MEHALAH (continued 4)

'I married one woman and got another,' said Charles Pettican to himself many times a day. 'I can't make it out at all. Marriage to a woman is, I suppose, much like a hot bath to a baby; it brings out all the bad humours in the blood. Young girls are as alike as flour and plaster of Paris, and it is not till you begin to be the making of them that you find the difference. Some make into bread, but others make into stone.'

When Elijah Rebow entered the little parlour, he found Mr. Pettican nearly choked with passion. He was ripping at his cravat to get it off, and obtain air. His face was nearly purple. He took no notice of his visitor for a few moments, but continued shaking his fist at the window, and then dragging at his neckcloth.

Being unable to turn himself about, the unfortunate man nearly strangled himself in his inability to unwind his cravat. This increased his anger, and he screamed and choked convulsively.

'You will smother yourself soon,' observed Elijah dryly, and going up to Mr. Pettican, he loosened the neckcloth.

The cripple lay back and panted. Presently he was sufficiently recovered to project his head towards Rebow, and ask him what he wanted, and who he was.

Elijah told him his name. Charles Pettican did not pay attention to him; his mind was engrossed by other matters.

'Come here,' said he, 'here, beside me. Do you see them?'

'See what?' asked Elijah in return, gruffly, as Pettican caught his arm, and drew him down, and pointed out of the window.

'There they are. Isn't it wexing to the last degree of madness?'

'Do you mean your daughter and her sweetheart?'

'Daughter!' echoed the cripple. 'Daughter! I wish she was. No, she's my wife. I don't mean her.'

'What do you mean then?'

'Why, my crutches. Don't you see them?'

'No, I do not,' answered Rebow looking round the room.

'They are not here,' said Pettican. 'Admonition flew out upon me, because I wouldn't draw more money from the bank, and she took away my crutches, to confine me till I came into her whimsies. There they are. They are flying at the mast-head. She got that cousin of hers to hoist them. She knows I can't reach them, that here I must lie till somebody fetches them down for me. You should have heard how they laughed, those cousins as they call themselves, as my crutches went aloft. Oh! it was fun to them, and they could giggle and cut jokes about me sitting here, flattening my nose at the pane, and seeing my crutches hoisted. They might as well have robbed me of my legs—better, for they are of no use, and my crutches are. Fetch me them down.'

Elijah consented, chuckling to himself at the distress of the unfortunate shipbuilder. He speedily ran the crutches down, and returned them to Pettican.

'Turning me into fun before the whole town!' growled Pettican, 'exposing my infirmity to all the world! It was my wife did it. Admonition urged on her precious cousin Timothy to it. He did fare to be ashamed, but she laughed him into it, just as Eve jeered Adam into eating the apple. She has turned off my servant too, and here am I left alone and helpless in the house all day, whilst she is dancing off to Colchester market with her beau—cousin indeed! What do you think, master—I don't know your name.'

'Elijah Rebow, of Red Hall.'

'What do you think, Master Rebow? That cousin has been staying here a month, a whole calendar month. He has been given the best room, and there have been junketings without number; they have ate all the oysters out of my pan, and drank up all my old stout, and broken the necks of half the whisky bottles in my cellar, and smoked out all my havannahs. I have a few boxes, and indulge myself occasionally in a good cigar, they come costly. Well, will you believe me! Admonition routs out all my boxes, and gives her beau a havannah twice a day or more often, as he likes, and I haven't had one between my lips since he came inside my doors. That lot of old Scotch whisky I had down from Dundee is all drunk out. Before I married her, Admonition would touch nothing but water, and tea very weak only coloured with the leaf; now she sucks stout and rum punch and whisky like a fish. It is a wonder to me she don't smoke too.'

The cripple tucked his recovered crutches under his arms, rolled himself off his chair, and stumped vehemently half a dozen times round the room. He returned at length, out of breath and very hot, to his chair, into which he cast himself.

'Put up my legs, please,' he begged of Elijah. 'There!' he said, 'I have worked off my excitement a little. Now go into the hall and look in the box under the stairs, there you will find an Union Jack. Run it up to the top of the mast. I don't care. I will defy her. When that girl who came here the other day—I forget her name—sees the flag flying she will come and help me. If Admonition has cousins, so have I, and mine are real cousins. I doubt but those of Admonition are nothing of the sort. If that girl——'

'What girl?' asked Rebow gloomily, as he folded his arms across his breast, and scowled at Charles Pettican.

'I don't know her name, but it is written down. I have it in my note-book—Ah! Mehalah Sharland. She is my cousin, her mother is my cousin. I'll tell you what I will do, master. But before I say another word, you go up for me into the best bed-room—the blue room, and chuck that fellow's things out of the window over the balcony, and let the gull have the pecking and tearing of them to pieces. I know he has his best jacket on his back; more's the pity. I should like the gull to have the clawing and the beaking of that, but he can make a tidy mess of his other traps; and will do it.'

'Glory——' began Elijah.

'Ah! you are right there,' said Pettican. 'It will be glory to have routed cousin Timothy out of the house; and if the flag flies, my cousin—I forget her name—Oh! I see, Mehalah—will come here and bring her mother, and before Master Timothy returns with Admonition from market—they are going to have a shilling's worth on a merry-go-round, I heard them scheme it—my cousins will be in possession, and cousin Timothy must content himself with the balcony, or cruise off.'

'Glory—or Mehalah, as you call her.'

'I'll not listen to another word, till you have chucked that fellow's trape overboard. There's a portmantle of his up there, chuck that over with the rest, and let the gull have the opening and examination of the contents.'

There was nothing for it but compliance, if Elijah wished to speak on the object of his visit. The old man was in an excited condition which would not allow him to compose his mind till his caprices were attended to, and his orders carried out. Rebow accordingly went upstairs and emptied the room of all evidences of its having been occupied. There was a discharge of boots, brush, clothes, pipes, into the garden, at which Pettican rubbed his hands and clucked like a fowl.

Rebow returned to the parlour, and the old shipbuilder was profuse in his thanks. 'Now,' said he, 'run the flag up. You haven't done that yet. Then come and have a glass of spirits. There is some of the whisky left, not many bottles, but there is some, and not locked up, for Admonition thought she had me safe when she hoisted my crutches up the mast-head. Go now and let the bunting float as of old in my halcyon days.' This was also done; the wind took, unfurled, and flapped the Union Jack, and the old man crowed with delight, and swung his arms.

'That is right. I haven't seen it fly for many months; not since I was married. Now that girl, I forget her name, oh! I have it here—Mehalah—will see it, and come to the rescue. Do you know her?'

'What, Glory?'

'That ain't her name. Her name is—is—Mehalah.'

'We call her Glory. She is the girl. I know her,' he laughed and his eyes glittered. He set his teeth. Charles Pettican looked at him, and thought he had never seen a more forbidding countenance. He was frightened, and asked hastily,

'Who are you?'

'I am Elijah Rebow, of Red Hall.'

'I don't know you or the place.'

'I am in Salcott and Virley. You know me by name.'

'Oh! perhaps I do. My memory is not what it once was. I get so put out by my wife's whimsies that I can't collect my faculties all at once. I think I may have heard of you, but I haven't met you before.'

'I am the landlord of Glory—Mehalah, you call her. The Ray, which is their farm, belongs to me, with all the marshes and the saltings, and all that thereon is. I bought it for eight hundred pounds. Glory and her mother are mine.'

'I don't understand you.'

'I bought the land, and the farm, and them, a job lot, for eight hundred pounds.'

'I remember, the girl—I forget her name, but I have it here, written down——'

'Glory!'

'No, not that, Mehalah. I wish you wouldn't call her what she is not, because it confuses me; and I have had a deal to confuse me lately. Marriage does rummage a man's hold up so. Mehalah came here a few weeks back to ask me to lend her some money, as her mother could not pay the rent. Her mother is my cousin, Liddy Vince that was, I used to call her "Pretty Liddy," or Lydia Languish, after a character in a play, because of her ague, and because she sort of languished of love for me. And I don't deny it, I was sweet on her once, but the ague shivers stood in the way of our love waxing wery hot.'

'You lent her the money.'

'I—I——' hesitated Mr. Pettican. 'You see how I am circumstanced, my wife——'

'You lent her the money. Mistress Sharland told me so.'

'She did!' exclaimed Pettican in surprise.

'Yes, she did. Now I want to know, will you do that again? I am landlord. I bought the Ray for eight hundred pounds, and I don't want to drop my money without a return. You understand that. A man doesn't want to give his gold away, and be whined out of getting interest for it by an old shivering, chattering woman, and flouted out of it by a devil of a girl.' His hands clenched fiercely.

'Of course, of course,' said the cripple. 'I understand you. You think those two can't manage the farm, and were better out of it.'

'I want to be sure of my money,' said Elijah, knitting his dark brows, and fixing his eyes intently on Pettican.

'I quite understand,' said the latter, and tapping his forehead, he added, 'I am a man of business still. I am not so old as all that, whatever Admonition may say.'

'Now what I want to know,' pursued Elijah, 'is this—for how long are you going to pay your cousin's rent? For how long is that Glory to come to me and defy me, and throw the money down before me?'

'I don't quite take you,' said Pettican.

'How many times will you pay their rent?' asked Rebow.

'Well!' said the cripple, passing his hand over his face. 'I don't want them to stay at your farm at all. I want them to come here and take care of me. I cannot defend myself. If I try to be a man—that girl, I forget her name, you confuse me about it—told me to be a man, and I will be a man, if she will back me up. I have been a man somewhat, have I not, master, in chucking cousin Timothy's traps to the gull—that I call manly. You will see the girl—-Mehalah—I have the name now. I will keep my note-book open at the place. Mehalah, Mehalah, Mehalah, Mehalah.'

'I want to know——' broke in Elijah.

'Let me repeat the name ten times, and then I shall not forget it again.' Pettican did so. 'You called her something else. Perhaps we are not speaking of the same person.'

'Yes, we are. I call her Glory. I am accustomed to that name. Tell me what you want with her.'

'I want her and her mother to come and live with me, and take care of me, and then I can be a man, and make head against the wind that is now blowing in my teeth. Shall you see them?'

'Yes.'

'To-day?'

'Perhaps.'

'Then pray make a point of seeing the girl or her mother, in case she should not notice the flag, and say that I wish them to come here at once; at once it must be, or I shall never have courage to play the man again, not as I have to-day. They did put my monkey up by removing my crutches and hoisting them to the masthead, leaving me all by myself and helpless here. I should wish Mehalah to be here before Admonition and her beau return. They won't be back till late. There's a horsemanship at Colchester as well as a merry-go-round, and they are going to both, and perhaps to the theatre after that. There'll be junketings and racketings, and I—poor I—left here with no one to attend to me, and my crutches at the mast-head. You will tell the girl and her mother that I expect their help, and I will be a man, that I will. It would be something to boast of, would it not, if Timothy were to return and find his room occupied and his baggage picked to rags, and if Admonition were to discover that I have cousins as well as she?'

'You are bent on this?'

'I rely on you. You will see them and tell them to come to me, and I will provide for them whilst I am alive, and afterwards—when I am no more—we won't talk or think of such an eventuality. It isn't pleasant to contemplate, and may not happen for many years. I am not so old as you might think. My infirmity is due to accident; and my digestion is, or rather was, first-rate. I could eat and drink anything before I was married. Now I am condemned to see others eat and drink what I have laid in for my own consumption, and I am put off with the drumstick of the fowl, or the poorest swipes of ale, whilst the others toss off my stout—bottled stout. I will not endure this any longer. Tell that girl—I forget her name—and her mother that they must come to me.'

'But suppose they will not come.'

'They will, I know they will. The female heart is tender and sympathetic, and compassionates misery. My suffering will induce them to come. If that will not, why then the prospects of being comfortably off and free from cares will make them come. I have plenty of money. I won't tell you, I have not told Admonition, how much. I have money in the Colchester Bank. I have South Sea shares, and insurances, and mortgages, and I shall not let Admonition have more money than I can help, as it all goes on cousin Timothy, and whirligigs and horsemanships, or regattas, and red ribands, and what not; none is spent on me. No, no. The Sharlands shall have my money. They are my cousins. I have cousins as well as Admonition. I will be a man and show that I have courage too. But I have another inducement that will be sure to bring them.'

'What is that?'

'I have observed,' said Pettican, with a hiccuppy giggle, 'that just as tom-cats will range all over the country in search of other tom-cats, just for the pleasure of clawing them and tearing out their hair, so women will hunt the whole country-side for other women, if there be a chance of fighting them. Tell my cousin Liddy that Admonition is game, she has teeth, and tongue, and nails, and sets up her back in a corner, and likes a scrimmage above everything, and my word for it, Liddy—unless the ague has taken the female nature out of her—will be here before nightfall to try her teeth, and tongue, and nails on Admonition. It is said that if on a May morning you rub your eyes with cuckoo spittle, you see things invisible before, the fairies in the hoes dancing and feasting, swimming in eggshells on the water to bore holes in ships' sides, milking the cows before the maids come with the pail, and stealing the honey from the hives. Well, marriage does much the same sort of thing to a man as salving his eyes in cuckoo spittle; it affords him a vision of a world undreamt of before; it gives him an insight into what is going on in the female world, and the workings and brewings and the mischief in women's hearts. Tell Liddy Sharland about my Admonition, and she will be here, with all her guns run out and ready charged, before nightfall.'

Rebow shook his head. 'Mistress Sharland and Glory won't come.'

'Don't say so. They must, or I shall be undone. I cannot live as I have, tyrannised over, insulted, trampled on by Admonition and her cousin. I will no longer endure it. The flag is flying. I have proclaimed my independence and defiance. But, as you see, I am unable to live alone. If Liddy and her daughter will not come to me, I shall be driven to do something desperate. My life has become intolerable, I will bear with Admonition no longer.'

'What will you do?' asked Elijah with a sneer.

'I tell you, I do not care. I am reckless, I will even fire the house, and burn it over their heads.'

'What good would that do?'

'What good would it do?' repeated Pettican. 'It would no longer be a shelter for Admonition and that beau Timothy. I am not going to be trifled with, I have endured too much. I will be a man. I shouldn't mind a bit smoking them out of this snug lair.'

'And what about yourself?'

'Oh, as for me, I could go to the Blue Anchor, and put up there for the rest of my days. I think I could be happy in a tavern, happier than here, and I should have the satisfaction of thinking I had shaken the weevils out of the biscuit.'

Elijah started, and strode up and down the room, with head bent, and his eyes fixed on the floor. His hands were clenched and rigid at his side.

'You will tell Liddy,' said the cripple, watching him.

'Smoke them out! Ha! ha! that is a fine idea!' burst forth from Elijah, with a laugh.

'You will tell Liddy,' repeated Charles Pettican. 'You must, you know, or I am lost. If Admonition were to return with Timothy at her heels, and were to find the flag flying, and me alone——' he passed his agitated hand over his face, and his lips trembled.

'I see,' said Rebow. 'You would then cease to be a man.'

It was late when Admonition and her cousin returned from the market. It was so dark that they did not see the flag. But as Admonition put her hand on the gate it was grasped.

'Stop,' said Elijah. 'A word with you.'

'Who are you?' asked Mrs. Pettican in alarm, and Timothy swaggered forward to her defence.

'Never mind who I am. I have waited here some hours to warn you. Was there a girl, a handsome girl, a glorious girl, here to see that man, your husband, a month ago? You need not answer. I know there was. She is his cousin. He lent her money.'

'No, he did not. I stopped that, didn't I, Tim?'

'He lent her money. You think you stopped that, but you did not. He let her have the money, twenty pounds, how I know not. She had his money, and she will have more, all, unless you keep a sharp watch on him.'

'Tim! do you hear this?' asked Admonition.

'He will send for his cousin to live in the house with him, and to support him against you.'

'Oh, oh! That's fine, isn't it, Tim?'

'If they come, your reign is at an end. That girl, Glory, has a head of iron and the heart of a lion. No one can stand against her but one. There is only one in all the world has dared to conquer her, and he will do it yet. Don't you think you will be able to lift a little finger against her will. She will be too strong for you and a hundred of your Timothys.'

Admonition laughed. 'My little mannikin daren't do it. He is under my thumb.'

'The flag is flying,' sneered Elijah.

At that moment the faint light of evening broke through the clouds and Admonition saw the Union Jack at the mast-head.

'He is right. There is audacity! Run, Tim, haul it down, and bring it me. It shall go into the kitchen fire to boil the water for a glass of grog.'

CHAPTER XIV.

ON THE BURNT HILL.

It was Christmas Eve. A hard frost had set in. The leaves which had hung on the thorn trees on the Ray rained off and were whirled away by the wind and scattered over the rising and falling waters in the Rhyn. On the saltings were many pools, filled from below, through crab burrows, from the channels; when the tide mounted, the water squirted up through these passages and brimmed the pools, and when the tide fell, it was sucked down through them as if running out of a colander. Now a thin film of ice was formed about the edges of these pondlets, and the marsh herbs that dipped in them were encased in crystal. The wild geese and ducks came in multitudes, and dappled the water of Mersea channel.

'There's four gone,' said Abraham Dowsing in a sulky voice to Mehalah.

'Four what?'

'Four ewes to be sure, of what else have we more than one?'

'Where are they?'

'That is what I should like to know. Two went yesterday, but I said nothing about it, as I thought they might be found, or that I hadn't counted aright; but there's two more missing to-day.'

'What can have become of them?'

'It's no use asking me. Is it like I should know?'

'But this is most extraordinary. They must have wandered off the saltings, on to the causeway, and so away.'

'That is likely, ain't it,' said Abraham. 'It is like the ways of sheep, to scatter, and two or three to go off and away from all the flock. I'll believe that when sheep change their nature.'

'They must have fallen into a pool and been drowned.'

'Then I should find their carcases; but I haven't. Perhaps there has been a spring tide at the wrong time of the year and overflowed and drowned them. That's likely, isn't it?'

'But, Abraham, they must be found.'

'Then you must find 'em yourself.'

'Where can they be?'

'I've told you it is no use asking me.'

'Can they have been stolen?'

'I reckon that is just about it.'

'Stolen!' exclaimed Mehalah, her blood flashing to her face and darkening cheek and brow. 'Do you mean to tell me that some scoundrel has been here in the night, and carried off four of our ewes?'

Abraham shrugged his shoulders; 'Mud tells tales at times.'

Mehalah trembled with anger.

'Some boat was here last night, and night afore, and the keel marks remain. I saw them, and I saw footprints of sheep too, near them.'

'When?'

'The tide is up, and you can't see. Near the Burnt Hill.'

'Abraham, this is not to be borne.'

'Who is to help it?'

'I will. I will watch,' she stamped her foot fiercely on the red glasswort; 'I will kill the cowardly sneaking thief who comes here to rob the widow and the orphan.'

'You must see him first,' said Abraham, 'and sheep-stealers don't generally let themselves be seen.'

'A man who steals sheep can be hung for it.'

'Yes.'

'I'll catch him,' she laughed, 'and the gallows will be set up on the Burnt Hill, and then he shall dangle till his bones drop away into the ooze.'

'You must catch him first,' said the shepherd, and shrugged his shoulders again.

Mehalah strode up and down in the marsh, her brows knit, and the veins swollen on her temples. She breathed fast and her blood sang in her ears. To be robbed in this cowardly manner! The thought was maddening. Hitherto she and her mother had deemed themselves perfectly safe on the Ray: nothing had ever been taken from them; the ooze and the sea water walled them in. The Ray was a trap from which there was no escape save by boat. It was said that once a deserter found his way into Mersea Isle and lingered about the marshes for many days. He dared not return by the causeway, thinking it would be watched and he would be secured, and he had no money wherewith to bribe a boatman to put him across elsewhere. One evening he lit on a farmer with a spade over his shoulder going to the sea-wall to block a rent against an expected tide. He fell on the man from behind, wrenched away his spade and cut his head open with it, then turned out his pockets in search of coin, but found none. The man was taken. He could not escape, and was hung on the marshes where the murder was done, by the mouth of the Pyefleet.

If Mersea was a trap, how much more so the Ray. The Sharlands had not even a lock to their door. No one was ever seen on the island after dark save those who dwelt there, for the hill was surrounded on all sides, save where girt by the sea, by a labyrinth of creeks and pools. A robber there would be like a fly in a cobweb, to be caught at once. The sheep were allowed to ramble all over the marsh and saltings, they could thread their way; and it was only when the moon was full or new, and the wind in the south-east, that the shepherd drove them into fold till the waters subsided. There were times—such as the coincidence of a peculiar wind with an equinoctial tide—when to leave the sheep on the marsh would be to ensure their being drowned. This was so well known, that precaution was always taken against the occasion.

The sense of being treated unjustly, of being cruelly wronged, of advantage being taken of their feebleness, filled Mehalah's heart with bitterness, with rage. An over-mastering desire for revenge came upon her. She, a girl, would defend her property, and chastise the man who injured her. She gave up all thought of obtaining the assistance of Abraham, if it ever entered her mind. The old man was too slow in his movements, and dull of sight and hearing, to be of use. As likely as not, moreover, he would refuse to risk himself on the saltings at night, to expose himself to the ague damp or the bullet. What could he, a feeble old loon, do against a sturdy sheep-stealer?

'Whom do you suspect?' asked Glory abruptly.

He drew up his shoulders.

'Come, tell me.'

'An empty belly.'

'Abraham! one man cannot have taken four sheep for himself.'

Another shrug.

There was nothing to be got out of the dogged rustic. Mehalah waited till evening, then she wrapped a cloak round her, put her pistol in her belt, and walked through the marsh to the point indicated by the shepherd as the Burnt Hill.

Through all the low flat coast land of this region, above the saltings, or pasture overflowed by high tides occasionally, are scattered at irregular intervals large broad circular mounds of clay burned to brick red, interspersed with particles of charcoal. A few fragments of bone are found in them, relics of the meals of those who raised these heaps, but they cover no urns, and enclose no cists, they contain no skeletons. They were never intended as funeral monuments, and are quite different from the hoes or barrows which stand on high land, and which were burial mounds. The burnt or red hills are always situate at high-water mark; near them, below the surface of the vegetable deposit, are multitudes of oyster shells. Near them also are sometimes found, sunk in the marsh, polished chert weapons. Who raised these mounds? For what purpose were they reared? These are questions that cannot be answered satisfactorily. One thing is certain. An immense amount of wood must have been consumed to burn such a mass of clay, and the country must then have been more overgrown with timber than at present. Many of the mounds are now enclosed in fields by sea-walls which hold out the tide, the plough has been drawn over them, and the spade has scattered them over the surface, colouring a whole field brick red, and making it rich for the production of corn. There is no better manure than a red hill.

But why were these mounds so laboriously raised? The tradition of the marsh-dwellers is that they were platforms for huts, the earth burned as a prevention to ague. It is curious that in the marshy regions of Central Africa the natives adopt a precisely similar method for their protection from miasma. But why men dwelt in such numbers on the saltings remains undetermined. Whether they lived there to burn the glasswort for nitre, or to steam the sea water for salt, or to take charge of oyster grounds, is uncertain. Fragments, very broken, of pottery are found in these heaps, scattered throughout them, but not a specimen of a perfect vessel. The burnt hills are built up on the old shingle of the shore, with no intervening line of vegetable matter, the growth of the marsh has been later and has risen about their bases and has partly buried them.

Glory reached the Burnt Hill, and stood on it. A cold east wind wailed over the waste; a white fog like curd lay on the water, and the surface of the saltings, clinging to the surface and rising scarce above three feet from it. Here and there it lifted itself in a vaporous column, and moved along in the wind like a white spectral woman, nodding her head and waving her arms cumbered with wet drapery. Above, the sky was clear, and a fine crescent moon sparkled in it without quenching the keenness of the stars. Cassiopeia was glorious in her chair, Orion burned sideways over Mersea Isle. No red gleam was visible to-night from the tavern window at the City, the veil of fog hung over it and curtained it off. To the north-west was a silvery glow at the horizon, then there rose a pure ray as of returning daylight, it was answered by a throb in the north-east, then it broke into two rays, and again united and spread, and suddenly was withdrawn. Mehalah had often seen the Aurora, and she knew that the signals portended increased cold or bad weather.

She seated herself on the mound, and drew her cloak about her more closely, the damp cold bit into her flesh; she knew she was safe from ague on the burnt earth.

Her anger subsided, not that she resented the wrong the less, but that her mind had passed to other contemplations. She was thinking of George, of her dead hopes, of the blankness of the future before her. A little sunlight had fallen on her sad and monotonous life, but it had been withdrawn, and had left her with nothing to live for, save her mother. Her heart had begun to expand as a flower, and a frost had fallen on it, and blackened its petals. She brooded now on the past. She wished for nothing in the future. She had no care for the present. It was all one to her what befell her, so long as her mother were cared for. She had no one else to love. She was without a friend. She would resent an injury, and fight an enemy. George might have introduced her into a new world of gentleness, and pity, and love. Now the door to that world was shut for ever, and she must beat her way through a world of hard realities, where every man's hand was lifted against his brother, and where was hate and resentment, and exacting of the uttermost farthing. She had gone forth seeking help, and except from George, had found none. Mrs. De Witt, Phoebe Musset, Admonition, such were the women she had met; and the men were selfish as Parson Till, fools as Charles Pettican, surly as Abraham Dowsing, or brutal as Elijah Rebow.

Hark!—She caught the dip of an oar.

She drew in her breath and raised her head. Then she saw a boat shoot out of the mist, white and ghost-like as the mist forms that stalked over the water, and in the boat a man.

There he was! The sheep-stealer, come once more to rob her mother and herself. At once her furious passion boiled up in her veins. She saw before her the man who had wronged her; she thought nothing of her own weakness beside his strength, of there being no one within call to come to her aid, should his arm be stouter than hers. She sprang to her feet with a shout, such as an Indian might utter on leaping on his foe, and rushed to the water's edge, just as the man had landed, and had her hands at his throat in a moment.

'You coward, you thief!' she cried shaking him savagely.

'Glory!'

In an instant a pair of stronger hands had wrenched her hands away and pinioned them.

'By heaven! you wild cat, what are you flying at me like that for? What has brought you here at this time of night?'

Mehalah was abashed. Her rage sank. She had mistaken her man. This was no sheep-stealer. She could not speak, so great was her agitation. She writhed to free herself, but writhed in vain. Elijah laughed at her attempts.

'What are you here for?' he asked again. 'Can you not answer my question?'

'Some one has been stealing our ewes,' she said.

'And you took me for the thief,' said Rebow. 'Much obliged for the compliment. Me—the owner of Red Hall, and the man that purchased the Ray, the farm house, and the marshes and the saltings and all that thereon is for eight hundred pounds, to be taken and hanged for sheep-lifting! A likely story, Glory. You must manage better another time.'

'What brings you here?' asked Mehalah sullenly, angry with herself and with him.

'That is the question I asked of you, and you return it. I will tell you. I am out duck-shooting, but the mist lies so thick on the water, and eats into the marrow of the bones. I could see no ducks, and I was freezing in my punt; so I have come to lie with my gun on the Burnt Hill awhile till the fog clears, as it will in an hour, when I shall return.'

'Were you here yesterday night?'

'No, I was not; I was up Tottesbury creek and got a dozen pair of wild duck. Will you have some? I have a pair or two in the punt.'

'I have refused them before, and I refuse them again.'

'Why do you ask me if I were here yesternight?'

'Because then two sheep were taken. Were you here the night before?'

'No, I was then on Abbots' Hall marshes. Do you suspect me still of sheep-stealing?' he asked scoffingly.

'I do not, but I thought had you been here you might have seen some signs of the villains who have robbed us.'

'Come here, Glory! out of the fog on to the Burnt Hill.'

'I am going home.'

'You are not, till I have said what I have to say. Come out of the ague damps.'

'I am going home, now.'

He held her by both wrists. She was strong, but her strength was nothing to his. She made no great effort to get away. If he chose to speak to her, she would listen to him. If she struggled in his grasp, it would make him think she feared him. She would not allow him to suppose himself of such importance to her. If he insulted her, she had her pistol, and she would not scruple to defend herself.

He drew her to the top of the mount; there they were clear of the mist, which lay like snow below and round them, covering the morass and the water. The clear cut crescent moon hung over a clump of pines on Mersea. Rebow looked at it, then waved an arm in the direction.

'Do you see Grim's Hoe yonder?—That great barrow with the Scotch pines on top? Do you know how it comes there? Have you heard the tale?'

Mehalah was silent.

'I will tell you, for I often think of it, and so will you when you have been told the tale. In the old times when the Danes came here, they wintered on Mersea Isle, and in the summer they cruised all along the coast, burning and plundering and murdering. There were two chiefs to them, brothers, who loved one another, they were twins, born the same hour, and they had but one heart and soul; what one willed that willed the other, what one desired that the other desired also. One spring they sailed up the creek to St. Osyth's, and there they took Osyth and killed her. She had a sister, very beautiful, and she fell to the lot of the brothers. They brought her back to Mersea, and then each would have her for his own. So the brothers fell out whose she should be, and all their love turned to jealousy, and their brotherhood to enmity, and it came about that they fought with their long swords who should have the maid. They fought, and smote, and hacked one another till their armour was broken, and their flesh was cut off, and their blood flowed away, and by nightfall they were both dead. Thereupon the Danes drew their ship up to the top of the hill just above the Strood, and they placed the maid in the hold with a dead brother on either side of her, in his tattered harness, sword in hand, and they heaped a mountain over them and buried them all, the living and the dead together.'

Rebow paused, and pointed to the moon hung over the hoe.

'When the new moon appears, the flesh grows on their bones, and the blood stanches, and the wounds close, and breath comes back behind their ribs. When the moon is full they rise in the ship's hold and fall on one another, and if you listen at full moon on the hoe you can hear the brothers fighting below in the heart of the barrow. You hear them curse and cry out, and you hear the clash of their swords. But when the moon wanes the sounds grow fainter, their armour falls to bits, their flesh drops away, the blood oozes out of all the hacked veins, and at last all is still. Then, when there is no moon, you can hear the maid mourning and sobbing: you can hear her quite distinctly till the new moon reappears, and then she is hushed, for the brothers are recovering for a new fight. This will go on month after month, year after year, till one conquers the other and wins the maid; but that will never be, for the brothers are of the same age, and equally strong, and equally resolute.'

'Why have you told me this?' asked Mehalah.

'Why have I told you this, Glory?' repeated Rebow; 'because you and I are like those brothers, only they began with love and ended with fighting, and you and I begin with fighting and must and shall end with love. I love you, Glory, and yet, at times, I almost hate you.'

'And I,' broke in Mehalah, 'hate you with my whole heart, and never, never can love you.'

'You have a strong spirit, so have I,' said Elijah; 'I like to hear you speak thus. For long you have let me see that you have hated me: you have fought me hard, but you shall love me yet. We must fight, Glory; it is our destiny. We were made for one another, to love and fight, and fight and love, till one has conquered or killed the other. How can you live at the Ray, and I at Red Hall, apart? You know, you feel it, that we must be together to love and fight, and fight and love, till death. What is the use of your struggling against what must come about? As soon as ever I saw you I knew that you were ordained for me from the moment you were born. You grew up and ripened for me, for me, and no one else. You thought you loved George De Witt. I hated you for loving him. He was not worthy of you, a poor, foolish, frightened sop. You would have taken him and turned him inside out and torn him to pieces, in a week, disgusted with the fellow that made calf-love to you, when you had sounded his soul and found a bottom as soon as the lead went out of your hand. You thought George De Witt would belong to you. It could not be. You cannot oppose your destiny. A strong soul like yours must not mate but with a strong soul like mine. Till I saw you I hated women, poor, thin-headed, hollow-souled toys. When I saw you I saw the only woman who could be mine, and I knew, as the pointers yonder know the polestar, that you were destined to me. You hate me because you know this as well as I do. You know that there is no man on earth who can be yours save me, but you will play and fight with your destiny. Sooner or later you must bend to it. Sooner or later you must give way. You thought of George De Witt, and he is swept out of your path. You may fancy any other man, and he will go this way or that, and nothing will prosper till you set your face in the direction whither your destiny points. You can take no other than me, however much you may desire it. You need me and I need you. You may hate me and go on hating me and fighting me to the last, but you cannot escape me.

'Elijah,' said Mehalah, 'escape you I will. Since I have known you, you have been mixed up with all the ills that have come upon us, I do not know how; but I seem to feel that you are like an evil wind or a blighting cloud passing over my life. I would look up and laugh, but I cannot, I turn hard, and hate the world—only because you are in it. It would be another world without you.'

'Why do you turn hard and hate the world? Because you are on a wrong road, you are battling against your destiny. All goes across with you, because you are across your proper path. Why do you hate me? Because you feel in your soul that you must sooner or later be mine, and your haughty will rebels against having your future determined for you. Yet I know it. The time is at hand when you will take me for better, for worse, for all life. We cannot live a moment the one without the other. If I were to die you would die too, you would rage and writhe against death, but it would come. I know it. Our lives are bound up together in one bundle, and the knife that cuts one string cuts the other also. Our souls are twins to love and to hate, to fondle and fight, till death us do part! Till death us do part!' repeated Rebow scornfully, 'Death can no more part us than life. We will live together and we will die together, and moulder away in one another's arms. The worm that gnaws me shall gnaw you. I think of you night and day. I cannot help it: it is my fate. I knew it was so the moment I saw you. I came here. I cannot keep away till you come to me to Red Hall.'

'I shall never go there again,' said Mehalah sullenly,

'Not before New Year?'

'Never.'

He laughed. 'She would swear to it, and yet at the New Year she will be there. And she will take me and be mine. For me she must and will love. It is her fate; she cannot oppose that for ever. For me she would even give up George De Witt.'

'George De Witt is dead.'

'I say, were it to come to this, George or Elijah, one or the other, you would fly to Elijah and cast George off.'

'Let me go. I will have no more of this mad babble,' said Mehalah, wrenching her hands out of his grasp. She would not run away. She was too proud. She folded her arms on her breast and confronted him.

'Hark!' she said, 'the Christmas bells.'

Faint and far off could be heard the merry pealing of the Colchester bells. The wind had shifted.

'Peace on earth and good will to men,' muttered Elijah; 'but to them that fight against their destiny fury and hate.'

'Go back, Elijah, and speak to me no more on this matter. I will not hear you again. I have but endured it now.'

'This is Christmas Eve,' said Rebow. 'In eight days is the New Year, and then you will be in Red Hall, Glory!'

'Listen to me, Elijah,' exclaimed Mehalah passionately. 'If you find me there, then you may hope to see your other fond dream fulfilled. Destiny will have been too strong for me.'

'Farewell.'

'May we not meet again.'

'We shall. It cannot be helped. I feel it coming. You may fight against it; you cannot escape. Destiny must fulfil itself. We must fight and love, and love and fight in life, in death, and through eternity, like the old warriors in Grim's Hoe.'

'Farewell.'

'Till this day sen'night.'

CHAPTER XV.

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

No more sheep were stolen; but then the moon was filling her horns, and a robbery could not be committed without chance of detection. But though nothing further had been taken, Mehalah was uneasy. Some evilly-disposed person had visited the Ray and plundered her and her mother of four ewes; others, or the same, might attempt the house, in the hopes of finding money there. The auction had shown people that Mistress Sharland was not without money.

On New Year's Eve Mehalah went to Colchester to make some purchases for the New Year. The kalends of January and not the Nativity of Christ is the great winter festival among the Essex peasantry on the coast. They never think of wishing one another a Happy Christmas, but only a Merry New Year. No yule log is burnt, no mummers dance, no wassail bowl is consumed at Christmas, but each man who can afford it deems himself bound to riot and revel, to booze and sing, to wake the death of the old year, and baptise the new with libations of brandy or ale.

When Mehalah returned, she brought with her a new lock and key for the house-door. There had been once a lock there, but it had been broken many years ago, and had never been repaired. On the Ray no lock was needed, it had been supposed. Mehalah was of a different opinion now. The short day had closed some time ago; she had seen it die over Bradwell from Abberton Hill, but the full moon was rising, and she knew her way over the marshes, she could thread the tangle easily by moonlight. She reached the Ray, threw open the door, and strode in. Her mother was by the fire, with her head on the table. Mehalah's heart stood still for a moment, and then her face flushed. The smell of spirits in the close room, the attitude of her mother, the stupefied eyes which opened on her, and then closed again without recognition, convinced her that her mother had been drinking.

Mehalah was angry as well as distressed. This was a new trouble, one to which she was quite unaccustomed. She knew that her mother had taken a little rum-and-water against her ague, and she had not grudged it her. But of late there had been something more than this. Since Rebow had supplied Mrs. Sharland with spirits, the old woman had been unable to resist the temptation of going to her keg whenever she felt lonely or depressed. Mehalah had insisted on her mother receiving no more from Elijah Rebow, but she was by no means certain that the widow had complied with her desire. The sight of her mother in this condition angered Mehalah, for she was sure now that a fresh supply had been obtained, and was secreted somewhere. She was angry with her mother for deceiving her and with Rebow for tempting the old woman and laying her under an obligation to him. She was angry with herself for not having watched her mother more closely, and explored the places of concealment which abounded in the old house.

She stood over her mother for some moments with folded arms and bowed head, her brows knit, and a gloomy light in her eyes. Then she shook her roughly and spoke harshly to her.

'Mother! answer me. You have received more from Rebow?'

'It was very kind, very kind indeed,' stuttered the old woman. 'Capital for ague shivers and rheumatic pains in the bones.'

'Has Elijah been here again?'

'He's wery civil; he knows what suits old bones.'

'Has he brought you another keg?'

'It is stowed away,' said the widow drowsily. 'Quite comfortable. Go to bed, Mehalah, it's time to get up.'

The girl drew back in disgust and wrath. Elijah was making her own mother despicable in her eyes. She was quite resolved what to do. She thrust open the door to the cellar, and behind a heap of faggots found a fresh keg, evidently recently brought, and quite full. She drew it forth into the front room and held it up.

'Mother!' she shouted.

'I am here, Mehalah. The ague isn't on me yet.'

'Do you see this little cask? It is full, quite full.'

'Don't do that, child, you may drop it.'

'I shall dash it to pieces,' said the girl, and she flung it with her whole force on the bricks. A stave was broken: the precious liquor spurted out. Some flew into the fire and flashed into blue flame up the chimney. In a moment the floor was swimming, and the thirsty bricks were sucking in the spirit. The old woman was too besotted with drink to understand what was done. Mehalah's bosom heaved with passion and excitement.

'I have done with that,' she said; 'I said that I would, and I have kept my word. Never, never shall my poor mother be like this again. He did it.' She knit her hands, and a fire flickered in her eye, like that of the burning spirit in the chimney.

'Now come to bed, mother.' She drew or carried the old woman out of the room, undressed her, and put her in bed. Mrs. Sharland made no resistance. She submitted drowsily, and her head was no sooner on the pillow than she fell asleep.

Mehalah returned to the front room. She got out some tools and set herself to work at once to fasten on the lock. She was accustomed to doing all sorts of things herself; she could roughly carpenter, she had often patched her boat. The old farmhouse was in a decayed condition and needed much mending, and for several years she had done what was required to it. To put on a lock was a trifle; but the old nails that had fastened the former lock remained in the wood, and had to be punched out, and the keyhole was not quite in the right place when the lock was first put on, and had to be altered. At length the lock was fast, a strong lock, strong for such a worm-eaten door.

Mehalah went to her mother's room and looked at the old woman. She slept heavily, unlike her usual sleep, which would be broken at once by the entry of her daughter with a light.

Mehalah returned to the kitchen and seated herself at the hearth. How long had this keg of spirits been in the house? She had paid no attention to the introduction of spirits since George's death, her mind had been occupied with other matters. Her mother and Rebow had taken advantage of this. How was it that Rebow came to the house when she was away? He never came when she was present, at least not since the night when the money was stolen; but she was sure that he visited her mother during her absence, from little things let drop by the old woman.

How did he manage to time his visits so as not to meet her? She would find out when he was last at the Ray Farm. She sprang up, and went out of the door, unlocking it to let herself go forth; and she called Abraham. There was no answer. The old man was already turned into his loft over the cowhouse, and asleep.

She called him again, but with equal want of success. Not a thunderbolt falling on the thorns beside the house would rouse him. Mehalah knew that, and went back to her seat by the fire, relocking the door. 'I will ask him in the morning. He must know.'

She drew off her shoes, and put her bare feet on the warm hearth. She was without her guernsey and cap, for she did not wear them when she went to Colchester.

She fell, as was her wont, to thinking. Since the death of George, she had been accustomed to sit thus over the fire, after her mother had retired. She was not thinking of him now, she was thinking of Elijah. His words, his strange, mad, fierce words, came back to her. Was there a destiny shaping her life against her will, and forcing her into his arms? She shuddered at the thought. To hate and love, and love and hate, year out, year in, that was what they were fated to do, according to him. That he was drawn towards her by some attractive power exercised against her will, she knew full well, but she would not allow that he exercised the least attraction on her. Yet she did feel that there was some sort of spell upon her. Hate him as she did and would, she knew that she could not altogether escape him, she had an instinctive consciousness that she was held by him, she did not understand how, in his hands. Perhaps it was her destiny to hate and fight him; for how long? Love him she never could, she never would. There was an assurance in his manner and tone which impressed her against her better judgment. He spoke as though it were but a matter of time before she yielded herself wholly to him, and came under his roof and joined her lot with his, for life and for death. What right had he to assume this? What grounds had he for this confidence? None but a blind, dogged conviction in his own mind that destiny had ordained them for each other. Then she thought of the story of Grim's Hoe, of the two who loved and hated, embraced and fought eternally therein, those two destined from their mother's womb to be together in life and death, with twin souls and bodies, who had they lived in love might have rested in death, but as they fought must fight on. There they were, in the old hollow womb of the ship down in the earth in darkness, loving one another as brothers, fighting each other as rivals; the conflict lasting till one shall master the other, a thing that never can be, for both were born with equal strength, and equal purpose, and equal stubbornness of will. The fumes of the spilled spirits hung in the air, and stimulated Mehalah's brain. Instead of stupefying, they quickened her mind into activity. Her heart beat. She felt as if she were in the ship hold watching the eternal conflict, and as if she must take a part with one or the other; as if her so doing would determine the victory. But which should she will to conquer, when each was the counterpart of the other? She could not bear this thought, she could not endure the fumes of the spirit, it suffocated her. She sprang up. The full moon was glaring in at the window from a cloudless sky.

She opened the door. The air was cold, but there was little wind. She could see on the south-east horizon, at the highest point of the island, the great Hoe crowned with black pines.

The moon was at full. The old warriors were now hewing at one another, and the dim, frightened captive maid looked on with her hands on her heart, her great eyes gleaming like glow-worms in the decaying ship hold. Ha! at each sword stroke the sparks flashed. Ha! the cut flesh glimmered like phosphorescent fish, and the blood ran like blue fire. Was the story true? Could anyone hear the warriors shout and smite, who chose to listen at the full of the moon? The distance to Grim's Hoe was not over two miles. Mehalah thought she must go there and listen with her own ears. She would go.

Once more she returned to her mother's room, and saw that Mrs. Sharland was asleep. Then she drew on her shoes, her guernsey, and her red cap, went out, locked the door, and put the key in her pocket.

'Who went there?' She started. She thought she saw something—some one, move; but then laughed. The moon was so bright that it cast her shadow on the wall, distinct and black as if it were a palpable body. She stood still, listened, and looked round. She could see the stretch of the saltings as distinctly as if it were day, only that the shadows were inky black, not purple as by sunlight. Not a sound was to be heard.

'I will go,' she said, and she strode off towards the causeway.

The path over the marshes was perfectly distinct. She walked fast, the earth crackled under her feet, the frost was keen. Her eyes rose ever and anon to Grim's Hoe. The pines on it did not stir, they stood like mourners above a grave.

The Mersea channel gleamed like a belt of silver, not a ripple was on the water on the west side of the causeway, and but slight flapping wavelets, driven by the north-east wind, played with the tangles on the piles on the other side of the Strood.

She reached the island of Mersea by the causeway, now dry, and began to ascend the hill. Once she turned and looked back. She could see the Ray rising above the marshes, bathed in moonlight, patched with coal black shadows cast by the ancient thorn trees, and the farm buildings.

Before her rose the great barrow, partly overgrown with shrubs, but bare on the north-west towards the Strood. It was a bell-shaped mound rising some thirty feet above the surface of the ground. She paused a moment at the foot and listened. Not a sound. She must then climb the tumulus, and lie on the top between the pines, and lay her ear to the ground. She stepped boldly up the little path trodden by children and sheep, and in a few moments was at the top. She stopped to breathe, to look up at the wan white moon that gazed down on her, and then she cast herself on the ground, with her face to the north-west.

What was that? A fir cone fell beside her. There was no sound. Hist! a stoat ran past and disappeared in a hole. Then she heard screams. A poor rabbit was attacked and its blood sucked. She lifted her head, and then laid it on the ground again. Her eyes were fixed on the distance.

What was that? In a moment she was on her feet.

What was that red spot over the marshes, on the Ray, among the trees? What was that leaping, dancing, lambent tongue, shooting up and recoiling? What was that white rising cloud above the thorns?

Before she knew where she was, Mehalah was flying down the hill towards the Strood, the dead Danish warriors forgotten in the agony of her fear. As she ran on, her eyes never left the Ray, and she saw the red light grow in intensity and spread in body. The farm was on fire. The house was on fire, and her mother was in a dead sleep within—locked in—and the key was in her pocket.

O God! what had she done? Why had she gone? Had not the spilled spirits caught fire and set the house in flames! Why had she locked her mother in? a thing never done before. Mehalah ran, terror, horror, anguish at her heart. She did not look at her path, she took it instinctively, she did not heed the rude bridges, she dashed across them, and one broke under her hasty foot, and fell away after she had passed. The flames were climbing higher. She could see them devouring the wooden tarred walls. Then came a great burst of fire, and a rushing upwards of blazing sparks. The roof had fallen in. A pillar of blue and golden light stood up and illumined the whole Ray. The thorn trees looked now like wondrous, finely-ramified, golden seaweeds in a dim blue sea. Mehalah would not pause to look at anything, she saw only flames leaping and raging where was her home, where lay her mother. How could she reach the place before the house was a wreck, and her dear mother was buried beneath the burned timbers of the roof, and the hot broken tiles?

She was there at last, before the great blaze; she could see that some one or two men were present.

'My mother, my mother!' she gasped, and fell on her knees.

'Be still, Glory, she is safe, no thanks to you.'

Mehalah lost consciousness for a few moments. The revulsion of feeling was so great as to overcome her. When she recovered, she was still unable for some time to gather all her faculties together, rise, look round, and note what had taken place.

The whole farmhouse was on fire, every wall was flaming, and part of the roof had fallen in. If once the house were to catch fire it was certain to go like tinder. A spout of flame came out of her mother's bed-room window. The fire glowed and roared in the old kitchen sitting-room.

'Where is my mother?' asked Mehalah abruptly.

'She is all safe,' answered Abraham Dowsing, who was dragging some saved bedding out of reach of the sparks. 'She is in the boat.'

'The cow?' asked Mehalah.

'She is all right also. The fire has not caught the stable.'

'Who got my mother out?'

'I did, Glory!' answered Elijah Rebow. 'You owe her life to me. Why were you not here? Fighting your destiny, I suppose.'

Several articles were scattered about under the trees. The Sharlands had not many valuables; such as they had seemed to have been saved.

'Where is my mother? Lead me to her.'

'She is in the boat, Glory!' said Rebow. 'Come with me. The fire must burn itself out. There is nothing further to be done; we must put your mother at once under shelter. There is a cruel frost, and she will suffer.'

'Where is she? What have you done with her?' again asked Mehalah, still hardly collected and conscious of what she said.

'She is safe in my boat, well wrapped up. Come with me. You shall see her. Abraham and my man shall stay and watch till the fire dies out, and see that no further harm is done, and then follow in your boat.'

'Where are you going?'

'I am going to place your mother under cover, at once, or the cold will kill her. Come on, Glory!'

Elijah led the way down the steep gravelly slope to the Rhyn. There floated his boat—his large two-oared boat, and in the stern half lay, half crouched, Mrs. Sharland, amidst blankets and bedding.

'Joseph!' shouted Elijah to one of the men by the fire, 'follow us as soon as you can, and bring Abraham Dowsing with you. We will fetch away the traps to-morrow.'

Mrs. Sharland was wailing and wringing her hands.

'Oh Mehalah! this is dreadful! too dreadful!'

'Step in and take the oar,' said Elijah impatiently. 'We must get off, and house the old woman as soon as possible, or she will be death-struck.'

The flames were reflected in the water about the boat, it seemed to float in fire.

'Take the oar!' ordered Elijah gruffly.

Mehalah obeyed mechanically. He thrust the boat off, and cast himself in.

No word was spoken for some time, Mehalah's eyes were fixed on her burning home, with despair. Her brain was numb, her heart oppressed. Mrs. Sharland wailed and wept, and uttered loud reproaches against Mehalah, which the girl heard not. She was stunned, and could not take in the situation.

The boat shot past the head of the Ray.

There stood the low broad bulk of the Burnt Hill. Mehalah roused herself.

Elijah looked over his shoulder and laughed.

'Up Salcot Fleet!' he said shortly.

'What!' suddenly exclaimed Mehalah, as a pang shot through her heart. 'Whither are we going?'

'To Red Hall,' answered Elijah.

'I will not go there!' exclaimed the girl in a tone of despair, as she drew her hands sharply from the oar, and the boat swung round.

'Take the oar again,' ordered Elijah. 'Where else can your mother go? You must think of her. She cannot be left to die of cold on the marshes, this night.'

A groan escaped Mehalah's breast. She resumed the oar. 'Hold hard!' shouted Elijah after a row of half-an-hour. He sprang into the water, and drew the boat ashore.

'Give your mother a hand and help her to land,' he said peremptorily. Mehalah obeyed without a word.

Rebow caught the girl by both hands as she stepped on shore.

'Welcome, Glory! welcome to Red Hall! The new year sees you under the roof where you shall rule as mistress; your destiny is mightier than your will.'

CHAPTER XVI.

IN NEW QUARTERS.

When the boat reached the landing place for Red Hall, Mrs. Sharland was found to have been so overcome with terror, and numbed with frost, as to be unable to walk. She moaned under her blankets, but made no effort to rise. Elijah was obliged to carry her out of the boat upon the sea-wall, and then with the assistance of Mehalah she was conveyed to the house in their arms. Neither spoke, and Mrs. Sharland's lamentations, over various articles she had prized, and which she feared were lost or destroyed, remained unattended to.

The old woman was wrapped up from the cold in a blanket that enfolded her entire person and head, and she kept working an aperture for her face, whilst being carried, not so much to obtain air, as to give vent to queries.

'My green bombazine,—where is it?'

The folds of the blanket closed over the face. The fingers worked at them, till they had made a gap.

'Is the toad-jug saved?' at the same time a point of a nose and a thin finger emerged from the wraps.

'There was a dozen of Lowestoft soup-dishes!' A jerk as she was being lifted over a rail sent her head and shoulders deeper into the blanket, and it was some minutes before she had grubbed a hole for herself again.

'The warming-pan! I can't go to bed unless I have the sheets aired.'

A spring across a dyke buried the old woman again 'in woollen.' She emerged only as the house was reached to exclaim 'My rum!'

'You've come where there's lots of that,' said Elijah, and he indicated with his chin to Mehalah to carry her up the steps into the hall.

A red fire was glowing and painting the walls. The great room was warm, and Mrs. Sharland battled out of her envelopes as soon as she became aware that she was under cover.

'Take me to bed,' she said; 'my legs are frozen. I can't go a step. Oh! is the toad-jug saved?'

'I will carry her now,' said Elijah. 'You light a candle, Glory, and follow me.'

He took the old woman over his shoulder, and led the way up the stairs. Mehalah followed with a light she had kindled at the hearth. He conducted into a bed-room, comfortably furnished, with white curtains to the windows, and a low tester bed in the corner.

'Light the fire,' he ordered, and Mehalah applied the candle to the straw and chips in the grate. Presently the flames were dancing up the chimney, and making the whole chamber glow. The old woman was laid on the bed.

'This looks comfortable,' said she; 'just as if you was prepared for us.'

'I was prepared for you. Everything was ready. Glory knows that I have been expecting you and her. I told her she must come, sooner or later. Sooner or later the same roof must cover both, as sooner or later the same grave will hold us both. She would fight me, and would not come to me, but her destiny is stronger than her will. My will is the destiny of her life. It shapes and directs it.'

Mehalah did not speak. She could not speak. She was stunned. A belt of iron bound her heart and restrained its free bounds, a weight of lead crushed her brain and killed its independence of action. She, who had been hitherto a law to herself, whose will had been unfettered, now discovered herself a captive under the thraldom of a will mightier, or more ungovernable, than her own. She had no time or power to think how to escape, and free herself from the situation in which she was placed. All her thoughts that she could collect must be about her mother. She must think of herself when she had more leisure. But though she could not think of herself, she could feel that she was conquered, and a captive, and that escape would not be easy.

'There,' said Elijah, indicating a door, 'there is another little room for you and your mother to put away what you like. If you want anything, come downstairs.'

Elijah went heavily down the stairs and out at the door. Mehalah looked from the window, and saw him on his way to the boat. He was going back to the Ray. She could still see a red cloud hanging over her burnt home. The tears rose in her heart at the sight, but would not well out at her eyes. She stood and looked long at the dying fire, drawing the window curtain behind her to screen from her the light of the room. Her mother lay quiet, evidently pleased at having got into such comfortable quarters, and exhausted with her alarm. By degrees she dozed off into unconsciousness of her loss and of her situation, and Mehalah remained at the window looking moodily over the fens and the water, at the ruby spark that marked her old home.

She was standing in the same place when the boats arrived, bringing portions of their goods to Red Hall. She heard the voices of Rebow and other men below. She opened the door and listened. He was giving them something to eat and drink. Abraham Dowsing was there. She could distinguish his voice.

'If I hadn't turned you out, you'd have been burnt,' said Rebow.

'A good job for mistress we saved the cowhouse,' answered Abraham, with sulky unwillingness to admit that he was indebted to Elijah for anything.

'Don't you think you owe me your life?' asked Rebow.

'The cowhouse didn't burn.'

'No. But it would have, had not we been there to keep the flames off,' observed one of the men.

'Good job for mistress I wasn't burnt. I don't know how she'd got along without me.'

'It did not matter particularly to yourself then, Abby?'

'Don't know as it did. A man must die some time, and I've always heard as smothering is a nice quiet sort of death—better than being racked with cramps and tormented with rheumatics and shivered into the pithole with agues.' After a pause Abraham's voice was heard to add, 'Besides, I should have woke, myself, with the fire and smoke.'

'Not you. And if you had, what could you have done to save the old woman? She'd have been burnt to a cinder before you woke.'

'That's mistress' matter, not mine,' answered Dowsing.

'You could not have got the things out of the house.'

'They are not mine,' retorted Abraham angrily. 'You are not going to make a merit to me of saving what are the belongings of other folk?'

'They belong to your mistress.'

'Well, so they do, that is, they don't belong to me; so none of your boasting to me, as if I owed you anything.' This ungracious remark, but one not unnatural for a rude peasant jealous lest an obligation should place him in a position of disadvantage, was followed by silence, during which the party ate.

Presently Abraham asked, 'How came you to be there?'

'Master sent Jim out with me in the big boat after ducks, and he was in the punt,' answered one of the men. 'He bade us lie by at the mouth of the Rhyn, while he went on to drive the birds our way; there was a lot, and we thought to pepper into a whole flight. He was not long away—not above an hour—when we saw the Ray house afire, and heard him shouting to us to come on, so we rowed as hard as hard, and by the time we landed he had broke open the door, and got the old lady out. We helped as best we might, and saved a deal of things.'

'They ain't worth much,' said Abraham. 'There's nothing in the house worth five pound,—take the whole lot. The cow was the only thing would pay for saving, and she was safe. I slept in the loft over her.'

'The life of your mistress was worth something, I hope, Abby.'

'Don't know that. Not to me, anyhow. She's not mistress; it is Mehalah that orders, and does everything. I don't reckon an old woman's life is worth a crown, not to nobody but herself, may be; but that is her concern not mine. She was an ailing aguish body. Why!' exclaimed Abraham banging his can of ale on the table, 'when you've saved an old woman who is nought but a trouble to everybody as does with her, of what wally is it? They might have paid you to let her alone, but not to lug her out of the fire. Now, Mehalah, she was another sort. But you didn't save her.'

'Where was she? She was not in the house.'

'How am I to know? I don't spy after her. Others may,' he gave a sly, covert look at Elijah, 'I don't. But I reckon she was out on the saltings watching for the sheep-stealers.'

'Have you had sheep-stealers on the Ray?'

'Aye, we have.'

'Did you watch for them at night?'

'I!' with a grunt. 'They were not my sheep. No, thank you. Let them that wallys the sheep watch 'em. I do what I'm paid to do, and I don't do more.'

Mehalah did not listen to the whole of this conversation. She had satisfied herself that Abraham was there, and had heard how Rebow and his men came to be on the spot when the fire broke out; she then closed the door again, and returned to the window. She did not leave her station till dawn, except to attend to the fire, to make it up from the heap stacked by the side of the chimneypiece. When day began to break, she seated herself on a stool by the bed, and laying her head on the mattress fell asleep, and slept for an hour or two, uneasily, troubled by dreams and the discomfort of her position.

When she awoke the house was quiet. She went downstairs, with reluctance, and found no one stirring, but the fire made up and a kettle boiling over it, the table spread with everything she could desire for breakfast. Elijah, Abraham, and the other men were gone. There was a canister with tea on the board. Mehalah made her mother some, and took it up to her.

The old woman was awake, and drank the tea with eagerness.

'I don't think I can get out of bed to-day, Mehalah!' she said. 'I feel my limbs all of an ache; the cold has got into the marrow of my bones, and I feel as if the frost were splitting them, as at times it will split pipes. I must lie abed till the thaw comes to them.'

'Can you eat anything?'

'I think I can.'

'Mother, how long are we going to remain here?'

'It is wery comfortable, I am sure.'

'But we cannot stay in this house.'

'Where else can we go?'

'I will get into service somewhere.'

'You cannot leave me. Where shall I go? I cannot leave my bed, and I don't think the frost will get out of my bones for a week or more.'

'I can not, I will not, remain here.'

'Where can we go?'

Mehalah put both her hands to her brow. She could not answer this question. Were she alone, she could get a situation in a farmhouse, perhaps; but with a sick mother dependent on her, this was not possible. No farmer would take them both in for the sake of her services.

'Where else can we go?' again asked Mrs. Sharland; then in a repining voice, 'If Master Rebow houses us for a while, it is very good of him, and we must be thankful, for we have no chance of shelter elsewhere. Where is the money to pay for rebuilding the farmhouse? Do you think my cousin, Charles Pettican——'

'No, no,' exclaimed Mehalah, 'not a word about him.'

'He spoke up and promised most handsomely,' said Mrs. Sharland.

'He can do nothing, mother, I will not ask him.'

'A man that has a gilded balcony to his house wouldn't miss a few pounds for running up a wooden cottage.'

'I will not go to him again.'

'My dear child,' said Mrs. Sharland, 'I don't doubt he would take us in on a visit for a while, when we are forced to leave Red Hall.'

'You think we shall not be obliged to remain here?'

'I don't see how we can. It is very good of Master Rebow to house us for a bit, but I doubt we can't stick as fixtures. I only wish we could. Anyhow stay here a bit we must. We have nowhere else to go to, except to my cousin Charles.'

Mehalah knew what this alternative was worth. It was a relief to her to hear her mother speak of their stay in Red Hall as only temporary. She could not endure to contemplate the possibility of its being permanent. She formed a hope that she would be able to find work somewhere, and hire a small cottage; she was strong enough to do as much as a man.

During the day, everything that had been rescued from the fire on the Ray was brought to Red Hall, even the cow, which was driven round by land, a matter of eleven miles. The old clock arrived, and was set up in the large room below, an old cypress chest or 'sprucehutch' as Mrs. Sharland called it, covered with curious shallow carvings picked out with burnt umber, representing a hawking party, that contained her best clothes, and was a security against moth, was conveyed into her bedroom. It weighed half a ton. The old Lowestoft dishes she valued were placed in the rack in the hall along with the ware that belonged to Elijah. The toad-jug, a white jug with a painted and glazed figure of a toad squatting inside it in the neck, was also brought to Red Hall, so even were two biscuit-china poodles with shaven posteriors and with manes and tufted tails, that had stood on the chimneypiece at the Ray. The warming-pan of brass with a stamped portrait of H.M. George I. on it was likewise transported to Red Hall, and hung up in the little oak-panelled parlour behind the entrance hall generally occupied by Rebow.

By degrees most of the property of Mrs. Sharland was brought to the house, and the small oak parlour was furnished with it. Her arm-chair of leather with high back was placed in the hall by the great fireplace that bore the inscription, 'When I hold, I hold fast.' There were also some things belonging specially to Glory that had been saved, and these were put in the oak parlour. The satisfaction of Mrs. Sharland at finding herself surrounded by her goods was extreme. She did not leave her bed, but she insisted on her daughter bringing her up everything that could be carried, that she might turn it about, and inspect it minutely and rejoice over what was uninjured, and bewail what had suffered. One of the poodles had lost an ear and part of its tail. The old woman cried and grumbled and scolded about this injury, as though it were on a level with the destruction of the house. She would see the men Jim and Joe who had brought it from the Ray in the boat; she catechised them minutely, she insisted on knowing which had brought the dog out of the burning house, where it had been placed till removal, and fretted, till they promised to examine the spot beneath the thorn tree where the china brute had spent the night, and also the bottom of the boat, for the missing tail tuft and ear tip.

'You know,' she said, 'if I boil them in milk with the dog, I can get them to stick on.'

Among certain persons, the mind is destitute of perspective, and consequently magnifies trifles and disregards great evils. Mrs. Sharland had a mind thus constituted. She harped all day on the battered biscuit-china dog, because it was placed on the mantelpiece of her bedroom, and was under her eyes whenever she turned her head that way. The farmhouse was almost forgotten in her distress about the tail; her flaming home formed but a red background to the mutilated white poodle.

Mehalah saw nothing of Elijah Rebow all day. He was several times in the house; directly her foot sounded on the stairs, however, he disappeared. But she saw and felt that he was considering her; his care to recover all the little treasures and property on the Ray evinced this; and in the house he provided everything she could need; he placed meat on the table in the hall for her dinner, and had boiled potatoes over the fire. They were set ready for her, she had only to take them out. Her mother ate heartily, and was loud in expressions of satisfaction at the comfort that surrounded them.

'I hope, Mehalah, we shan't have to leave this in a hurry.'

Glory did not answer.

Towards evening Abraham Dowsing arrived with the cow. The girl heard the low, and ran down—she could not help it—and threw her arms round the neck of the beast. There was a back stair leading to the kitchen and yard, by which she could descend without entering the hall, and by this means she avoided Elijah, who, she was aware, was there.

Elijah, however, came to the top of the steps after she had descended, and looked into the yard where she was. Mehalah at once desisted from lavishing her tenderness on the animal.

Abraham stood sulkily by.

'I've had a long bout,' he said.

'I dare say you have, Abraham,' she answered.

'I want something to eat and drink, I haven't bit nought since morning. There's nothing but ashes on the Ray now, and they are red-hot. You don't expect me to fill my belly on them.'

Mehalah put her hand to her mouth and checked her tongue, as she was about to tell him to go indoors and get some supper. She had now nothing to give the old man. She lived on the bounty of Rebow.

'I cannot go without my wittles,' persisted Abraham. 'Now I want to know where my wittles are to come from. I paid fourpence at the Rose for some bread and cheese, and you owes me that.'

'There is the money,' said Mehalah producing the coin.

'Ah! that is wery well. But where am I to get my wittles now? Am I your servant or ain't I? If I am,—where's my wittles?'

'Come here, Abraham,' said Elijah, from the kitchen door. 'There is bread and cold potatoes and meat here. You shall have your supper, and you can sleep in the loft.'

'Look here, master,' pursued the sullen old man, 'I want to know further where I'm to look for my wages.'

'To me,' said Rebow. 'I take you on.'

'Where am I to work?'

'Here, or on the Ray, looking after the sheep.'

'The sheep are not yours, they are hers,'—pointing to Mehalah with his thumb.

'The Ray and Red Hall are one concern,' answered Rebow. 'You look to me as your master, and to her as your mistress;' then he entered and slammed the door.

Abraham shrugged his shoulders. He leered at Mehalah, who had put her hands to her forehead.

'When are you going to church? Eh, mistress? I thought it was coming to this. But I don't care so long as I gets my wittles and wage.'

Abraham went slowly into the cattlehouse with the cow. Mehalah remained rooted to the spot, pressing her brow.

This was more than she could endure. She ran up the steps, she would speak to Rebow while her heart was full. She dashed through the kitchen and into the hall. He was not there. As she ran on, she tripped and almost fell; and recovered herself with horror. She had almost precipitated herself through the trap into the vault beneath. The door was thrown back, her foot had caught this. Faugh! an odour rose from the cellar as from the lair of a wild beast. She looked in, there was the maniac racing up and down in the den fastened by his chain, jabbering and uttering incoherent cries. He was almost naked, covered with filthy rags, and his hair hung over his face so that she could distinguish no features by the dim light that strayed down from the trap, and from the horn lanthorn that Elijah had placed on the steps. Rebow had a pitchfork, and he was tossing fresh straw to his brother, and raking out the sodden and crushed litter of the wretched man.

Mehalah could not bear the sight; she withdrew. She needed a little while by herself to consider what was best to be done, to think of what had taken place. She opened the front door, and descended by the long flight of steps over the arch. Then she saw that a shutter covered the circular window that in summer lighted the den of the maniac. This was now closed to shut out the cold of winter. There was a door. As she looked, Rebow opened it from within, and appeared, raking out the litter and the gnawed bones, the relics of his brother's repasts. He did not notice her, or he pretended not to do so, and she shrank back. Her wish to speak with him had gone from her. She was not equal to an interview till she had been alone for a while, and had gathered up her strength. An interview with him must be a contest. It was clear to her that he was resolved that she should stay at Red Hall. She was equally determined not to do so. But how to get away and remove her mother was more than she could discover.

She left the house and the garden round it, and walked through the meadow till she reached the sea-wall. She ascended that, and went along it to the spot where the Red Hall marsh divided the Tollesbury Fleet from the Virley and Salcott Creeks.

Then she threw herself beneath the windmill, the mill that pumped the water out of the dykes, and worked day and night whenever there was wind to move the sails. The mill was now at work. The wings rushed round, and the pump painfully creaked, and after every stroke sent a dash of water into the sea over the wall.

Mehalah hoped that here, away from her mother and Rebow, and the sights and sounds of Red Hall, she might be able to think. But it was not so. Her numbed head was unable to form any plans. She looked out at sea, it was leaden grey, ruffled with angry waves, and the mews screamed and dipped in them. The sky overhead was overcast. The Bradwell shore looked grey and bleak and desolate; there was not a sail in the offing. The fancy took her to sit and wait, and if she saw a ship pass to take it as a good omen, a promise of escape from her present perplexity.

She sat and waited. The sea darkened to a more sullen tint. The mews were no longer visible. Mersea with its trees and church tower disappeared. Bradwell coast loomed black as pitch against the last lingering light of day. Not a sail appeared.

Far away, out to sea, as the darkness deepened, gleamed a light. It gleamed a moment, then grew dim and disappeared in the blackness. A minute, and then it waxed, but waned again, and once more all was night. So on, in wearisome iteration. What she saw was the revolving Swin light fifteen miles from land, a floating Pharos. She thought of Elijah's words, she thought of the horrible iterations in the barrow on the hill, the embracing and fighting, embracing and fighting, loving and hating, loving and hating, till one should conquer of the twin but rival powers.

CHAPTER XVII.

FACE TO FACE.

Mehalah returned slowly to the house, her spirits oppressed with gloom. It was night without and within, before her face, and in her soul. The wind sighed and sobbed among the rushes and over the fen, in a disconsolate, despairing manner, and the breath of God within—the living soul—sighed and sobbed like His breath that blew over the wintry marsh without. Not a star looked down from His heaven above, and none looked up from His heaven below in the little confines of a human heart. Mehalah could scarce see her way in the fen, among the dykes and drains; she was as unable to find a path in the level of her life.

She reached Red Hall at last, and mounted the front stairs to the principal door. She would see Elijah now. It were better to speak with him and come to some understanding at once. It was intolerable to allow the present position to remain unexplained, and the future undetermined. She hesitated at the door. It was not without a struggle that she could open it and go in and face the man whose hospitality she was receiving and yet whom she abhorred. She knew that she was greatly indebted to him. He had saved her mother's life, he had secured from destruction a large amount of their property; yet she could not thank him. She resented his intrusion into their affairs, when anyone else would have been unobjectionable. She disliked him all the more because she knew she was heavily in his debt; it galled her almost past endurance to feel that she and her mother were then subsisting on his bounty.

'Come in, Glory!' shouted Elijah from within, as she halted at the door.

She entered. He was seated by the fire with his pipe in his hand; he had heard her step on the stairs, and had paused in his smoking, and had waited in a listening, expectant attitude.

He signed her to take a chair—her mother's chair—on the other side of the hearth. She paid no attention to the sign, but stood in the middle of the room, and unconsciously covered her eyes with her hands. Her pulses quivered in her temples. Her heart grew cold, and a faintness came over her.

'The light is not too strong to dazzle you,' said Elijah, 'put your hands down, I want to see your face.'

She made an effort to retain them where they were, but could not; they fell.

'Sit down.'

She shook her head.

'Sit down.'

'I want to speak with you, Elijah, for a moment. I must speak with you.' Her heart palpitated, her breast heaved. She could only utter short sentences.

'Sit down there!' he beckoned with the stalk of his pipe.

She still refused to obey. Her power was slipping from her. The exhaustion after the excitement she had gone through had affected even her stout will. She resolved to oppose him in this trifling matter, but knew that her resolution was infirm. She clung desperately to what remained to her of power.