHORNE,

Hag which sloped down to Moss-Edge Hollow.
The sun had sunk now below Helbeck Lund. Its
glow was still on the Hag's brow, but the long
shadows drifted longer on these eastern slopes.
Not so dark, however, but that I could see half-
way down the descent some one — a man — stand-
ing indistinct in the gray dusk.

I readily imagined he could be no other than
Davie o* Burtree-syke, driven hither, perhaps, by
the calm, discursive sermon I could figure Letty
preaching while she stirred the " parritch," with
poor Mally for her text. Driven out, perhaps, with
sheer weariness, — perhaps with a mournful memory
of the girl, — certainly with pity enough in him to
do my bidding for her. I stood a moment on
the brow, shading my eyes with my hand from the
glow here, the better to see into the dusk there.
Should I call or beckon him up? The shorter
way would be to go down to him.

The shorter way, especially if one took it as I
did. For . I ran swiftly down the slope, and was
■almost close upon him, when he lifted himself from
his lounging posture against the rock and turned
to front me directly.

No Davie o' Burtree-syke, — but Miles Leth-
waite.

He lifted his hat with grave courtesy, and would
have moved away. But I sprang forward then.
He would help me. I dared not shrink, and wait
for other aid.

Ill

WEARITHORNE.

203

" Colonel Lethwaite, I — I did not know you, — I

thought How can I ask you ? — ^but I must

have help. Some one — ^yes, it is Mally — is up
yonder at the Hag, ill, dying perhaps. I have no
one to send for a doctor, and I dare not leave her."

" Mally !"

I wrung my hands impatiently.

"If you would go!"

He quitted me without another word.

I did not stay to watch him. I knew so well he
was gone for help. I went up again to the house-
place, and began my helpless, weary watch.

I believe, even then, wellnigh hopeless as well.
I sat there by her side, and never moved my eyes
from her still face. She slept, and there was no-
thing heard in the room but her fluttering, irregu-
lar breathing, the crackling of the blazing peat now
and again, the rushing of the beck down in the
Lund, and the tick-tick of the old clock on the
stair. After a time, that ticking seemed to rise up
and drown all the others. Was it measuring out
the moments of poor Mally's life ? Even now, —
was she breathing even now ?

"^ was leaning toward her, listening fearfully, —
listening so intently that I never heard, until a step
was close behind me. I turned then, and saw Miles
Lethwaite.

" I sent a trusty messenger," he said, in a sub-
dued tone. " You cannot blame me if I could not
leave you here alone."

204

WEARITHORNE.

! t

Blame him ? But I did not venture to thank
him. I only dropped my face against Mally's pil-
low, hiding it there from him.

And my remorseful fear for the faint life breath-
ing out here beside me was even stronger than the
sense of Miles's nearness. Life in the presence of
Death, — how it all sinks to nothingness !

I had almost forgotten he was there, until, as
time went by, he came to me, not touching me, but
bending near, and saying low, —

" It is the doctor's step, no doubt. Be yourself,
Nannette ; be calm and strong to meet him."

I was calm. My trouble lay too deep to ruffle
my manner. I stood waiting at the foot of the
bench until the doctor should come in and give his
verdict.

What did he say ? How could I listen to it ?
I only know — I remembered it afterward, though
I hardly was aware of it then — ^that Miles sud-
denly came close to me, putting his arm across
the chair-back before which I stood. Was there
something in my face to call him there ? I only
know that I did brace myself to hear every word
of the directions the doctor gave. They were few
enough. " It will not be for long," I heard him say.

I stood there still, and listened to his step pass-
ing out on the stone court. And then Miles came
again, and said to me, —

"He says she can be moved. Shall I carry
her up-stairs for you ?"

WEARITHORNE.

205

I could not answer him, but for reply took up
the candle and the pillow when he raised her in
his arms and followed me out from the house-
place up to my own room. He laid her gently on
the bed there, while I set the candle near, upon my
desk.

" Do you know what is to be done for her?" he
asked me as we stood together by the bed.

Mechanically I repeated all the doctor had said.

" That is right. And now I will go send Marget
to you. She will help you, will stay with you
until "

He broke off there. He could not say to me,
" until Mally dies." I put in, hurriedly, —

" Not to-night, — to-morrow; but to-night I must
be alone. No, do not urge me. I tell you I shall
go mad if I am not left in quiet."

" To-morrow morning, then."

In turning, he brushed against the desk upon its
stand. It shook unsteadily ; I reached out to stop
the candle, and the book which aye lies on my desk
was jostled to the floor.

He stooped for it ; I hardly heeded. But when
I saw his start as he replaced it, I knew it was my
poor little weather-stained volume of poems, — his
sole gift of long ago.

Let it be. What if he did see how it was treas-
ured ? J was past caring now.

He had put the book down as if it had stung
him. But I was past being stung by that. There

206

WEARITHORNE.

was nothing I took reckoning of, save the changes
in the wan face on the pillow.

And so I did not clearly know when Miles quitted
me. I did not know anything that night, but,
strangely enough, the hours for the powders the
doctor had left me. I heard when the stair-clock
rang them out, and I moved then — never any time
but then — from my crouching posture down by
Mally's bedside, — from my watching of her with
eyes wide and dry.

And then the candle flickered in the socket, and-
grew wan in the gray dawn that stole in through
the half-shut window. Mally was sleeping now,
and I crept out^down-stairs. He said he would
send Marget this morning. Would she be coming
now ? For, standing up there at that window, I had
caught sight of an indistinct shadow, as of some
one just moving along the corner of the house.

" Marget, is it you ?"

I was standing on the outer threshold of the
house-place, leaning against the door-post, for a
dizziness came over me, and I was fain to steady
myself there. When the shadow hesitated ; came
direct this way ; and :

" Is there any change ?" Miles Lethwaite asked
me, quickly.

I shook my head, and then I faltered, —

" Marget will not come to me ?"

" Surely she will. I have no doubt she will be
here presently."

WEARITHORNE,

207

"But if she does not? O, why did you not
bring her?"

He did not answer. And looking up at him, his
worn face, his hair and beard and dress damp with
the night-dews and the morning mists, I saw he had
shared my watch with me, — he without, I within.
The first sob that had come to me in all my dry-eyed
misery throbbed in my throat then ; but I choked
it back. It was not for me to weep for Mally.

" Did you know you were watching with a mur-
derer ?" I asked, in a voice which sounded hollow
and strange to my own ears.

"I know," he said.

He would not cloak my guilt to my own eyes
nor his ; but he did not turn from me at that word.
There was a yearning pain in his eyes that met
mine steadily. I knew if he condemned me, there
was a bitterness as of condemning himself Why
should any words more be spoken between us ? I
turned to go to my place up-stairs again.

But there fell another footstep up the court.
Marget's ? The doctor's returning ? For it was a
heavier than a woman's tread.

And then a man came slowly round the gable.
He brushed past me into the house-place, stood
there looking round as if he had expected to find
some one, and then turned to me abruptly :

" Hae ye, too, sent her off?"

No need for me to press my finger on my lips as
I motioned him to follow. That he understood

r I

208

WEARITHORNE.

me at once, I could see from the sudden paling of
his sunburnt face. He followed me with labored
noiselessness up the stone stairs, and on, through
the door of my room which I had left unclosed.

But, noiseless though we were, the girl stirred
while we stood there beside her. Her eyes wan-
dered round the room ; then fixed themselves on
him.

It was a long, still gaze, wistful and wondering,
and never changing. But his eyes that answered
it, changed every instant with the angry, scornful,
pitying thoughts that thronged each other in them.

And she spoke, — I hear the faint, low, quivering
tones even yet :

" I kenned he'd look at me so. I thought I'd
hid mysel' so as he'd ne'er find me out. How
could he win here o' this wise, to threep it at me?
Will the fever hae him, too ? — he be clemmed an*
drouthed like me."

Then with a sharp, quick wail :

" He ne'er looked so at me, — it is his spirit ! It
grows so dark here under the sod, — ^but I can see
the corpse they streaked beside me last night i'
the damp cellar. Davie, man ! didna one say 'at
Letty an* thou, — I — I dunna rightly know, — I's
that wore out *'

Slower and slower the words came, — lower and
lower, — and the lids drooped again over the tired
eyes. Davie stirred then for the first time. He
set his teeth hard, and I heard him mutter, —

I:l

WEARITHORNE.

209

" Nay, I'll none forgie her. SheVe a spoiled niy
life an' her own, — I'll none forgie her."

At that she opened her eyes again. They sought
him with that same strange, wistful gaze. I think
now, she had not heard, not understood. But I
could bear it no longer. As he was turning away
sharply, hurriedly, afraid to trust himself, I put
my hand on his sleeve :

" You have nothing to forgive her. It is I
spoiled your life and hers."

He stared at me, and would have moved away,
as if it were not worth his while to listen to a girl's
vain babble. But I did not remove my clasp. He
should hear what I had to say :

" It is I. Mally is innocent. She never took the
money. It was I, — I took it away."

"You!"

The fury gathering in his eyes would have made
me tremble at another moment. Now, it seemed
there was nothing left for me to fear. But the w'>'-d
was a threat. He shook off my hand; his face
was dark with rage. But I did not quail because
of that. It was because I saw, blacker and more
appalling than ever, the fulness of my wrong.

My shuddering limbs refused to support me.
The room reeled before me. I was fain to sink
down on the chair Miles placed for me, when he
came forward and stood between Davie and me.

I think I had even then passed away from Davie's
mind as entirely as if I had never been. He had

18*

/•)

2IO

WEARITHORNE.

turned to Mally again, standing near, but not stoop-
ing toward her, and never moving his eyes from
'the still face.

He never stirred, save now and then a strong,
sharp shudder shook his powerful frame as if it had
been a leaf. He stood there still; until at last:

" Lassie !" he said, brokenly, — " little lassie ! say
but ye forgie me !"

Her blue eyes looked up to his, but there came
no answer into them. Was she already so near
the opening gate of the spirit-land that she could
only look back her last upon a distant, indistinct,
and shadowy earth, all its voices dying off from
her on her far height ?

" Little lassie !"

The words groaned forth again were the only
words that broke the stillness. We stood there,
never moving, any of us. It seemed a long time
passed away, and then another stealthy tread came
up the stair, and Marget was among us.

And we waited in the silent chamber; waited
until it should be the chamber of death. We all
of us felt that hush. We all of us felt that we and
our earthly agitations and emotions were as nothing
here. There is a time for grief, — there is a time
for remorse, — ^but that time is not the tranquil
death-hour.

After awhile her glance roved restlessly about
the room, and her lips moved. Just moved, — so
faint and still the slow words came :

WEARITirORNE.

l;i

211

" Will they ne'er rest, the weary, weary vheels ?
They's wear my life out, wi' their click-clack, click-
clack, on an' on. 0, 1 think an Davie kenned "

It was the stair-clock, ticking out the weary
seconds as they went. Not many more of that
poor life to measure now. For Marget had gone
forward suddenly, had raised the head on her strong
arm

I think I went stupid after that. I can hardly
remember anything, save of moving about me-
chanically at Marget's bidding ; until this morning.

Marget and I had been passing in and out of the
■ juse-place, where the neighbors were assembled
for the burying, and bearing in the beef and beer
and burial-buns to the little tables set out here
and there. I had been back and forth, never seeing
any one there, never hearing anything; until :

" Ay, Letty be a sponsible body enow, an' 'twere
a vast o' pity as Mally werena one o' t* sort. Ye
see, a' her trouble were o* the web o' her own
weaving. It were a very deal o' money "

"Ay, ay."

I set my tray down suddenly. I glanced over
where Davie itood alone in the deep window, his
rugged profile gray and stern and still as if he had
been struck with death. He had not heard the
lowered comment, any more than Mally in her
coffin half seen through the open door into the
inner room. Would he not hear, — not speak to

RfJINHHIIigi

212

WEARITHORNE.

right her? Ah, I think he knew just then but of
one wrong to her, — ^the short-coming of his own
faith.

I gathered all my strength. I went forward,
standing before them all, yet seeing nothing but
that half-open door, and stern, stiii Davie, his lone
in the window.

" It was never Mally took that money, — it was
I "

I never heeded the stir and comment round me,
— the curious questions, — the sneers looked and
uttered. I stood in the midst of them all, alone,
as I had always been. When I felt my hand
drawn in a strong arm; and, leaning upon Miles,
I faced them.

" It is not for us to judge, who are not as God,
to know the whole," he said, his voice overbear-
ing all the tumult. And, while there fell sudden
silence, he led me away, shutting the door fast
between me and their judgment.

It was very good in, Miles, I felt, — very noble
and true-hearted. But it was pain to me to lean
on him thus, feeling all the while, as I was feeling,
that it was out of his great compassion, nowise out
of his trust in me, that he had spoken for me. I
drew my arm from his as we reached the foot of
the stairs, and would have gone without a pause
up to my chamber. But he stopped me.

"It is not for us to judge," he said again. "I
feel that bitterly enough to-day. But you, Nan-

WEARITHORNE.

213

nette, — have you judged me and condemned me
utterly?"

I could not speak. I stood there, leaning on
the balustrade, shivering and trembling as I lis-
tened to him. They were far-off tones, — the voice
of love calling across the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. It cannot always call us back.

He laid his palm on my hand that rested on the
balustrade, while he said, huskily, —

" My darling shall not think now, but rest. I
will come for my answer to-morrow. God in
heaven have her in His keeping !"

In heaven, in His keeping ?

The house is very quiet now. Marget, too,
went to the burying, — coming up one moment to
my room, stooping over and covering me where I
lay on the bed, and saying, tenderly, she would be
back very soon to stay with me. I moved a little
from her as she spoke, and hid my folded hands
from hers beneath the pillow. For if indeed this
throbbing pulsing in wrist and temples means the
fever, why should she stay with me yet ?

I have been up since they all left, leaning over
my desk, adding these few pages. For the still-
ness was unbearable as I lay there, thinking, think-
ing. Miles bade me not think, but rest. How is
it in the grave ? Is there no thought in that long
rest ?

My good auld Naunty Marget left my Prayer-

< i

214

WEARITHORNE.

book on the bed beside me, open at the Burial
Service. She must have known the words well, it
would speak to me:

" In the midst of life we are in death : of whom
may we seek for succor, but of Thee, O Lord,
who for our sins art justly displeased?

"Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most
mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver
us not into the bitter pains of ete*-nal death.

" Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts;
shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayer ; but spare
us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy
and merciful Saviour, Thou most worthy Judge
eternal."

Is there, then, forgiveness for me ? Mally's lips
have closed for evermore without that word ; but
has God let her send <his message from her grave?

Life were worth living so, — or death worth
dying.

Which is mine?

Marget can tell me, it's like. She'll no be much
longer now. So I must close my book, — lay it
away. It were such an old, old friend. I'll wait,
— and bid her destroy it, if

How the letters swim before me! — the room
grows dizzy. If Miles

THE END.

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