S. R. Crockett

“ Stennis refused to give Jeremy a farthing for any such purpose, and at the first sullen retort of the madman, turned fiercely upon him, wrenched from his hands the violin on which he had been fitfully playing and threw it on the fire. As the light dry wood caught and the varnish crackled, Mr. Stennis strode off, fuming, to his weaving-room to calm himself with a turn at the famous hand-loom. He sat down before it, and as the shuttle began to pass back and forth, his passion fell away in proportion as the fascination of the perfect handicraft gained on him. ”

“ It was a fine summer morn, early in June, and the clouds in the sky to the east were just the colour of the first brier rosebuds in the hedge by the roadside. I came up the brae like a Untie and as free o' care, for my heart was light in those good days. There stood the cot of Breckonside before me, shining white in the sun. For the miser, though he spared most other things, never was a sparer of good whitewash. I was just beginning to listen for the click-clack of Hobby's shuttle, when down by the waterside methought I saw a ferlie. ”

“ Ablethorpe, But for me, I will not go with my sisters, who have done nothing—known nothing. If the guilty are to suffer—and if the guilty are indeed my brother and my master—then I will stand in the dock by their side. No one shall ever say that Aphra Orrin went back on a friend, or refused her full share of responsibility. All the same, Mr. Ablethorpe—and you, Mr. De la Poer—I am grateful from my heart for what you are doing for my poor sisters. For me, I am neither mad nor irresponsible—only as the more notable sinner, in the greater need of your ghostly counsels! ”

“ The reading of Hobby Stennis' confession—so ghastly, perverted, cold-blooded, dead to all moral sense, even triumphant, ending with the will which gave everything to Elsie—had so incensed the people that there was a rush when a kind of crack-witted preaching man from Bewick shouted, "Make an end, ye people, make an end! Let none of the viper's brood escape! She is a woman, this Elsie, and will breed the like—murderers and monsters every one! She is a Stennis, and we have had enough of such. To Breckonside! To the Bridge End! ”

“ The villain! The robber!" cried Aphra Orrin, for a moment forgetting her role of penitent—"to take from us who earned in order to give all to a stranger!"
"Elsie will never touch a penny of it!" I shouted, but my voice was lost in the universal howl.
"The woman stands fully committed—take her away!" cried the sheriff.
He had glanced at his watch. It was in fact, long past his dinner hour! As if moved by his hand policemen rapidly displaced the two clergymen, and Aphra disappeared down a flight of stairs to the cells below. ”

“ For though Elsie had seized the knife and was about to kill the madman, it would have been too late so far as I was concerned.
But out of the undergrowth, as if he had been watching, came a little quick-tripping old man, bow-backed and wizened, who called, "Jeremy! Jeremy!" in a high, piping key.
At the sound the madman lifted himself up from my neck, as if moved by a spring, and stood before the little man smiling and sucking his thumb—for all the world like a child caught stealing sugar. ”

“ And with a jingle of bells he struck in the "Reel o' Bogie." Elsie did no more than set her lips to her glass. But she obeyed, for Jeremy was in no mood to be countered. Then, taking up her gown daintily on both sides, as the dance ordains, she danced it alone. And every time as she turned, her eyes caught the door of the weaving-room, and the heart within her became as water for what she had seen through that little black mark of exclamation which was the keyhole.
Yet somehow the situation stirred her, too. There is a vast deal of desperate courage in a woman. ”

“ He bent toward us as if whispering, though he had no need, all being clear behind and around us for a long way on every side.
"There are folk that are not canny on yon side of the moat!" he said, with the same curious shrinking look over his shoulder. "I can hardly manage them myself!"
"Nonsense," said Elsie, "take us across, and be done with it. Is it not your own land, your own flowers, and I your nearest of kin?"
"Aye," said the old man, shaking his head, "it will be true enough. Ye mind me of Bell's mother—my wife that was. God rest her soul—and her tongue! Ye are never a Stennis. ”

“ Some magnet of danger past and gone for ever—something, too, of nearness to the little schoolhouse, to which, spite of my father and myself, Elsie had carried her point and returned. I was sulky and jealous about this—much to Elsie's indignation.
"Mr. Mustard—Mr. Mustard!" she said, with her eyes cold and contemptuous; "I can keep Mr. Mustard in his place—ay, or ten of him—you too, Joseph Yarrow, mopping about the woods like a sick cat! You are not half the man your father is!" ”

“ How indeed, could they be otherwise?
"Where is your knife?" cried Aphra Orrin. "Quick! Make an end—do as with the others! This is the last seed of iniquity. She will take from us our riches—all that should be ours—hard earned, suffered for, all that lies under the green turf—all you have won, Jeremy, and I have paid for twice over with weary nights of penance. That old man would steal it from us, from us who gained it for him, to give it all to this pretty china doll he calls his granddaughter!" ”

“ In another minute Elsie and I stood within the Moat. And turning round, what was my horror to see the bridge rising slowly into the air behind me, and in a little house at the side, bent double over a wheel, I caught sight of the "mounster," Jeremy Orrin, with a grin on his face and all his dark ringlets shaking and dancing.
As we went past he set his head out and called these words after us:
"Rats in a trap!" he cried, "rats in a trap!" ”

“ The sound of many feet, the hoarse murmur of voices in angry discussion, and perhaps, also, the reflected light of many lanterns awoke both Nance Edgar and Elsie. But it was Elsie who was first down. "What is it?" she asked, standing in the doorway with a plaid about her shoulders, and her feet thrust into Nance Edgar's big, wooden-soled, winter clogs. "What has brought you out?"
I told her that my father had not returned from Longtown, but that some one had brought Dapple home, unlocked the door of the yard, and let in the mare—then relocked it and gone his way. ”

“ I bet he did! There wasn't anybody in Mr. Mustard's school—no, nor yet in Breckonside, who could have caught the Hayfork Parson but me. He had legs like a whacking pair of compasses, and went along like the wild ass that sniffeth up the wind.
"Yes," he repeated, tying a white handkerchief about the size of a tablecloth round his brow—I kept mum about what had given him the headache; pretended that I had brought out the hook to fish with—"yes, Joe, I did leave the barn in a hurry. But it was for the sake of those poor, foolish women, for whose souls none cares but myself. ”

“ But after Bell took the road to Gretna, and the white cat by the Breckonside was left lonely, the miser never uttered word, but sat with shut mouth at the weaving of the wonderful flowered napery, the secret of which he alone possessed. And if he could not weave himself a new daughter with all his skill, at least he kept himself so busy that he seldom minded the one he had lost. ”

“ Over the door of the parish church of Breckonside they had printed the motto, 'We serve the Lord.' But the right words should have been, 'We envy and grieve at the good of our neighbour.' For when the men thought of Miser Stennis's money bags they could have felled him, and when the women saw Bell Stennis's bonnie face smiling over her braw mantle, they set to work and bethought them what lie they could tell about her. ”

“ Just imagine—mad folks, and murderers, maybe, skulking in coverts! I am as brave as anybody when all is open and I have a chance to run. I am too old to believe in ghosts, of course; but for all that there are queer things to be seen in old green droopy woods like that of Deep Moat Hollow. The trees whisper and seem to know such a lot. After about an hour I get shivers down my back.
But it was no use arguing with Elsie. ”

“ I myself shall be your keeper, but think not but that Jeremy Orrin kens bravely how to behave himself to a leddy. Ye will wait here, sacred as St. Theresa, till the wedding gown is prepared and the table spread. But Jeremy will feed his ladybird with his own hand three times a day—nor shall his sister Aphra put so much as a pot stick in the cooking, for fear of mistakes! She's a fine lass, Aphra, when ye ken her, but little to trust to when she has a spite against ye. Stick you by Jeremy, leddy, and he will stick by you! ”

“ Why, his old conscience couldn't have made more fuss if he had known all about the murder—the hiding of the body—of a score of bodies, indeed. But then, with consciences, a fellow like me can't tell. It's like love, or sea-sickness, or toothache. If a fellow has never had them, he's no judge of the sufferings of those who have.
And that's what I always say to people when I hear of some new caper of the Hayfork Parson, or Rev. De la Poer, or any of that lot. "It's conscience," I say. "It takes them like that. It's uncommon, I grant, in Breckonside, but they've got it. ”

“ Indeed, Harriet never asked me. She had put on a smart little summer hat, and we were out on the moor quicker than I can write it.
"Mind you," she said, laying her hand confidingly (as I then thought) on my arm, "don't you ever dare to tell Stancy that her eyes are like to the vault of heaven, or like forget-me-nots wet with dew, or like turquoises, or the very colour of her sky-blue silk scarf. For, first of all, it's not true, and it is wrong to tell lies. More than that, she will tell me. And I like—well" (she added this bit softly, taking a long look at me) "never mind what I like. ”

“ And with the blank midnight pressing against the huge windows of the facade, and the white lights and red candle stems reflected a thousand times in the sullen moat, Elsie danced. The irregular wind moaned about the house, and as the brand-new melodeon whined and crew, flinging a weird rhythm to the tremulous candle flames, something like the fast-running "Broom o' the Cowdenkynwes," "Logan Braes," "Green Grows the Rushes," or "Bonnie Dundee," emerged. Elsie danced to them all. ”

“ Then we dived into Sparhawk Wood, and came out again on the country cross-road along which Bailiff Ball had seen Dappled Bess plunging madly with her empty cart. The Brom Water flowed still as a canal on our left, down towards the Moat Pond. It was certainly heartsomer to be out under the sky and the crying whaups, with the blue Cheviots looking over the tree tops, than in Grange Longwood, where somebody might be watching you from behind every bush and you none the wiser. ”

“ It is wonderful how soon a thing is forgotten, or at least put on a shelf in people's memories. Poor Harry Foster, for example! There was a man now—a man murdered in the discharge of his duty, if ever a man was. And after a month or two another man was travelling the same road with a new mail cart and new sacks of letters, as quiet as water going down a mill-lade. The only difference was that he started a while later in the morning than poor Harry, after it was daylight, in fact, so that the Bewick people had to wait, often till midday, before they got their letters. ”

“ It was in the days after the disappearance of Henry Foster, the mail-post carrier between Bewick and Breckonside, that I became aware of the increasing madness of those whom I had so rashly taken under my roof and protection. The younger sisters, especially Honorine, thought nothing of standing on walls screaming like peacocks, flapping their arms, and declaring that they were winged angels, ready on a signal from on high to fly upward into the blue. ”

“ The white and gold walls of the drawing-room of Deep Moat Grange, though tarnished by time, and with spots of mould beginning to outline themselves again for want of Aphra Orrin's careful hand, gave back gaily enough the mellow glow of a hundred candles all of wax.
"Dance, Elsie woman!" cried Mad Jeremy, emptying a tumbler at a gulp. "But first drink ye also, lassie. That will bring back your bonnie colour! What has come to ye, bairn? Ye are pale as a bit snaw-drap that sets its head through a wreath at a dyke-back. ”

“ Then, quick and chillish, like the breaking of cold sweat on a man, though he doesn't know quite why, there passed over me the thrill which tells a fellow that he is not alone. Yet anything more lonely than the Moat Pond ruins, with what remained of the square hulk of the tower cutting the sky—the same from which Jeremy had hurled himself—could not be imagined. ”

“ And I knew well enough that he was thinking and saying to himself—'Miser Hobby—Miser Hobby!' Still, had I had the sense to look at the matter in the right light, this should have cheered me—that he only despised me, I mean. For if Joseph Yarrow, the cleverest man in all the neighbourhood, was not calling me 'Murderer Hobby,' then I was safe from all the rest. But so curious a thing is man, and so much harder to bear is scorn than the worst accusation of crime, that it was often on my tongue tip to jolt his self-complaisance with a little inkling of the truth. ”

“ By day, and sometimes far into the night, the click of his shuttle was never silent, and, being an old man, it was thought a marvel how he could sit so long at his loom. And still Daft Jeremy abode with him and filled his pirns. Sometimes the 'naiteral' would sit on the dyke top at the end of the cottage and laugh at the farmers as they rode by, crying names and unco words after them, so that many shunned to pass that way in the gloaming, for fear of the half-witted, strong creature that mopped and mowed and danced at the lonely gable end. ”

“ No scene can be more magnificent than that presented on a near approach to the north-western coast of Trinidad. The sea is not only changed from a light green to a deep brown colour, but has in an extraordinary degree that rippling, confused, and whirling motion which arises from the violence of contending currents, and which prevail here in so remarkable a manner, particularly at those seasons when the Orinoco is swollen with periodical rains, and vessels are frequently some days or weeks in stemming them, or perhaps are irresistibly borne before them far out of their destined track. ”