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 GOD'S FAILURES
 
 By THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Life in Arcadia (Arcady Library). Cr. 8vo. 
 5^. net. With Illustrations by Patten 
 Wilson. 
 
 A pleasanter book it would be hard to find amongst 
 recent literature.' — The Speaker. 
 
 ' A work which only a writer of genuine imagination 
 could produce.' — Publisher s Circular. 
 
 The Wonderful Wapentake. Cr. 8vo. 
 ^s. 6d. net. With Illustrations by J. Ayton 
 Symington. 
 
 Mr. Fletcher has, in these delightful sketches of 
 rural life, proved himself no unworthy successor of 
 Jefferies. ' — XVhitehall Review. 
 
 ' A book to reserve for one's quietest and best mo- 
 ments. The author is a lover of Nature, and has studied 
 her moods as sympathetically as ever the late Richard 
 Jefferies did.' — The Star. 
 
 Ballads of Revolt. Sq. 32mo. a. 6d. net. 
 
 London : JOHN LANE, The Bodley Head
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
 
 TO 
 
 MY DEAR WIFE

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIGHT O' LOVE I 
 
 THE LAST OF THE DRINGS 1 3 
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 26 
 
 THE VOW 38 
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 56 
 
 POOR DANIEL 68 
 
 PARTED 79 
 
 THE OMEN 89 
 
 THE EVE OK THE WEDDING 97 
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL Ill 
 
 Luke's love 127 
 
 the act of god 137 
 
 the beatific vision i49 
 
 the price of confession 157 
 
 the last look round 1 67
 
 LIGHT O' LOVE 
 
 There suddenly came upon her, as she stood 
 in the glare and horror of the London mid- 
 night, an intense longing to go back to the 
 little village. For a moment she closed her 
 eyes to the glitter of the lamps, her ears to 
 the jests and blasphemies of the mob that 
 surged about her. Again, as in a dream, she 
 heard the birds singing and chirping in the 
 garden gay with apple-blossom ; again, as in 
 a rare vision, she saw the low hills wrapped 
 in the blue-grey mist of early morning, and 
 beneath them the winding stream that girt 
 the village as with a silver belt. She smelt 
 the smell of the fields, the divine fragrance of 
 the brown soil turned up by the glittering 
 ploughshare, the scent of leaves that lie thick 
 and heavy in wood and lane when autumn 
 comes, the perfume of new-made hay, the 
 odour of grass and hedgerow when the April 
 
 A
 
 2 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 showers have fallen upon them. And through 
 all she caught the sound of village bells — 
 chiming, chiming, chiming. 
 
 She opened her eyes and looked around her. 
 Strange to dream so in that foul corner of the 
 world ! All that she saw there was of hell — 
 not of the blessed earth that God made and 
 smiled upon. And she ? With a sudden 
 gesture of impatient powerlessness she shook 
 her head and moved away. The crowd of 
 unholy revellers swallowed her up into itself, 
 and the lamps glittered over it and shut out 
 the silent stars. 
 
 But the next day she went back. The long- 
 ing was irresistible — it would not be denied. 
 Home she must go — she must see once more 
 the familiar places and the familiar faces too, 
 even if it cost her — what ? What could it cost 
 her that was worth the giving? She had 
 naught to give, for she was no longer, even in 
 her own mind, the possessor of anything that 
 is worth possession. She was the outcast of 
 the world — and yet there remained within her 
 more than one fine feeling that cried from soul 
 to body for mercy, for opportunity to breathe 
 and to live. Not altogether had body killed
 
 LIGHT O' LOVE 3 
 
 soul in her, and it was the soul, weak, and per- 
 haps all the mightier because of its weakness, 
 that now sent her back in search of what she 
 knew quite well she would never find again. 
 
 The village looked just the same, as she drew 
 near to its tall elms and grey church spire. It 
 was October, and a grey day ; there was a 
 misty softness in the air that seemed to her 
 strikingly familiar. She gazed and gazed, and 
 could have gazed again and for ever, at each 
 well-known scene and object. She counted the 
 elms that made a long avenue at the entrance 
 to the village. There used to be four-and- 
 twenty of them ; now there were only twenty- 
 two — the wind or the lightning had destroyed 
 two of them. And there was the carpenter's 
 shop, and the men busied at the benches ; and 
 here in its nook in the hedgerow was the well 
 whereat she had drunk a thousand times. So 
 with all things along the village street. It was 
 mid-afternoon, and the men were at work in the 
 fields, and the children's voices came like the 
 hum of a beehive from the little school. Only 
 the women were at home, and they sat by the 
 stick fires, sewing, knitting, gossiping. In all 
 the long, wide street she saw no face either of
 
 4 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 friend or stranger. But once or twice she 
 peeped timidly through the little windows, and 
 saw old faces by the hearth, the white-frilled 
 caps making specks of light against the shadows. 
 How peaceful it all was ! How full of quiet 
 charm ! 
 
 And then in her soul rose up the picture of 
 that other life in the foul city. 
 
 At the door of a lonely cottage just outside 
 the village she knocked timidly. A woman 
 answered her knock, and stood with one hand 
 on the latch looking at the stranger. She was 
 a stolid-faced, unimpressionable woman, plainly 
 clad, but clean and neat of person. The woman 
 at the door looked back at her, and was full of 
 curious envy. 
 
 ' Martha ! ' 
 
 The woman within the cottage started. 
 
 * Well ! ' she said, ' did ye iver see ! Why, 
 it 's Poppy ! Come in wi' you, lass — come in, 
 and sit yoursen down.' 
 
 She walked in and sat down, and looked 
 about her with eyes from which that curious 
 envy and regret had not yet faded. There was 
 a cradle by the fire, and she bent over it. 
 
 ' Yours ? ' she whispered.
 
 LIGHT O' LOVE 5 
 
 * Ay, lass, for sure. We 've had nine on 'em, 
 and they 're all alive but one. There 's been a 
 deal to do wi' 'em,' said Martha meditatively, 
 ' but I don't know if I should like to loise one 
 on 'em. And what brings you here, lass ? I 
 thowt we 'd lost all sight on you.' 
 
 * I couldn't rest, Martha,' she answered. ' I 
 couldn't. I felt that I must come and look at 
 the old place again. And so I came — it 's so 
 little changed,' she said pathetically. 
 
 ' Nay, there 's none so much change about it,' 
 said Martha. ' T' change is all wi' t' men and 
 women — t' owd spots change hardly onny. 
 Ye '11 be livin' i' London, then ? ' she asked. 
 
 * Yes, I am living in London, Martha.' 
 ' Are ye wed, lass ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 Martha looked round the kitchen as if she 
 feared an eavesdropper. 
 
 * Theer wor some varry queer tales about ye, 
 lass,' she said, not unkindly. ' Ay, I don't 
 know what mak' theer wor'rnt. But I niver 
 took no notice on 'em — ye were a good lass 
 enow i' t' owd days, and I alius respected your 
 poor uncle and aunt — ha' ye been to see their 
 graves, lass ? '
 
 6 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 ' No, Martha, no !— but I will. Oh, I wish 
 I 'd never left home ! — why did I ? But there, 
 what 's the good of that ? ' She began to laugh 
 almost hysterically. ' Come, Martha, don't 
 let 's be dowly now that I 've come to see the 
 old spot. See, I 'm rich — look at my purse ! 
 You tell me all your news, and I '11 tell you 
 about London, and we '11 have a good old talk.' 
 
 Martha looked at her curiously. 
 
 ' Ay, well, lass,' she said, ' I '11 mak' a cup o' 
 tea — it'll do you no harm. An owd face is 
 welcome here — not 'at yours is an owd face, for 
 it 's young enow and pretty enow.' 
 
 Poppy's lips tightened. 
 
 ' Don't talk about me,' she said. ' Tell me 
 about the old place. Who's got my uncle's 
 farm, and is old John dead, and where has 
 David gone? — come, tell me all about it, 
 Martha.' 
 
 So they sat and talked while the afternoon 
 drew on to night. In the twilight Martha's 
 husband came home, and with him the children 
 who had spent the day at school. Poppy sat 
 and watched them — and in her heart grew up 
 a great envy of Martha's lot. 
 
 A crreat restlessness came over her. She left
 
 LIGHT O' LOVE 7 
 
 the cottage, saying that she would go for a walk 
 in the village, and return early. So she passed 
 down the winding lane towards the four cross- 
 roads, whose meeting made a centre in the 
 village street. Now and then a homeward- 
 bound labourer passed her in the darkness, and 
 gave her a civil good-night. The gloom re- 
 freshed her — it seemed to her that for years 
 and years she had walked in a blinding glare 
 that had scorched heart and brain. There 
 had never been such refreshing gloom as this 
 mystic twilight that lingered under the dripping 
 elm-trees. 
 
 She reached the street. There was a bright 
 light behind the red blinds of the ' King 
 William,' and from a door opposite came a 
 gleam of still brighter light across the highway. 
 Into this door young folks were passing ; a 
 knot of young men and lads stood near it ; it 
 seemed plain that some event was about to 
 take place within the room inside. She re- 
 membered that room and the cranky stairway 
 that led to it. It was there that they used to 
 hold dances and village festivities in the old 
 days that she so regretted. Could it be that 
 there was to be a dance there that niffht ? She
 
 8 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 turned to a man smoking his pipe in the angle 
 of a wall close by, and made inquiry of him. 
 It was a dance — old Tommy was going to 
 play the fiddle for them — there he was, going in 
 now, and the fiddle was under his arm, wrapped 
 in a pillow-case. 
 
 A flood of memories came over her as she 
 stood gazing at the door, and they crowded 
 thicker and faster as the scrape, scrape, scrape 
 of the fiddle squeaked its way down the rickety 
 stairs. From her place in the gloom she saw 
 young men and women, once her companions 
 and playmates, trooping up the stairs. There 
 was plenty of high-voiced laughter and rude 
 merrymaking amongst them, and the sound of 
 it smote her like the knots of a whip. And in 
 the smart and agony of it something prompted 
 her to forget everything and to go in and dance 
 and make merry as in the old, dead times. 
 Why not ? — they knew nothing ; it was only 
 she herself that knew. 
 
 She ran across the highway, and darted 
 upstairs. She laughed gaily — it was just in that 
 light-hearted fashion that she used to run out 
 of the old farmhouse to the dance in the past. 
 Why, the past was living again ! She laughed
 
 LIGHT O' LOVE 9 
 
 once more to think of it. Gone were the evil 
 days — she was a child, innocent and secretless, 
 again — and there was the jolly old fiddler 
 scraping away at his dear old fiddle. 
 
 The long low room was full of blazing light 
 from a hundred lamps and candles. They were 
 pairing off for the first dance as she burst in 
 upon them, and she knew instantly that every 
 man and every woman paused and stood and 
 looked at her. But she heeded, or made believe 
 that she heeded, nothing. There was nobody 
 that she did not know, and she made for the 
 first group, and hailed them as if all were as it 
 once had been. 
 
 'Why, Letty, Nell, Mary, this is fun! To 
 think that you should be having a dance the 
 very day of my return ! It 's like old times — I 
 haven't had a real good country dance I don't 
 know when. Come, where is there a partner ? 
 Ah, Dick, you and I have danced together 
 many a time — you shall dance this with me. 
 Why, you and I were sweethearts in the old 
 days, Dick. Come — come along — your arm, 
 sir — the old fiddle's as squeaky as ever, isn't 
 it, Dick ? ' 
 
 The man whom she addressed stared at
 
 lo GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 her wonderingly ; the girls shrank away from 
 her. She saw or seemed to see nothing ; she 
 put her hand on the man's arm. He, unwilling, 
 mesmerised as it appeared by her presence, 
 began to dance with her, looking appealingly 
 at his companions as she led him away. There 
 was talking, whispering, nodding of heads — she 
 saw nothing. Her eyes were bright, there was 
 real colour in her cheeks, her tongue rattled 
 volubly to the astonished man who held her 
 mechanically. 
 
 A girl ran down the steps and across the 
 road to Dick's house. Dick's wife, arrayed in 
 festival attire, met her at the door. 
 
 ' I 'm a bit late, lass,' she said, and then 
 stopped. ' What 's t' matter ? ' 
 
 The girl, excited to breathlessness by her 
 great news, panted rather than spoke. 
 
 ' There 's Poppy Mallet come back — and 
 she 's a-dancin' wi' your Dick ! ' 
 
 Dick's wife stared and comprehended, and 
 marched across the road. She walked up the 
 stairs and into the dancing-room. Some of the 
 young men and women, the more careless, had 
 begun to dance, but the greater part of the floor 
 space was left to Dick and Poppy.
 
 LIGHT O' LOVE ii 
 
 ' Out ! ' 
 
 The fiddle stopped with a screech ; the floor, 
 innocent of wax, re-echoed the thud with which 
 each couple brought its gyrations to an end ; 
 every man and woman drew towards the centre 
 of the floor. There stood Poppy, torn from 
 Dick's encircling arm ; there stood Dick, fright- 
 ened and abashed ; there, too, stood Dick's wife, 
 one finger stretched in eloquent indignation 
 towards the girl. 
 
 ' Out you go ! ' she cried. ' Out ! out ! out ! 
 I say.' 
 
 The other woman turned and looked about 
 her. Every face was known to her, but in none 
 did she see a sign of pity or of friendliness. 
 The men looked at each other, at their boots, 
 at the wall ; the women stared straight and 
 stonily at herself She looked at them once, 
 twice, and then she turned and left the room 
 without a word. 
 
 The news had spread. At the door and in 
 the road the older women of the village had 
 assembled, full of indignation and resentment. 
 She heard the murmurs that broke out at sight 
 of her, and took no heed of them. She went 
 up the road and into the darkness, and dis-
 
 12 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 appeared, and the group of observers melted 
 and talked of her, 
 
 A mile away along the road she turned across 
 the moorland. Her feet stumbled over the 
 rough ground, but she kept on, brushing the 
 darkness from her with hands that trembled. 
 The moon was rising somewhere in the heavens, 
 and the landscape grew lighter moment by 
 moment. She saw a tree start out of the dark- 
 ness, and remembered it, and turned away in 
 another direction. For a long time she walked 
 steadily on, but at last she paused, and looked 
 up to the sky, and waited. Suddenly the white 
 moon shot out from a deep cloud-bank, and 
 showed her the edge of the cliff, and beneath 
 it, far down in the ravine, the jagged edges of 
 the rocks that hemmed in the howling river.
 
 THE LAST OF THE BRINGS 
 
 Not even the most learned of local historians 
 could put his finger on any one of the years 
 that have followed each other since the Norman 
 came, and say with certainty, * At this time 
 there were no Brings of Grindleholme Ford.' 
 When the Brings came first, or from whence, 
 none of them knew. Before the Bomesday 
 Book was compiled they were there, tilling the 
 land, grinding their own and their neighbours' 
 corn in the windmill that tops Grindleholme 
 Moor, heaping together money and keeping it. 
 Their records show on the pages of local history 
 again and again, and more than once they wrote 
 their names in red letters in the books that deal 
 with national things. They were hard-headed, 
 selfish, domineering men of force and action, 
 and but for a certain conservative spirit which 
 ran through them like the grain through an 
 
 13
 
 14 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 oak, they had been great lords in the land. As 
 it was, they were great yeomen, and were proud 
 of it. Lords can be made at any time, and 
 princes likewise, but a yeoman must grow on 
 the soil, and with the soil's produce. Through 
 the long war which peers and landowners fought 
 with the yeomen of England, whose land they 
 coveted, the Brings of Grindleholme Ford held 
 their own. In the end they saw the broad 
 yeomanries change into farms, great and small, 
 and men paying tribute to other men for leave 
 to till the soil. They laughed deep down in 
 their hearts at that, for Grindleholme Ford 
 was still theirs, and a thousand acres of land 
 around it. 
 
 Hartas Bring, who followed his father in 1821 
 as head of all the Brings of Grindleholme Ford, 
 made up his mind as he saw them place his 
 father's coffin in its grave that he would not 
 do as his ancestors had done for the past two 
 hundred years. They had been content to keep 
 their own, and to do the best that could be done 
 with it. For two hundred years the Brings 
 had commanded a thousand acres, and in all 
 that time they had not added to their estate by 
 a rood. Hartas swore to himself that where he
 
 THE LAST OF THE BRINGS 15 
 
 found a thousand he would leave two thousand. 
 Upon him there had come a desire for greatness 
 such as his forefathers never possessed. He 
 stood in the churchyard while the parson read 
 out of his book, and he looked round him at 
 the fair corn-lands and rolling meadows, and he 
 lusted for them in his heart. ' Man that is born 
 of a woman,' read the parson, ' hath but a short 
 time to live.' ' Pish ! ' said Hartas Bring to 
 himself. ' Time enow, I warrant, to do all that 
 lies in my heart.' And he hardened himself 
 then and there, and resolved in God's acre and 
 house, and in the presence of his dead father's 
 corpse, to spare neither himself nor his wealth, 
 and to consider neither man nor woman, until 
 he was lord of all the land 'twixt Grindleholme 
 Ford and the sea. 
 
 Hartas Bring was then twenty-and-five years 
 old. For the next five-and-twenty years he 
 strove and toiled and plotted and schemed. 
 He cared for neither eating nor drinking. He 
 was up early and at work till late. As for the 
 delights of life, he scorned them. He never 
 looked at a woman unless he was conducting 
 a bargain with one, and he kept no company 
 under his own roof, and sought none in the
 
 i6 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 houses of his neighbours, nor in the inn on 
 market-days. And bit by bit he worked out 
 his own ends. There was a piece of land to 
 sell here, and another there, and they came to 
 him as the needle goes to the magnet. His 
 thousand acres was already three thousand, and 
 when he walked across the churchyard and saw 
 the tombs of his ancestors and remembered his 
 forefathers' motto — * Hold Fast, Dring, And 
 want not Anythinge ' — he spat upon the ground 
 in fine scorn, and let his eyes roll across the 
 great stretches of land over which he was lord 
 and master. 
 
 II 
 
 It came into Hartas Dring's mind as he sat 
 one December night by his fireside that he 
 was now fifty years of age, and must make 
 haste to do two things. Between him and the 
 sea there was but one poor hundred acres of 
 land over which he might not ride his horse. 
 That was the holding of Thurstan Sleightholm. 
 There had been Sleightholms there as long as 
 there had been Drings at Grindleholme, but 
 the Sleightholms were not as the Drings. 
 They had neither increased their store nor
 
 THE LAST OF THE BRINGS 17 
 
 held what they had, and now there was but 
 this patch of meadow-land left to Thurstan, 
 the last of them. 'That must be mine,' said 
 Hartas Bring, and he set to work for the 
 thousandth time to devise some means of 
 cozening Thurstan out of the acres to which 
 he clung like a horse-leech. And when he had 
 thought of that, he thought of the other matter 
 which required haste. He must marry — there 
 must be a son to whom all his broad acres 
 could be handed down. So he went to bed 
 swearing a great oath that before next Becem- 
 ber came round he would marry a wife, and 
 harry Thurstan Sleightholm out of his house 
 and land. 
 
 And both these things Hartas Bring did. 
 In June he went to the church, and was 
 married to a girl whose parents gave her to 
 him, not out of her love for him, for she had 
 none, but rather because they owed him more 
 money than they could ever pay. It seemed 
 to Hartas a fair arrangement. He wanted a 
 wife that could bear him a son, and he was 
 willing to buy her. With him life was a 
 question of buying and selling, of values and 
 equivalents. His face was hard as ever as he 
 B
 
 i8 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 took his wife home, and when she wept he 
 cursed her as if she had been a dog that 
 whimpers without reason. 
 
 As for Thurstan Sleightholm and his land, 
 both fell into Hartas Dring's power as easily 
 as the ripe pear drops into the schoolboy's 
 fingers when he bends the stalk upwards. 
 There was no man in all the East Riding 
 poorer than Thurstan, and in days gone by 
 he had mortgaged his acres for money. What 
 easier than for Hartas Dring to buy up the 
 mortgages, and to fasten his teeth into 
 Thurstan Sleightholm's heart? So it came 
 about that one October morning, when the 
 mists still hung over the land, and a great 
 bank of fog half shut out the wild North Sea 
 from their sight, they came to the beginning 
 of the last act of the tragedy of Thurstan's life. 
 
 For Thurstan had fought for house and 
 home, and Hartas Dring had found it necessary 
 to invoke the aid of the law. With the officers 
 and emissaries of the law he now came, and they 
 hunted Thurstan Sleightholm and his wife and 
 children out of the house as hunters dig a fox 
 out of his hole, and when they were out Hartas 
 Dring razed the old farmstead to the ground.
 
 THE LAST OF THE BRINGS 19 
 
 so that there was not one stone left higher than 
 another. 
 
 When that was over, Thurstan Sleightholm 
 had no more heart in him. He walked down 
 the sandhills to the sea, and where the tide 
 comes swelling in between two high walls of 
 rock he let himself drop into the green water. 
 And so he died, and the tide cast up his body 
 with its eyes wide open, and staring at the sky 
 as if they called upon God for vengeance. Then 
 the fisher-folk who found it shuddered and said 
 that Heaven would surely repay Hartas Dring 
 for forcing a man to this pass ; but, since 
 Hartas was their landlord, they held their 
 peace, save to themselves. 
 
 But not so did Thurstan's wife. All day and 
 all night she had watched by the beach, for 
 something told her that death was heavy upon 
 her and hers, and she remained there till the 
 body was given back to her by the sea that had 
 slain it. And she looked and said nothing ; 
 but, after a time, she turned away and climbed 
 the sandhills, and went across the level land 
 above, the fire of madness in her sunken eyes ; 
 and she paused not — save to stand for one 
 moment by the blackened ruins of the house
 
 20 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 that had once been the dead man's home, and 
 to which he had brought her as his bride, to 
 bear him children, and to comfort him in his 
 loneliness, — until she came to Grindleholme 
 Ford and found Hartas Dring. 
 
 Hartas Dring sat at meat in his kitchen. It 
 was his custom to assemble all his family and 
 servants at meal-times. He sat frowning on 
 all, and none dared speak in his presence. But 
 Thurstan Sleightholm's widow spoke. She 
 stood in the doorway, a gaunt figure against 
 the pale October noon-light, and she stretched 
 out her hand that was thin from starvation 
 towards Hartas Dring, and fixed her eye upon 
 him, and she solemnly cursed him in the name 
 of God, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and 
 of the White Christ whom his forefathers chose 
 instead of Odin and Thor, and of all saints and 
 martyrs, and she prophesied that never should 
 child of his reign in his stead, but that doom 
 and sorrow should follow him for all the rest of 
 his life. 
 
 There was neither man nor woman in the 
 kitchen that did not shudder and feel the blood 
 turn to water in their hearts while the widow 
 spoke, — save one, and he was Hartas Dring.
 
 THE LAST OF THE DRINGS 21 
 
 And he heard her to the end, and when she 
 had finished he rose and took down his great 
 dog-whip and struck her across the face with 
 it, so that she fell shrieking, and after that he 
 bade his men kick her from his doors for a 
 mad woman, and so he sat down again to his 
 meat. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Hartas Dring at last was satisfied. For five 
 years he had been lord of all the land 'twixt 
 Grindleholme Ford and the North Sea. That, 
 however, had only satisfied him in part. All 
 that five years he had been filled with a fierce 
 disappointment. His wife had given him no 
 son. He had cursed her for that many a time. 
 Had he married her for aught else than that 
 she should bear him children ? Curses upon 
 her that other women should bear children 
 to their husbands and not she ! And she had 
 prayed him more than once to kill her, so that 
 he might marry another woman ; and Hartas 
 Dring would gladly have answered her prayer 
 but for fear of his own neck, for he hated her 
 because o( her barrenness.
 
 22 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 And now, at the end of the fifth year, his 
 wife was about to give him a child. When 
 there became a certainty of this the man's 
 heart underwent some change. He was kind 
 in his way to his wife, and careful that naught 
 should interfere with her health. As the time 
 drew near, he made great preparations. There 
 were to be feasting and rejoicing all over the 
 country-side — the highest and the lowest were 
 to celebrate the birth of Hartas Dring's son 
 and heir. He had no doubt as to the child's 
 sex — he had had his way always in all 
 things, and it seemed to him that neither 
 God nor nature could defy or thwart him 
 in this. 
 
 And at last the child was born, and it was 
 a boy. Then Hartas Dring was more than 
 satisfied. He kept open house for days, and 
 bade his friends and acquaintances eat and 
 drink to the full. There was no work done 
 thereabouts all that time, and half the men lay 
 drunk about the halls and kitchens because of 
 their zeal in drinking the young heir's health. 
 As for Hartas, he sat at the head of his table 
 night after night, carousing with his cronies, 
 and boasting of the power that his boy should
 
 THE LAST OF THE DRINGS 23 
 
 exercise in those parts. And it was while he 
 thus boasted one night that a woman rushed 
 into the great kitchen crying that the child 
 was stolen ! 
 
 Then there arose the greatest commotion 
 that had ever been known at Grindleholme 
 Ford. Some ran here and some ran there, and 
 for a while Hartas Dring was as a madman. 
 But his hard head at last prevailed over his 
 passion, and he began to ask questions and 
 make inquiries, and then it came out that a 
 half-witted lad had seen Thurstan Sleightholm's 
 widow run swiftly from the house through the 
 byre, and across the grey meadows towards 
 the sea, carrying in her arms something that 
 moved. 
 
 When Hartas Dring heard that, he reeled 
 like an oak that receives the last stroke of 
 the woodman's axe, and he said no word to 
 man or woman, but went out and saddled his 
 horse, and rode for the seashore like a mad- 
 man. And he passed the ruins of Thurstan's 
 house and fancied he heard ghostly cries in the 
 moonlight, but still he rode on, for his heart 
 told him that the woman would make for the 
 spot where her husband died. So it came about
 
 24 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 that at midnight he rode in the light of a full 
 moon down the steep track between the sand- 
 hills, and came to the spot where Thurstan had 
 died, and there he paused and listened, and 
 heard naught but the lapping of the waves 
 against the black rocks on which he stood. 
 And in that moment Hartas Dring felt his 
 heart turn to flesh for the first time in all his 
 life, and he prayed to God. And as he prayed 
 he heard a weird cry on the cliff above him, 
 and he looked up and saw Thurstan Sleight- 
 holm's widow, a spectral figure against the sky, 
 and she held out his child at arm's length and 
 cried to him again. 
 
 ' Woe to thee, Hartas Dring ! Woe and 
 vengeance ! ' she cried. ' The fulfilling of the 
 curse is at hand — no son of thine shall inherit 
 thy ill-gotten riches ! ' 
 
 And with that she flung the child into the 
 sea beneath, where the tide boiled and foamed 
 amongst the rocks. Then with a great cry 
 Hartas Dring leaped after it, and the sea took 
 him, even as it had taken Thurstan, and so the 
 life went out of him. 
 
 In the morning they found the father and 
 the son, the man clutching the child's body,
 
 THE LAST OF THE BRINGS 25 
 
 side by side on the beach ; and beside them, 
 crooning low music as if she would hush them 
 to sleep, cowered Thurstan Sleightholm's widow 
 with white face, and eyes that burned like live 
 coals in black and cavernous depths.
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 
 
 It 's been a weary time that I 've laid here 
 waiting to die, and the doctor 's been surprised 
 when he 's come of a morning to find me still 
 alive. According to him I ought to ha' been 
 dead long since. Folks come in sometimes 
 when I 'm lonely and make jest of it, saying 
 that a creaking gate hangs long, and that it 's 
 weary waiting for dead men's shoes. As to 
 being likened to a creaking gate I say nought, 
 and as for all they '11 get that stand in my shoes, 
 why, it '11 be no more than '11 help them to put 
 me in the earth decently. There's twenty 
 gold pounds sewed in the mattress under my 
 bed — you '11 mind that, and that it 's to bury 
 me with, and to buy me a decent shroud and 
 coffin, — and that 's all that I have in this world 
 beside the bits o' sticks in the cottage. There 's 
 nobody to benefit, you see, by my death, and 
 so nobody '11 give me a thought when I 'm 
 
 26
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 27 
 
 gone. It'll be just another old woman out of 
 the world, and nobody will think aught of it — 
 death 's common enough, I warrant you ! 
 
 Ay ; he wonders, does the doctor, why I 
 don't die. There was him and the parson's 
 wife in here yesterday, and they were talking 
 about me, because they thought I was asleep. 
 But I wasn't asleep, for all that I had my eyes 
 closed, and I heard every word they said. ' It 's 
 queer,' says doctor. ' I can't think how it is 
 that she holds out so long — I expected her 
 dying a month ago.' Then the parson's wife 
 said something about the fine constitution I 'd 
 always had, and she was right there, for I 've 
 been as strong a woman as ever lived. But 
 it 's not the constitution that 's kept me alive. 
 It 's all gone long since, is that. Look at my 
 arm — all skin and bone, isn't it ? No — there 's 
 only one person in the world that knows what 
 it is that keeps me from passing, and that's 
 myself. And I 'm sick and weary of living 
 any longer, and so I '11 tell my story — to you 
 — and after that I shall die just as a candle 
 goes out. 
 
 There was parson himself here a day or two 
 ago, and he prayed out of his book and wanted
 
 28 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 me to confess to him. If I 'd been a Papist 
 I would ha' confessed, and felt better for it. 
 But I 'm neither Papist nor believer — I never 
 did believe in either God or man after it occurred 
 that I 'm going to tell you about — all those 
 ideas were driven out of heart and head at 
 that time. I believe in the devil and in hell, 
 oh yes, because I 've proved 'em both, — but in 
 neither man nor God. Man 's false and treach- 
 erous, and God doesn't interfere, so what was 
 there to make me believe in them ? So I Ve 
 no sins to confess to parson, nor to any one 
 else. It 's not a sin that I 'm going to tell you 
 about. It doesn't make me uneasy either. I 
 only did what I had to do, and I 've never 
 regretted it. But I 've kept it locked up in 
 my heart all this time — five -and -fifty years 
 come next June — and I meant to keep it secret 
 till the end. Nobody '11 be the better for know- 
 ing it — but I shan't pass until it 's told, and 
 I want to pass. It's weary work lying here 
 waiting for death. 
 
 You mightn't think it, but sixty years ago 
 I was the handsomest maiden in all the Riding 
 — everybody, man and woman alike, said so. 
 I was tall and strong, and my face and figure,
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 29 
 
 as old Squire Stubbs used to say, was like a 
 queen's. I 've stood in front of a bit o' looking- 
 glass and admired myself for an hour at a time, 
 and I 've said to myself when I was occupied 
 in that way that there wasn't a wench in the 
 country that had such glossy black hair or 
 such bright eyes or such colour in lips and 
 cheek as I had. And at that time I was main 
 proud o' my beauty, never thinking, poor fool 
 that I was, that beauty's one o' the devil's 
 baits. Small reason did I have to be proud 
 or thankful for mine. If I 'd been born as 
 ugly as Red-headed Poll, that everybody made 
 fun of, it would ha' been better for me. 
 
 Of course, I 'd lovers — plenty of 'em, and at 
 one time I could ha' taken pick and choice of 
 half a dozen good men. But there never was 
 but one man that I cared more than a crooked 
 ha'penny for, and that was Geoffrey Heathcott, 
 of the Mote Farm. He was a better sort of 
 man, for his land was his own, and he had the 
 right to call himself a gentleman, though he 
 did farm his own acres. You '11 recollect 
 nought o' the Mote Farm — it 's no more than 
 a ruin now, and the land 's sold long since to 
 Squire Clifford ; but in those days it was a
 
 30 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 bonny place ; there was ivy and clematis on 
 the old grey walls, and the garden was beauti- 
 ful with trees and shrubs and flowers. We 
 had many a happy day there, and remem- 
 bered them after with curses. 
 
 I went to the Mote Farm as dairymaid just 
 before old Mrs. Heathcott died. Geoffrey 
 Heathcott was a young man then, and folks 
 said he 'd marry and settle down now that his 
 mother was dead. But they were wrong there, 
 for he made no sign o' marrying. He was 
 curious in his way — a good farmer, but given 
 to reading books and wandering about the 
 garden o' nights as if he was poetry-making. 
 He never associated with the folks hereabouts, 
 and they called him proud and queer because 
 of it. But why should he ha' made himself 
 cheap to them, seeing that he was cleverer 
 than any of 'em? I always liked him the 
 better because he kept himself high above all 
 of 'em. 
 
 It was a lonely place, the Mote Farm, and 
 I was a good deal alone in the dairy, and 
 Geoffrey Heathcott used to come in there and 
 talk to me. And bit by bit we got fond of 
 each other, and there were meetings in the
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 31 
 
 garden and in the fields, and at last we were 
 lovers — though he was master and I was maid. 
 If there 's a God, as parson says there is, that 
 knows everything, He only knows how I loved 
 that man — ay, and what I gave up for him. 
 For at last I was everything to Geoffrey Heath- 
 cott that a woman can be to a man — but he 
 never made me his wife. 
 
 There wa^ no one ever knew of it. It was 
 so easy in a quiet place like that to keep every- 
 thing secret ; and beside, who 'd ever ha' sus- 
 pected that a man like him should ha' fallen 
 in love with a girl like me — whose father was 
 shepherd to a working farmer ? So it went on 
 for a year or more, and I was content enough, 
 for he 'd spoken as fair words as ever man 
 could to a woman. There was some reason 
 why he couldn't marry, he said, until a certain 
 time had gone by, but as soon as it had gone 
 by he would marry me at church, and all would 
 be right. And, of course, I trusted him — what 
 woman wouldn't ? I was ready to believe 
 everything that Geoffrey Heathcott told me, 
 just because I loved him. 
 
 It was one night in spring that he came to 
 me, and told me he was obliged to leave home
 
 32 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 for a week or two — he'd business in London 
 that required his presence there. I made no 
 objection, of course, though I bear in mind well 
 enough that I wished I could ha' gone with him. 
 I remember a deal of what we had to say to 
 each other that night. I never doubted him for a 
 minute. He was going next day, and that night 
 he gave me a present — a gold bodkin that had 
 been given to one of his ancestors by some 
 great body in gone-by times. It 's sewed up 
 with my twenty gold pounds in the mattress, 
 and you '11 see that it 's put in my coffin after 
 I 'm dead. It 's a fine bit of gold — strong and 
 straight and sharp at the end as a needle, and 
 maybe somebody that has to do wi' my body 
 when I 'm dead might take a fancy to it for its 
 value, but it 's mine, and I '11 have it in the coffin 
 wi' me — you must pin it on to the shroud, just 
 above my heart. 
 
 Geoffrey Heathcott had been gone maybe a 
 week when there came to the Mote Farm one 
 o' them lawyer bodies — a cold, stony-faced man 
 that looked right through you. He brought 
 another lawyer with him — Lawyer Applegarth, 
 of Cornchester — and they were with Tobias Gar- 
 forth, the hind, in the little parlour for the best
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 33 
 
 of an hour. And at the end o' that time they 
 called all of us in — there were six servants, men 
 and women, in the house — and told us their 
 news. Geoffrey Heathcott had gone to Aus- 
 tralia, and wasn't coming back for years, and 
 Tobias was to farm the land at easy terms for 
 himself, and to pay rent to the lawyers, and, as 
 for the rest of us, we were paid our wages and 
 something over there and then, and we could 
 re-engage with Tobias or not as we pleased. 
 And that was all. 
 
 I had to stand there, you '11 understand, and 
 hear it like all the rest of 'em without making 
 a sign. But it seemed to me that something 
 turned my heart to stone in that moment, and 
 I went out and set to on my work in the dairy 
 as if I were a machine instead of a live woman. 
 It was a goodish bit before I could fairly think 
 things over, but at last it struck me that 
 Geoffrey Heathcott couldn't have really gone 
 — he would write to me from London in a day 
 or two and send me money to go to him, and he 
 would take me with him to Australia. So I was 
 cheerful again, and hoped for the best. And 
 after that the days went by until a week's end 
 came, and still I had no word of him ; and a 
 c
 
 34 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 month passed, and at last I knew that Geoffrey 
 Heathcott had forsaken me. 
 
 I 've heard folk say that love turns to hate, 
 but I don't know whether it 's true, for I loved 
 him as fierce as ever, only I hated him too. If 
 I could ha' found him then I 'd ha' killed him — 
 but I 'd ha' kissed his dead lips as fondly as ever. 
 Nothing but killing him would have satisfied 
 me, though I loved him as I 'd always done. 
 
 It was four years after that when they began 
 to talk in the village about Geoffrey Heathcott's 
 coming home. It was Tobias Garforth that set 
 it about. He said that Geoffrey Heathcott had 
 made a deal of money in Australia, and was 
 coming back to live at the Mote Farm. Only 
 it wasn't to be a farm any longer, but a grand 
 gentleman's house. Some believed Tobias's 
 news and some didn't ; but it was true, and pre- 
 sently the lawyers came and gave out a lot of 
 instructions, and there were all sorts of altera- 
 tions made at the Mote Farm, and the builders 
 and paper-hangers came, and there were great 
 loads of furniture sent down from London town, 
 and folks that went to peep in at the window said 
 it was like a palace, and much finer than Squire 
 Clifford's place at the Park.
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 35 
 
 But I never went near, for I 'd heard a matter 
 talked of that made the blood in my veins 
 hotter than fire. They said that Geoffrey Heath- 
 cott was going to be married to some rich man's 
 daughter in London, and that he and his wife 
 were coming straight home to the Mote Farm. 
 His wife ? — as if I wasn't his wife as much as 
 any woman could be ! When I heard that 
 and knew that it was true, I went out one night 
 and swore to God that I 'd have vengeance on 
 Geoffrey Heathcott if I suffered for it. 
 
 It was a summer's evening when Geoffrey 
 Heathcott and the girl he'd married came 
 home. I never knew whether they'd been 
 married that day or a day or two before, but 
 she was in her bridal finery, and he sat by her 
 in the carriage looking as proud of her as could 
 be. There was a great to-do in the village — 
 they 'd put up an archway of green stuff between 
 the King's Arms and Farmer Topps's house, 
 and they took out the horses and dragged the 
 carriage up the street, and there were crowds 
 everywhere. But nobody saw me, for I peeped 
 through the cottage window at them and 
 cursed Geoffrey Heathcott in my heart — and 
 yet I loved him all the time. As soon as I set
 
 36 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 eyes on him I knew that I loved him more than 
 ever, and yet I swore to be revenged on him. 
 For he 'd hurt me past endurance, and it was 
 only fair, wasn't it, that he should be made to 
 suffer for it ? 
 
 I don't know what it was that made me take 
 the gold bodkin in my hand when I went out 
 that night, nor why I was holding it so firmly 
 when I crept through the garden of the Mote 
 Farm, and peeped in at the windows. There 
 was a light in every room, it seemed to me, and 
 all the things were very grand ; but I saw 
 nought but Geoffrey Heathcott and the woman 
 whom he 'd put in my place. And I saw what 
 turned everything to blood — the caresses that he 
 gave her that should have been mine ; and when 
 I saw it, I knew what there was for me to do. 
 
 It was so easy to hide myself in that house — 
 I 'd done it a hundred times for love's sake. It 
 was easy, too, to get into their chamber ; but it 
 seemed to me that all I did was done in a 
 dream. For at last, in the quietest part of the 
 night, I stood by their bed and looked at them. 
 There was a faint moonlight in the room, and 
 I saw the woman's face, but Geoffrey Heath - 
 cott's face was in shadow. And at last — it
 
 THE GOLD BODKIN 37 
 
 seemed a long time, somehow — I felt for her 
 heart, where it beat beneath the white linen, 
 and I drove the gold bodkin into it and h^ld it 
 there. And there was scarce a movement, and 
 what there was didn't wake the sleeping man, 
 for Geoffrey Heathcott was always a sound 
 sleeper. But the woman was dead, and her 
 blood was on the point of the bodkin, and when 
 I looked at her in the moonlight there was just 
 a speck of blood on the white of her breast. 
 And then I stole away and left Geoffrey Heath- 
 cott alive, so that he might be tortured before 
 his time came. 
 
 But in the morning Geoffrey Heathcott was 
 dead too. For he woke and found his young 
 wife dead at his side, and his grief was too great 
 for him, and he shot himself with his pistol be- 
 fore ever he gave alarm of her death. And 
 then the weight that had been so long on my 
 head seemed to lift, and my heart was lighter. 
 
 It's to be pinned on to my shroud. I '11 come 
 back and haunt you if that isn't done. With 
 the twenty gold pounds it is, in the mattress — 
 it 's strong and sharp as ever. I can remember 
 the feel of it — how it went into her heart so 
 straight and true.
 
 THE VOW 
 
 Barbara Kent came out of her little cottage 
 and stood at the gate looking up and down the 
 road. It was very early morning ; the sun still 
 made a rosy curtain of the eastern horizon, and 
 the gossamer webs hung thick and white on the 
 hedgerows. There was no one in the village 
 street or on the chapel hill. The blinds were 
 drawn in the chapel windows and in the 
 windows of the farmhouse over the way. 
 Nobody seemed stirring but herself She 
 waited a moment longer at the gate, and 
 looked about her with a vague curiosity in 
 her face. She had seen the same things 
 every morning for years, but it seemed to 
 her that they now possessed a new signifi- 
 cance. She glanced at them again — at the 
 chapel and the farmhouse and at the orchard 
 and at the red-roofed cottages, and then she 
 went into her cottage again and sat down and 
 
 38
 
 THE VOW 39 
 
 folded her hands in her lap and waited. And as 
 she waited she prayed, ' Pray God ! ' she said, 
 * that they come soon and take me away before 
 the neighbours are astir, lest all the village see 
 my shame ! ' This was what she prayed, having 
 still some of the old Kent pride left in her. 
 
 Barbara Kent was five-and-sixty years of 
 age. Every one in Queen's Malbis knew her 
 slight figure and pale, refined face. Dressed 
 in rusty black, always threadbare, always neat, 
 she had been a conspicuous figure at the 
 Methodist chapel for more years than all but 
 the elderly people could remember. When 
 she first went there to worship she sat with 
 the other Kents in a pew for which sitting- 
 money had to be paid. Of late years she 
 had found a place in the free seats amongst 
 the old men and women and the farmers' lads. 
 She sat there with an ancient dignity and well- 
 preserved seriousness that at once distinguished 
 her from her surroundings. It was easy to see 
 that she had come down in the world. 
 
 A mile away from Queen's Malbis there 
 stands a solitary homestead, set in a ring of 
 beech and elm trees. You can see its high 
 gables, the red-tiled barns, the grey tower of
 
 40 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 its ancient pigeon-cote, for many a mile as 
 you go about the land in that corner of the 
 wapentake. It is a lonely place, but the house 
 is built of solid stone, damp-proof and wind- 
 proof, and in the great orchard at its side 
 there are fruit-trees the yield of which is noted 
 throughout the whole Riding. The name of 
 this solitary homestead is Ravenscroft, and the 
 church books show that there were Kents of 
 Ravenscroft from the time of William and 
 Mary onward. They were tenant-farmers, and 
 bore the reputation of doing their duty to the 
 land better than most of their sort. That, of 
 course, was natural, seeing that as soon as 
 one Kent died his eldest son stepped into 
 his place. It came to be a recognised thing 
 that there should be a Kent of Ravenscroft, 
 and therefore every Kent did his best with 
 the land, so that his son and his son's son 
 should get good out of it. 
 
 Matthias Kent married and had one child 
 by his wife — the girl Barbara. When his wife 
 died he remained single for some time, but at 
 last he married again, and his wife gave him 
 a son, which was what he most desired. He 
 gave this boy the name of Robert, and ever
 
 THE VOW 41 
 
 after its birth he chiefly occupied himself in 
 watching or amusing it. He carried the boy 
 with him wherever he went, sometimes wrapped 
 in a shawl on his saddle-bow, sometimes huddled 
 up in old coats and rugs on the seat of his tax- 
 cart When the lad was seven he made the 
 tailor clothe him after the fashion of a man, 
 and the next Saturday he took him to Sicaster 
 market, and had him in to the ordinary. Some 
 of the farmers laughed at Matthias for this 
 proceeding, and patted the boy on the head ; 
 but others frowned, and said that if the lad 
 was brought up in that way he would come 
 to no good. But these said little to Matthias, 
 for it was plain to see that his heart was 
 wrapped up in his son, and that he would 
 take counsel with nobody as to the right way 
 of bringing him up. 
 
 Matthias's second wife died when Robert 
 was twelve years old, and within a year of 
 her decease Matthias himself lay sick unto 
 death on the great four-poster with the blue 
 hangings. He went out one morning hale and 
 hearty, and came back dying ere noon had 
 struck. Because he was a man from whom 
 it was neither wise nor possible to conceal
 
 42 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 aught, they told him that he must soon die, 
 and advised him, if he had affairs to arrange, 
 to lose no time in setting about their disposal. 
 When he had heard this, Matthias turned all 
 of them out of his room and bade them send 
 Barbara to his bedside. Barbara came, keep- 
 ing back her tears, because she knew that 
 her father hated to see women weep. She 
 was then a girl of nineteen years, sweet and 
 fair, with the most pleasant expression of 
 human goodness in her face. She knelt at 
 the bedside and took her father's hand within 
 her own. 
 
 ' Barbara,' said Matthias, ' I am dying ; — in 
 one hour — only one short hour ! — from now I 
 shall be as dead as all the folk in Malbis church- 
 yard. 'Tis a hard thing — I had reckoned to 
 live at least twenty years longer. But that's 
 no use — the time is short. Girl, listen to me. 
 All is settled — Lawyer Flood has all the 
 papers. Until Robbie is twenty-one years of 
 age the farm will be managed by Lawyer 
 Flood and you, and a hind that you and 
 Flood will engage. When Robbie comes to 
 his manhood, it will be his — the Squire has 
 given me his promise for all this, Barbara —
 
 THE VOW 43 
 
 and so will the money I have made, and 
 what they made who came before me. It has 
 always been so with us Kents of Ravenscroft. 
 You understand me ? ' 
 
 Barbara understood him, and said so, stroking 
 his hand the while. He rolled his head towards 
 her, and went on speaking. 
 
 ' Now, Barbara, there is one thing that you 
 must do. It is you that must look after Robbie 
 while ever there is need of it. Swear to me 
 neither to marry nor to depart from him so 
 long as the lad has need of your help. Swear 
 it on the Scriptures, and let me die easy.' 
 
 There was no thought in Barbara's mind at 
 that moment of what the consequences of this 
 vow might be. Her one idea was to gratify 
 the last wish of her father. She rose up and 
 fetched the great Bible, and laying her hand 
 on its open pages she swore never to leave 
 her brother, either for marriage or for any other 
 reason, so long as he had need of her. 
 
 After that Matthias bade her go away and 
 fetch Robert. When the brother and sister went 
 back to the chamber their father was dead, and 
 Barbara's great responsibility had its beginning. 
 
 Until Robbie was twenty-one everything
 
 44 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 seemed to go well with the Kents of Ravens- 
 croft. Lawyer Flood and Barbara hired a 
 good hind, and, Barbara herself being a clever 
 manager, there was much money earned and 
 saved and put away against the time when 
 Robbie came of age. Then everything was 
 to be his, except a thousand pounds devised 
 to Barbara. It seemed a poor amount, for 
 Matthias had left a good deal of money ; but 
 Lawyer Flood said that from time immemorial 
 a thousand pounds had been the portion of the 
 Kent womankind, and Barbara was satisfied. 
 She was one of those rare creatures who never 
 think of self; her sole aim in life was to 
 discharge her duty to Robbie. Always deeply 
 religious, she regarded her vow as a most sacred 
 obligation. She watched over her brother 
 jealously. No mother could have been more 
 anxious for his prosperity and welfare. She 
 interested herself in all that he did ; in his 
 boyish pleasures ; his schooling ; his notions 
 and ideas ; she coaxed him to confide and 
 believe in her. The lad gave her no anxiety 
 during his boyish days — he took life lightly, 
 it was true, and was fonder of his pleasures 
 than of the serious things in which Barbara
 
 THE vow 45 
 
 took delight, but beyond that he seemed to 
 be free from vice and disposed to live a clean 
 and sober life. 
 
 It was when Barbara was twenty-six and her 
 brother nineteen years of age that Michael 
 Burton fell in love with her. He was a farmer 
 in Queen's Malbis, sober, steady, well-to-do — 
 the very man to make her a good husband. 
 She let him court her for a year before she 
 would consent to give him a definite answer 
 to the question that he had put to her more 
 than once. Then she promised to marry him, 
 but, remembering her vow (which, indeed, was 
 always present to her mind), she stipulated that 
 he should not claim her until it was abundantly 
 apparent that Robbie had no further need. 
 Burton accepted the stipulation joyfully ; it 
 seemed to him that as Robbie was twenty-one 
 he would settle down to manage Ravenscroft 
 by himself, and that Barbara would then be 
 free. So he and Barbara were duly betrothed, 
 and there was a new light in her life. 
 
 It was about six months previous to Robbie's 
 coming of age that Barbara first had any anxiety 
 about him. He went with companions to 
 Sicaster Fair, and came home intoxicated.
 
 46 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 Barbara spoke to him gravely and gently, 
 begging him never to offend again in like 
 manner. Robbie laughed and promised. He 
 had some plausible excuse for his transgression, 
 and Barbara believed him, and, after she had 
 scolded him, made up for the scolding by 
 added kindness. But in a month Robbie was 
 drunk again. This time Barbara went on her 
 knees to him and begged him to bethink him- 
 self of the consequences which must ensue if 
 he persisted in a life of dissipation. Robbie 
 laughed at her again, and finally flew into a 
 temper at her continued pleading. 
 
 ' A fine thing ! ' said he, stalking with lifted 
 head from the parlour. * A fine thing, indeed, 
 that a man may not take his liquor without so 
 much caterwauling and mewling from a parcel 
 of women ! Stick to your hymns and your 
 cat-lap, sister, and leave me alone. I have 
 been cooped up here too long, and am now 
 minded to see something of the world.' 
 
 Then Barbara knew that she must make 
 good the promise she had given to her father. 
 And she stood there looking down the long 
 vista of years to come, and she asked herself 
 questions that she could not answer.
 
 THE vow 47 
 
 As soon as Robbie Kent attained his twenty- 
 first year everything came into his hands. He 
 was tenant, and therefore master, of Ravens- 
 croft, and owner of all the money that genera- 
 tions of Kents had hoarded together. Now, 
 during the previous half-year he had made 
 many companions, none of them of the sort 
 likely to help him to lead a good life, but 
 rather inclined to assist him in spending his 
 substance in riotous living. Barbara soon 
 found that everything was to be changed. 
 Robbie came home drunk on market nights, 
 and to her expostulations and entreaties he 
 replied first with ribald laughter and then with 
 curses. He began bringing his pothouse com- 
 panions to the homestead, where they kept up 
 unholy revels through half the night, while 
 Barbara wept and prayed in her own room. 
 And so things progressed, going from bad to 
 worse. 
 
 There would have been small hope for 
 Robbie at this period, so far as his career as a 
 farmer was concerned, if it had not been for 
 his sister. The Squire, loth to turn a Kent off 
 the land which their family had farmed for 
 generations, was still bound to take notice of
 
 48 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 Robbie's foolish ways. Barbara pleaded and 
 persuaded. She did the overseeing herself; 
 she was out early and late ; she tramped 
 across the fields or rode to market while her 
 brother idled his time or wasted his money at 
 one or other of the neighbouring towns. Thus 
 she kept things going, and the Squire had his 
 rent to the day. Of that, indeed, he had no 
 fear — there was money enough and to spare. 
 But he and others nodded their heads, and 
 said, wisely enough, that the money would not 
 last for ever. 
 
 As for Michael Burton, he was sorely tried. 
 He loved Barbara truly, and grieved to see her 
 wasting the best years of her life over her 
 scapegrace brother. Once he asked her to 
 forswear her vow and leave Robbie to his fate, 
 and come to him and be happy. Barbara 
 listened and replied ; and after she had spoken 
 Michael knew that nothing, not even love, 
 would turn her from the fulfilment of the vow 
 she had sworn to Matthias as he lay on his 
 deathbed. 
 
 When this state of things had lasted some 
 four years, during the whole of which time 
 Barbara vainly endeavoured to persuade her
 
 THE VOW 49 
 
 brother to give up his wild habits and settle 
 down, there came a gleam of hope to both 
 Barbara and Michael Burton. Robbie fell in 
 love. The girl was young, modest, and good, 
 and it became plain that she had some influence 
 over him. Barbara went to her, and begged 
 her to use her influence, and after that Robbie 
 remained sober and conducted himself soberly 
 for some time. But his sweetheart was delicate 
 and fragile, and in the spring which should 
 have witnessed their marriage she died of 
 consumption. For a while Robbie's grief kept 
 him still sober, but ere long he fell in with his 
 old companions, and they tempted him, and 
 he gave way to his old evil courses, and his 
 behaviour was worse than before. 
 
 And now Michael Burton came to Barbara 
 with set face and determined eyes, and bade 
 her take him into the parlour so that he 
 might speak to her privately. ' Barbara,' said 
 he, * this sort of thing cannot go on. Robbie is 
 bound to go his own way. You cannot turn 
 him from his evil. He will return to it again 
 and again — nothing will change him. My 
 dear, it is not right that you should waste your 
 life upon him. I love you, and I have waited a 
 D
 
 50 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 long time. Now, Barbara, I can wait no longer. 
 You must choose between him and me.' 
 
 ' I cannot,' she said. * I cannot, Michael. I 
 have not the power. I promised my father.' 
 
 * Barbara,' he said, ' think a moment. If you 
 marry me you can still look after your brother. 
 I will help you. Why ' 
 
 ' It is no good, Michael,' she answered ; ' I 
 swore neither to marry any man nor to leave 
 Robbie while Robbie had need of me. And 
 his need is great.' 
 
 ' Then we must say good-bye to each other,' 
 said Michael Burton. ' I have loved you long 
 and true, Barbara, but I cannot let things go 
 on in this way. Is it impossible for you to 
 marry me ? ' 
 
 ' It is,' she said. ' I cannot leave Robbie. 
 I will stay with him till one of us is taken. 
 Perhaps I may save him yet.' 
 
 * You will never save him,' answered Michael 
 bitterly. 'And you will wreck your own life 
 into the bargain.' 
 
 Then they clasped hands, and he made as if 
 to draw her to him and kiss her lips, but she 
 motioned him away, and said, ' God bless and 
 keep you, Michael ! ' and so left him. And
 
 THE VOW 51 
 
 when he had gone from the house she went to 
 her chamber and knelt down and prayed long, 
 beseeching God for mercy with much weeping, 
 and at last came downstairs, comforted, with a 
 great peace shining in her eyes. 
 
 But the mercy for which Barbara prayed 
 came not — at least, on this earth. For her 
 brother sank deeper and deeper into the mire 
 in which he loved to wallow, and nothing 
 but disgrace and shame followed his steps. 
 And at last he was turned off his farm, and he 
 and Barbara left the house in which there had 
 been Kents for six generations. It was little 
 use attempting it, even after this, but Barbara 
 still tried to save him. She persuaded him to 
 take a smaller farm in the neighbourhood, and 
 thither they went, she beseeching him to mend 
 his ways and retrieve his character. For a while 
 he tried to do well, but ere long the old habits 
 asserted themselves, and so he went from bad 
 to worse. Barbara strove and strove, and 
 worked hard, rising early and going to bed 
 late, to keep her brother's head above water, 
 but it was no use ; he flung his money away as 
 if it had been dirt, never heeding the sacrifices 
 she had made for him with such patient fidelity.
 
 52 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 And at last, in spite of all that she could do, 
 the end came, and Robbie found himself sold 
 up, the last penny of his wealth gone, and him- 
 self a pauper. 
 
 Barbara was then a toil-worn woman of fifty. 
 Care had hardened her face, and sorrow had 
 whitened her hair, but she was still faithful to her 
 vow. Robbie was now left without one penny 
 to rattle against another, but she had her thou- 
 sand pounds still untouched, together with the 
 accumulated interest. She went to live in the 
 cottage by the chapel at Queen's Malbis, and 
 made a home for Robbie under its roof. She 
 tried to steady him, and hoped to succeed now 
 that it was not possible for him to have so 
 much money to spend. 
 
 But Robbie, knowing of his sister's little 
 fortune, was not minded to go without the 
 means of satisfying his wickedness, and he 
 took counsel with certain of his friends as to 
 how he might possess himself of it. And thus 
 it came about that one day there came news 
 to Barbara that her brother had forged her 
 name, and had drawn her money from the 
 place where she had lodged it, and had fled. 
 
 She was now penniless. Whether or not she
 
 THE VOW 53 
 
 at that time looked back with regret on her 
 wasted life it is impossible to say, for she made 
 no sign. It may have been that she wished 
 for the time to come over again so that she 
 might have taken Michael Burton's advice to 
 break her vow and marry him. He had long 
 since left the neighbourhood, and had married 
 and done well, and had perhaps forgotten her. 
 But she had not forgotten. She forgot nothing 
 — not even Robbie. She set to work to earn 
 her own living. She sewed, she went to help 
 in the farmhouses, she was glad to do anything 
 that she was fit and had strength for. Day by 
 day she toiled, having a horror of the bread of 
 charity. On Sunday she sat in the free seats 
 at the chapel, a rusty black figure whose very 
 poverty commanded respect. And Sunday or 
 week-day she prayed unceasingly for the 
 wanderer's return. For she dreaded to meet 
 her father in the world of shadows and find 
 herself unable to give him a good account of 
 his son. 
 
 And Robbie came back. Where he had been 
 and how he had spent his time no one knew, 
 for he had no chance to tell them. He was 
 found lying dead one morning by the roadside
 
 54 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 at the entrance to the village. His clothes 
 were ragged and dirty, there was no money 
 in his pockets, and his face was the face of an 
 old man. 
 
 Barbara had saved money for her own burial. 
 She took it from its hiding-place and used it 
 to bury her brother in the vault underneath the 
 church, where Matthias and many another Kent 
 already lay asleep. That done, she went back 
 to her daily toil. People said that she looked 
 more satisfied. They thought she must be 
 relieved to know that Robbie was at last 
 powerless to vex and distress her. But of all 
 these things she said nothing to any one. She 
 went on her way silently and without com- 
 plaint, until at last sickness overtook her, and 
 she found herself without means of support. 
 She tided over the sickness, but the poverty 
 stuck, and at last there was nothing left for her 
 but the shelter of the workhouse. It was hard, 
 and she felt it to be hard, that the last of the 
 Kents should come to that, and so when the 
 day came for her removal to the house she 
 begged the man who was to drive her there to 
 come with his cart before the neighbours were 
 up, so that no one might see her go.
 
 THE VOW 55 
 
 All these things she thought of, letting her 
 mind wander over the past as she waited in her 
 little cottage. How different it all might have 
 been ! She had known nothing but sadness 
 and grief, weeping and sore trouble, all her life. 
 She might have had love and quiet joy, the 
 affection of a good man, the caresses of little 
 children, the assurance of comfortable old age, 
 the thousand-and-one delights that spring 
 
 A sound woke her out of her reverie. She 
 looked up and saw, waiting outside her cottage 
 door, the conveyance that was to carry her 
 away to the workhouse. 
 
 4
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 
 
 ' Who cares ? ' said Cicely. She snatched up 
 her grain-measure from the kitchen table, and 
 went out into the sunlight, letting the heavy- 
 door fall to behind her with a clash that shook 
 the thick walls. In her hazel eyes there was 
 temper, and round about the dainty curves of 
 mouth and chin an expressive evidence of 
 naughtiness. She gave John a quick glance 
 over her shoulder ere she vanished, and John 
 saw these things, and was troubled, in spite of 
 the spasm of laughter that shot through him. 
 Because of laughter and trouble, and of the 
 great love that welled up in his heart for fro- 
 ward Cicely, he rose from his chair by the 
 fireside, and went slowly across the floor and 
 opened the door and looked out. 
 
 Cicely stood in the yard — a sweet and glow- 
 ing picture of vigorous young womanhood in 
 
 56
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 57 
 
 the fresh morning sunlight. Her gown was 
 Hlac-hued, and the slight breeze that came from 
 beyond the apple-trees wrapped it closely about 
 her ripe figure. On her cheeks there burnt a 
 glow of vexation ; but it seemed to John that 
 no peach, warmed and kissed by the sun against 
 his garden wall, had ever shown such perfect 
 colour, inviting almost to madness, as that. Nor 
 was there ever a rose-leaf, crumpled by the 
 weight of a bee, that could pucker itself into 
 such a delicious attraction as the full, red lips 
 that were now curved into a bewitching naughti- 
 ness. He looked and looked, a slight smile of 
 indulgent affection playing about his mouth, 
 and then he burst into laughter. 
 
 John's laughter, strident and hearty rather 
 than musical and refined, grated on Cicely's 
 ears. She gave him a quick glance, lightning- 
 like in its passage from the hazel eyes to the 
 grey ones, and then she turned her back upon 
 him with a little toss of the head, which made 
 John think of the play-actors whom he had 
 once seen in Sicaster market-place on statutes 
 day. There were fowls and ducks and a stray 
 goose that had escaped its fellows at Cicely's 
 feet, and to them she threw handful after hand-
 
 58 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 ful of corn. And because John was there, and 
 wanting to talk to her, she began to talk to 
 the fowls, and, finally, to sing at the top of 
 her voice. 
 
 John turned away at last, still laughing. He 
 went into the house, and remained there several 
 minutes, but when he came out again Cicely 
 was still busied with her fowls. She gave him 
 a quick glance, and noticed the whip that he 
 carried in his right hand. When she saw that. 
 Cicely's temper turned to wickedness. 
 
 ' So you are going ? ' she asked. ' You 
 are?' 
 
 ' I mun go, lass,' answered John. * I ha' no 
 choice i' t' matter.' 
 
 ' And you 're going without me ?' she said. 
 
 ' There 's no choice i' that either, lass,' said 
 John. ' One on us must stop at home to-day, 
 and since I can't, thou mun. Come, lass, come, 
 what odds is missing one Sicaster Fair ? Gow, 
 I wish I wor goin' to stop at home i'steead o' 
 goin' yonder !' 
 
 'You !' she said, her temper hot and careless, 
 ' you ! Ah, you 're a nice 'un to go to a fair ! 
 You '11 sit in a bar-parlour and smoke and drink 
 and take no heed of a bit of merry-makin'.
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 59 
 
 But I 've never missed a Sicaster Fair yet, and 
 it 's hard 'at I can't go to this.' 
 
 * A '11 come home as soon as ever my business 
 is finished, lass,' said John soothingly. * And 
 I '11 bring thee a new ribbon, or summut pretty 
 — so gi' us a kiss, and let me go.' 
 
 Cicely threw up her head. She caught up 
 the grain-measure, and made for the kitchen 
 door. 
 
 ' Keep your ribbons !' she said. ' What good 
 are ribbons to a woman 'at 's no better than a 
 slave ? I 've no time for ribbons, marry.' 
 
 ' Come and gi' us a kiss, tell thee !' laughed 
 John. * Slave ? — gow, I think it 's me 'at 's a 
 slave, my pretty. Come on — let 's hev' a touch 
 o' thi lips before I go.' 
 
 'Wait till you come back !' said Cicely. She 
 was inside the door by that time, and she 
 slammed it in John's face. She stood with her 
 hand on the sneck, and waited. She half- 
 expected, and more than half-wished, that he 
 would open the door and kiss her, whether she 
 would or no. But presently she heard his 
 heavy footsteps pass away on the flags out- 
 side. Then she caught the clatter of the 
 mare's iron shoes on the cobbles, and she
 
 6o GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 ran to the window and looked out between 
 the pots of geranium. 
 
 John was riding out of the yard. It seemed 
 to Cicely that his head was bent, as if in dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 II 
 
 The afternoon was one of golden light and 
 dreamy sleepiness. The sunlight falling on 
 the old farmstead made rare pictures of the red 
 roof and grey walls, and of the gorgeous sun- 
 flowers and dahlias in the garden. Cicely sat 
 under a lilac-tree and sewed. Her temper had 
 not yet passed away, for she was powerless to 
 forget the delights of Sicaster Fair. While she 
 sat there, sewing her own linen, or darning 
 John's thick socks, what magnificence and ex- 
 citement there was going on in the old market- 
 place ! It was cruel that John should prevent 
 her from going. The house might surely have 
 looked after itself for one afternoon — lonely as 
 it was, there were few chances that strangers 
 would come that way and molest it. But then 
 John was so particular about his bits of things — 
 he fumed and worried over every little matter. 
 He might surely have arranged things so that
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 6i 
 
 she could go to the fair — but, of course, she was 
 his wife, and therefore a slave, and so it was no 
 good repining. But Cicely did repine in spite 
 of her resolve not to. 
 
 A young woman came over the sunlighted 
 fields by a narrow path between the corn, and 
 caught sight of Cicely as she turned into the 
 lane. She advanced to the privet hedge, and 
 looked over, standing on tip-toe. 'Nay!' she 
 said, ' I niver did ! Why, what are you doing 
 there. Cicely ? I thowt you 'd ha' been off to 
 t' fair long sin'. You 're late.' 
 
 ' I 'm not goin',' answered Cicely. 
 
 ' Not goin' ! Why, I niver knew you to miss 
 a fair i' your life ! ' 
 
 ' But I 'm married now,' said Cicely. 
 
 ' Eh, dear ! Wouldn't John let you go ? ' 
 
 Cicely explained. The face looking over the 
 privet hedge assumed an expression of scorn, 
 pity, and contempt. 
 
 * I should tak' no notice, lass,' said its mouth. 
 ' Go and put on your things and come on wi' 
 me. You moan't let John hev' t' upper hand 
 like that theer — it 's t' greatest mistake that a 
 woman can mak'. You mun show him 'at 
 you 're bahn to suit your sen. Come on to t'
 
 62 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 fair, and if he says owt when you come home, 
 tell him 'at you 're his wife, and not his slave. 
 That 's t' way to manage men — I know ! ' 
 
 Cicely mused. The advice seemed to accord 
 with her inclination, for she was proud and head- 
 strong, and it hurt her to feel that she was 
 yielding obedience to a man. The adamantine 
 nature of John's refusal to take her with him 
 had made her to chafe and fret — she felt like a 
 young mare that has been under curb and chain 
 until the point of endurance is past, and a bolt 
 becomes inevitable. 
 
 ' Come in, and sit down for ten minutes,' said 
 Cicely. She led the way into the house, and 
 installed her friend in John's elbow - chair, 
 while she ran upstairs. In a quarter of an hour 
 she came down, a deeper red in her cheeks, and 
 a brighter glow in her eyes. The girl in the 
 chair broke into loud praises of Cicely's gown 
 and of her gold earrings. The fair would look 
 more like itself when Cicely got there. 
 
 ' I hope John won't see us,' said Cicely as she 
 locked the door. ' He 'd be that vexed 'at I 
 hadn't done as he said. But I must see them 
 play-actors again. Come on, let 's walk fast' 
 
 They turned into the fields, two blots of colour
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 63 
 
 against the splendid monotony of the golden 
 crops that half-enveloped them. Far away in 
 the distance the spire of Sicaster Church in- 
 vited them onward. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Cicely came out of the booth, closely attended 
 by Bella. The play was over, the curtain had 
 fallen ; already the actors were making ready 
 for the next performance. 
 
 ' Weren't it lovely ! ' sighed Bella. ' Eh dear, 
 I fair cried when the handsome young lord and 
 his sweetheart were parted. Eh — and how grand 
 they did talk and walk about ! — it were fair 
 beautiful to see how they swung t' tails o' their 
 dresses round 'em.' 
 
 ' Well, it 's over now ! ' said Cicely. ' All 'at 's 
 nice seems to come to a quick end, somehow. 
 Bella, I 'm going home now. I must get home 
 before John comes in, and if I go now I shall.' 
 
 ' Well, you are a silly ! ' answered Bella. 
 ' Laws ! — why, there 's all the fun to come on yet. 
 We hevn't seen t' wild beasts, and there's a 
 stone man ower yonder, and the fat woman, and 
 them conjurers, and there's t' panorama in t' 
 Beastfair — we hevn't seen any o' them.'
 
 64 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 * You can stop and see 'em,' said Cicely. 
 ' I 've seen t' play-actin', and now I '11 go. Good- 
 bye, Bella — you '11 find somebody to go round 
 with. Good-bye.' 
 
 She hurried away through the crowd, unheed- 
 ing Bella's half-sneering remark as to her fool- 
 ishness. Cicely was miserable. Something in the 
 tinsel passion of the poor play-actors had stirred 
 up a vein of emotion in her, and she suddenly 
 recognised that she was treating John badly. 
 She wanted to get out of the rickety canvas 
 booth and run home there and then, but she 
 and Bella were tightly packed in the crowd, and 
 escape was impossible. Now that she was free 
 she hurried away from the market-place by 
 quiet courts and alleys until she emerged upon 
 the country road that led homewards. She 
 looked fearfully up and down its white expanse, 
 dreading to see John, not because of his anger, 
 but rather because she felt that she had treated 
 him meanly So much had one poor touch of 
 sentiment mouthed from the lips of a half- 
 starved strolling player, done for her rebellious 
 heart. 
 
 ' He trusted me,' said Cicely, as she turned 
 into the fields and hurried through the tall corn,
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 65 
 
 * and it was mean to go and leave t' house as I 
 did. If only he 's not at home when I get there, 
 I '11 make up to him for it — he shall have t' 
 nicest bit o' supper 'at I can manage.' 
 
 The sun was hot, but she hurried on, some- 
 times running between the corn, sometimes 
 resting for a second or two at a stile to fan her- 
 self with her handkerchief It was while she 
 rested thus that she remembered that John had 
 gone away disappointed of the kiss with which 
 she always sent him about his business. The 
 remembrance made her still more uncomfort- 
 able. In all their short married life of five 
 months she had never refused him a kiss until 
 that morning. It hurt her at the time, and she 
 would have given worlds to have been able to 
 subdue her pride and call him back. But now 
 when the fading afternoon brought deeper 
 thoughts, and gratified temper had produced a 
 strong harvest of remorse, her crime against 
 love seemed to assume awful dimensions, and 
 she ran on in an agony of self-upbraiding. 
 
 At last she reached the old house. The door 
 
 was still fast, the key hung behind the shutter 
 
 where she and John placed it if either went out 
 
 while the other was not at home. She ran up- 
 
 E
 
 ee GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 stairs and tore off her finery, and dashed into 
 the yard to see that all was well there. She 
 counted geese and ducks and poultry with the 
 accuracy of a mathematician, and sighed with 
 relief to find that no thief nor tramp had visited 
 them. Then she ran indoors and stirred the 
 fire into a blaze, and set on the kettle. She 
 placed John's slippers by his easy-chair, and 
 laid his old coat ready to his hand when he 
 should come in. Then she busied herself with 
 the table, spreading her whitest cloth on the 
 white deal, bringing out the best her larder could 
 afford. Then the kettle began to sing, and Cicely 
 sang too, and so the kitchen was full of melody 
 as sweet as the flowers in the window-sill. 
 
 Cicely suddenly grew silent. What should 
 she say to John ? Should she tell him that she 
 had sinned against his wishes, and treated him 
 meanly? Was there need of it? He didn't 
 know she 'd gone, and he hadn't seen her, and 
 perhaps no one would tell him supposing any 
 of their friends had seen her — they 'd think that 
 she had gone there with John. No, surely there 
 was no reason to tell him that she 'd not done 
 as he wished. And yet Cicely felt that she 
 ought to confess and be absolved. It would be
 
 ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN 67 
 
 so much more comfortable — and John was so 
 ready to forgive. But her pride rose again, and 
 so she sat undecided and wondering 
 
 A sound of cartwheels at the gate, a heavy- 
 foot on the gravel, the murmur of voices, a hesi- 
 tating tap at the door, roused her from her 
 reverie. She ran across to the door and opened 
 it. Before she saw the man's face at the door 
 or the group at the gate she knew that sorrow 
 had come to her. She put out her hand as if to 
 keep the men off, and ran down the gravel path. 
 
 ' Do thee wait a bit, my dear ! ' said the old 
 man who had knocked at the door in his office 
 of news-breaker. ' Do thee wait, poor dear. 
 Lord help thee ! ' 
 
 But she ran on. She stopped only when she 
 had pushed her way through the men and 
 thrown aside the sheet from John's dead face. 
 
 Even then there was neither cry nor sigh from 
 Cicely's white lips. She looked round her as a 
 child looks round a chamber of mystery. She 
 saw the red roof, the grey gables, the sunflowers 
 nodding against the glossy privet hedge, and 
 suddenly she realised that her problem was 
 solved. It was now too late to confess : too 
 late to be forgiven.
 
 POOR DANIEL 
 
 For three-and-fifty years life and the world 
 had been to Daniel the most dismal realities. 
 If he had ever possessed the capacity to under- 
 stand things, it is scarcely probable that he 
 would have allowed himself to live. Nature, 
 however, had mercifully endowed him with an 
 oxlike power of dumb endurance — he there- 
 fore went on his way, suffering and bearing, 
 with little or no regard to his own feelings. 
 To analyse anything was beyond his power — 
 self- consciousness had no place within his 
 mental equipment. All he did was just to live, 
 taking things as they came, and showing no 
 more feeling with respect to them than is 
 shown by the forgotten beast of burden left 
 to starvation and cold in the corner of some 
 desolate close. 
 
 It was well for Daniel that Nature had pro- 
 vided him with so large a capacity to suffer,
 
 POOR DANIEL 69 
 
 for in other respects she had been more than 
 niggardly to him. One of his legs was some 
 inches shorter than its fellow, and where his 
 right eye should have been there was nothing 
 but a foul scar. Thus his gait resembled the 
 painful movements of a crab, and his face 
 appalled whatever child looked at him. But 
 against these afflictions Daniel set up that 
 steady endurance which characterised him 
 throughout his days, and with its aid he forgot 
 the short leg and the lost eye. It was no 
 virtue, inherent or cultivated, that enabled him 
 to do so, but simply the result of Nature's 
 provision in that respect. 
 
 All his life, from early infancy onward, 
 Daniel had known the meaning of the word 
 labour. There were five of them at home in 
 the little cottage near the church at Queen's 
 Malbis — the father, mother, Daniel himself, 
 and two sisters. The father was a weakly man, 
 who carried the signs of death in his face for 
 many a year before Death finally claimed him. 
 Because of his weakness and of the invalid 
 mother in the arm-chair by the fireside, Daniel 
 was put to work as soon as he was high enough 
 to reach a horse's bridle. He rose long before
 
 70 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 the sun and made the fire in the Httle cottage- 
 home ere he set out, h'mping and shivering, for 
 the farmstead. All day he toiled, sometimes 
 in the fold, sometimes in the mistal or stable, 
 sometimes knee-deep in the wet turnips, until 
 night sent him home again, still shivering, and 
 always limping. All this toil produced but 
 little result in the shape of wealth, and yet it 
 had been hard work to keep the wolf from the 
 door without the few shillings which Daniel 
 brought home o' Saturday nights. He was 
 fortunate in one respect — there was never lack 
 of work for him. In the three-and-fifty years 
 during which Daniel lived, there was not one 
 day of all those that came after he first began 
 working on which he did not continue his 
 labour. Some people of his acquaintance kept 
 festival on Christmas Day and Good Friday, 
 and took their week's holiday at Martinmas ; 
 others, having worked six days out of seven, 
 did nothing on Sunday save eat, slefep, and idle 
 their time. Daniel, however, kept no festival, 
 and was only slightly less busy on Sundays 
 than on other days of the week. He worked 
 as hard on a public holiday as other men do in 
 harvest, and on Sunday he milked the cows
 
 POOR DANIEL 71 
 
 at morning and night, and did odd jobs into 
 the bargain. 
 
 In boyhood he was called Lame Daniel ; it 
 was not until his father died that he gained 
 the distinguishing title by which he was ever 
 afterwards known. ' Poor ' in his case meant 
 unfortunate, unlucky, much put upon. For 
 the father was dead, and the mother was a 
 hopeless invalid of the sort that lives a long, 
 long time ; and of the two sisters, Martha was 
 dying by inches, and Susan was bound to look 
 to the home, and would, therefore, do nothing 
 towards earning her own living. Daniel was 
 then twenty years of age — a gaunt, hungry- 
 looking thing, with wild face and unkempt hair, 
 and an eye that seemed as if it were perpetually 
 endeavouring to discover something undiscover- 
 able. When his mother told him that hence- 
 forward he would have to provide for all of 
 them, he made no more answer than a nod and 
 a grunt. He had known it all along ; indeed, 
 he had never known anything else. There 
 was, therefore, no new departure to make, save 
 to go to the master and ask for a rise in his 
 wages. Because he was a hard worker, and 
 did more than any two men on the farm, he
 
 72 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 got what he asked for. After that, for thirty- 
 three years, Daniel went on working steadily. 
 The old mother sat in the old chair by the fire, 
 always dying but never dead ; Martha lingered 
 ten years ere Daniel buried her ; Susan lived 
 and scolded and kept a tight hand on every- 
 thing. To her Daniel every Saturday brought 
 the sum-total of his wages — sixteen shillings 
 all told. Out of it Susan, always grudgingly, 
 returned him sixpence for himself It was 
 enough, she said, for a man to spend on beer 
 and tobacco in one week. Daniel took it 
 thankfully. It represented an ounce of tobacco 
 and three gills of ale — one on Saturday night, 
 one on Tuesday night, one on Thursday night. 
 Without the sixpence there would have been 
 neither tobacco nor beer. 
 
 When Daniel found religion at the penitent 
 bench in the little chapel, and was duly brought 
 in as a convert, his financial position began to 
 cause him some anxiety. His weekly six- 
 pence was already laid out, but now there 
 were new demands upon him. After study- 
 ing the matter for a whole day he approached 
 Susan. 
 
 ' Thou mun let me hev a shillin' i'steead o'
 
 POOR DANIEL 73 
 
 sixpence now,' he said. ' Sixpence weean't do 
 i' t' future — I mun hev a shillin'.' 
 
 * Aw, mun tha ? ' said Susan. ' And for why, 
 pray ? I 'm sewer sixpence a week 's plenty, 
 and aboon plenty, to lig out i' bacca and beer. 
 Doster know 'at sixpence a week is six-and- 
 twenty shillin' a year ? ' 
 
 ' I doan't want it for neyther beer nor bacca,' 
 said Daniel. ' But tha sees, I 've fun religion, 
 and I 'm bahn to be a member o' t' class- 
 meetin', and it's a penny a week, and then 
 theer 's t' collections an' all.' 
 
 * Aw, is there ? ' answered Susan. ' Weel, 
 lad, I 'm nooan bahn to pay for thi religion — if 
 tha will be religious, tha mun pay for it thysen. 
 Tha wor goin' on all reyt wi'out onny religion 
 — I doan't knaw what tha wanted to chaange 
 for.' 
 
 Seeing that it was hopeless to extract more 
 money from Susan, Daniel was perforce obliged 
 to think things over again. Remembering the 
 adage that two heads are better than one, he 
 consulted Sister Simpkin, the class-leader, on 
 the matter. They considered the matter 
 deeply, and in the end came to a decision. 
 Daniel gave up beer and tobacco — the latter a
 
 74 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 sore trial — and in future laid out his sixpence 
 in this way : one penny was spent in sweet- 
 stuff (to console him for the loss of his pipe), 
 one penny was devoted to his ticket, and 
 another to the missionaries, while the balance 
 of threepence was stored up against collection 
 days, or such times as the Lord should show 
 need of it. 
 
 It was through his connection with the 
 chapel that Daniel fell in love. He was 
 accustomed to walk home from meeting with 
 his fellow-members, and it not unfrequently 
 happened that he and Sister Jones held such 
 converse by the way as tended to give 
 them a most favourable opinion of each other. 
 Sister Jones was a little woman of some forty 
 years, stunted, withered, and gnarled by a life 
 of field-labour ; but Daniel was no authority 
 on good looks, and cared nothing about out- 
 ward appearances. He was drawn to Sister 
 Jones by the sympathy which she showed 
 towards him. His mother and Susan were the 
 only other women with whom he ever held 
 much converse, and one was peevish and 
 querulous, and the other hard and repellent. 
 Sister Jones, in spite of her ill-favoured looks,
 
 POOR DANIEL 75 
 
 was a cheery little body ; it gave Daniel a sense 
 of relief and pleasure to hear her talk. And, 
 therefore, he looked and longed for a promised 
 land. 
 
 One night, as he and Susan sat in the 
 cottage, she mending some garment, and he 
 sucking one of the sweets that atoned so poorly 
 for his old clay pipe, Daniel dared to mention 
 the thing that was uppermost in his mind. 
 
 ' I 've been thinkin',' he said, ' 'at it wor time 
 I gat wed.' 
 
 Susan dropped her needle and faced him, 
 sore amazed. 
 
 ' Thee — get — wed ! ' she exclaimed. ' Thee ! 
 And who 'd ivver be sich a fooil as to marry a 
 poor shammackin' creeatur like thee ? ' 
 
 ' Nah, then, hod thi noise!' said Daniel. 
 ' Theer 's somebody 'at '11 hev me — I can do a 
 bit o' courtin' as weel as onnybody.' 
 
 * Tha '11 drive me mad ! ' said Susan. ' T' 
 idea o' thee gettin' wed, or goin' courtin', wi' a 
 poor owd bed-ridden mother to keep ! Tha 
 owt to be 'shaamed o' thisen ! ' 
 
 Daniel glanced uneasily at the great four- 
 poster in the corner, where the old woman lay 
 asleep.
 
 76 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 'Who's ta been makkin' up to?' asked 
 Susan. ' I insist on tha tellin' me all abaht 
 it' 
 
 Daniel grew frightened. 
 
 ' It's nowt,' he said ; * I wor nobbut thinkin' 
 'at rae and 'Becca Jones 'ud get wed — that wor 
 all' 
 
 ' And plenty ! ' exclaimed Susan. * 'Becca 
 Jones, indeed ! There would be a bonny pair 
 on ye. 'Becca Jones ! But I '11 larn her a 
 lesson next time I set ees on her. Nah, then, 
 dooan't thee go in for noa more cantrips o' that 
 sort. Tha's plenty to do to keep thi owd 
 mother and me.' 
 
 ' Say no more about it,' said Daniel. 
 
 After that life pursued an even course so far 
 as Daniel was concerned. Whether the days 
 were fine or wet, whether he was ill or well, 
 whether the wind whistled through his thin 
 clothes or the sun beat fiercely on his unkempt 
 head, he moved about the land in his now per- 
 manent occupation of shepherd. You saw him 
 in winter wrapped up in an old sack, which 
 served the purposes of an overcoat, plunged 
 almost to the knees in wet and heavy clay, 
 feeding his sheep with turnips, and exchanging
 
 POOR DANIEL ;; 
 
 chance remarks with whatever straggler, game- 
 keeper, tramp, or idler, chanced to pass his 
 way. Week after week he carried his wage 
 home to Susan, receiving his sixpence with 
 thankfulness ; Sunday after Sunday he went 
 to the little chapel and kept his one eye fixed 
 steadfastly on the preacher. And sometimes 
 he went to see 'Becca Jones in her little cottage, 
 but there was nothing more said between them 
 as to love and marriage. 
 
 At the age of fifty and three, Daniel, having 
 had his thin and time-worn garments soaked 
 to the skin several days in succession, found 
 himself one day so ill that rising from his 
 miserable bed in the cottage garret was a 
 physical impossibility. Susan went up the 
 ladder and scolded him. Poor folk, said she, 
 had no business to be badly. Daniel shook 
 his head. He asked her to fetch the doctor to 
 heal his body, and the class-leader to comfort 
 his soul. Then Susan was afraid, and she 
 descended the ladder to tell the invalid mother 
 that trouble was afoot. The old woman wept 
 and fretted, while Susan went down the village 
 street in quest of help. 
 
 * Eh dear, eh dear ! ' sighed Daniel's mother.
 
 78 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 ' Childer V a deeal o' trubble — a deeal o' trubble 
 — sure-ly ! ' 
 
 Poor Daniel, however, was to trouble nobody 
 any longer. Next morning he was dead. 
 'Becca Jones came to see his body, and a tear 
 or two rolled upon his face from her withered 
 cheeks. Hers, at any rate, of all the hearts 
 he had known, was not absolutely without 
 humanity.
 
 PARTED 
 
 As the twilight gradually deepened into dark- 
 ness the woman rose from her seat in front of 
 the fire, and lighted an oil lamp that stood 
 trimmed in the centre of the little deal table. 
 Its faint light at first did no more than indicate 
 the gathering gloom, but when she turned up 
 the wick there came out of the shadows a 
 picture of light and shade, which presented 
 itself to the eye in sharp and definite outlines. 
 The woman turned from the lamp to the fire, 
 and looked about her. She lifted her hand to 
 her mouth, and yawned wearily. From her 
 lips her hand fell, as if instinctively, to the 
 kettle on the hob. Her fingers closed round 
 the handle, and she placed the kettle in the 
 centre of the glowing coals. 
 
 A low tap sounded on the cottage door. 
 The woman went across the red-tiled floor in 
 response; but before her fingers touched the 
 
 79
 
 80 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 sneck the door opened, and a face showed 
 itself against the darkness outside. 
 
 * Come in, Mrs. Catheram,' said the woman 
 who had lighted the lamp. ' I wor just hopin' 
 you 'd come — it 's nobbut dowly wark sittin' 
 here.' 
 
 Mrs. Catheram came in — a diminutive figure 
 in rusty black, whose lithe movements opposed 
 themselves to the hundred wrinkles of the 
 parchment face. She set down a black bundle 
 on the deal table, and gave a quick glance 
 round the little house. 
 
 ' Why, joy,' she said whisperingly, * why, it 
 is weary waitin' for 'em to drop off, to be sure. 
 But we mun bide the Lord's time, you know 
 — ay, surely.' 
 
 She began to untie her bonnet-strings as she 
 spoke. While her long, clawlike fingers busied 
 themselves about her throat, her eyes again 
 ran round the house. Beyond the table, half- 
 hid in shadow, stood a quaint four-poster bed- 
 stead, from which the hangings and draperies 
 had long since vanished. The contour of its 
 white sheets and patchwork quilt was broken 
 but faintly by the outlines of a human figure. 
 On the pillow rested a human face — gaunt.
 
 PARTED 8i 
 
 fleshless, a high nose projecting above a sunken 
 jaw, and rings of grey hair straying loose from 
 a dingy night-cap. A hand lay outside the 
 quilt, and the fingers plucked at the sheets un- 
 ceasingly. Mrs. Catheram saw the fingers, and 
 nodded her head. She looked round in the 
 opposite direction. Behind her, on the other 
 side of the hearth, an old man sat in a hooded 
 chair, fast asleep. His head, snow-white, fell 
 back in the angle of the hood ; his hands, 
 thick and gnarled as the roots of an oak, lay 
 twitching on his knees. His mouth had fallen 
 open as he slept, and revealed a solitary tooth, 
 long and yellow, that bent outward, and com- 
 pressed his nether lip. Over his wrinkled face 
 there lay the grey stubble of a beard ; round 
 his neck a strip of red flannel was twisted 
 loosely above the band of his coarse shirt. A 
 stout stick rested between his knees, and as 
 the little woman in rusty black glanced at him, 
 he started uneasily in his sleep and laid his 
 hand on it. 
 
 The younger woman took down a teapot, 
 and dropped three spoonfuls of tea into it. 
 
 * I wor just goin' to hev a cup o' tea,' she 
 said. I 'm fair stalled o' waitin' for t' owd lass 
 F
 
 82 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 to mak an end on't. Sit you down, Mrs. 
 Catheram, and we'll hev a cup together. It's 
 nobbut cowd outside.' 
 
 Mrs. Catheram sat down near the fire. The 
 younger woman busied herself with preparations, 
 bringing out a teacake and butter from the 
 cupboard, and putting the teapot to warm on 
 the oven top. A cat sleeping on the hearth-rug 
 woke, and saw signs of a meal, and purred 
 complacently. Outside the wind rose and 
 began to sob and sigh in the elm-trees. 
 
 ' Ah, listen to yond,' said Mrs. Catheram. 
 'It's a sign is that, Hannah. They're comin' 
 for her. I 've heerd 'em many a time. When 
 Bob Jasper died — eh, they howled and wowled 
 round his chamber windows that awful till it 
 made me afeerd.' 
 
 ' I hope they '11 wait till we 've hed a cup o' 
 tea, at onny rate,' said Hannah. ' It 's ready — 
 help yoursen, Mrs. Catheram.' 
 
 The rusty black woman poured out a cup of 
 tea, and then looked at Hannah inquisitively. 
 
 ' Is there a drop left i' t' little bottle, lass ? ' 
 she inquired. 'Work like mine, you know' — 
 she nodded in the direction of the bed — ' maks 
 you need some'at comfortin' ! '
 
 PARTED 83 
 
 ' I 'd clean forgotten/ said Hannah, She rose 
 and produced a little black bottle from the 
 cupboard. 'It's rum,' she said, 'Sixpen'orth 
 —our Jack fotched it thro' t' " Dog and Duck." ' 
 
 While they sat eating and drinking, the 
 figure on the bed stirred, and the gaunt jaw 
 moved feebly, 
 
 ' Josey ! ' 
 
 ' He 's asleep,' said Hannah, moving over to 
 the bedside, ' He 's hevin' a nap. Go to sleep 
 agen ; it '11 do you good,' The old woman's eyes 
 turned themselves vacantly towards the light, 
 
 * Aw,' she said. ' Aw — ay, I dersay, a nap '11 
 do him a power o' good. Who 's there ? ' 
 
 * It 's me, Mally,' said Mrs. Catheram. 
 'We're sittin' wi' you — me and Hannah, just 
 friendly like.' 
 
 ' Aw,' said Mally feebly. ' Aw.' She looked 
 wonderingly at both the women, and her fingers 
 worked quicker at the sheets. ' Hev ye come 
 to lay me out ? ' she asked suddenly, 
 
 * Nowt o' t' sort ! ' said the woman in rusty 
 black. ' None o' yer fancies — go to sleep agen ; 
 that 's a good soul.' 
 
 The old woman closed her eyes, and turned 
 her head to the wall. Hannah stood by her
 
 84 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 for another moment before she went back to 
 her seat at the fireside. 
 
 ' She 's off ageean,' said Hannah, sipping her 
 tea. * She 's been Hke that on and off all day ; 
 it 's cur'us how clear her mind is.' 
 
 ' She '11 none be long, lass.' Mrs. Catheram 
 poured out more tea and more rum. ' They 're 
 offens very clear i' their minds just afore t' end. 
 And hark at t' wind — how it 's wowling outside ! ' 
 
 'Well, I doant care how sooin it's ower,' 
 said Hannah. ' It 's poor wark nursin' them 
 'at doesn't belong to you. I 've been in here 
 all t' day, and our Sarah Jane 's hed to see to 
 things at home.' 
 
 ' Why, lass, we mun do a bit o' summut to 
 help, thou knows. It's unfort'nate 'at Josey 
 and Mally heen't onny childer o' their own to 
 see to 'em.' 
 
 ' I expect owd Josey '11 be droppin' off t' next,' 
 said Hannah, glancing at the sleeping figure in 
 the chair. ' He 's varry near past doin' owt for 
 hissen. Ye '11 hev to come and lay him out 
 next.' 
 
 ' I expect to lay a good many out yet, lass,' 
 said Mrs. Catheram calmly. 
 
 It's wark 'at I shouldn't like,' observed.
 
 PARTED 85 
 
 Hannah. ' You mun ha' seen a deal o' corpses 
 i' your time.' 
 
 Mrs. Catheram drank off her tea and nodded, 
 glancing at her black bundle. 
 
 * I hev, my lass, I hev. Corpuses o' all sorts 
 and sizes, high and low, rich and poor. Theer 
 wor precious little difference i' onny on 'em 
 when they were dead,' she added reflectively. 
 
 The old woman on the bed stirred again. 
 
 * Josey ! ' she said. * Josey ! ' 
 
 ' He 's asleep, I tell you,' said Hannah. 
 
 ' Aw.' She was silent again. The women 
 at the fireside sat staring at the glow of 
 the cinders. Presently the old woman spoke 
 again. 
 
 * Me an' Josey 's been wed fower-and- fifty 
 year,' she said. ' Fower-and -fifty year come 
 Martlemas.' 
 
 'They owt to be stalled on each other bi 
 now, then,' said Hannah in an undertone. * Go 
 to sleep wi' you,' she added, raising her voice. 
 
 ' Let her be, lass,' said Mrs. Catheram. ' She '11 
 just drop off quiet. Eh, that wind ! — it 's gettin' 
 wilder nor iver.' 
 
 Hannah cleared away the tea-things. ' I '11 
 just run round and see if our Sarah Jane 's
 
 86 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 gotten her feyther's supper ready,' she said. 
 ' Ye can do wi'out me a bit, now.' 
 
 ' Go thy ways, lass,' said the layer-out. 
 ' Theer 's nowt to do.' 
 
 She turned to the fire as Hannah left the 
 cottage, and, drawing her chair closer to the 
 grate, began to warm hands and knees at its 
 ruddy glow. Now that there were no human 
 voices to break in upon it, the silence within 
 the little cottage was deep and intense. The 
 old clock in the corner ticked gently, the old 
 man in his hooded chair breathed with regular 
 monotony, now and then a cinder fell from the 
 bars into the ash-pan ; but around these slight 
 sounds the silence wrapped itself, and beyond 
 the silence rose the pathetic sighing of the wind 
 in the elms outside. 
 
 After a time the layer-out rose and went 
 over to the bedside. The old woman seemed 
 to sleep, and she turned away from her and 
 resumed her place by the hearth. The little 
 black bottle still stood on the table — she laid 
 hands on it half- mechanically, and took the 
 cork out and put the neck to her lips, shaking 
 her head mournfully after each sip. For half 
 an hour she sat thus, nursing the bottle between
 
 PARTED 87 
 
 her hands, and rocking her thin body and 
 wrinkled face over the fire, 
 
 A curious rattling sound from the bed roused 
 her at last. She laid the bottle on the table 
 and bent over the bed, holding the lamp in her 
 hand. The rattling in the old woman's throat 
 died away as the layer-out stood and looked 
 at her. 
 
 ' Sudden at last,' she said, setting the lamp 
 down. ' I mun just run round and tell Hannah. 
 Josey's sound asleep yet, I declare.' 
 
 She went out and closed the door after 
 her. The wind swept in and sent the lamp- 
 light flaring up to the blackened rafters for a 
 moment. 
 
 Josey woke with a start. He had been 
 dreaming, and he had seen a vivid flash of 
 lightning across his eyes. He lifted his head 
 slowly and looked round him. Everything 
 that he saw was familiar — the little house, the 
 bed, the fireside, the lamp burning on the table. 
 He leaned back again and yawned, and became 
 wide awake. 
 
 •Mally!' 
 
 He called his wife's name gently. Then he 
 leaned forward and listened. When a moment
 
 88 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 had gone by he grasped his stick, and, pulling 
 himself to his feet, hobbled over the hearth-rug 
 towards the bed. He bent down to the still 
 figure and spoke again, and then began to 
 fumble amongst the sheets for Mally's hand. 
 His fingers touched her face, and suddenly his 
 hand rested on her forehead as on something 
 very cold. A cry escaped his lips as he turned 
 to the door, through which the layer-out was 
 entering with stealthy tread.
 
 THE OMEN 
 
 Before ever I rose from my bed that morning 
 I knew that for me the end of the world was 
 all but come. Through the long hours of the 
 earlier night I had lain in my bed asleep, yet 
 not asleep. There was no power of motion in 
 me — twice, thrice, and once again I tried to lift 
 my hand from the coverlet on which it lay, and 
 found myself unable to stir even a finger. All 
 about me hung the thick, stifling darkness, and 
 it hurt me so that I longed to scream with pain. 
 My tongue clicked drily against my teeth ; the 
 roof of my mouth was parched ; my lips burnt 
 themselves with their own feverish heat ; I could 
 not have cried or spoken had I seen a ghostly 
 hand point a knife at my heart. There I lay, 
 while the heart of the night throbbed and 
 pulsated all around my bed, — longing to sleep, 
 to move, to cry out my terror, and finding 
 myself powerless. It was as if I had died and
 
 90 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 still inhabited my body : I was myself, and 
 yet not myself. Thus I lay while the night 
 passed, hearing, as one hears the sound of a 
 signal -bell from far off on a misty sea, the 
 chiming of the clock on the stairs. With the 
 grey dawn the horror shifted, and for a while 
 I slept, but presently the first glint of light 
 crept up the counterpane and touched my face, 
 and I woke and dressed, and shivered because 
 of the nameless terrors of the night. 
 
 That was my wedding-day. I crossed over 
 to the window and drew up the blinds and 
 looked out. The rain was falling heavily over 
 a grey landscape. In my croft the cattle had 
 grouped themselves together beneath the trees ; 
 further away, beyond the Black Coppice, I saw 
 my sheep huddling against the nets in the 
 turnip-field. Underneath my window the gar- 
 den lay cold, bare, desolate. The walks were 
 clogged with new-fallen leaves, the lawns were 
 dank and wet, and the hawthorn hedge, destitute 
 enough of leaf, showed black and shining against 
 the grey background of the moody sky. Every- 
 thing reminded me of death rather than of life. 
 Had there been a bird to sing one note of his 
 song, or even a stray thrush to hop about my
 
 THEOMEN 91 
 
 seed-beds, I might have forgotten myself and 
 my thoughts — but the garden was lifeless, for- 
 saken : it spoke to me of nothing but sadness 
 and deep regret. 
 
 Upon the oak chest in the deep window- 
 place lay my wedding finery. It had come 
 home the night before, and the women had laid 
 it there in order. I stood and gazed at it, and 
 for the life of me I could not realise that it was 
 mine, and that I was to wear it that day. I 
 pictured myself in it, and laid a finger on the 
 lace and the ruffles, and drew it away again as 
 if I had touched some uncanny thing. But I 
 put the various articles on one by one. When 
 I came to the coat I took it in my hands, hold- 
 ing it by the shoulders, and so sat down on my 
 bed, and began to stare fixedly at the steadily 
 falling rain. 
 
 I was at that time thirty-six years of age, 
 and all my life I had done my own will and 
 pursued my own pleasure without let or hin- 
 drance. The land that I tilled was mine ; mine 
 were the old house and all its comforts ; mine, 
 too, the money that my fathers had toiled 
 early and late to hoard. There was no man in 
 the Riding that I had reason to envy — nay,
 
 92 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 there was none that I did envy until that day. 
 But that morning, sitting there with the drip, 
 drip, drip of the rain sounding in my ears and 
 the meadows lying dank and dismal before my 
 eyes, I envied the meanest labourer that toiled 
 for me. It seemed to me then that poverty 
 was a more enviable thing than great riches, 
 for I knew poor men who were content. I 
 was not. 
 
 Years before that, when I first became my 
 own master and lorded it over my land and 
 those that lived upon it with all the arrogance 
 of a boy made sovereign over a kingdom, I 
 had sinned. It was no common sin, but rather 
 a sin which nothing can atone for, a sin that 
 neither God nor man ought to forgive. I had 
 cast my eyes on a girl in a neighbouring village, 
 and from that moment she and I were lost. 
 She loved me as a good woman will love a bad 
 man, for in her heart there was no thought of 
 wickedness — she was pure as the white blossom 
 that comes on the hawthorn in later spring. 
 For her love I gave her lust ; for her faith, 
 betrayal. I think the devil entered into and 
 possessed me at that time. All the arts that 
 wickedness can devise I used — and so at last
 
 THEOMEN 93 
 
 my evil deeds came to their fulfilment, and for 
 the happiness that she had dreamed of I gave 
 her misery, tears, the portion of all who trust 
 and are deceived. Even then I never felt any 
 pity for her — she seemed to me no more than 
 the flower which one picks by the wayside to 
 delight one's senses for a moment, and then to 
 fling away. When she died I was conscious of 
 only one thought — that it was better to know her 
 dead than living. ' The dead have no power to 
 reproach/ I said, and I went about with a light 
 heart. 
 
 It was strange that I never once thought of 
 this passage in my life until the eve of my 
 wedding-day. The years passed and I lived 
 my life and prospered, and at last made up my 
 mind to settle down and marry, and raise up 
 children to fill the old homestead with happy- 
 hearted laughter. I looked about me for a 
 wife, and those who had a right to judge said 
 that I chose wisely. Her father's land and 
 mine marched together, and because she was an 
 only child all his acres would some day be hers, 
 and therefore mine. He and I were friends — 
 we settled the marriage between us before ever 
 I said a word of love to his daughter. I could
 
 94 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 never tell whether she loved me at any time or 
 not. Her lips were cold when they met mine, 
 and there was no responsive gleam in her eyes 
 when I gazed at her. It was that coldness, I 
 think, that made me love her so madly. She 
 seemed something high, unapproachable, and 
 because of it I grew to desire her as a man 
 might desire an angel. I shook with emotion 
 at the thought of losing her. Her seeming 
 coldness stung me to a furious desire to take 
 her to my heart and kiss her into warmth and 
 throbbing life. There was not a pulse within 
 me that did not beat for her, not a drop of my 
 blood that did not turn to fire if she touched 
 my hand. 
 
 Upon the eve of our wedding-day I left her 
 in the gathering gloom of the October twilight, 
 and rode homeward across the land in a gay 
 good-humour. She had seemed less cold — 
 nay, she had lifted her cheek for another fare- 
 well kiss as I turned from her to my horse's 
 stirrup. I shouted a laughing farewell to her 
 as I put my horse at the first hedge. When I 
 had cleared it I turned in the saddle and looked 
 back, and saw her at the orchard gate waving 
 her hand in the gloom. I rode away mad with
 
 THEOMEN 95 
 
 love. I laughed, I sang, I rushed my horse at 
 the great hedges that shot out of the twilight to 
 meet us, I yelled at the startled cattle in the 
 meadows. And through all there rang a con- 
 tinual chiming in my heart that said, 'To- 
 morrow ! To-morrow ! To-morrow ! ' 
 
 But in the twilight I came to a lonely church- 
 yard in which that other woman's dead body 
 lay lonely and cold in the damp, clinging earth. 
 I drew rein and looked over the wall, and gazed 
 at the corner in which they had buried her. It 
 was a fearsome place — the nettles grew rank 
 and thick everywhere, and the white mist 
 seemed to hover like a ghost above them. I 
 looked and looked again, and yet again — and 
 it was then that the nameless horror came into 
 my soul and filled it, I could have cried with 
 terror as I shook the reins, but my tongue was 
 dry and my teeth chattered. I began to shake 
 as a man shakes in the ague. The horse tossed 
 his head and moved on, and I clutched at the 
 bow of the saddle to save myself from falling. 
 The curse was upon me. 
 
 As I crossed the open down before my door, 
 two black blots showed themselves against the 
 light skyline between the horse's ears, and as
 
 96 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 they were lost in the wavering darkness I heard 
 the cry of ravens. 
 
 After that I knew that it was in this Hfe 
 that I must begin the punishment of my great 
 sin. 
 
 I thought over all these things as I sat by 
 the bedside, holding my wedding-coat in my 
 hand, and staring through the window at the 
 dripping landscape outside. Nothing would 
 lift the black horror from my soul, but at last 
 I rose and finished my preparations, and went 
 down the stairs to outward appearance as brave 
 a bridegroom as any woman could desire. 
 Through the steadily falling rain I rode, passing 
 thorpe and hamlet as one rides by the ghostly 
 imaginings of a dream, and at last I came 
 to the church, and saw the wedding guests 
 assembling at the door. It was not I, I think, 
 but something which had usurped my place, 
 that waited so long at the altar for the bride 
 that came not. But it was I that at last rushed 
 from the church and leapt upon my horse and 
 rode away, throwing back great peals of mad 
 laughter that echoed along the wondering 
 street.
 
 THE EVE OF THE WEDDING 
 
 Dick finished his tea-supper with a sigh of 
 deep contentment. He smiled as he looked 
 at the round of cold pressed beef that stood 
 before him. There was something about its 
 diminished size that seemed to appeal pathetic- 
 ally to the empty egg-shells which flanked it. 
 Dick smiled again and lifted the teapot. He 
 waved it at the pictures, as he had seen his 
 mother do many a time, and then essayed to 
 pour liquid from its black spout into his cup. 
 But the teapot was empty ; it seemed to groan 
 as Dick set it down. Beef, eggs, tea — he had 
 made an example of all, and the brown loaf of 
 bread had suffered with them. For seven long 
 September hours Dick had tasted neither bite 
 nor sup, and he was therefore sharp-set when 
 he came to table. He now left it, satisfied and 
 happy. 
 
 Margery came into the parlour to clear away 
 the tea-things. From beneath the depths of 
 G
 
 98 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 her white cap she gazed at the remnants of the 
 feast. When she had duly noted the ruin of 
 the plateful of eggs and the diminished pro- 
 portions of the round of beef, she lifted the 
 teapot and made a mental calculation as to its 
 contents, 
 
 ' Lord be good to us, master ! ' said Margery. 
 ' For a man that contemplates holy matrimony 
 on the morrow, your appetite is truly amazing ! 
 It did use to be said when I were a young 
 maid — a long, long time ago, alack-a-day! — 
 that to be in love meant to be without an 
 appetite. But young folk are so different now- 
 adays.' 
 
 Dick laughed. He had got his big frame 
 into the old chair at the fireside by that time, 
 and was settling down for half an hour's com- 
 fortable repose with pipe and tobacco. 
 
 ' There 's naught meddles with my appetite, 
 nor yet my sleep, Margery,' said Dick. ' A 
 man must eat if he means to work, mustn't he ? 
 Only with me the work usually comes before 
 the eating, and that 's why I 'm always ready 
 for what there is.' 
 
 ' And a good job, too,' said Margery. ' Ay, 
 indeed, a good job ! I 've known them 'at
 
 THE EVE OF THE WEDDING 99 
 
 could neither eat nor yet sleep for love — ay, 
 marry, I have so. So thank the Lord, lad, that 
 it 's not so wi' thee.' 
 
 ' Thank the Lord ! ' said Dick somewhat 
 irreverently. ' And what was it that made 'em 
 like that, eh, Margery ? For love, was it ? 
 Why, I 'm in love as badly as a man can 
 be ' 
 
 ' Love,' said Margery, ' is a queer thing. But 
 it was 'cause they were in love that they could 
 neither eat nor sleep, sleep nor eat. But you 're 
 young, my lad, and what should you know of 
 such things? It's been all love's pleasure wi' 
 you, and none o' love's pains. Eh, well — I 
 hope it 's to be like that always, master. I 'm 
 getting old, and I could like to see thy boy on 
 my knees before I go.' 
 
 'You shall dance at my boy's wedding, 
 Margery,' laughed Dick. 'And that'll be 
 something over twenty years to come, at any 
 rate. Old ? — why, you '11 shake as loose a leg 
 as any of them to-morrow, I '11 be bound.' 
 
 The old woman laughed and went out with 
 her tray, and Dick picked up the county news- 
 paper and began to read over his pipe. But 
 there was little in the paper to interest him,
 
 lOO GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 and he presently flung it aside. His thoughts 
 turned to the morrow — the morrow that was 
 to make him bridegroom to the sweetest girl in 
 all the world. At the thought of her his heart 
 beat quicker, his blood leapt in his veins, a great 
 tide of happiness surged over his soul, his entire 
 being seemed lifted up to heights of mysterious 
 joy. To-morrow she was to be his — sweet 
 Letty Gray, whose sunny hair and violet eyes 
 had won his heart from the first. She had been 
 hard to woo and harder still to win, but at last 
 all barriers had been swept away before love's 
 overwhelming tide, and on the morrow she was 
 to give herself to him. He sat and thought of 
 her, and of the great joy that was coming to 
 him. And at last the old clock in the farm- 
 house kitchen struck seven, and then Dick rose 
 and knocked the ashes out of his pipe and left 
 the house. He was going to meet Letty for 
 the last time as her lover. That night they 
 would meet and later on say good-bye — after 
 the morrow there would be no parting between 
 them. 
 
 Dick went slowly through the quiet village, 
 sleeping softly in the light of the harvest moon. 
 Like most lovers, he was early at the trysting-
 
 THE EVE OF THE WEDDING loi 
 
 place. He sat on the old stile by the church- 
 yard and waited, his eyes fixed on the path by 
 which Letty must come to him. Everything 
 was very quiet thereabouts — there was scarcely 
 a sound from the village street, and the noise 
 of the little stream beyond the Five-Ash 
 Coppice came to his ears in a subdued murmur. 
 It seemed to Dick that all things spoke of love 
 and happiness — of love brought at last to full 
 fruition, of happiness all the sweeter because it 
 had been waited for. And then he caught sight 
 of Letty's light dress coming through the thin 
 belt of trees that wrapped the Mill- House in 
 gloom, and he got down from the stile and 
 went slowly to meet her. 
 
 They met by the old tree that stands in the 
 centre of the Duke's Garth — an ancient oak that 
 has doubtless heard the vows and whispered 
 protestations of generations of lovers. Dick 
 held out his hands. The girl slid her own into 
 them, and held up her face. 
 
 ' How cold your hands are, Letty ! ' said 
 Dick, raising his head from her face. 'And 
 your lips too. What's the matter, dear? 
 You 're not ill, Letty ? ' 
 
 Letty looked at him. He saw traces of tears
 
 102 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 on her cheeks, and unshed tears showed them- 
 selves in her eyes. Dick put his arm about 
 her. At that protecting touch the girl burst 
 into tears. 
 
 * Letty ! ' Dick was genuinely alarmed. ' My 
 dear love ! What is it ? ' 
 
 She suddenly released herself from his arm, 
 and leaned back against the tree, and looked 
 at him. 
 
 ' I 'm not ill, Dick,' she said. ' But I 'm un- 
 happy and miserable.' 
 
 ' Unhappy ? Miserable ? ' 
 
 A strange, cold feeling surged over Dick's 
 heart. It seemed to him that he had suddenly 
 come into the presence of something which he 
 could not understand. He stepped closer to 
 the girl, and held out his hands again. 
 
 "It's not about to-morrow, Letty?' he said. 
 ' For God's sake, say it isn't ! ' 
 
 She had been hard to win, hard even to 
 woo, and even sometimes he had thought that 
 the love was all on his side. His heart beat 
 with anxiety as he stood watching her in the 
 moonlight. 
 
 Letty bowed her head. 
 
 'Oh!' she sobbed, 'I can't help it, Dick, I
 
 THE EVE OF THE WEDDING 103 
 
 can't indeed. It is about to-morrow — because, 
 Dick, I — I don't love you as I should do.' 
 
 Dick came close to her and possessed him- 
 self of her hands. 
 
 ' Letty ! ' There was something of command 
 in his voice now. ' Letty ! Speak to me — tell 
 me true, now. Is it because there 's some other 
 — man ? ' 
 
 She nodded her head and sobbed afresh. 
 Dick drew a long breath. 
 
 ' Who is he ? ' he asked, feeling that the 
 happiness of the night was suddenly turned 
 into despair. 
 
 ' He 's dead,' she answered. ' Dead — dead ! ' 
 
 She leaned her face against the tree and 
 burst into a storm of bitter weeping. Dick 
 stood close by, silent and full of wonder. He 
 could say nothing and do nothing to relieve the 
 girl's distress, but he was conscious of a great 
 relief. Dead? Then he had no rival ! In his 
 heart he thanked God for that. 
 
 After a time he put out his hand and laid it 
 gently on Letty's shoulder. 
 
 ' Come, my dear,' he said, ' come, tell me all 
 about it. Dear heart — it kills me to see you 
 crying like that.'
 
 104 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 Letty came closer to him, nestling almost 
 against his broad shoulder. 
 
 * You 're my true friend, Dick, as well as my 
 lover, aren't you ? ' she said, looking at him 
 appealingly. 
 
 ' I am, Letty,' he answered. ' God knows 
 I am!' 
 
 ' I 'm weak and silly, perhaps, to-night,' she 
 said. ' And I 've been unhappy this last week 
 or two because I — well, I got thinking about 
 — him, you know. It was before we came here 
 to live, Dick, before you knew me — and — and 
 — we did love each other true. And he had to 
 go away, Dick, and he was — lost at sea. And 
 oh, Dick — I was dreaming about him last night, 
 and I saw him — alive ! ' 
 
 She shuddered convulsively, and her hands 
 clutched Dick's arm as she looked fearfully into 
 the white moonlight. Dick put his arm about 
 her protectingly. 
 
 ' Hush ! ' he said. ' You 're a bit overwrought, 
 Letty, and you 're not well. So I wasn't the 
 first wi' you, Letty ? ' 
 
 ' No,' she whispered. ' Forgive me, Dick. I 
 ought to have told you, but somehow I couldn't. 
 And besides I liked you, Dick/
 
 THE EVE OF THE WEDDING 105 
 
 ' But you loved him/ he said. 
 
 ' Yes,' she sighed. ' But he 's dead. Was it 
 wrong to think about him, Dick ? I couldn't 
 help it, I couldn't indeed ! ' 
 
 ' No,' he answered. ' Of course you couldn't, 
 my dear — no more than I could help thinking 
 about you. But oh, Letty, this is sad news to 
 me, for I love you, my lass, with all my heart, 
 and I thought I 'd won your love in return.' 
 
 Letty looked up at his face, and was moved 
 by the pain which she saw there. She drew 
 still closer to him and raised her face to his. 
 
 ' I '11 be a good wife to you, Dick,' she 
 whispered, 
 
 ' But your love 's his,' he said. ' O Letty, 
 it 's awful ! And I thought — I thought you 
 loved me ! ' 
 
 He suddenly put her away from him, and 
 stood looking at her in the moonlight. Letty 
 began to weep again. 
 
 * I 'm very sorry, Dick,' she said. ' I know I 
 ought to have told you before, but it 's hard to 
 tell things like that, and besides he's dead — 
 dead ! And I will be a good wife, Dick ; 
 and, perhaps, I shall get to love you as I 
 ought to,'
 
 io6 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 Dick shivered. 
 
 ' Don't, Letty ! ' he said. ' Don't ! My lass, 
 I couldn't marry you without love.' 
 
 ' But you do love me,' she said. 
 
 ' And you don't love me,' he answered. 
 
 ' I like you, Dick. You 're the best man I 
 know.' 
 
 ' I 'd rather I was the worst, if so be as you 
 loved me,' he said. ' Good God, Letty, do you 
 think I can take you into my arms, knowing 
 that you haven't any love for me ? There may 
 be men that can do that — but I can't, Letty ; I 
 can't ! It must be love, and no less.' 
 
 ' Dick ! ' she said, ' Dick ! I do love you. 
 I 've always loved you — in a way, you know, 
 and I seem to love you better. It was only 
 because I couldn't bear to marry you until I 
 had told you all about that.' 
 
 Dick's heart leapt within him. He suddenly 
 seized the girl in his arms and held her to him, 
 showering sudden kisses over her lips and 
 cheeks and forehead. 
 
 ' Say that again ! ' he whispered. ' Tell me 
 you love me again, Letty ! Oh, my dear, 
 you Ve told me all ; now let 's forget. Letty, 
 Letty, it 's more than liking that you have for
 
 THE EVE OF THE WEDDING 107 
 
 me, isn't it ? Say that it is, Letty ; say that 
 you love me ! ' 
 
 She would have been more than human if 
 she had resisted the passion in Dick's voice 
 and the kisses that fell upon her lips. She 
 nestled close to his breast, and for a moment 
 forgot everything but him. 
 
 * O Dick ! ' she sighed, a new feeling for him 
 filling her heart. ' I believe I do — I believe I 
 do!' 
 
 * But you love him ? ' he suddenly said, dis- 
 engaging her arms from his neck, and looking 
 searchingly into her face. ' You love him — 
 yet?' 
 
 Letty bowed her head. The tears began to 
 run down her cheeks again. 
 
 'I can't help it, Dick — I can't indeed,' she 
 pleaded. ' If you 'd only known ' 
 
 ' Ah,' he said, ' if I 'd only known ! ' 
 
 He still stood gazing at her, Letty began 
 to be afraid. 
 
 ' Oh, dear ! ' she said at last. ' What a puzzle 
 it all is, isn't it, Dick ? But we 've got to make 
 the best of it, haven't we ? There, Dick, I wish 
 I hadn't told you, but I felt I had to.' 
 
 She came to him and put her hand on his
 
 io8 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 arm. They walked across the meadow towards 
 the garden gate of Letty's home. 
 
 Dick went back to his lonely hearth later in 
 the evening. The lamp burnt brightly on the 
 table, there was a clear fire in the grate, and 
 on the little stand by the easy-chair old 
 Margery had set out the materials for his one 
 glass of grog. Dick had pictured to himself 
 the difference which Letty's presence would 
 make in his parlour. It was bright and com- 
 fortable enough, but it needed a woman's 
 presence to make it feel like home. Woman 
 and woman's love — Dick's heart had cried for 
 both, and then rejoiced in finding them in 
 Letty. 
 
 He thought of these things as he stood before 
 the fire, looking down into the glowing flame. 
 A woman's love ! — he thought he had found 
 it, and, lo ! it had been another's all the time. 
 Between himself and the woman he had chosen 
 from all other women of his world there rose 
 the apparition of the dead man. What had 
 Death to do with Love and Life ! What ? — but 
 Love had much to do with Life and Death, 
 for it could endure through both. Death had 
 no power over Love — had he not seen the tears
 
 THE EVE OF THE WEDDING 109 
 
 drop from a woman's eyes because of her love 
 for a dead man whom nothing, not even the 
 great God Himself, could give back to her? 
 And that woman was the woman whom he 
 loved with the love which only comes once, 
 and who could never give him the first, fresh 
 love that he had desired and hoped to win. 
 
 He stood there, thinking. Old Margery's 
 words came back to him with strange force — 
 ' It 's been all love's pleasure wi' you, and none 
 o' love's pains.' He laughed grimly at the 
 thought. Pleasures ? Ay, but they were ima- 
 ginary. There had been vows of love and 
 passion, kisses, the hundred and one tricks of 
 lovers — and all the time there had been be- 
 tween himself and his promised bride the ghost 
 of a dead man ! 
 
 It was midnight when Dick turned away 
 from the hearth. All that time he had never 
 moved. The fire burnt low and went out ; the 
 red cinders turned to grey ashes, the lamp's 
 light grew low ; deep shadows filled the corners 
 of the room. In the vaulted hall outside there 
 were weird murmurs of the wind that swept 
 along passage and corridor and made the case- 
 ment shake and rattle. He climbed the stairs
 
 no GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 in the fitful moonlight and went into his room. 
 He lighted a candle, and in its first gleam 
 caught sight of his wedding finery laid out 
 on the bed. He turned from it, and from 
 all that it suggested, with a dead regret — 
 between him and the dearest hopes of his 
 heart there stood a grey spectre, which not 
 even the morning light would charm from his 
 sight.
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 
 
 When the train began to roll and creak its 
 sinuous way out of the little station there was 
 no one on the narrow platform but the woman 
 who had alighted and the collector who stood 
 waiting to take her ticket. He leaned idly 
 against the door of his office ; she, lingering 
 near the edge of the platform, looked out across 
 the level landscape that ran up to the borders 
 of the railway line opposite. It was a dull 
 December morning ; the sky was a mass of 
 grey clouds, and there was a sobbing wind 
 that seemed to threaten rain. The ticket- 
 collector shivered, and wondered why the 
 solitary figure in rusty black lingered star- 
 ing at the dank meadows and mist-sodden 
 woods. But when she turned he forgot the 
 cold, raw air, and thought of naught else but 
 her face, which was full of a tragic beauty
 
 112 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 such as he had never yet set eyes on. There 
 was something in the face that awed and 
 frightened while it attracted him, and he 
 mechanically lifted his fingers to his cap as 
 he took the third-class ticket which she held 
 out to him. 
 
 As she was passing out of the station the 
 woman turned and looked at the collector. 
 Although she said nothing, he drew near, and 
 again touched his cap. She glanced at him 
 as a superior at an inferior — he felt, somehow, 
 that her eyes expressed a gloomy pride. They 
 were glowing eyes, burning in dark sockets, 
 and thrown into fierceness by the excessive 
 pallor of the brow and cheeks, and they 
 frightened him. But he stood, waiting, sure 
 that the woman was about to speak to him. 
 
 ' There is a village named Fenton West near 
 here ? ' she said interrogatively. 
 
 ' Fenton West, ma'am ? Yes, ma'am — about 
 two miles along the road there,' he answered, 
 finding it a great relief to speak at last. ' You 
 can see the spire of the church just over the 
 wood yonder.' 
 
 ' And from there to Queen's Malbis — how far 
 is that ? ' she said.
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 113 
 
 The ticket-collector considered distance. ' A 
 good five miles/ he said. ' Yes, nearer six, I 
 should say, ma'am. But there 's a highroad all 
 the way.' 
 
 The woman lingered for a second or two as 
 if she meditated some further inquiry, but 
 presently she turned abruptly away with a 
 nod of thanks, and went across the station- 
 yard towards the lane outside. The collector's 
 eyes followed her until she disappeared from 
 sight ; then he retired within his office, and 
 drew a deep breath of wonder as though he 
 had just seen something that amazed him. 
 He went out again in a few moments, and 
 walked along the platform until he came to 
 a point which commanded the long stretch of 
 road. The woman he looked for was walking 
 with quick steps along the pavement in the 
 direction of Fenton West village. 
 
 There is in Fenton West an ancient school, 
 endowed some three hundred years ago, the 
 master of which is permitted to take into his 
 ov/n house a certain number of resident pupils. 
 The school stands back from the village street, 
 and is set in the middle of an ornamental 
 garden ; the master's house overlooks it. Into 
 H
 
 114 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 the garden walked the woman in black at the 
 same moment which saw the boys released 
 for their mid-morning playtime. She looked 
 at none of them as they clustered about her. 
 She went up to the door of the master's house 
 and knocked. Once inside the little room 
 where the master kept his books and papers, 
 she sat down, stern-faced and very quiet, and 
 did not even turn her head to glance at any- 
 thing until the old man opened the door and 
 stood before her. 
 
 ' You have a boy in your charge named 
 Richard Frere ? ' she said, making no response 
 to the schoolmaster's greeting. 
 
 ' Yes — I have,' he answered wonderingly. 
 
 ' He has been here some time,' she said, 
 looking round her, as if to examine Richard 
 Frere's surroundings. ' It is, I think, ten 
 years.' 
 
 ' Ten years, madam,' said the master. 'When 
 he came he was five years old — he is therefore 
 now fifteen — a tall, fine boy,' he added, with 
 some pride. 
 
 A swift look shot across the woman's face. 
 
 ' I am his mother,' she said shortly. ' I am 
 Mrs. Frere. I wish to see him.'
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 115 
 
 The old man looked up at her with a sudden 
 interest. 
 
 ' His mother ! ' he said wonderingly. ' I did 
 not know — I have often wondered who it 
 
 might be that And you have never seen 
 
 him for ten years ! ' he added, with increasing 
 wonder. 
 
 ' Will you bring him to me ? ' she said, sitting 
 down again. 
 
 The old man went out. As he shambled 
 across the garden to the school-house his 
 thoughts went back to the day, ten years 
 before, when a man brought little Richard 
 Frere to him, and paid down a year's fees 
 in advance for his board, lodging, and teach- 
 ing. Every year since then had come a 
 letter, written in a fine Italian hand, covering 
 a draft for the next year's fees, and making 
 formal inquiry after the boy's health and 
 welfare. Beyond the signature, ' Margaret 
 Frere,' there was nothing to show who the 
 writer was. The schoolmaster had wondered 
 and conjectured, but had never succeeded in 
 fathoming the mystery which surrounded his 
 young charge. It was perhaps because of it 
 that he had taken a strons^ Hkinsr to Richard.
 
 ii6 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 It seemed to him that the child was absolutely 
 lonely — in all the ten years no one had asked 
 for him at the school-house door ; no one had 
 shown any sign of affection for him. Save for 
 the coldly formal letter that came every Easter, 
 with its firm signature and slip of blue paper, 
 there was nothing from the outside world to 
 show that any one thought or cared for the 
 lonely boy. 
 
 ' His mother ! ' said the old man, drawing 
 near to the boys in his playground. ' His 
 mother! And for ten years — and maybe 
 longer — she has never cared to see his face ! ' 
 
 Richard Frere was playing football. His 
 face was flushed, his eyes sparkled with the 
 exertion. When the master looked at him he 
 had no doubt as to the identity of the woman 
 in his study — the mother's face was the son's 
 face. But there was one difference — the 
 woman's hair was raven black, streaked with 
 threads of white ; the boy's was a bright chest- 
 nut brown, that tumbled in rings and curls all 
 across his forehead. 
 
 The schoolmaster took Richard Frere into 
 his parlour, and told him who it was that 
 awaited him in the study. The lad began to
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 117 
 
 tremble. He was tall and straight and strong, 
 and had never known fear in his life, but at the 
 thought of seeing some woman whom he must 
 henceforth call by the name of mother a great 
 concern fell upon him. He shrank behind the 
 schoolmaster when the old man opened the 
 study door. But the schoolmaster laid a kindly 
 hand on his shoulder and pushed him forward. 
 The black figure in the chair turned and looked 
 at him. 
 
 ' Madam,' said the old man, ' this is your son.' 
 The woman half-rose from the chair, her 
 hands suddenly tightened on the arms, and she 
 bent her face forward and looked at the boy 
 with eyes that were lighted up with a wonderful 
 eagerness. She looked at him up and down, 
 from head to foot, from foot to head, and her 
 gaze rested at last on the chestnut curls. With 
 a quick gesture she rose and walked over to 
 the window, and the old man's observant eyes 
 saw her lift both hands towards her breast 
 as if to repress some emotion that was rising 
 there. 
 
 At last she turned. ' So you are my son,' 
 she said, with calm self-command. ' You are a 
 proper boy to look at, and I hope you are
 
 ii8 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 master of yourself. At last I have come to 
 fetch you — you are to go away with me.' 
 
 ' To go away ! ' The old man and the boy 
 spoke together. ' To go away ! ' 
 
 ' Certainly — that is why I came. Make your- 
 self ready at once, boy — it is time that we were 
 on our way now.' 
 
 ' I trust he is to come back to me, ma'am ? ' 
 said the old man, his hand trembling as it lay 
 on the lad's shoulder. 'I hope ' 
 
 But the woman had turned to the window 
 again. She made no answer to the master's 
 question, and he, with a sense of curious fear at 
 his heart, signed to the boy to leave the room 
 and prepare himself for his journey. He him- 
 self remained, sore perplexed and full of wonder. 
 He wished to ask many things, but when the 
 woman turned to him again his first glance at 
 her face showed him that it was useless to speak 
 to her. He sat down and waited, while she, 
 still standing, fixed her eyes on some imaginary 
 point, and gazed steadily before her. 
 
 II 
 
 Nicodemus unlocked the west door of the 
 church at Queen's Malbis, and stepped into the
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 119 
 
 low, dark room under the tower. He took the 
 mattock and shovel from his shoulder, and 
 placed them against the wall. Then he un- 
 rolled his sleeves and put on his jacket, and, 
 sitting down on the old oak chest, which was 
 gradually rotting to pieces in the corner, he 
 produced his tobacco-pipe and applied a lighted 
 match to the shreds that were tightly plugged 
 into the bottom of the bowl. 
 
 ' Five minutes to twelve,' said Nicodemus, 
 folding his arms and kicking one heel against 
 the oak chest ; ' and seeing that I 've worked 
 like a heathen negro for five mortal hours, I 
 contend that I 've a right to them five minutes. 
 Lawfully, they 're the church's, seeing that I 'm 
 a minister of that great establishment ; but 
 nobody gets or gives all that should be given 
 and got, and therefore I shall take five minutes 
 for myself 'Taint lawful neither to smoke 
 'bacca in consecrated places ; but seeing that 
 this ancient chamber is as damp as old Squire's 
 vault below the chancel, a pipe is allowable, in 
 my opinion. There ought to be something 
 short kept in this old chest. A drop of any- 
 thing ' 
 
 Matthew pushed the door open and entered.
 
 I20 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 He was attired in his Sunday best, and looked 
 spick and span. Nicodemus nodded to him. 
 
 ' You 're in good time,' said he. ' The 
 burying isn't till two o'clock. I 've only just 
 finished the grave — they 're bricking it now.' 
 
 'Parson said I was to start ringing at half- 
 past twelve,' answered Matthew. ' " Start at 
 half-past twelve and ring every minute on the 
 muffled bell until the funeral corteege is in the 
 churchyard," says he. So here I am, and 'tis a 
 monotonous task that lies before me.' 
 
 ' Ay,' said Nicodemus, ' 'tis so. Not but what 
 a man can do a good deal between one minute 
 and another. For instance, he can smoke his 
 pipe, or he can put his lips to a bottle-neck, 
 such as that which sticks out of your pocket at 
 this moment, neighbour.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' exclaimed Matthew, visibly discon- 
 certed, and clapping his hands on the bottle. 
 ' 'Tis a drop that I called in at the Crown for. 
 Will you join me in a drink, neighbour? — 'tis 
 mortal cold in this tower.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' Nicodemus removed his lips from the 
 bottle-neck. 'You were always a rare judge of 
 good drink, Matthew, and your judgment hasn't 
 failed you this time. I '11 come up the ladder
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 121 
 
 and have another drink out of your bottle when 
 I come back.' 
 
 ' Do, neighbour, do,' said Matthew, with evi- 
 dent fear. ' Though it's but a little bottle. Is 
 it going to be a big funeral to-day, neighbour ? ' 
 
 ' For some folks it would be called big,' 
 replied Nicodemus. ' For some it would be 
 termed small. Yes ; a quiet affair, considering 
 that the corpse is that of a great landlord and a 
 baronet. Just the family and so on.' 
 
 'Well, we must all die.' Matthew sighed 
 profoundly. ' Rich or poor, it comes to us. 
 Last week it was old granny Wickfield ; to-day 
 it's the great Sir Richard. All his wealth, you 
 see, didn't save him. At the age of forty 
 years he dies, and his land and his riches and 
 all his possessions is taken from him. Truly 
 all flesh is grass, neighbour,' said Matthew, 
 mechanically carrying the bottle to his lips. 
 
 * Ay,' said Nicodemus, ' so it is. Well, I 
 never cared much about Sir Richard. His 
 father was one of the fine old sort, and when 
 he died the burying was as proper a one as 
 you might desire to see. There was hatch- 
 ments and mutes, and everybody in deep 
 mourning, and they said there was as much
 
 122 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 crape and stuff as would have covered the 
 churchyard. And there was ale too — gallons 
 and hogsheads of it — and bread and cheese in 
 the Tithe Barn. But them days,' added Nico- 
 demus, ' is gone.' 
 
 ' He was a fine figure of a man, though, was 
 Sir Richard,' said Matthew, ' and looked un- 
 common well in his pink coat' 
 
 ' As good-looking a man as ever I saw,' said 
 Nicodemus impartially. ' And yet no better 
 for it. There was them that wasn't any better 
 for it, too.' 
 
 ' Ay,' said Matthew, ' so I 've heard. There 
 was some talk of him and that handsome 
 daughter of old steward Green's, wasn't there, 
 neighbour ? ' 
 
 Nicodemus shook his head. 
 
 ' No more than was true, Matthew, my lad. 
 A deal o' sins to answer for has Sir Richard, 
 baronet though a' be. Ay, a fine-looking lass 
 was Margaret — held herself up like a queen. 
 'Twas a poor come-out for her.' 
 
 'Well,' said Matthew, 'he's done wi' it 
 now, neighbour. Good or bad, rich or poor, 
 they don't come out of the grave when once 
 they 've entered it.'
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 123 
 
 ' Not when I 've dug it and Dick Smith 's 
 bricked it/ answered Nicodemus. He knocked 
 the ashes out of his pipe, and got down from 
 the oak chest. ' I '11 away and have my bit of 
 dinner, and make ready for clerking,' he added. 
 ' When I come back, neighbour, I '11 drink with 
 you again.' 
 
 ' And welcome, neighbour,' said Matthew 
 hastily, ' if there 's any left.' 
 
 Nicodemus went along the village street to- 
 wards his cottage. When he came out again, 
 an hour later, the people were flocking to the 
 churchyard, and Matthew's muffled bell was 
 sending its dull note across the grey landscape. 
 Nicodemus had put on his Sunday clothes of 
 sober black, and with them his most solemn 
 air. He felt full of decorous sobriety and 
 clerkly virtue, and said to himself that the 
 office of clerk was more to his taste than that 
 of sexton. To say ' Amen ' in the reading- 
 desk was better than to dig graves in the 
 churchyard. 
 
 There were scores of people clustered about 
 the porch and the tower when Nicodemus 
 walked up. The church at Queen's Malbis 
 stands on a slight elevation, and those who
 
 124 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 waited in the churchyard could see the funeral 
 approaching along the winding highroad be- 
 neath. It drew nearer and nearer, and at last 
 the vicar, with Nicodemus in attendance, went 
 down the path to the lych-gate, and they began 
 to carry up the dead man towards his grave. 
 It was then that the woman and the boy drew 
 near. She held him by the hand, and drew 
 him away to the three yew-trees which stand in 
 one corner of the churchyard. There they stood, 
 waiting in silence, until the procession came 
 out of the church again. The woman tightened 
 her hold on the boy's hand. She looked across 
 the graves, to a slight figure that followed the 
 coffin as chief mourner — the figure of a boy of 
 twelve or thirteen, blue-eyed, gentle-faced, with 
 hair that exactly resembled that of the lad at 
 her side. 
 
 'That's t' young heir,' said an old woman 
 who leaned against the yew-tree. ' Young Sir 
 Walter they'll call him now. Eh, dear, to 
 think 'at a lad like that should hev all that 
 land and money ! ' 
 
 The woman tightened her grasp on the boy's 
 hand. He looked at her inquisitively, and, 
 seeing her eyes fixed on the slight figure, he
 
 HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 125 
 
 turned his own in the same direction, and 
 watched the ceremony to the end. He was 
 full of wonder, but there was something in his 
 mother's face that made him refrain from 
 asking questions, and so he stood there giving 
 back silence for her silence. 
 
 At last the service was over, and Nicodemus's 
 final * Amen ' sounded hollow and ghostly 
 across the open grave. The assembled crowd 
 began to melt away, going by twos and threes, 
 and at last there was no one in the churchyard 
 but Nicodemus and Matthew, busy at the 
 graveside, and the woman and the boy. The 
 two men, their Sunday coats off, and their 
 trousers rolled up, looked at each other as each 
 stuck his shovel into the soft earth. 
 
 ' Shall we have an odd glass first ? ' said 
 Matthew. ' 'Tis perishin' cold, and I can see a 
 good fire at the Crown.' 
 
 * Agreed, neighbour,' said Nicodemus. ' He '11 
 take no harm for half an hour.' 
 
 When they had gone, the woman took the 
 boy's hand and led him up to the graveside. 
 They stood looking at the coffin. The boy 
 stared at his mother, and was afraid of her 
 eyes. At last she spoke.
 
 126 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 ' See, boy/ she said, ' you asked me why I 
 brought you here. I wished you to see this 
 man buried. You see all this land, these wide 
 meadows : you saw the great house that they 
 carried him from ? It was all his — he was a 
 great man and rich. You saw the boy that 
 followed him to this grave ? — all the land and 
 money are his now. And all should have been 
 — yours. Richard, you are standing by your 
 father's grave ! ' 
 
 The boy started back and looked at her. 
 He suddenly comprehended all that she meant, 
 and a great flush of colour spread over his face. 
 He stared at the coffin, and from the plate on 
 its broad top to his mother. Suddenly his 
 heart burst, and with a great cry he threw 
 himself into her arms. 
 
 ' Mother ! mother ! mother ! ' he cried. ' O 
 mother ! ' 
 
 Something woke in the woman's breast. 
 Till then her heart had been all ice and stone ; 
 at the touch of the young arms about her neck 
 she suddenly felt a glow of new fire wake 
 within her, and with a sob she drew the boy 
 to her, and let him sob his grief out against 
 her breast.
 
 LUKE'S LOVE 
 
 When Dick Marrish came back to the village 
 after his seven years' service in the army, 
 there were not wanting those who said that his 
 coming would do no good to somebody. He 
 was a fine figure of a man, and wore his clothes 
 with a rakish air that had its influence on the 
 young women. He had seen many men and 
 places during those seven years, and he had 
 learnt to talk of his adventures and experiences 
 in a fashion that made him popular in the 
 parlour of the Brown Cow or round the farm- 
 house fires. It was said that he had killed 
 more than one enemy, though he never 
 mentioned the matter himself Neither did he 
 mention anything of the wound which had left 
 a scar across his left cheek. Some of the 
 women said he was ashamed of the scar, 
 because he was vain of his beauty ; but the 
 girls, who admired him not a little, considered
 
 128 GODS FAILURES 
 
 the scar to add to his good looks. To them it 
 was an ever-present proof of his bravery and 
 heroism. In imagination they saw him doing 
 great things, and thus each made a soft corner 
 for him in her heart. The other men of the 
 village knew that, and resented it : had it been 
 possible, they would have sent Dick to the 
 right-about without ceremony. He placed 
 them at a disadvantage, and there was only 
 one of them that did not feel jealous if he saw 
 the ex-dragoon in company with the village 
 maidens. 
 
 Luke felt no jealousy of Dick or anybody 
 else. He was one of those simple-minded 
 giants who trust everything and everybody, 
 and since Lucy had promised to marry him 
 he had believed in human nature and the world 
 with added conviction. All his life he had 
 loved her with that unselfish love which only a 
 great heart can feel. It had been a dumb love 
 — Luke had no gift of speech. His part was 
 to love and feel in silence. He made no 
 demonstration ; he was happy if, at the end 
 of a long day's work on the land, he could sit 
 and look at Lucy, busied with needlework or 
 knitting. Now and then he would approach 

 
 LUKE'S LOVE 129 
 
 her timidly, and let his toil-worn hand stray 
 over her sunny head. When he stooped from 
 his great height to kiss her, and caught the 
 gleam of her eyes and the dewy freshness of 
 her lips in one impression, Luke's head swam, 
 and he experienced all the madness of a pure 
 intoxication. He was almost afraid of those 
 moments ; they seemed to him the high festival 
 days of life, and the remembrance of one of 
 them was sufficient to keep him in a dumb 
 content until the next came. * As well have a 
 stick for a sweetheart ! ' said the other girls 
 with whom Lucy exchanged confidences. 
 ' He 's a strange lover that 's satisfied wi' one 
 kiss.' But Luke knew naught of that — he was 
 filled with quiet happiness, and went about his 
 work, beaming satisfaction on everybody, and 
 dreaming, so far as his practical nature would 
 let him, of the happy days to be. 
 
 As for doubts, jealousies, suspicions, Luke 
 had no thought of them. Being true-hearted 
 himself, he was naturally incapable of harbour- 
 ing a wrong thought of others, and especially 
 of the woman whom he had loved ever since 
 he and she, boy and girl, trotted side by side 
 along the lanes to school. But other folk 
 I
 
 130 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 whose eyes were sharper saw things which he 
 could not see. They wagged their heads over 
 ale-pot and tea-cup, and said to one another 
 that Luke had best look after his sweetheart. 
 It was easy to see, they observed, that Dick 
 had made an impression in a certain quarter. 
 And therewith they proceeded to discuss the 
 matter from all points of view, and were glad 
 of the diversion. 
 
 It was old Reuben Gledd that took upon 
 himself the duty of speaking warningly to 
 Luke. They met on a May morning in a 
 deep-banked lane, topped with the first bloom 
 of the hawthorns, and ankle- deep with the 
 luxurious bursting of the grass. Reuben pulled 
 up his pony, and stared at Luke from between 
 its cocked ears. 
 
 ' Thou 'rt nobbut a lad,' said old Reuben, 
 ' and thou 'rt a good lad. I '11 gi' thee a word 
 o' good counsel. Tak care of all 'at tha hes.' 
 
 Luke smiled broadly. He had been taught 
 prudence and economy from his childhood, and 
 never spent a sixpence where a penny would 
 do as well. As to taking care of what he 
 already possessed, he had always done that, 
 and meant to continue doing it.
 
 LUKE'S LOVE 131 
 
 * I think you can trust me on that score, 
 Mester Gledd,' he answered. ' I look efter mi 
 own pretty weel.' 
 
 ' There 's summat 'at thou isn't lookin' efter 
 just now,' said old Reuben. 
 
 ' Aw ? ' Luke stared. He looked round at 
 his fields, as if to discover some sin of omission 
 or commission detected by the old farmer's 
 
 sharp eye. ' Aw ? I dooant know ' he 
 
 began. 
 
 ' It 's neyther crop nor cow, turnip nor tatey,' 
 said old Gledd. ' I '11 warrant thee to look 
 after them all reyt. It 's thi sweetheart.' 
 
 Luke's broad face flushed a sudden red. His 
 blue eyes shot a glance of fiery interrogation 
 at the old man. Reuben nodded his head. 
 
 ' Now, then, tak a word o' counsel,' said he. 
 ' There 's happen no harm done, but thee watch 
 yon Dick Marrish. Sin' he came home to farm 
 his mother's land he 's setten hafe the wenches 
 crazy wi' his fine airs. Now, look efter thi 
 own, mi lad. I 'm tellin' thee.' 
 
 Reuben touched up his pony and went 
 forward, his old hat grazing the trailing clouds 
 of hawthorn blossom. Luke stood and gazed 
 after him until man and pony disappeared
 
 132 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 Then he turned in the opposite direction, and 
 went straight across the fields towards Lucy's 
 house. There was no feeling of resentment in 
 him — all that he was conscious of was a vague 
 pain. He had no doubt of Lucy — how could he 
 doubt the candour of her eyes ? — but it hurt him 
 to think that others dared to suspect her. And 
 Dick Marrish — why, Dick was an old friend ! 
 
 Half a mile from the house he met Lucy's 
 father. The old man called to him from behind 
 a hedgerow, and beckoned him to approach. 
 
 ' I wanted to see thee, my lad,' he said. ' I 'm 
 a bit uncomfortable like about Lucy and yon 
 Dick Marrish. 'Od-rabbit the wenches, they 're 
 as soft as soap ower Dick ! I think if I were 
 thee, I should aim at hastenin' t' weddin', lad.' 
 
 ' What 's it all mean ? ' said Luke hoarsely. 
 
 * Nay, I darsay it 's nowt, lad, but he 's been 
 about t' place a good deeal lately wi' his fine 
 airs and graces, and he walked her home thro' 
 t' church t' other Sunday neet, and I see'd 'em 
 down i' t' Low Meadow together yesterday efter- 
 noon. I telled her mi mind about it last neet, 
 but she laughed it off, tha knaws, lad — said it 
 wor a pity if a lass couldn't speak to an owd 
 friend.'
 
 LUKE'S LOVE 133 
 
 Luke continued to stare at Lucy's father. 
 His own mind was so far a blank, but across 
 it there began to steal a cloud of curious 
 emotion. 
 
 * Thou mun get her to put t' day forrard, 
 lad/ said Lucy's father. ' And thou mun mak 
 love to her a bit fiercer — lasses likes it hot and 
 strong, thou knows.' 
 
 Luke glared at him, and said nothing. Sud- 
 denly he turned away, and went along the 
 fields again. He saw the red roof of Lucy's 
 house above the tree-tops. Until then the 
 sight of it had always given him a thrill of 
 pleasure. As he went about his own land it 
 was his custom to look across country and 
 let his eyes rest for a moment on the roof 
 which sheltered his sweetheart. But now there 
 was no pleasure in it — instead there was a dull 
 pain that bit and gnawed at his heart. He 
 dropped his eyes and walked forward, vividly 
 conscious of the sunlight, the singing of birds, 
 the white-topped hedgerows, the daisies and 
 buttercups at his feet, the patch of celandine 
 under the elm-tree, and yet still more conscious 
 of an undefinable something that crushed his 
 heart and suffocated him.
 
 134 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 At last he stood on the doorstep of the house. 
 The door was closed. He hesitated as he 
 opened it. A fear came upon him lest Lucy 
 should see the trouble in his face. He could 
 picture her astonishment on seeing him there 
 at that hour — the sudden interrogative arch 
 of her eyebrow, the smile that would bring 
 out the dimple in her cheek, the clear voice 
 that would ask what he was doing there. His 
 face cleared as these things came into his mind, 
 and he opened the door and walked in. 
 
 There was no one in the kitchen. The old 
 clock ticked by the wall, a cat purred con- 
 tentedly on the hearth-rug, a score of buzzing 
 flies made monotonous music in the window- 
 place ; but there was no sign of human presence. 
 Luke stood against the dresser, listening. He 
 was going forward to the stairs to call his 
 sweetheart's name, when he suddenly caught 
 the sound of Lucy's voice. It was not words, 
 but laughter, that he caught, and there was 
 something in the laughter that he had never 
 heard before. 
 
 Lucy was in the dairy — a great cool place 
 at the end of a long dark passage leading from 
 the kitchen. Luke went down the passage.
 
 LUKE'S LOVE 135 
 
 Something had filled him with a great fear. 
 What was that strange new note in the girl's 
 laughter? It frightened him — his heart throbbed 
 and his breath came in gasps, and he felt as if 
 his emotion would choke him. And all the 
 time he knew that he was afraid because he did 
 not know what it was that he was afraid of 
 
 The door of the dairy had a square of wire 
 let into its top panel, and through this Luke's 
 glance passed as he came to the end of the 
 passage. Again he was vividly conscious of 
 all his surroundings. He smelt the fresh butter, 
 he saw the half-light of the cool dairy, he 
 noticed the drip, drip, drip of the butter-milk 
 still running from the churn ; he recognised 
 the dampness of the passage wall on which 
 his right hand rested. And, above all these 
 things, he saw Lucy, in her print gown, with 
 its sleeves rolled above the elbow, leaning 
 against the big stone table, with Dick at her 
 side, his arm about her waist, his hand lifting 
 her face towards his own. He saw the sudden 
 flush of colour in her cheek and the quiver of 
 her lips as they were turned to Dick's 
 
 He went quietly back into the kitchen after 
 five minutes had o-one. His face was white
 
 136 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 as the hearth-stone by which he stood, and 
 his eyes had fallen deep into their sockets. 
 But now the suffocation at his heart and throat 
 had passed away, and he breathed freely ; and 
 his hands were steady as he took down the 
 gun that hung, ready loaded, over the fire- 
 place. He strode gently to the door, and 
 went out into the quiet garden. The sunlight 
 flooded the grass, but beneath the lilac-bush 
 lay a patch of black shadow.
 
 THE ACT OF GOD 
 
 Stephen Thorpe rose from his bed in the 
 early morning, and lighted the candle on his 
 dressing-table. He stared at his face in the 
 glass, and saw sunken eyes set in dark circles, 
 and chin covered with the thick stubble of a 
 two-days' beard, lines and wrinkles that told 
 of conflicting passions and emotions ; and over 
 all a general air of fierce soul-hunger. At any 
 other time it would have made him afraid to 
 see such a reflection of his own countenance, 
 but he had no time for fear that morning. All 
 night long he had tossed and turned in his bed. 
 The clock on the stairs had kept up a mono- 
 tonous ticking throughout the dark hours. It 
 chimed one, and two, and three, and four, and 
 five, and six between Stephen's downlying and 
 uprising, and he counted the strokes every 
 time. It was now half-past six, and the farm- 
 stead was astir. He drew the curtain aside, 
 
 137
 
 138 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 and looked out of the window into the fold. 
 The winter morning was black, but over the 
 granary roof the stars still burnt with the spark- 
 ling light that tells of frost in the air. He saw 
 lights in the stables, and heard the heavy thud 
 of the horses' feet as they crossed the straw- 
 strewn fold to drink at the trough. From the 
 kitchen beneath his chamber he caught the 
 sound of the maids' voices, sleepy and irritable. 
 There was a rattling of fireirons against the 
 grate, the musical tinkle of the cinders as they 
 fell on the hearth, the grating of a hob-nailed 
 boot on the step as a man went in or out — he 
 heard all this with a vague consciousness of 
 having heard it a thousand times before, and 
 yet never with such a feeling as that which 
 was beating itself against his side. 
 
 *An hour and a half,' said Stephen Thorpe, 
 as he turned from the window and began to 
 huddle his garments upon him. ' One hour 
 and half an hour — ninety minutes — five thou- 
 sand four hundred seconds — and then he dies ! 
 I can see him now — he sits in the cell with 
 two warders watching him — they have waked 
 him up from his last sleep — and he is just 
 realising that in ninety minutes he will die.
 
 THE ACT OF GOD 139 
 
 The parson has come to pray with him, and 
 they are bringing his last breakfast. It is all 
 last with him. He has slept for the last time, 
 prayed for the last time, eaten and drunk for 
 the last time, seen the light for the last time, 
 looked at men's faces for the last time — and 
 then he dies. Only ninety minutes ! — they 
 are going fast enough with him, no doubt, but 
 they go slow, slow for me. And that 's natural, 
 for he 's going to die — at eight o'clock exactly 
 it will take place — whereas I 'm going to live 
 and possess the things that he cheated me of 
 After all, what 's his agony to the agony that 
 I 've gone through because of him ? Naught ! ' 
 
 Then he cursed the man who was about to 
 die with a fierce hatred, feeling nothing of pity 
 for him. And that done, he continued to dress, 
 and while he dressed he let his mind go back 
 to the things that had been. 
 
 It was Michael Lynford who lay in Grand- 
 chester Gaol waiting the hangman's summons, 
 and Stephen hated and cursed him because in 
 the days gone by they had been rivals. They 
 were both men of a fierce nature, both intent on 
 living and loving in their own way, and it was 
 an ill matter for both that they fixed their
 
 I40 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 affections on the same woman. Worse still was 
 it that for many a day the woman seemed not 
 to know her own mind. She was one of those 
 who think it a fine thing to have more than one 
 string to a bow, and it pleased her weak nature 
 to see two men in love with her. To-day she 
 encouraged Michael ; to-morrow Stephen, Had 
 they told each other all they knew, both had 
 torn the thought of her out of their hearts and 
 spat in disgust of her memory. But she was 
 careful not to play off one against the other — 
 it was only when she was alone with Michael 
 that she showed Michael her heart — it was only 
 when she and Stephen had their time to them- 
 selves that Stephen was made to believe she 
 cared for him. Thus it came about that when 
 she finally decided to marry Michael, Stephen 
 swore a great oath that he would never more 
 believe in either God or man. And one stormy 
 scene he had with Michael's wife, in which he 
 made her weep because of the fierce contempt 
 with which he treated her, but it had been 
 better for him if it had never taken place. For 
 Michael's wife, like all of her sort, was a liar 
 from the beginning, and she gave Stephen to 
 understand that she had been entrapped into
 
 THE ACT OF GOD 141 
 
 marrying his rival, and hinted darkly that 
 Michael had poisoned the mind of her father 
 against Stephen. After that Stephen hated 
 Michael with a bitter hatred that never slept ; 
 but, having a sense of honour strong within him, 
 he kept away from Michael's wife, though he 
 loved her as fiercely as ever. Strong in all else, 
 he was weak enough to believe in her, and there 
 was not a day nor a night that he did not curse 
 the fate that had given her to another. 
 
 Michael had been married two years, and 
 during that time he and Stephen had never met 
 on the old terms of friendship which once 
 existed between them. If they crossed each 
 other's path, it was in a sullen silence ; if Michael 
 entered inn or parlour where Stephen sat, he 
 went out ; if Stephen found Michael in the 
 market-place and at the church door, he 
 straightway went elsewhere. Thus from friend- 
 ship they were turned to enmity. At first 
 Michael wondered at it, for he knew no reason 
 why Stephen should hate him. Once he stopped 
 his old friend on the highway-side and asked 
 him straightforwardly of the matter. 
 
 ' Why,' said Michael, ' should we be enemies, 
 Stephen ? 'Tis true that I have won the girl
 
 142 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 that we both desired, but I won her fairly. You 
 had equal chance with myself, but you lost the 
 game. Is that any reason for the hatred you 
 show me ? I think not.' 
 
 Now, if the woman, Michael's wife, had been 
 aught but a liar, all had been well. But she 
 had already lied to Stephen, and he had believed 
 her, and so he answered Michael with a curse 
 and flung away, and after that there was no 
 more speech between them at any time. 
 
 Stephen had sworn to be revenged. ' No 
 matter,' said he, ' how long I wait, at last I will 
 have my knife in his heart. It is poor work, 
 this waiting, but my satisfaction will be all the 
 greater because I have had to wait for it. 
 Sooner or later I shall be amply revenged.' 
 
 It was at the end of the second year that 
 Stephen's opportunity came. Upon a Septem- 
 ber afternoon the gamekeeper was found in the 
 Home Spinney, shot through the heart. 
 
 When Stephen heard it, he remembered that 
 he had seen Michael Lynford hurrying away 
 from the Spinney that morning with his fowling- 
 piece over his shoulder. That alone was suffi- 
 cient to hang Michael, for between him and the 
 dead man there had been a great enmity.
 
 THE ACT OF GOD 143 
 
 Michael had suffered serious loss because of the 
 depredation of foxes upon his fowls, and when 
 he failed to get suitable compensation for the 
 damage sustained, he made up his mind to 
 shoot every fox he saw. And that was all very 
 well so long as his war upon the foxes was 
 carried on secretly, but one day the game- 
 keeper had found him dragging a fox which he 
 had just shot into cover, and after that Michael 
 was made to feel the enormity of his crime. 
 The squire and the steward had delivered their 
 minds to him, with threat and expostulation, 
 and the followers of the hunt had ignored his 
 greeting as they passed him on the road. 
 Michael resented it, and even as Stephen had 
 vowed vengeance on him, so he vowed venge- 
 ance on the keeper. And so there was naught 
 wanting but Stephen's testimony to make the 
 chain of evidence complete against him when 
 Michael was charged with murder. 
 
 For a moment Stephen hesitated. All that 
 he could say was that he had seen Michael 
 crossing the field outside the Spinney with his 
 gun on his shoulder an hour or two before the 
 keeper's dead body was found. He knew that 
 that in itself was naught — a thousand good
 
 144 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 reasons might be found why Michael's presence 
 there was innocent enough. But he also knew 
 that his evidence was sufficient to hang Michael. 
 There was the dead man, shot through the 
 heart, and Michael had been seen near the 
 place with his gun, and it was known that he 
 had vowed vengeance on him. It was enough, 
 and Stephen knew it was enough. 
 
 ' Guilty or innocent,' said he, ' he shall die. 
 After all, it will only be his deserts for robbing 
 me of the woman I loved.' 
 
 After that his heart never softened. He 
 gave information and saw Michael arrested, 
 and, when the trial came on at the Assizes, he 
 repeated the story he had told before coroner 
 and magistrates. And he heard his old rival 
 sentenced to death, and his heart bounded 
 to hear it. But when the judge had finished 
 speaking, Michael turned to the man who 
 had given evidence against him, and fixed him 
 with a look. 
 
 ' Stephen Thorpe,' he said, ' you have sworn 
 my life away, and yet you have said nothing 
 that wasn't true. But in your heart you know 
 that I am incapable of murdering any man. 
 Before God, I am innocent of this crime — and
 
 THE ACT OF GOD 145 
 
 I never had a wrong thought of you in my life, 
 Stephen Thorpe, enemy as you are.' 
 
 Then they took him away, and Stephen 
 mixed with the crowd and went homeward. 
 Somehow there was something in Michael's 
 voice and look that made him afraid, but he 
 cursed his fears and hardened his heart, and 
 looked forward to the day that should see 
 Michael's shameful death. Once his rival was 
 dead, the future seemed clear to Stephen. 
 
 And so at last the day had come. It was 
 a dark winter morning, and Michael was to die ; 
 and Stephen rose and dressed with the intention 
 of riding across the land until he came in sight 
 of the tower of Grandchester Castle. He knew 
 of a spot where he could stand until the black 
 flag floated out against the grey sky. After he 
 had seen that he would go home content. 
 
 The dawn was breaking as Stephen went 
 down to the great kitchen. His breakfast was 
 laid ready on the round table by the fireside, 
 but on that morning he had no appetite. He 
 poured out his coffee with a shaking hand, and 
 fetched the brandy from the parlour cupboard 
 and added it to the coffee in generous quantity. 
 It seemed to give him new strength, and so he 
 K
 
 146 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 took more, and more again. And at last he 
 put on his boots and spurs, and went out and 
 saddled and bridled his horse, and rode away 
 across the fields in the direction of the city. 
 As he went the dawn widened. The sky was 
 streaked with red and yellow, the trees and 
 woods came out of the grey shadows of the 
 dying night, across the grass there lay a subtle 
 tint of silvery frost. Stephen saw these things, 
 and did not see them ; his eyes were bent over 
 his horse's ears, fixed on the spot where the 
 towers and roofs of Grandchester Castle would 
 presently emerge from the misty light. 
 
 It was within five minutes of eight when he 
 drew rein on the summit of a low hill. He 
 backed his horse under the leafless branches of 
 a solitary elm. He had often kept tryst there 
 with the woman who in a few minutes was to 
 be Michael's widow, and he remembered it now 
 with a savage joy. Michael had robbed him : 
 now Michael in his turn was to be robbed of all 
 that he had. And he, he had been the instru- 
 ment, the means of vengeance ! 
 
 He took out his watch, and, letting the reins 
 fall on his horse's neck, looked from its face 
 to the grey tower across the hill. He could
 
 THE ACT OF GOD 147 
 
 see the flagstaff, and he fancied he could hear 
 the tolling of the bell. There were but two 
 minutes to elapse. His heart beat itself with 
 remorseless violence against his side as he 
 watched. 
 
 ' The hangman has got him ! ' he said. ' He 
 is strapping his legs and his arms — he will 
 never use either again. Now they are leaving 
 the cell — the parson is praying — you have only 
 a short minute, Michael Lynford. Look your 
 last, Michael — see, there 's the winter sun peep- 
 ing over the prison wall. You '11 never see his 
 face again. Take your last look at all the 
 sweet earth that I 'm still living in — There, the 
 hangman 's drawn the cap over — Ah ! ' 
 
 A dot of black, vague, indistinct, but clear 
 enough to Stephen's eyes, shot up the flagstaff, 
 and suddenly expanded, a square of awful dark- 
 ness against the red-and-grey of the sky. He 
 stared and stared, and something in his brain 
 seemed to burst as he still leaned forward, 
 staring. He grasped blindly at the saddle 
 before he fell forward with a choking cry, half- 
 smothered ere it reached his lips. Then his 
 great weight dragged itself free of the saddle, 
 and he fell to the ground, and lay there face
 
 148 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 downward with one arm outstretched to clutch 
 the wet soil. 
 
 The horse bent its head and cropped the 
 starved grass at the foot of the tree. It wan- 
 dered by the hedge-side for five minutes, but 
 at last it came back and put down its nose 
 to the dead man's face. When it lifted its 
 head again it looked round, and sent a long 
 whinny of brute despair across the desolate 
 landscape.
 
 THE BEATIFIC VISION 
 
 Johnny sat in the sunlight, his eyes wearily 
 blinking at a scant patch of shadow that lay 
 over the dusty grass of the wayside. He had 
 sat there in his shabby rocking-chair every fine 
 day for some twenty years. To folks with the 
 usual amount of brains, the years would have 
 seemed long, dreary, and of an exceeding 
 monotony. But Johnny, being a poor simple- 
 ton from his birth upward, scarce knew the 
 difference between day and night. Early in 
 the fine mornings his mother dressed him (using 
 his father's cast-off garments for the purpose), 
 fed him (as babies are fed), and set him in his 
 chair outside the cottage door. There he 
 flourished, like a cabbage or cauliflower, drink- 
 ing in sunlight and fresh air. In the opinion 
 of his rural neighbours it had been better if 
 Johnny had never been born, and a merciful 
 deliverance if Providence would only take him. 
 
 149
 
 ISO GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 Whether Johnny had any thoughts of his own 
 upon these points who shall say ? The fact 
 remains that he lived a life of great vegetable 
 luxury, positively flourishing in the sun, and 
 making up in summer for the privations of 
 winter. From April until October he lived 
 outside the cottage ; from October until April 
 his seat was near the fire. Summer suited 
 him best ; it was his great recuperator, and he 
 fattened on it. Johnny's mother put her head 
 out of the door and looked at him. Johnny 
 grinned broadly — it was the only form of 
 expression that he had. Sometimes, if strongly 
 moved, he would give vent to his feelings by 
 making a curious boo-ing sound, but for 
 ordinary events the broad grin served. A 
 stranger passing along the street might easily 
 have taken him to be a perfectly sane person, 
 for his smile was intelligent and his face 
 attractive. It was only when you looked at 
 his big blue eyes and saw the hopeless vacancy 
 behind them, fixed in an unmeaning stare that 
 never varied, that you saw Johnny in stern 
 reality. Then perhaps you looked more 
 closely and noticed his legs, dangling loose 
 from his chair, and betraying a disposition to
 
 THE BEATIFIC VISION 151 
 
 wander and wobble, or his fingers that played 
 feebly with his stick — and then you knew him 
 to be one of those beings who come into the 
 world soulless. 
 
 When Johnny's mother's face withdrew, 
 Johnny yawned and moved his head from one 
 side to the other. He looked up the street ; 
 he looked down the street. His face wore the 
 expression which you may see a thousand 
 times a day in Bond Street — the expression 
 of the utterly bored lounger who looks at what 
 he has seen a million times before. Up the 
 street — the mill, its sails going round, round, 
 round, round, round, round, round ; the Gap- 
 ing Goose, its sign swinging in the light breeze ; 
 the school-house, its weathercock glittering in 
 the sun ; a row of cottages ; the gables and 
 roofs of a farmstead. Down the street — the 
 rookery, with the young rooks risking their 
 half-feathered necks at the edge of the nests ; 
 the towers of the Manor rising through the 
 trees ; the church spire ; the village green, and 
 the little pond that flashed in the sunlight. 
 Johnny looked — up, down — up, down — and 
 rubbed his nose in sheer vacuous unconcern. 
 He had seen all these thing-s a thousand times
 
 152 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 and ten thousand upon that. They were the 
 extreme limits of his world. In his twenty 
 years he had never travelled even as far as 
 the duck-pond or the mill. There was a vague 
 notion somewhere in his body that something 
 lay beyond his little circle of vision, but he had 
 no power to wonder what it might be. He fell 
 back upon his favourite amusement of grinning 
 at the shadows on the grass. 
 
 When Johnny next looked up the street, he 
 saw rare things approaching. Over the crest 
 of the hill came a great company such as his 
 eyes had never seen before. It came like a 
 cloud at first, and, growing larger, assumed the 
 proportions of a great procession. Johnny 
 began to feel a tender interest in this thing 
 that moved steadily towards him. Never in 
 his life had he seen aught like it. He was 
 always interested in the passing of a horse, 
 and sometimes he had seen a little procession 
 of four stone-wagons go by, and had boo-ed 
 at them for pure delight. But this — why, 
 already the advance-guard was abreast of the 
 Gaping Goose, and still there were things 
 coming over the hill-top half a mile be- 
 yond. Johnny looked, and looked, and at
 
 THE BEATIFIC VISION 153 
 
 last lifted up his voice in one long, deep 
 howl of joy. 
 
 ' Boo — 00 — 00 — 00 ! ' said Johnny. 
 
 Johnny's mother ran out of the cottage ; her 
 neighbour appeared at the next door. They 
 stared up the street, urged thereto by the 
 vigorous waving of Johnny's right arm. 
 
 'It's t' circus folk,' said the neighbour. 
 ' They 're bound to Cornchester. Sitha, 
 Johnny ! ' 
 
 But Johnny needed no admonition. He 
 gazed, and gazed, and gazed again. His blue 
 eyes were big as saucers : his mouth stood 
 agape. He saw rare things, and did not com- 
 prehend anything but that they were exceed- 
 ing rare. 
 
 First there appeared men, riding in a 
 gorgeous car drawn by many horses — black, 
 brown, white, and piebald. The horses had 
 exceeding long tails, and the men applied 
 hands and mouths to shining things out of 
 which came a divine music. The sound echoed 
 and rang through the village. The school- 
 master and his flock appeared at the school- 
 house door ; the farmers' wives peeped out of 
 the windows, and their daughters ran to the
 
 154 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 gates ; the parson looked over his hedge, and 
 the blacksmith came out of the forge; the 
 geese by the pond rejoiced loudly, and the 
 dogs that lay sleeping in the sun woke up and 
 barked. Then Johnny's mouth relaxed, and 
 he joined the chorus. 
 
 'Boo — oo — oo ! Boo — boo — boo!' cried 
 Johnny. 
 
 But now came wonderful matters. Great 
 beasts walked solemnly by whose tails hung 
 from between their eyes, and whose tread shook 
 the little houses. They bore gorgeous things 
 in scarlet and gold upon their backs, and in 
 one of them rode a great man, with a shining 
 crown upon his head and a flashing sword in 
 his hand. Johnny's mouth widened to a perfect 
 O. But then followed other marvels. Beasts 
 passed before him whose backs were fashioned 
 with great humps, and whose feet trod softly 
 in the powdery dust. A milk-white steed bore 
 a black man, whose glittering teeth made 
 Johnny afraid until a beautiful lady with wings 
 on her shoulders came by and smiled at him. 
 Little cows, with crumpled horns, drew a tiny 
 carriage ; a beast with rings all over it was led 
 by a beautiful gentleman in green and gold.
 
 THE BEATIFIC VISION 155 
 
 And then came birds, great white birds, with 
 long necks and legs, whose snowy plumage 
 glittered in the sun. Houses on wheels, with 
 wonderful pictures on the sides, passed by. 
 In some of them were awful beasts that howled 
 and roared and made Johnny afraid. But ere 
 he had time to whimper came a company of 
 merry gentlemen whose faces were painted in 
 white and red, and whose clothes made Johnny 
 think of the hangings round his grandmother's 
 bed. He boo-ed with delight, and they smiled 
 at him and cut an antic or two for his special 
 benefit. And then came more solemn beasts, 
 with their misplaced tails waving from side to 
 side, and upon the head of one of them rode a 
 curious little animal that wore a scarlet uniform, 
 and mopped and mowed at the people ; and so 
 there was an end of it all, and Johnny sat 
 staring at the last elephant as it wound up the 
 great procession. 
 
 ' Now then, Johnny ! ' said the neighbour, 
 ' there 's fine sights, surely ! ' 
 
 ' Boo — 00, boo — 00 ! ' said Johnny. ' Boo — 
 boo — boo — boooo ! ' 
 
 The last elephant disappeared beyond the 
 green, the strident strains of the band grew
 
 156 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 faint and more faint. Johnny stretched his 
 neck. 
 
 * Nay, lad,' said Johnny's mother, ' they 're 
 gone — thou 's seen t' last on 'em.' 
 
 But Johnny continued to gaze. When the 
 last notes of the music had died away, and all 
 the folk had gone back to their work or 
 pleasure, he turned an inquiring eye on his 
 mother. She, too, had returned to her wash- 
 tub, and Johnny was alone. He heaved a deep 
 sigh, and fell once more to smiling at the 
 shadows as they danced in the grass.
 
 THE PRICE OF CONFESSION 
 
 Leaning his chin on his hands, folded to- 
 gether over the blade of the hoe with which 
 he had singled one turnip-plant from another 
 since seven o'clock that morning, Dick Garth 
 stood in the centre of the field, a motionless 
 figure. It was within an hour of noon, and the 
 sun was burning fiercely in a sky destitute of 
 clouds ; but there still lingered a bright dew- 
 drop here and there on the dull green of the 
 turnip leaves, and it was on one of these that 
 Dick's eyes were fixed. He had gone up one 
 row and down another with monotonous regu- 
 larity for over four hours, and had paused more 
 than once to rest upon his hoe, and stare 
 vacantly at something immediately before him. 
 After each of such reveries he had fallen to 
 work again with renewed vigour, and now, as 
 he slowly lifted his head and reversed the hoe 
 in his hand, he made as if to lop away the next
 
 158 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 bunch of superfluous plants with its bright blade. 
 But ere the sharp edge touched the tender stems, 
 it was arrested. Dick looked across the field, 
 attracted by the dismal note of a crow that had 
 perched for a moment above the hedgerow. It 
 swayed uncertainly over the topmost twigs of 
 a tree which the lightning had blasted into 
 barrenness in a previous summer — a dusky 
 speck against the steely blue of the sky, and 
 beneath it the ghostly white of the boughs and 
 silvery grey of the trunk, down the centre of 
 which ran one long streak of black. 
 
 Dick suddenly flung down the hoe. He 
 faced towards the withered tree. ' I can't work, 
 it 's no good,' he said, and walked towards the 
 hedgerow. The hoe lay where he had thrown 
 it. He plunged his hands deep into his pockets, 
 and hung his head. His feet, cased in their 
 heavy boots, left deep impress in the light soil, 
 a yard of brown earth and green leaf separating 
 each print. But at the foot of the withered 
 tree he stopped. The crow uttered a final note 
 of sepulchral protest, and flew slowly across the 
 next field. Dick watched it out of sight ere he 
 sat down beneath the tree to rest his head on 
 his hands and fall to his thoughts again.
 
 THE PRICE OF CONFESSION 159 
 
 All that morning, and all the day before, and 
 for many days before that, there had been but 
 one thought in Dick's mind. It was not so 
 much a thought as an image — the image of a 
 man sitting in the condemned cell at Corn- 
 chester Gaol, counting the hours as they went 
 by, reckoning up every minute that remained 
 ere the door should open to admit the hang- 
 man. Dick's imagination was slow, dull, not 
 easily stirred ; but the thought of Stephen 
 Meadows, in that awful cell, woke it to acute 
 perception. He put himself in Stephen's place, 
 as he sat there under the tree. There were so 
 many hours to live. Multiply the hours by sixty, 
 and there were so many minutes. Multiply the 
 minutes by sixty — there were so many seconds. 
 But a second is a long time, and a minute — 
 why, in two minutes and fifty seconds you can 
 decide a horse-race ! And yet how fast every 
 second seemed to go ! — the first crowded on the 
 second, and the second on the third, and the 
 third on the fourth, and now the fifty-ninth 
 was lost in the sixtieth, and there was a 
 whole minute gone. And the minutes went 
 quickly, too, and after them the hours — but there 
 was an awful slowness about their progress
 
 i6o GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 for all that, because there was something 
 coming. 
 
 The sweat stood in great beads on Dick's 
 forehead, as he lifted his face and looked about 
 him. From the next field the crow called to 
 him with dismal iteration. He shuddered as 
 though a spirit had laid a spectral hand upon 
 him, and again his mind set to work. He saw 
 the hangman busy with his victim, the little 
 procession making its way to the scaffold to 
 the dull, monotonous clangour of the prison 
 bell ; he saw the central figure 
 
 ' I shall go mad !' said Dick, and rose to his 
 feet. He turned towards the gate, leaving the 
 hoe where it had fallen from his hands. Near 
 the gate he saw his coat hanging on the hedge, 
 where he had put it when the sun grew hot. 
 He stared at it, and passed on unheeding. 
 Down the narrow lane to the village he walked, 
 his heavy tread leaving little puffs of dust in 
 the sandy soil between the deep ruts. His 
 hands were still deep in his pockets, and his 
 chin rested on his breast. Now and then he 
 muttered unintelligible words ; now and then 
 he looked from left to right, always with the air 
 of a man who sees nothing. But he went for-
 
 THE PRICE OF CONFESSION i6i 
 
 ward steadily, until at last, where the lane 
 turned into the village street, he came to a little 
 cottage perched on the bank-side. He stood 
 before the door, irresolute, wavering, for a time, 
 but at last he mounted the freshly scoured 
 steps and knocked timidly. 
 
 A girl's face looked out at him through a few 
 inches of open doorway. Then her hand set 
 the door wide open, and she beckoned him to 
 enter, with a slight movement of her head. Dick 
 followed her inside, and looked round him. 
 There was a stick-fire crackling on the hearth, 
 and over its cheerful blaze hung a great black 
 pot, from the open top of which came a savoury 
 smell. Near the fire sat an old woman, heavily 
 shawled and wrapped, whose head nodded 
 rhythmically, as if it beat time to some tune. 
 She looked round at Dick, and smiled vacantly 
 ere she turned again to the fire. The old grey 
 head went on nodding — backward and forward, 
 backward and forward. 
 
 ' Now, Lucy,' said Dick. 
 
 He kept his eyes on the fire, and did not 
 raise them to the girl's face. But something 
 told him that her own eyes were red with weep- 
 ing, and that her white cheeks bore witness to 
 L
 
 i62 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 an exceeding sorrow. He moved his feet 
 nervously, and his fingers plucked at the buttons 
 on his waistcoat, but his eyes never shifted from 
 the fire and the pot that swayed to the crackling 
 flames, 
 
 ' Now, Dick,' said the girl. 
 
 ' Is there — have they heard — will aught be 
 done?' he said. 
 
 'No,' she answered. 'It's all over — we've 
 had word this morning from the lawyer — it's 
 all been of no use, Dick.' 
 
 ' They '11 hang him high upon the gallows- 
 tree !' piped the old woman. ' High, high, high 
 — high up for the birds of the air to feast upon ! 
 — eh, dear, I can remember 'em hanging in 
 chains — they was brave days, was them ! ' 
 
 ' Hush, mother, hush !' said the girl fiercely. 
 
 The old woman began to whimper. The girl 
 crossed over and touched her hand. She looked 
 at Dick, and nodded towards the door. Dick 
 went outside and waited. In a moment Lucy 
 came to him, and they stood in the middle of 
 the narrow lane. Dick looked at her for a 
 second, and met her eyes. He turned away 
 and stared at the ground. 
 
 ' Dick,' she said presently, * he '11 die inno-
 
 THE PRICE OF CONFESSION 163 
 
 cent. It was never in Stephen to kill anybody 
 — I 'II stake my soul on his innocence. Oh, to 
 think that he '11 die — and like that ! — to-morrow 
 morning! Dick — Dick — it'll kill me!' 
 
 Dick's voice seemed far away to him when 
 he spoke. 
 
 ' You loved him true, Lucy?' he said. 
 
 ' I love him with all my heart,' she answered 
 firmly. ' And he knows it now. I wrote it to 
 him, Dick — I thought there might be some 
 comfort — oh, my poor lad, my poor lad ! — what 
 shall I do, Dick!' 
 
 With an effort that seemed to drive the life 
 out of him Dick turned to her. 
 
 'Lucy!' he said. 
 
 She lifted her eyes to his. ' Dick !' she said. 
 The white face that she looked at made her 
 afraid. 'Dick!' she said again, 'Dick! What 
 is it?' 
 
 The tongue in his mouth seemed suddenly 
 turned into dry, cracking leather. He tried to 
 move his lips — his teeth met and clicked. But 
 with her eyes on him he made an effort and 
 spoke. 
 
 ' Lucy ! it was me ! it was me — not him — that 
 did it ! I couldn't rest— till— till '
 
 i64 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 She stood staring at him a full minute before 
 she stepped forward and laid her hand on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 'You? It was you?' She drew back again 
 — a sudden change came over her face ; it grew 
 cold, hard, pitiless, as she looked at the man 
 cringing before her. She lifted her hands to 
 her forehead, and seemed to smooth something 
 away from her temples. ' I don't understand,' 
 she said brokenly. * I — I 've thought a deal of 
 late, and I 'm not quite clear about ' 
 
 As she stood staring at him, the cold look in 
 her eyes suddenly changed to one of acute per- 
 ception. She sprang forward again, and gripped 
 his arm with fingers that seemed to arrest him 
 as with the implacable justice of the law. ' I 
 know!' she cried. 'You mean that it was you 
 — you, and not Stephen — not Stephen ! Speak, 
 speak, man — isn't that what you mean ?' 
 
 He half-turned to gaze at her face, but shrank 
 away again from the fierce regard of her eyes. 
 ' Yes,' he said. ' It is what I mean.' 
 
 'How was it?' she said. Her breath came 
 and went in quick gasps, her fingers still kept 
 their strict hold of Dick's arm. 
 
 ' It was an accident,' said Dick. ' I swear to
 
 THE PRICE OF CONFESSION 165 
 
 God it was. I 'd no enmity against him. But 
 when they fastened it on to Stephen I said naught 
 — because I thought — I thought they 'd put him 
 out of the way, and I should have a chance with 
 thee, lass ! It was all for love of thee, Lucy.' 
 
 The girl's hand unclasped itself from Dick's 
 arm. She hastened within the cottage, and 
 came back tying the strings of her sun-bonnet 
 under her chin, with fingers that trembled at 
 every movement. 
 
 ' Come,' she said, motioning to Dick. He 
 looked at her wonderingly. ' Where?' he said. 
 
 ' To Cornchester,' she answered. 
 
 *To Cornchester?' 
 
 He echoed the words in a dull, meaningless 
 fashion. But suddenly their import burst upon 
 him, and his face turned deathly pale, and the 
 sweat flushed thick upon his forehead. He put 
 out his hands, as if to keep some awful thing 
 away. But on the instant the girl was at his 
 side, and had seized both his hands in hers. 
 
 * Dick ! Dick ! For the dear Lord's sake, 
 Dick, be strong ! O Dick, don't have two 
 murders on your soul — come with me and right 
 him. Dick — if you love me — if you love me, 
 Dick, give me back the man I love !'
 
 i66 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 She had drawn close to him as she pleaded, 
 and suddenly she lifted her face to his and 
 kissed him. At the touch of her lips Dick 
 drew himself up — the tides of irresolute man- 
 hood came back to him strong and vigorous. 
 He looked at her for a moment, and then held 
 out his hand. 
 
 ' Come, Lucy,' he said. 
 
 Hand-in-hand they went silently along the 
 sunlit road. It was noon, and there was scarce 
 a figure to be seen in the wide expanse of level 
 land on either side the way. But at a turn of 
 the highway there came in sight the red-roofed 
 town, and high above it the round tower of the 
 gaol, that seemed to frown menace upon the 
 green earth that came up to its very founda- 
 tions. With a quick consent their eyes turned 
 to it at the same time. There was a sudden 
 tremor in Dick's hand, but in a moment it was 
 steady again. They went on — two lonely figures 
 against the close-cropped hedgerows. 
 
 In the turnip-field lay Dick's hoe, its blade 
 resting against the last plants that it had struck 
 out. The sun that glinted upon its polished 
 surface had withered the plants into premature 
 death.
 
 THE LAST LOOK ROUND 
 
 As the April sunshine stole into his room, 
 Martin Summers awoke and looked about him 
 with sleepy eyes. He sat up, and, leaning on 
 his elbow, stared at the ceiling and the walls. 
 The lath and plaster were falling from the 
 ceiling, and there were unmistakable evidences 
 of damp in the long streaks of discoloured 
 wall-paper. His eyes wandered to the window, 
 and rested on a wisp of straw that had been 
 stuffed into the jagged opening left by a 
 broken pane. Thence they turned to a curious 
 examination of the room. The floor was bare 
 concrete — there was neither mat nor carpet 
 for bare feet to step upon ; the walls were 
 destitute of picture or ornament, save for a 
 tattered Scripture text that hung from a nail 
 above the mantelpiece. There were no hang- 
 ings to the crazy bed, and beyond the bed 
 there was no single piece of furniture in the 
 
 167
 
 i68 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 room. Martin's clothes lay on the floor where 
 he had thrown them the previous night. 
 
 ' So this is the end of it all,' said Martin, and 
 got out of bed. ' A fine end, truly ! Land 
 and money, money and land, house and home, 
 home and house, all gone — and me a beggar. 
 A fine end ! ' 
 
 He picked up his clothes and huddled them 
 upon him with no more care than he would 
 have displayed in dressing up a scarecrow. 
 Pulling his coat on, he went down the stairs, 
 his heavy boots waking dull echoes in the 
 deserted house. He heard the scuttering of 
 mice on the hearthstone of the kitchen as he 
 passed through, and never turned his head to 
 glance at them. Mechanically he walked to 
 the door and took down a rough towel that 
 hung there on a roller. From the window- 
 ledge he picked up a bit of yellow soap, hard 
 and dry. The door into the yard was open 
 — he had not thought it worth the trouble of 
 bolting when he went to bed the night before. 
 He walked into the yard and washed himself at 
 the pump. The cold spring water revived him, 
 and he looked about him, drawing a long breath 
 of satisfaction as he turned back to the house.
 
 THE LAST LOOK ROUND 169 
 
 From a cupboard in the kitchen Martin 
 Summers took a crust of bread and a bowl 
 of milk. He sat down in the window-seat 
 and lifted the bread to his mouth. ' The bread 
 of bitterness ! ' he said, as his teeth met in the 
 crust. And he laughed sneeringly, with a 
 laughter that checked itself abruptly ere the 
 full note came. The first mouthful seemed 
 to choke him, and he made as if to put the 
 bread down, but lifted it to his lips again 
 instead, and munched steadily at it, swallow- 
 ing every crumb with evident distaste and 
 difficulty. Then he drank the milk at a 
 draught, and looked at the empty bowl as if 
 it were some curious specimen of pottery. He 
 suddenly flung it from him with a turn of his 
 wrist, and it hit the rusty bars of the fireless 
 grate and smashed into small pieces with a 
 harsh ring. 
 
 Martin laughed again, and rose to his feet. 
 He stood irresolute for a moment ere he 
 walked across the kitchen to the parlour door. 
 But with the door once open and the empty 
 parlour lying before him he hesitated no longer. 
 He went in and walked round it, looking 
 curiously at the bare boards, the blackened
 
 I70 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 hearthstone, the marks on the walls where 
 the pictures had hung. By the window he 
 stopped, standing on one particular spot, where 
 his mother's chair had always stood. There 
 was a fine view of the garden and of the 
 country beyond from that window — he looked 
 at it now with eyes that saw naught of it. 
 Presently he turned away, and began to ex- 
 plore the rest of the house. He^ went from 
 one room to another, upstairs and downstairs, 
 and even into the cellars, by the stone steps 
 that had been worn and hollowed by the feet 
 of half a score generations of his ancestors. 
 And at last he had visited every corner of 
 the old house, and he came out at the front 
 door and stood on the doorstep, shading his 
 eyes from the sunlight as he looked about him. 
 In the paddock there were unmistakable 
 evidences of the previous day's sale. The 
 grass was strewn with straw, bits of rope, 
 odds and ends ; a well-defined circular track 
 showed where the horse-ring had been set up ; 
 further away the ground was trampled into 
 mud by the feet of sheep, cattle, and pigs. 
 Under the trees still remained two or three 
 old implements — a roller, a drill, a pair of
 
 THE LAST LOOK ROUND 171 
 
 harrows, sold for a shilling or two to some 
 purchaser that repented his cheap bargain, and 
 left his purchase unclaimed. Martin looked at 
 these things as he marched across the paddock 
 and into the wide meadow beyond. 
 
 ' A fine end ! ' said he bitterly. ' Truly a fine 
 end 1 Empty house, empty barn, empty stable. 
 Once the house was full of plenishing and 
 plenty — there was never stint nor hindrance to 
 lad or lass within its doors. There were corn in 
 the barn and horses in the stable — ay, better 
 horses and more corn than in any farmstead of 
 the wapentake. And now it's all gone — by 
 heaven ! ' said Martin Summers, ' 'tis time I 
 was gone too.' 
 
 And with that he began to think and re- 
 member. Twenty years had gone by since 
 the old place came into his possession. There 
 had been a Summers of Summerscote since 
 the days of the first Charles — one of them 
 had fought with honour at Marston Moor, — 
 and each successive owner had added some- 
 thing of value to the place. For generations 
 they had toiled and saved, rising early and 
 working late, men and women — the men in 
 the fields, the women in the dairy ; and so they
 
 172 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 had come to be people of substance and of 
 position. But wealthy as they were, there 
 was never a Summers of Summerscote who 
 felt himself entitled to play the fine gentleman 
 until Martin's day. His father, it was true, 
 had kept a good table, drunk his bottle of 
 wine on a Sunday, and ridden to hounds twice 
 a week in the season ; but there his extrava- 
 gance stopped. It was a mild extravagance, 
 and Martin, as a lad, had shared in it. He had 
 vowed that when he came into full lordship 
 things should be different. He would have 
 his fling, he would enjoy life. Life, he said, 
 was meant to be lived — it was something better 
 than a dull round of daily tasks, relieved by 
 a visit to market, a day's hunting, and an 
 occasional bottle of wine. He would live 
 royally and enjoy himself — he would acquire 
 a reputation as a good fellow and a generous 
 host, and there should not be a sportsman in 
 the Riding to compare with him. 
 
 When he came into possession of land 
 and money he was twenty-two years of age, 
 and had an appetite for pleasure that had been 
 whetted more keenly by the repression which 
 his father's presence had exercised upon him.
 
 THE LAST LOOK ROUND 173 
 
 There was never a doubt in his mind as to the 
 riches of the dead Summerses lasting out. He 
 was not anxious, as his father and grandfather 
 had been anxious, to leave wealth behind him. 
 He had no desire to deny himself in order to 
 leave money to a son. All that he wished was 
 for years of pleasure. Time enough, he said to 
 himself when he fairly realised that he was lord 
 and master of Summerscote, to think about 
 serious matters when he grew tired of life's joys. 
 So he plunged into the whirl of life, and never 
 gave a thought to the morrow. 
 
 For five years the old mother, sitting in her 
 chair at the parlour window, with Bible and 
 knitting ever at hand, watched her only child's 
 life with a terrible anxiety. She besought and 
 warned, and sometimes commanded ; and to 
 all that she said Martin turned a deaf ear. He 
 was never unkind, never remiss in his attentions; 
 he was sedulous in his regard to her personal 
 comfort, but he would have his own way. The 
 old woman in time refrained from entreating 
 him, and betook herself to prayer. She strove 
 to shut her eyes to what was going on. There 
 were days and days whereon Martin never 
 came near the land and his labourers — he
 
 174 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 was away in Cornchester, or York, or London, 
 roystering and seeing life. She felt that the 
 money which his father had helped to gather 
 together, and to keep when gathered, was melt- 
 ing away, and she was powerless. And at last 
 she died, and so there was no check on Martin, 
 and his career went forward at a faster rate 
 than ever. There were not wanting those who 
 had known and respected his father to come to 
 him with advice and warning as to the fate in 
 store for him if he persisted in his mode of life. 
 But to some Martin answered with a careless 
 laugh, and to others with a sullen curse ; and 
 neither failed to warn his counsellors that it was 
 of no use wasting words upon him. He was a 
 prodigal from his birth. 
 
 All these things came back to Martin 
 Summers as he walked about the land that 
 April morning. The end had been long in 
 coming, for there was much money, and the 
 land was valuable ; but it had come at last. 
 He had known twenty years of reckless life, 
 and now it was over. The land was his no 
 longer ; there was not a beast on its surface that 
 he could call his own ; the old house contained 
 naught but the crazy bedstead and the broken
 
 THE LAST LOOK ROUND 175 
 
 potsherds on the hearth — every stick had been 
 sold to satisfy the rapacious creditors, and he was 
 a beggar. ' And more than a beggar,' he said to 
 himself, ' for I am a friendless man. Of all the 
 men that spent my money, that lived on me 
 and flattered me, who is there that will give me 
 my dinner ? Not one, A fine end ! ' 
 
 All that morning he wandered up and down 
 the fields, thinking bitterly of his own folly, but 
 at noon he went back to the house and turned 
 into the fold with purposeless steps. He felt 
 that something lay before him, and yet he 
 knew not what it was. The whinny of a horse 
 roused him. He looked up, and saw, watching 
 him from the half-open door of a stable, the old 
 beast that had been put up last of all the night 
 before, and had been knocked down for a hand- 
 ful of silver. Its purchaser had left it in the 
 stable over night, and now it whinnied for food. 
 Martin approached it. With his hands in his 
 pockets he stood staring at this wreck of his 
 fortunes — a gaunt mass of bones with rheumy 
 eyes and swollen knees. There was a halter 
 round its neck, and he laid hold of it and 
 led the old horse across the fold. He threw 
 wide the gate into the paddock, but as he
 
 176 GOD'S FAILURES 
 
 turned the beast loose he took the halter from 
 its head. 
 
 The old horse shambled into the paddock and 
 began to crop feebly at the grass. Martin looked 
 at it, and from its bony ribs his eyes turned to the 
 rope in his hands. He turned, and walked back 
 to the stable. It was cool and dark in there, 
 but light enough to show him a stout beam that 
 ran across the roof. He climbed up, and made 
 fast the rope. Then he came down and paused 
 — and went over to the door and shut out the 
 sunlight. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
 John Lane 
 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES. 
 
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 scenes and landscapes are described with so much and so rare vividness, 
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 for the real flood of the human heart than for the tepid negus which stirs 
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 not always winning, is certainly always fascinating and impressive.' — 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' English or foreign, there is no work among those now before me which 
 is so original as that of the late Francis Adams. " A Child of the Age " is 
 original, moving, often fascinating.' — Academy. 
 
 ' It comes recognisably near to great excellence. There is a love episode 
 in this book which is certainly fine. Clearly conceived and expressed with 
 point.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 'The love incident is exquisite and exquisitely told. "Rosy" lives; her 
 emotions stir us. Wonderfully suggested in several parts of the work is the 
 severe irony of natvure before profound human suffering. But the charm of 
 the book is the analysis of mental torture, of interesting remorse, of the 
 despair of one to whom the future is without light. One is grateful for the 
 artistic revelation of the sweet wormwood of pain.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 THE GREAT GOD PAN and THE INMOST LIGHT. 
 
 By Arthur Machen. Crown 8vo, 33. 6d. net. 
 
 'Since Mr. Stevenson played with the crucibles of science in "Dr. 
 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde " we have not encountered a more successful experi- 
 ment of the sort.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' Nothing so appalling as these tales has been given to publicity within 
 our remembrance ; in which, nevertheless, such ghastly fictions as Poe's 
 "Telltale Heart," Bulwer's "The House and the Brain," and Le Fanu's 
 " In a Glass Darkly" still are vividly present. The supernatural element 
 is utilised with extraordinary power and effectiveness in both these blood- 
 chilling masterpieces.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 'Will arouse the sort of interest that was created by " Dr. Jekyll and 
 Mr. Hyde." The tales present a frankly impossible horror, which, never- 
 theless, kindles the imagination and excites a powerful curiosity. It is 
 almost a book of genius, and we are not sure that the safeguarding adverb 
 is not superfluous.' — Birmingham. Post. 
 
 ' The coarser terrors of Edgar Allen Poe do not leave behind them the 
 shudder that one feels at the shadowed devil-mysteries of "The Great God 
 Pan." ' — Liverpool Mercury.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 Fifth Edition. 
 DISCORDS. By George Egerton. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 net. 
 
 ' She has given, times without number, examples of her ripening power 
 that astonish us. Her themes astound ; her audacity is tremendous. In 
 the many great passages an advance is proved that is little short of amaz- 
 ing.' — Literary World. 
 
 'A series of undoubtedly clever stories, told with a poetic dreaminess 
 which softens the rugged truths of which they treat. Mothers might benefit 
 themselves and convey help to young girls who are about to be married by 
 the perusal of its pages.' — Liverpool Mercury. 
 
 ' The book is true to human nature, for the author has genius, and, let us 
 add, has heart. It is representative ; it is, in the hackneyed phrase, a 
 human document.' — Speaker. 
 
 ' It is another note in the great chorus of revolt ... on the whole 
 clearer, more eloquent, and braver than almost any I have yet heard.' — 
 T. P. (' Book of the Week '), Weekly Sun, December 30. 
 
 ' What an absorbing, wonderful book it is : How absolutely sincere, and 
 how finely wrong ! George Egerton may be what the indefatigable Mr. 
 Zangwill calls a one-I'd person, but she is a literary artist of exceptional 
 endowment — probably a genius.' — Woman. 
 
 ' She has many fine qualities. Her work throbs with temperament, and 
 here and there we come upon touches that linger in the memory as of things 
 felt and seen, not read of.' — Daily News. 
 
 PRINCE ZALESKL By M. P. Shiel. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 net. 
 
 ' Mr. M. P. Shiel has in this volume produced something which is 
 always rare, and which is every year becoming a greater rarity — a work 
 of literary invention characterised by substantial novelty. We have 
 Poe's analysis and Poe's glamour, but they are no longer distinct ; they 
 are combined in a new synthesis which stamps a new imaginative impres- 
 sion. A finely-wrought structure in which no single line impairs the 
 symmetry and proportion. One of the most boldly-planned and strik- 
 ingly-executed stories of its kind which has appe.ared for many a long 
 day. We believe there is nothing in "Prince Zaleski " which that great 
 inventor and masterly manipulator of the spoils of invention (Poe) would 
 have disdained to father.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 'The Prince was a Sherlock Holmes, with this difference: that while 
 yielding nothing to Conan Doyle's hero in mere intellectual agility, he 
 had that imaginative insight which makes poets more frequently than 
 detectives. Sherlock Holmes was a clever but essentially commonplace 
 man. Prince Zaleski was a great man, simply. Enthralling . . . once 
 begun they insist on being finished. Broadly and philosophically con- 
 ceived, and put together with rare narrative skill, and feeling for effect.' 
 — Woman. 
 
 ' He has imparted to the three tales in this volume something of that 
 atmosphere of eerie fantasy which Poe knew how to conjure, proceeding 
 by the analysis of a bafliing intricacy of detail to an unforeseen conclusion. 
 The themes and their treatment are alike highly imaginative.' — Daily 
 
 News. 
 
 ' Manifestly written by one of Poe's true disciples. His analytical skill 
 is not that of the detective, even of so brilliant a detective as Mr. Sherlock 
 ' Holmes. Probably his exploits will interest the public far less than did 
 those of Mr. Doyle's famous character ; but the select few, who can 
 appreciate delicate work, will delight in them exceedingly.' — Speaker.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 Twenty-second Edition. 
 
 THE WOMAN WHO DID. By Grant Allen. Crown 
 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' Really impressive ; but unfortunately — or fortunately, as we think it — it 
 is a strong and impressive plea for what Mr. Grant Allen regards as the 
 effete, unintelligent, utterly wrong view of things.' — Spectator. 
 
 ' There is not a sensual thought or suggestion throughout the whole 
 volume. Though I dislike and disbelieve in his gospel, I thoroughly 
 respect Mr. Grant Allen for having stated it so honourably and so bravely.' 
 — A cademy. 
 
 'Even its bitterest enemies must surely feel some thrill of admiration for 
 its courage. It is, once more, one philosopher against the world. Not in 
 our day, perhaps, can it be decided which is right, Mr. Grant Allen, or the 
 world. Perhaps our children's children will some day be canonising Mr. 
 Grant Allen for the verj' book for which to-day he stands a much greater 
 chance of being stoned, and happy lovers of the new era bless the name of 
 the man who, almost single-handed, fought the battle of Free Love. 
 Time alone can say. . . . None but the most foolish or malignant reader 
 of 'The Woman Who Did ' can fail to recognise the noble purpose which 
 animates its pages. . . Label it as one will, it remains a clever, stimu- 
 lating book. A real enthusiasm for humanity blazes through every page 
 of this, in many ways, remarkable and significant little book.' — Sketch. 
 
 ' Mr. Grant Allen has undoubtedly produced an epoch-making book, and 
 one which will be a living voice when most of the novels of this generation 
 have passed away into silence. It is epoch-making in the sense that 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was ; — the literary merits of that work were by no 
 means great, but yet it rang like a tocsin through the land, arousing mankind 
 to a sense of the slavery under which a large portion of humanity suffered. 
 — Humanitarian. 
 
 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES. By H. D. LOWRY. Crown 8vo, 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 'Written in a clear unaffected style, and with the restraint in handling 
 delicate subjects that marks the true artist.' — Athenaum, 
 
 ' Of that best and finest kind of imaginative realism which presents not 
 only the object, but its surrounding atmosphere, there have of late been few 
 rnore arresting and impressive examples than these tales of lowly Cornish 
 life.' — Acadevty. 
 
 ' He is the master of a style singularly strenuous and sensitive. What he 
 sees he can e.xpress with marvellous vividness. There is nothing more 
 terrible and perfect of its kind than his story, "The Man in the Room." 
 It is magnificently done, powerfully imagined, and convincingly presented.' 
 —Black and White. 
 
 'Mr. Lowry's "Women's Tragedies" are the most striking thumbnail 
 sketches since Mr. Quiller Couch idly ceased to write his wonderful 
 " Noughts and Crosses." ' — Star. 
 
 ' A wide and critical section of the reading public will be ready to welcome 
 " Women's Tragedies." The author has not a little of the ancient mariner's 
 power. He creates a situation which holds the reader mentally spellbound, 
 and leaves an impression not readily effaced . . . sombre, even eerie, they 
 prove, and yet strong with the author's power to fascinate.' — Dundee 
 Advertiser.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 GREY ROSES. By Henry Harland. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 net. 
 
 ' Exceedingly pleasant to read. You close the book with a feeling that 
 you have met a host of charming people. "Castles Near Sp^n" comes 
 near to being a perfect thing of its kind.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' They are charming stories, simple, full of freshness, with a good deal of 
 delicate wit, both in the imagining and in the telling. The last story of 
 the book, in spite of improbabilities quite tremendous, is a delightful story. 
 He has realised better than any one else the specialised character of the 
 short story and how it should be WTitten.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 'Really delightful. "Castles near Spain" is as near perfection as it 
 could well be.' — Spectator. 
 
 ' " Castles near Spain " as a fantastic love episode is simply inimitable, 
 and " Mercedes" is instinct with a pretty humour and child-like tenderness 
 that render it peculiarly — nay, uniquely — fascinating. "Grey Roses" are 
 entitled to rank among the choicest flowers of the realms of romance.' — 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 AT THE FIRST CORNER, and other Stories. By 
 H. B, Marriott Watson. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 'We willingly bear witness to Mr. Watson's brilliance, versatility, and 
 literary power. "An Ordeal of Three " is a fancy that is full of beauty and 
 delicate charm. When, again, Mr. Watson deals with the merely sordid and 
 real side of East-end London he justifies his choice by a certain convincing 
 realism which is never dull, and which is always inevitably true.' — Pall 
 Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' A collection of nine stories admirably told by a master who has been 
 much copied but never equalled. Mr. Marriott Watson has all the qualities 
 erf" strength, imagination, and style, combined with a very complete sense 
 of proportion.' — Vanity Fair. 
 
 ' Mr. Marriott Watson can write, and in these new stories he shows, more 
 manifestly than in any previous work, his capacity for dramatic realisation. 
 "An Ordeal of Three" has not only strength but charm.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' Admirably conceived and brilliantly finished ; the book will be read.' — 
 Saturday Review.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 MONOCHROMES. By Ella D'Arcy. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 net. 
 
 'If Miss D'Arcy can maintain this level, her future is secure. She has 
 produced one story which comes near to being a masterpiece.' — Daily 
 Chronicle. 
 
 'The cleverest volume of short stories that the year has given us.' — 
 Mr. Zangwill in the Pall Mall Magazine. 
 
 ' We doubt if any other living woman-writer could have written quite so 
 well.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' It is rare indeed to meet, in English, with a number of short stories of 
 such distinction from an English pen.' — Graphic. 
 
 'She expresses herself with remarkable force and point, whilst her 
 polished refinement of style gives literary value to these clever sketches. 
 "Monochromes" is distinctly clever, and so well written as to give us 
 strong hopes of its author's future.' — Speaker. 
 
 AT THE RELTON ARMS. By Evelyn Sharp. Crown 
 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 'Miss Evelyn Sharp is to be congratulated on having, through the mouth 
 of one of her characters, said one of the wisest words yet spoken on what is 
 rather absurdly called "The Marriage Question" (page 132). It is an in- 
 teresting and well-written story, with some smart characterisation and quite 
 a sufficiency of humour.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' A delightful story. The most genuine piece of humour in a book that 
 is nowhere devoid of it, is that scene in the inn parlour where Digby finds 
 himself engaged to two young women within five minutes ; while the two 
 brief colloquies of the landlady and her cronies make one suspect that the 
 author could produce an admirable study of village humour.' — Atlunaum. 
 
 'A distinctly clever book, of a fresh conventionality.'— /^faff^w?)'. 
 
 'A brilliantly-written tale. . . . Teems with character sketches of ex- 
 traordinary force and delicacy.' — Daily Telegraph.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 THE GIRL FROM THE FARM. By Gertrude Dix. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' Miss Dix has a pleasant and graceful style. The dean is well and sym- 
 pathetically portrayed, and some of the scenes between him and Katherine 
 bear the stamp of truth." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 'The novel is exceptionally well written, the characters are admirably 
 drawn ; there is a vividness, too, about several of the descriptions and 
 scenes which is a great deal more than mere patient realism.' — Glasgow 
 Herald. 
 
 ' A decidedly clever little book.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' The work of a writer with real gifts for fiction, gifts of characterisation 
 and story-telling.' — Star. 
 
 ' The story is cleverly constructed and well written.' — Weekly Scotsman. 
 
 ' A thoroughly wholesome book and very clever. Katherine is a charming 
 character.' — Queen. 
 
 ' A powerful piece of writing. The dean and his daughter are drawn in 
 masterly fashion.' — Whitehall Review. 
 
 THE MIRROR OF MUSIC. By Stanley V. Makower. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' It is a new thing in literature. There is a magnificent breadth, a 
 simple directness, about the conception of this diary, and the leading idea 
 is worked out with a resourceful ingenuity, a piercing insight, and an 
 unerring taste which betray the hand of some one very like a master.' — 
 Woman. 
 
 ' A remarkably original and noteworthy book.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' A fantastic and original book, to which belongs that note of distinction 
 rare in the days of crude and rapid production.' — Daily News. 
 
 ' The volume is a very remarkable one, and will be valued most of all by 
 those who love music in its best and noblest forms.' — Western Morning 
 
 News.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 YELLOW AND WHITE. By W. Carlton Dawe. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s, 6d. net. 
 
 ' Stirring and admirably written stories. In " Fan-Tan " a superb word- 
 picture is painted of the Chinese national game, and of the gambling hells 
 in which it is continuously played. The stories abound in dramatic situa- 
 tions and palpitate with dramatic interest.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 ' Are well written, and have about them a flavour of the shiny East, 
 which would seem to show that they are the work of "one who knows" 
 what he is talking about.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 'This thoroughly entertaining volume. Rich in local colour, and pre- 
 sented with considerable literary skill in a peculiarly vivid and impressive 
 manner. ' — Observer. 
 
 'Are as idyllic and charming as the heart could desire. Every page 
 gives sign that the book has been put together with fastidious and loving 
 care. Several of the tales are completely effective, and none fall short of 
 an entrancing picturesqueness.' — Woman. 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS. By Fiona Macleod. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' It is impossible to read her and not to feel that some magic in her touch 
 has made the sun seem brighter, the grass greener, the world more wonder- 
 ful.' — Mr. George Cotterell in The Academy. 
 
 ' We eagerly devour page after page ; we are taken captive by the speed 
 and poetry of the book.' — Literary World. 
 
 ' Primitive instincts and passions, primitive superstitions and faiths, are 
 depicted with a passionate sympathy that acts upon us as an irresistible 
 
 charm.' — National Observer. 
 
 ' From Nial the Soulless, with his hopeless quest and wild songs and 
 incantations, to sweet Sorcha, who dies of the dream in her eyes, these 
 mountain folk have charm to set one musing. The book is altogether 
 fascinating.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 'The sadness of Fiona Macleod's " Mountain Lovers" is well redeemed 
 by the art with which the short and simple story is told.' — St. James's 
 Cazrttc.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 Third Edition. 
 
 THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T. By Victoria Crosse. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 'No one who recollects "Theodora" will need to be told with what 
 acute perception the author reveals the hidden springs of human conduct. 
 In her the feminine gift of intuition seems to be developed with almost 
 uncanny strength, and what she sees she has the power of flashing upon 
 her readers with wonderful vividness and felicity of phrase. Readers will 
 find within its pages a strong and subtle study of feminine nature, biting 
 irony, restrained passion, and a style that is both forcible and polished.' — 
 Speaker. 
 
 ' A striking, well-told story, strong in character drawing, subtle in 
 observation, and fascinating in its hold of the reader.' — Realm-. 
 
 ' Is undoubtedly effective. Told with singular force and naturalness, 
 which renders it by no means unworthy of the admirable series in which 
 it is included.' — Whitehall Review. 
 
 ' Is at least a proof that the " Keynotes Series " can touch the soft pedal 
 of resignation as well as the clarion of revolt.' — Sketch. 
 
 THE THREE IMPOSTORS. By Arthur Machen. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' With this new volume Mr. Machen boldly challenges comparison with 
 Mr. Stevenson's " Dynamiters." We enjoy his humour and marvel at his 
 ingenuity.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' We confess to having read the volume with entrancing interest. It has 
 power, it has grip, it holds the reader ; and if it leaves him in a decidedly 
 creepy condition, it likewise leaves him asking, like Oliver Twist, for more.' 
 — IVhiiehall Review. 
 
 'These different tales are ingeniously strung together, and lead up to a 
 fearful climax. The idea is gracefully and artistically worked out. Those 
 who enjoy a thrill of horror will find much entertainment in these weird and 
 uncanny stories.' — Scotsman. 
 
 ' Remarkably well done and remarkably thrilling. Mr. Machen has 
 constructed a book full of trepidations and unnamed terrors. It is not 
 Stevenson, of course, but it is a prodigiously clever counterfeit.' — Woman.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 THE BRITISH BARBARIANS. By Grant Allen. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. net. 
 
 ' Mr. Allen takes occasion to say a good many things that require saying, 
 and suggests a good many reforms that would, if adopted, bring our present 
 legal code more into harmony with modern humanity and the exigencies of 
 its development.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' A clever, trenchant satire on the petty conventionalities of modern life.' — 
 Vanity Fair. 
 
 'All will acknowledge the skill and cleverness of the writing. Honest 
 convictions, honestly stated, always merit attention, especially when they 
 are presented in so clever and skilful a dress.' — Western Morning News. 
 
 ' We can warmly recommend it as an eminently readable and distinctly 
 dever piece of work.' — Publishers Circular. 
 
 ' Is not a book to be dismissed lightly. There can be no doubt that 
 Mr. Grant Allen is sincere in what he here expounds, and if for no other 
 reason, "The British Barbarians" at least deserves consideration.' — 
 Aca^ntji. 
 
 ' It is a triumph of the advocate's art, so advanced, so honest, and so 
 fearless. ' — Queen. 
 
 NOBODY'S FAULT. By Netta Syrett. Crown 8vo, 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' An extremely careful and clever study ... a deeply interesting story. 
 — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 'The latest volume of the Keynotes Series is one of the pleasantest of the 
 lot. The " modern" ideas of all the characters ate the ideas which reason- 
 able people are beginning to hold, and they are propounded not in a 
 scream, but in the level conversational tones in which reasonable people 
 would speak them.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 'Yet another success in Mr. Lane's "Keynotes" Series. "Nobody's 
 Fault " is an exceedingly clever novel, and we shall expect to hear of its 
 authoress again. It reads like a transcript from a personal experience. One 
 follows Bridget's career with almost breathless interest.' — Weekly Sun. 
 
 ' Bridget is alive to the finger tips ; a vivid, impulsive creature ; of as 
 many moods as there are hours in the day ; brave, beautiful, outspoken, with 
 something of temperament genius.' — Daily News.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 PLATONIC AFFECTIONS. By John Smith. Crown 
 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' A remarkably powerful and original story.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 ' The reader will not feel inclined to quarrel with Mr. Smith for the light 
 and breezy way in which he deals with the problem : therein lies much of 
 the charm of " Platonic Affections." ' — Academy. 
 
 'An original and striking story, written in easy and pleasant style. 
 Original, since though there is nothing new in the fact that "platonic" 
 arrangements never stand the test of time, the inevitable denouement 
 of the impossible problem that two deliciously honest people try to solve, 
 is worked out so delicately, and with such subtle understanding of human, 
 especially feminine, nature, that the story is really a fascinating, as well as 
 an interesting study.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 WHERE THE ATLANTIC MEETS THE LAND. By 
 Caldwell Lipsett. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 '"The Unforgiven Sin," a story of woman's dishonour judged in the 
 fierce light of Irish peasant opinion, is an exceedingly strong piece of work, 
 restrained, dignified, and imaginative.' — Sketch. 
 
 ' We shall look with expectant pleasure for so promising a writer's next 
 volume.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 'It is quite a relief to meet with a teller of the short story to whom, 
 within the bounds he has set himself, one is justified in giving almost un- 
 stinted praise. ' — Morning Post. 
 
 IX HOMESPUN. By E. Nesbit. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d, net. 
 
 'Short as they are . . . they are really literature "In Homespun," and 
 hardly contain a line which does not add to the effect of the tale, which is 
 told with much simple and homely force.' — Spectator. 
 
 'Wherever we turn to in "In Homespun" we discover reasons for 
 applause, and we can safely recommend Mrs. Nesbit's contribution to the 
 "Keynotes Series" as one of the most refreshing.' — Literary World. 
 
 "'A Death-bed Confession" is one of the strongest, sternest stories 
 which have appeared in print for many a year past. " Coals of Fire" is 
 fine enough itself to make the fortune of the book.' — Daily Telegraph.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 NETS FOR THE WIND. By Una Taylor. Crown 8vo, 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' Miss Taylor is to be congratulated upon a very remarkable achieve- 
 ment. One thing is certain, that she can write very beautifully and 
 brilliantly.'— <?/aj^(7if Herald. 
 
 ' Full of fascination. The writer is an artist in words and the word 
 painting is always finished like a picture.' — Scotsman. 
 
 ' Wild, fantastic, and full of dreamy sadness, are the sketches in this 
 volnme.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' AKss Taylor has imagination and also a picturesque and delicately 
 vivid style.' — Daily News. 
 
 IN SCARLET AND GREY : Stories of Soldiers and 
 Others. By Florence Henniker. With 'The Spectre 
 of the Real.' By Florence Henniker and Thomas 
 Hardy. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' The work of a keen and sympathetic observer of life endowed with a 
 simple and graphic literary style. They are realistic in the true sense of 
 the word, and are full of a deep though restrained pathos.' — Pall Mall 
 Gazette. 
 
 ' .\ collection of profoundly melancholy stories which nevertheless make 
 extremely agreeable reading.' — Graphic. 
 
 ' Each of these stories can be read with pleasure both for its literary 
 form and on account of its own intrinsic interest as a tale.' — Gentlewoman. 
 
 ' Written with quiet pathos, unerring insight, and conspicuous felicity of 
 expression.' — Leeds Mercury. 
 
 ' It is a real delight to read anything so delicately finished and so rich 
 in thoughtful insight as are these stories,' — Speaker. 
 
 DAY BOOKS. By Mabel E. Wotton, Crown 8vo, 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 ' The interest is considerable and well sustained.' — Whitehall Review. 
 
 ' Stamp her as a keen analyst of character and motive, and a writer who 
 can be graceful or powerful as the occasion requires.' — Scotsman. 
 
 '"Morison's Heir" is a really clever study of a shallow and selfish 
 woman. The irony of a delicate situation is skilfully developed.'— C/ai-^cw 
 Herald.
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 FORTHCOMING VOLUMES. 
 
 STELLA MARIS. By Marie Clothilde Balfour. 
 UGLY IDOL. By Claud Nicholson, 
 SHAPES IN THE FIRE. By M, P. Shiel. 
 KAKEMONOS. By W. Carlton Dawe. 
 GOD'S FAILURES. By J. S. Fletcher.
 
 t JOHN LANE 
 
 g^r^v^^-a~>^ r^-tr^i- 
 
 THE ^ 
 
 bodlp:y 
 
 HEAD-^ 
 VIGOS"" 
 
 "BODLEIAN 
 LONDON' 
 
 CATAL0CUE2/°PIJB LICAT10NS 
 
 £2 BE LLE S LETTRE S sI^^^SE^
 
 1896 
 
 List of Books 
 
 IN 
 
 BELLES LETTRES 
 
 Published by John Lane 
 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 Adams (Francis). 
 Essays in Modernity. Crown 8vo. 
 
 5s. net. [Sliorily. 
 
 A Child of the Age. (See Key- 
 notes Series.) 
 
 A. E. 
 
 Homeward Songs by the Way. 
 Sq. i6mo, wrappers, is. 6d. net. 
 Transferred to the present Pub- 
 lisher, [Second Edition. 
 
 Aldrich (T. B.) 
 
 Later Lyrics. Sm. Fcap. 8vo. 
 2S. 6d. net. 
 Allen (Grant). 
 
 The Lower Slopes : A Volume of 
 Verse. With Title-page and Cover 
 Design by J. Ili.ingworth Kay. 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 The Wo.man Who Did. (See Key- 
 notes Series.) 
 
 The British Barbarians. [See 
 Keynotes Series.) 
 
 Arcady Library (The). 
 
 A Series of Open-Air Books. Edited 
 by J. S. Fletcher. With Cover 
 Designs by Patten Wilson. 
 Each volume crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 I. Round about a Bright tn 
 
 Coach Office. By Maude 
 Egerton King. With 
 over 30 Illustrations by 
 Lucy Kemp-Welch. 
 
 II. Life IN Arcadia. ByJ.S. 
 
 Fletcher. Illustrated by 
 Patten Wilson. 
 
 Arcady Library (The) — conf. 
 
 III. Scholar Gipsies. By John 
 
 Buchan. With 7 full-page 
 Etchings by D.Y. Ca.meron 
 The /allowing is in preparation : 
 
 IV. In the Garden of Peace. 
 
 By Helen MiL.M.\N. With 
 Illustrations by Ed.mund 
 H. New. 
 
 Beeching (Rev. H. C). 
 
 In a Garden : Poems. With Title- 
 page designed by Roger Fry. 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 St. Augustine at Ostia. Crown 
 8vo, wrappers, is. net. 
 
 Beerbohm (Max). 
 The Works of Max Beerbohm. 
 With a Bibliography by John 
 Lane. Sq. i6mo. 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 Benson (Arthur Christopher) 
 Lyrics. Fcap. 3vo, buckram. 5s. 
 
 net. 
 Lord Vyet and other Poems. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo. 3$. 6d. net. 
 
 Bodley Head Anthologies 
 (The). 
 Edited by Robert H. Case. With 
 Title-page and Cover Designs by 
 Walter West. Each volume 
 crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 I, English Epithalamies. 
 By Robert H. Case.
 
 I 
 
 THE riJIJLICATIONS OF 
 
 Bodley Head Anthologies 
 
 ( The) — continued. 
 
 II. MusA PiscATRix. By John 
 BuCHAN. With 6 Etchings 
 by E. Philip Pimlott. 
 
 III. English Elegies. By John 
 
 C Bailey. 
 
 IV. English Satires. ByCHAS. 
 
 Hill Dick. 
 
 Bridges (Robert). 
 
 SUFTRESSED CHAPTERS AND OTHER 
 
 Bookishness. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 net. {^Second Edition. 
 
 Brotherton (Mary). 
 Rosemary for Remembrance. 
 With Title-page and Cover Design 
 by Walter West. Fcap. 8vo. 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 Crackanthorpe (Hubert). 
 Vignettes. A Miniature Journal 
 of Whim and Sentiment. Fcap. 
 8vo, boards. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Crane (Walter). 
 TuY Books. Re-issue, each with 
 new Cover Design and End Papers. 
 This Little Pig's Picture Book, 
 containing : 
 I. This Little Pig. 
 II. The Fairy Ship. 
 III. King Luckieboy's Party. 
 The three bound in one volume with 
 a decorative cloth cover, end papers, 
 and a newly written and designed 
 preface and title-page. 3s. 6d. net ; 
 separately gd. net each. 
 
 Mother Hudbard's Picture 
 Book, containing : 
 I. Mother Hubbard's. 
 II. The Three Bears. 
 in. The Absurd A. B. C. 
 The three bound in one volume with 
 a decorative c'oth cover, end papers, 
 and a newly written and designed 
 preface and title-page. 3s. 6d. net ; 
 separately gd. net each. 
 
 Custance (Olive). 
 
 First Fruits : Poems. Fcap. Svo. 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 Dalmon (C. W.). 
 
 Song Favours. With a Title-page 
 by J. P. Donne. Sq. i6uio. 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
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 lation by Henry Thornton 
 Wharton. With 3 Illustra- 
 tions in Photogravure, and a 
 Cover designed by Aubrey 
 Beardsley. Fcap. 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 net. [Third Edition. 
 
 I 
 
 THE YELLOW BOOK 
 
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 Poll 4(0. js. net. 
 
 I. April 1894,272 pp., 15 Illustra- 
 tions. [Out oj print. 
 
 II. July 1894, 364 pp., 23 Illustra- 
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 III. October 18^4, 280 pp., 15 
 
 Illustrations. 
 
 IV. January 1895, 285 pp., 16 
 
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 V. April 1895, 317 pp., 14 Illus- 
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 VI. July 1005, 335 PPm 16 Illustra- 
 tions. 
 
 vii. October 1855, 320 pp., 20 
 Illustrations. 
 
 VIII. January 1896, 406 pp., 26 
 Illustrations. 
 
 IX. April 1896, 256 pp., 17 Illus- 
 trations. 
 
 X. July 1896, 340 pp., 13 Illustra- 
 tions.
 
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