Blackthorn

“ Sent along at a pace that Epsom flat never saw eclipsed, sweeping by the Grand Stand like the flash of electric flame, they ran side to side one moment more, their foam flung on each other's withers, their breath hot in each other's nostrils, while the dark earth flew beneath their stride. The blackthorn was in front behind five bars of solid oak, the water yawning on its farther side, black and deep, and fenced, twelve feet wide if it were an inch, with the same thorn wall beyond it! a leap no horse should have been given, no steward should have set. ”

“ One lantern he suspends from a rude granite slab spanning the stream, so that it hangs within a few inches of the rippling water. The other he fastens to a branch of a blackthorn on the far side of the croft. This done he climbs a mound amidst the furze and looks towards the lake now barely a furlong away. The surface is like a sheet of silver. No glimpse of living creature does he get, no sound reaches his ears but the voice of the fall and the song of a sedge-warbler. Retracing his steps he takes up a position on the rugged slope near the corner of the park. ”

“ It is a matter of some difficulty to obtain a real blackthorn in London or any big town. You go into a shop, and they show you a smart-looking stick which has been peeled and deprived of most of its knobs, dyed black, and varnished. That is not the genuine article, and, if you buy it, you will become the possessor of a stick as inferior to a blackthorn as a pewter skewer is inferior to a Damascus blade.
The best way is to send over to Kerry, Cork, or some other county in the Emerald Isle, and ask a friend to secure the proper thing as prepared by the inhabitants. ”

“ In the sheltered valleys alone, when the abundant crop of haws along the hedgerows had been consumed, were they able to pick up a living and find what was almost as necessary as food, a roosting-place out of the eye of the wind. The blackthorn brakes, every branch of the holly and the furze, any bush screened by ivy, were all occupied at night by thrushes, mistle-thrushes, blackbirds, linnets, and finches, whilst bevies of larks slept on the ground below. ”

“ It was indeed good to be alive again. It was wonderful! The next moment he was trembling from head to foot, and his body broke out in a sweat. He was not to be alive for long. Even if he reached Blackthorn Farm and delivered his message he would have to give himself up and go back to prison. Back to that living grave!
He had told poor 303 that escape was absolutely impossible. Even if a man got outside Dartmoor and reached Tavistock or Exeter or Plymouth he was certain to be detected and brought back. His father would never hide him or help him—he knew that. ”

“ Hide nothing—except the fact that you've seen your brother. Any distress you may show would be perfectly natural. Blackthorn Farm is sure to be watched day and night. You and your father will be watched and followed, probably, but that needn't prevent your coming up here if you want to see me. I won't announce our engagement until Rupert is safe, in case it arouses suspicion. ”

“ Slowly the dark and grey hues of winter are yielding to the lively tints of spring. The blackthorn has white buds on its lesser branches, and the warm rays of the sun have drawn forth the buds on one favoured hawthorn in a sheltered nook, so that the green of the coming leaf is visible. Bramble bushes still retain their forlorn, shrivelled foliage; the hardy all but evergreen leaves can stand cold, but when biting winds from the north and east blow for weeks together even these curl at the edge and die. ”

“ Get yourself a nice frock and some pretty shoes."
Rupert felt afraid that the rough fare and humble life at Blackthorn Farm would bore or disgust his friend, but he soon found that he was wrong. Despard settled down to the new mode of life as if he had been thoroughly used to it. He was up soon after daybreak helping Marjorie to milk the cows; watching her scald the cream and make the butter, and he insisted on being taught how to do these things himself. He made himself useful about the farm, too, and quite won John Dale's heart. ”

“ I need not let the subject delay me now, except to say that in the North-West Highlands I have heard the blackthorn called Bròn Lochlannach, the Northman’s woe, literally Norse or Norland Sorrow or Mourning, ... a legendary designation to which there is, I believe, a North-German analogue. The idea here is that the blackthorn sprang from the blood of the slain Norse invaders, the ‘pagans from Lochlin’ of mediæval Gaelic story. In many parts of the kingdom it is looked on askance, and cut sprays of it brought into a house are considered as a menace of ill, as a death-token even ”

“ In Scotland, by tying the young shoots with bands of hay, they make the stems grow so very close together, as that it encloseth rabbets in warrens instead of pales: And for this robust use we shall prefer the blackthorn; the extravagant suckers which are apt to rise at distance from the hedge-line, being sedulously extirpated, that the rest may grow the stronger and thicker. ”

“ The whole thing looked like a cinematograph picture; the horses like clockwork animals.
They neared Tattenham Corner. Rupert held his breath. The vast crowd began to murmur now. A strange sound as if emanating from the lips of one man. The sound rose and fell like distant thunder.
Presently he heard the thunder of the horses' hoofs. They had rounded the corner and were coming down the straight. He took a deep breath, and for a moment the scene was blotted from his eyes. And again he saw the black Devon moorlands, neither purple heather nor golden gorse now, just granite tors and bogland ”

“ Jim Crichton looked up at the sky. And presently he smiled. It was good to be a soldier and to fight. It was better to be a man, and to love.
CHAPTER XXI.
READY FOR FLIGHT.
Marjorie had reason to be grateful now for the sudden fame into which Blackthorn Farm had sprung owing to the discovery of pitch-blende in the tin mine, with the supposition contained in the expert's report that radium would undoubtedly be found. For the county was far too excited—even though still sceptical—over this discovery to have more than a fleeting interest in the escape of two convicts. ”

“ At the top of a conical hill in the centre of the clearing was a high stockade of bamboo enclosing some dozen houses on piles and thatched with palm leaves. As the long procession entered the clearing, a great hubbub arose out in the village. The deep notes of a big war gong mingled with the shrill cries of the women, who poured out of a gateway and danced down towards the approaching warriors. The sun had set and it was nearly dark, though a bright moon lighted up the clearing, throwing the stockade and houses into black relief against the opal sky.
Rupert glanced at Patterson. ”

“ Blackthorne had only been ordained three or four years, and was a little younger, and much less experienced in the ways of the world, than Sigismund Zaluski. He was a good well-meaning fellow, a little narrow, a little prejudiced, a little spoiled by the devotion of the district visitors and Sunday School teachers; but he was honest and energetic, and as a worker among the poor few could have equalled him. He seemed to fancy, however, that with the poor his work ended, and he was not always so wise as he might have been in Muddleton society. ”

“ They dropped on to a road, Tavistock Road. "Come on, we are right now!" Rupert cried excitedly.
They scrambled over the wall and raced down the steep hillside. Suddenly they saw the gleam of water below them, bushes and stones appeared. They had left the fog behind, the valley was clear.
As they plunged across the river and breasted the steep hill they saw the blessed fog shutting out Beardown Farm and all the tors above it.
"Quick! we must get up with the fog before we are seen. Thank God, there is no one in sight!" ”

“ At this crisis place your careful hands over your careful heart—can you find where it is?—and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the novelist's conventional breath for the excited heroine. Mr. Blackthorne wishes to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands. If there is, and he feels sure there must be, far-sighted man!—he invites her, invites us, Mrs. Blackthorne invites us, should we sometime be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, far-famed country-house in Warwickshire. ”

“ And they walked home together.
“I am so glad to have this chance of speaking to you,” she began rather nervously. “I wanted particularly to ask your advice.”
Mr. Blackthorne, being human and young, was not unnaturally flattered by this remark. True, he was becoming well accustomed to this sort of thing, since the ladies of Muddleton were far more fond of seeking advice from the young and good-looking curate than from the elderly and experienced rector. They said it was because Mr. Blackthorne was so much more sympathetic, and understood the difficulties of the day so much better ”

“ So that when you return from Devonshire, you'll find quite a nice little nest-egg.... Now, give me a cup of tea, and then I'll pack for you. You've only got about three hours."
It did not take Ruby long to pack. Rupert watched her and gave instructions as to what he would take, but to which, woman like, she paid no attention.
"I've got lots of old clothes at the farm," Rupert said. "We shall spend all our time fishing and shooting. Gad! I'll take old Despard down our tin-mine. ”

“ The Robin had shown him five little pale eggs, white spotted with brown, at the bottom of the nest, half hidden by the soft hair.
The Blackbird had also come across a most remarkable nest, that of the golden-crested wren. “My old friend, the Rook, tells me,” said the Blackbird, “that this wren is the very smallest of our birds. He certainly is a great beauty with his crown of golden feathers. His nest is in yonder yew-tree. It seems large for a bird of his size. It is almost entirely built of moss, and, can you believe it, the wren uses spider’s webs to bind it together! ”

“ Now I had doubted which hat to take, when I left home that day; till I thought that the black became me best, and might seem kinder to Lorna.
'Have I killed thee, old bird, at last?' my enemy cried in triumph; ''tis the third time I have shot at thee, and thou wast beginning to mock me. No more of thy cursed croaking now, to wake me in the morning. Ha, ha! there are not many who get three chances from Carver Doone; and none ever go beyond it.'
I laughed within myself at this, as he strode away in his triumph; for was not this his third chance of me, and he no whit the wiser? ”

“ Because they knew that the spars and sprays would spoil their lovely Sunday hats, even without the drip of a cherry wounded by some thirsty thrush. The blackbirds pop them off entire, and so do the starlings; but the thrushes sit and peck at them, with the juice dripping down on their dappled breasts, and a flavour in their throats, which they mean to sing about at their leisure. But now the birds, that were come among them, meant to have them wholesale. Phyllis, being a trifle taller, and less deft of finger, bent the shady branches down, for Mabel to pluck the fruit. ”

“ And, not content with eyesight only, he seemed to be feeling every blade of grass or weed, every single stick or stone, craning into each cranny of the ground, and probing every clod with his hands. Then, after vainly searching with the very utmost care all the space from the hawthorn trunk to the meadow-leet (which was dry as usual) , he ran, in a fury of impatience, to his rod, which he had stuck into the bank, as now I saw, and drew off the butt end, and removed the wheel, or whatever it is that holds the fishing line ”

“ A Greek bride was sometimes decked with a sprig of Hawthorn, as emblematic of a flowery future, with thorns intermingled. It is supposed that "the Jewes maden," for our Saviour, "a croune of the branches of Albespyne, that is, Whitethorn, that grew in the same garden, and therefore hath the Whitethorn many vertues" being called in France l'epine noble.
The shadows in the moon are popularly thought to represent a man laden with a bundle of thorns in punishment of theft:—
"Rusticus in lunâ quem sarcina deprimit una,
Monstrat per spinas nulli prodesse rapinas." ”

“ Darling Lorna wept again, because the old man could not tell her (except by one very feeble nod) that she was doing what he wished. Then she gave to me the trinket, for the sake of safety; and I stowed it in my breast. He seemed to me to follow this, and to be well content with it.
Before Sir Ensor Doone was buried, the greatest frost of the century had set in, with its iron hand, and step of stone, on everything. How it came is not my business, nor can I explain it; because I never have watched the skies; as people now begin to do, when the ground is not to their liking. ”

“ And there, about a furlong before me, rode a man on a great black horse, and I knew that the man was Carver Doone.
'Your life or mine,' I said to myself; 'as the will of God may be. But we two live not upon this earth, one more hour together.'
I knew the strength of this great man; and I knew that he was armed with a gun—if he had time to load again, after shooting my Lorna—or at any rate with pistols, and a horseman's sword as well. Nevertheless, I had no more doubt of killing the man before me than a cook has of spitting a headless fowl. ”

“ Many days the young men traveled to reach Dull Knife’s camp on the Little Bighorn. In the night of their last camp, Moh-Kwa came silently, an’ while the young men slept swapped Coldheart’s arrows; an’ when they rode to the lodge of Dull Knife, an’ while the scowling Blackfeet gathered about—for the sight of a Sioux gives a Blackfoot a hot heart—the black arrow was in the quiver of the Blackbird an’ the white arrow in that of Young Wolf. ”