Front matter (continued 2)

Now his attention was arrested by a huge black object sailing down stream, reeling and spinning as it advanced. What was it? A house lifted bodily and carried along? Jeremiah watched its approach with uneasiness; if it struck his brick hut it would probably demolish it. As it neared, however, he was relieved to discover that it was a hayrick; and on it, skipping from side to side, much as the cat had skipped on the cradle, he observed a fluttering white figure.

Now he saw that a chance offered better than that of remaining on the fragile hut. The bricks would give way, but the hayrick must float. If he could possibly swing himself on to the hay, he would be in comparative safety, for it is of the nature of strong currents to disembarrass themselves of the cumbrous articles wherewith they have burdened themselves and throw them away along their margins, strewing with them the fields they have temporarily overflowed. It was, however, difficult in the uncertain light to judge distances, and calculate the speed at which the floating island came on, and the rick struck the hut before Jeremiah was prepared to leap. He, however, caught at the hay, and tried to scramble into the rick that overtopped him, when he was thrown down, struck by the white figure that leaped off the hay and tumbled on the roof, over him. In another instant, before Jeremiah could recover his feet, the rick had made a revolution and was dancing down the stream, leaving a smell of hay in his nose, and the late tenant of the stack sprawling at his side.

'You fool!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick angrily, 'what have you come here for?'

'I could hold on no longer. I was giddy. I thought there was safety here.'

'Less chance here than on the rick you have deserted. You have spoiled your own chance of life and mine.'

'I'm starved wi' caud,' moaned the half-naked man, 'I left my bed and got through t'door as t'water came siping in, and I scram'led up on to t'rick. I never thowt t'rick would ha' floated away.'

'Here, then,' said Jeremiah, removing his great coat, but with a bad grace, 'take this.'

'That's better,' said the man, without a word of thanks, as he slipped into the warm overcoat. 'Eh! now,' said he, 'if t'were nobbut for the way t'rick spun aboot, I could na' ha' stuck there. I wouldn't ha' gone out o' life, spinning like a skoprill' (tee-totum), 'not on no account; I'd a-gone staggering into t'other world, and ha' been took for a drunkard, and I'm a teetotaler, have been these fifteen years. Fifteen years sin' I took t'pledge, and never bust out but once.'

'You have water enough to satisfy you now,' said Jeremiah grimly.

'Dost'a want to argy?' asked the man. 'Becos if so, I'm the man for thee, Peter—one, three, twenty, what dost'a say to that, eh?'

Jeremiah was in no mood to argue, nor was the time or place suitable; but not so thought this fanatic, to whom every time and place was appropriate for a dispute about alcohol.

'I wonder whether the water is falling,' said the manufacturer, drawing himself away from his companion and looking over the edge into the current. He saw apples, hundreds of apples swimming past; a long wavering line of them coming down the stream, like migrating ants, or a Rechabite procession, turning over, bobbing, but all in sequence one behind the other. By daylight they would have resembled a chain of red and yellow beads, but now they showed as jet grains on silver. They had come, no doubt, from a farmer's store or out of a huckster's cart.

Jeremiah leaned over the eave of the hut to test the distance of the water; then caught an apple and threw it on the roof, whence it rolled over and rejoined the procession on the further side.

''Tis a pity now,' muttered the man in nightshirt and topcoat, ''tis a pity aboot my bullock, I were bown to sell'n a Friday.'

Suddenly Jeremiah recoiled from his place, for, dancing on the water was a human body, a woman, doubtless, for there was a kerchief about the head, and in the arms a child, also dead. The woman's eyes were open, and the moon glinted in the whites. They seemed to be looking and winking at Jeremiah. Then a murky wave washed over the face, like a hand passed over it, but it did not close the eyes, which again glimmered forth. Then, up rose the corpse, lifted by the water, but seeming to struggle to gain its feet. It was caught in that swirl, that dimple Jeremiah had noticed on the face of the flood above his place of refuge.

How cruel the current was! Not content with drowning human beings, it romped with them after the life was choked out of them, it played with them ghastly pranks. The undercurrent sucked the body back, and then ran it against the bricks, using it as a battering-ram. Then it caught the head of the poplar and whipped the corpse with it, as though whipping it on to its work which it was reluctant to perform. The manufacturer had gone out that night with his umbrella, and had carried it with him to the roof of the hut. Now with the crook he sought to disengage the dead woman and thrust her away from the wall into the main current; he could not endure to see the body impelled headlong against the bricks.

'What art a'doing?' asked the man, also looking over. Then, after a moment he uttered a cry, drew back, clasped his hands, then looked again, and again exclaimed: 'Sho's my own lass, and sho's a hugging my bairn!'

'What do you mean?'

'It's my wife, eh! 'tis a pity.'

Mr. Pennycomequick succeeded in disengaging the corpse and thrusting it into the stream; it was caught and whirled past. The man looked after it, and moaned.

'It all comes o' them fomentations,' he said. 'Sho'd bad pains aboot her somewhere or other, and owd Nan sed sho'd rub in a penn'orth o' whisky. I was agin it, I was agin it—my mind misgave me, and now sho's taken and I'm left, 'cos I had nowt to do wi' it.'

You may as well prepare to die,' said Jeremiah, 'whisky or no whisky. This hut will not stand much longer.'

'I shudn't mind so bad if I'd sold my bullock,' groaned the man. 'I had an offer, but, like a fool, I didn't close. Now I'm boun' to lose everything. 'Tis vexing.'

Just then a heavy object was driven against the wall, and shook the hut to its foundations, shook it so that one of the stone slates was dislodged and fell into the water. Jeremiah leaned over the eaves and looked again. He could make out that some piece of furniture, what he could not distinguish, was thrust against the wall of the hut. He saw two legs of turned mahogany, with brass castors at the ends that glistened in the moonlight. They were about four feet and a half apart, and supported what might be a table or secretaire. The rushing water drove these legs against the wall, and the castors ran and felt about the bricks as groping for a weak joint where they might knock a hole through. Then, all at once, the legs drew or fell back, and as they did so the upper portion of the piece of furniture opened and disclosed white and black teeth, in fact, revealed a keyboard. This was but for a moment, then the instrument was heaved up by a wave, the lid closed over the keys, and the two brass-armed legs were again impelled against the fragile wall.

It is hardly to be wondered at that the ancients attributed living souls to streams and torrents, or peopled their waves with mischievous nixes, for they act at times in a manner that seems fraught with intelligence. It was so now. Here was this hut, an obstruction to the flood, feeble in itself, yet capable of resisting its first impetus, and likely to defy it altogether. The water alone could not dissolve it, so it had called other means and engines of destruction to its aid. At first, in a careless, thoughtless fashion, it had thrown a dead pig against it, then the corpse of a woman weighted with her dead babe; and now, having cast these away as unprofitable tools, it brought up, at great labour—a cottage piano. A piano is perhaps the heaviest and most cumbrous piece of furniture that the flood could have selected, and, on the whole, the best adapted to serve its purpose, as the deceased pig was the least. What force it must have exerted to bring up this instrument, what judgment it must have employed in choosing it! And what malignity there was in the flood in its persistent efforts to break down the frail substructure on which stood the two men! The iron framework of the instrument in the wooden back was under water, the base with the pedals rested against the foot of the hut. The water driving at the piano thus lodged, partially heaved it, as though a shoulder had been submitted to the back of the instrument, and thus the feet were driven with sharp, impatient strokes against the bricks. Moreover, every time that the piano fell back, the lid over the keys also fell back, and the white line of keys laughed out in the moonlight. But whenever the wave heaved up the piano, then the lid fell over them. It was horrible to watch the piano labouring as a willing slave to batter down the wall, as it did so opening and shutting its mouth, as though alternately gasping for breath and then returning to its task with grim resolution.

The moon was now disentangled from cloud; it shone with sharp brilliancy out of a wide tract of cold gray sky, and the light was reflected by the teeth of the keyboard every time they were disclosed. Hark! The clock of Mergatroyd church struck three. The dawn would not break for two or three hours.

'I say, art a minister?' suddenly asked the man in a nightshirt and great-coat.

'No; I am not,' answered the manufacturer impatiently. 'Never mind what I am. Help me to get rid of this confounded cottage-piano.'

'There, there!' exclaimed the man; 'now thou'rt swearing when thou ought to be praying. Why dost'a wear a white tie and black claes if thou ba'nt a minister? Thou might as weel wear a blue ribbon and be a drunkard.'

Mr. Pennycomequick did not answer the fellow. The man was crouched in squatting posture on the roof, holding up one foot after another from the cold slates that numbed them. His nightshirt hung as a white fringe below his great-coat. To the eye of an entomologist, he might have been taken for a gigantic specimen of the Camberwell Beauty.

'If thou'd 'a been a minister, I'd 'a sed nowt. As thou'rt not, I knaw by thy white necktie thou must 'a been awt to a dancing or a dining soiree. And it were all along of them soirees that the first Flood came. We knaws it fra' Scriptur', t'folkes were eatin' and drinkin'. If they'd been drinkin' water, it hed never 'a come. What was t'Flood sent for but to wash out alcohol? and it's same naaw.'

Mr. Pennycomequick paid no heed to the man; he was anxiously watching the effect produced by the feet of the piano on the walls.

'It was o' cause o' these things the world was destroyed in the time o' Noah, all but eight persons as wore the blue ribbon.'

Again the forelegs of the piano crashed against the bricks, and now dislodged them, so that the water tore through the opening made.

'There's Scriptur' for it,' pursued the fellow. 'Oh, I'm right! but my toes are mortal could. Don't we read that Noah and his family was saved by water? Peter, one, two, three, twenty—answer me that. That's a poser for thee—saved because they was teetotalers.'

At that moment part of the wall gave way, and some of the roof fell in.

'Our only chance is to reach the poplar-stump, said Jeremiah. 'Come along with me.'

'Nay, not I,' answered the man. 'The ships o' Tarshish was saved because Jonah was cast overboard. Go, then, and I'll stay here and be safe. I'll no be any mair i' t' same box wi' an alcohol-drinker.'

He drew up his feet under him, and put his fingers into his mouth to warm them.

Mr. Pennycomequick did not delay to use persuasion. If the man was fool enough to stay, he must stay. He slipped off the top of the hut, and planted one foot on the piano, then the other; his only chance was to reach the broken poplar, scramble up it, and lodge in its branches till morning. To do this he must reach it by the broken top that at present was caught between the legs of the piano, so that the water brushed up over the twigs. Jeremiah sprang among the boughs, and tried to scramble along it. Probably his additional weight was all that was required to snap the remaining fibres that held the portions together, for hardly was Mr. Pennycomequick on it than the strands yielded, and down past the crumbling hut rushed the tree-top, laden with its living burden, entangled, laced about with the whip-like branches, and as he passed he saw the frail structure dissolve like a lump of sugar in boiling water and disappear.

CHAPTER VII.

TAKING POSSESSION.

The valley of the Keld for many miles above and below Mergatroyd presented a piteous spectacle when day dawned. The water had abated, but was not drained away. The fields were still submerged. Factories stood as stranded hulls amidst shallow lagoons, and were inaccessible, their fires extinguished, their mechanism arrested, their stores spoiled. The houses in the 'folds' were deserted, or were being cleared of their inhabitants.[#] From the windows of some of these houses men and women were leaning and shouting for help. They had been caught by the water, which invaded the lower story, locally called the 'ha'ase,' when asleep in the bedrooms overhead, and now, hungry and cold and imprisoned, they clamoured for release. Boats were scarce. Such as had been possessed by manufacturers and others had been kept by the river, and these had been broken from their moorings and carried away. Rafts were extemporized out of doors and planks; and as the water was shallow and still in the folds, they served better than keels. One old woman had got into a 'peggy' tub and launched herself in it, to get stranded in the midst of a wide expanse of water, and from her vessel she screamed to be helped, and dared not venture to move lest she should upset her tub and be shot out.

[#] For the enlightenment of the uninitiated it will be as well to describe a fold. About some mills are yards, and the enclosing walls of these yards form the backs of cottages facing inwards on the mill, which are occupied by operatives working in the factory.

Not many lives, apparently, had been lost in the parish of Mergatroyd. Mr. Pennycomequick was missing, and the man at the locks with his wife had not been seen, and their cottage was still inaccessible. But great mischief had been wrought by the water. Not only had the stores in the mills been damaged, and the machinery injured by water and grit getting into it, and boilers exploded by the shock, but also because the swirl of the torrent had disturbed the subsoil of gravel and undermined the walls. Fissures formed with explosions like the report of guns; one chimney that had leaned before was now so inclined and overbalanced that its fall was inevitable, and was hourly expected.

All the gas jets fed from the main that descended into the valley were extinguished, and it was apparent that the rush of water had ploughed up the ground to the depths of the main, and had ruptured it. Walls that had run across the direction of the stream had been thrown over; the communication between the two sides of the valley was interrupted. It was uncertain whether the bridge was still in existence. The railway had been overflowed, and the traffic stopped. The canal banks and locks had suffered so severely that it would be useless for the barges for many months.

Tidings arrived during the day from the upper portion of the valley, and it appeared that the destruction of life and property had been greatest where the wave burst out from between the confining hills, before it had space in which to spread, and in spreading to distribute its force. Heartrending accounts came in, some true, some exaggerated, some false, but all believed.

That night of terror and ruin did not see the roll of death made up. Such catastrophes have far-reaching effects. The wet, the exposure, the shock, were sure to produce after-sickness and succeeding mortality.

With ready hospitality, the parsonage, the inns, the houses of the well-to-do, were thrown open to receive those temporarily homeless, and food, warmth and clothing were forced upon them. But such as were received felt that they could not protract their stay and burden unduly their hosts, and insisted on returning prematurely to their sodden houses, there to contract rheumatic fevers and inflammations.

Twenty years ago, the author of this story wrote an account of such a disaster in a novel, the first on which he essayed his pen. Time has rolled away, and like the flood, has buried much; and amongst the things it has swept off and sunk in oblivion is that book. Probably not a dozen copies of it exist. He may now be permitted to repeat what was there written, when the impression produced by the cataclysm was fresh and vivid; and let not the rare possessor of the lost novel charge him with plagiarism if he repeats something of his former description.

Near the spot where the Keld left the hills had stood a public-house called the Horse and Jockey. The full violence of the descending wave fell on it and effaced it utterly. The innkeeper's body was never found; the child's cradle, with the child in it, had gone down the stream, kept from overbalancing by the kitchen cat, and so escaped destruction. The beer casks floated ashore some miles down, were never claimed, and were tapped and drunk dry by some roughs. The sign of Horse and Jockey came to land twenty miles away, unhurt; it was the most worthless article the house had possessed. About a mile and a half above Mergatroyd was a row of new cottages, lately erected on money borrowed from a building society. They were of staring red brick, with sandstone heads to doors and windows; the flood carried away three out of the four.

In the first lived a respectable wool-picker with wife and children, all Wesleyans. He and his wife and child were swept from life in a moment, and supplied the preacher at their chapel with a topic for his next Sunday's discourse.

In the second lived a widow, who sold 'spice,' that is to say, sweets, together with sundry articles in the grocery line; a mighty woman, rotund and red, with a laugh and a joke for everyone; a useful woman to mothers in their troubles, and to children with the toothache, whooping cough, and other maladies. Black bottle and peppermint drops, Mother Bunch's syrup, soothing powders, porous plasters, embrocations, and heal-alls various, and of various degrees of mischievousness, were her specifics, and when the doses were nasty her lemon-drops and sugar-candy were freely given to cleanse the mouth of the taste of medicine. Now, she was gone down the river, her lollipops dissolved, her medicines dispersed. Away she had gone, floundering and spluttering, till her lungs were filled with the fluid she involuntarily imbibed, and then she sank and was caught among some sunken tree-snags, and her body was afterwards recovered from among them.

In the third cottage resided a musical shoemaker, a man with one love, and that the love of his bass viol. A wiry, solemn man, greatly in request at all concerts, able to conduct a band, or take almost any instrument himself, but loving best—a viol.

Now, he was gone, and grit had been washed into the sacred case of the cherished instrument, ruined along with its master.

In the last cottage of the row lived a drunken, good-for-nothing fellow, who did odd jobs of work; a fellow who had driven his own wife with her bairns from the house, and lived with another woman, as intemperate as himself, and with a mouth as foul as his own. This house and those within were spared.

'Well, now,' said an elder to the preacher, after the sermon at Providence Chapel next Sunday, 'ah, did think thou wer't boun' to justify the ways o' Providence.'

'So I would if I could,' answered the preacher, 'but they b'aint justifiable.'

Where the folds and fields were not too deep in water, lads waded, collecting various articles that had drifted no one knew whence. Some oranges lodged in a corner were greedily secured and sucked. One man ran about displaying a laced lady's boot at the end of a walking-stick, which boot had been carried into his kitchen, and was useless unless he could discover the fellow. There was much merriment in spite of disaster. Yorkshire folk must laugh whatever happens, and jokes were bandied to and fro between those who rowed and waded and those who were prisoners in their upper chambers.

The pariahs of society were alive to their opportunities, and were descending the stream, claiming everything of value that was found as being their own lost property. In many cases their claims were allowed; in others the finder of some article, rather than surrender it to a man whom he suspected, would cast it back into the water and bid him go further to recover it.

A higher type of pariah started subscriptions for the sufferers, and took many a toll on the sums accumulated for the purpose of relieving the distress.

What had become of Mr. Pennycomequick? That was the question in every mouth in Mergatroyd. Salome knew that he had left the house just after midnight to take a walk by the canal, and the watchman had seen him a little later on the towpath. Since then he had not been seen at all. It was probable that, hearing the alarm signals, he might have taken refuge somewhere; but where? That depended on where he was when the alarm was given. If he had ascended the canal he might have made his way into Mitchell's mill; that was a hope soon dispelled, for news came that he had not been seen there. If he had descended the canal it was inconceivable that he could have escaped, as there was no place of refuge to which he could have flown.

Mrs. Sidebottom had not a shadow of doubt that Jeremiah was dead. Not dead! Fiddlesticks! Of course he was dead. She acted on this conviction. She moved into her half-brother's house. It would not do, she argued, to leave it unprotected to be pillaged by those Cusworths. A death demoralized a house. It was like the fall of a general, all order, respect for property, sense of duty, ceased. Lambert should remain at home, where he had his comforts, his own room, and his clothes. There was no necessity for his moving.

'Besides,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I could never trust a man, especially with women. Talk of men as lords of creation! Why, they are wheedled and humbugged by women with the greatest facility. If Lambert were here, the Cusworths, the maids, would sack the house under his nose, and he perceive nothing. I know how it was when I was newly married. Then, if anything went wrong among my domestics I sent Sidebottom down the kitchen-stairs to them. He returned crestfallen and penitent, convinced that he had wrongfully accused them, and that he was himself, in some obscure manner, to blame.'

Mrs. Sidebottom gave orders that her brother's room should be made ready for her.

'Uncle Jeremiah's room, mother!' exclaimed Lambert, in astonishment.

'Of course,' answered she. 'I am not going to leave that unwatched; why, that is the focus and centre of everything. What do I care if they steal the sugar, and pull some of the French plums out of the bag in the store-closet? I must sit at my post, keep my hand on the strong box and the bureau.'

'But suppose Uncle Jeremiah were to return?'

'He won't return. He cannot. He is drowned.'

'But the body has not been recovered.'

'Nor will it be; it has been washed down into the ocean.'

'Rather you than I sleep in his room,' said Lambert.

After a slight hesitation Mrs. Sidebottom said, in a low, confiding tone, 'I have found his keys. He left them in his dress-coat pocket. Now you see the necessity there is for me to be on the spot. I must have a search for the will.' Then she drew a long breath, and said, 'Now, Lamb, there is some chance of my heart's desire being accomplished. You will be able to drop one of your n's.'

'Drop what, mother?'

'Drop one of the n's in the spelling of your name. I have never liked the double n in Pennycomequick. It will seem more distinguished to spell the name with one n.'

The captain yawned and walked to the door.

'That is all one to me. I don't suppose that one n will bring me more money than two. By the way, have you written to Philip?'

'Philip!' echoed Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Of course not. This is no concern of his. If he grumbles, we can say that we hoped against hope, and did not like to summon him till we were sure poor Jeremiah was no more. No, Lamb, we do not want Philip here, and if he comes he will find nothing to his advantage. Jeremiah very properly would not forgive his father, and he set us all an example, for in this nineteenth century we are all too disposed to leniency. I shall certainly not write to Philip.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Salome, who at this juncture appeared at the door. 'Were you mentioning Mr. Philip Pennycomequick?'

'Yes, I was,' answered Mrs. Sidebottom shortly.

Salome stood in the doorway, pale, with dark hollows about her eyes, and looking worn and harassed. She had been up and about all the night and following day.

'Were you speaking about sending for Mr. Philip Pennycomequick?' she asked.

'We were mentioning him; hardly yet considering about sending for him,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Because,' said Salome, 'I have telegraphed for him. I thought he ought to be here.'

CHAPTER VIII.

IN ONE COMPARTMENT.

In a second-class carriage on the Midland line sat a gentleman and a lady opposite each other. He was a tall man, and was dressed in a dark suit with a black tie. His face had that set controlled look which denotes self-restraint and reserve. The lips were thin and closed, and the cast of the features was stern. The eyes, large and hazel, were the only apparently expressive features he possessed. There is nothing that so radically distinguishes those who belong to the upper and cultured classes from such as move in the lower walks of life as this restraint of the facial muscles. It is not the roughness of the hand that marks off the manual worker from the man who walks in the primrose path of ease, but the cast of face, and that is due in the latter to the constant inexorable enforcement of self-control. In the complexity of social life it is not tolerable that the face should be the index of the mind. Social intercourse demands disguise, forbids frankness, which it resents as brusquerie, and the child from infancy is taught to acquire a mastery over expression. As the delicate hand-artificer has to obtain complete control over every nerve of his hand, so as to make no slurs or shakes, so also has the man admitted into the social guild to hold every muscle of his face in rigid discipline. This is specially the case with the priest and the lawyer and the doctor. Conceive what a hitch would ensue in conversation should the lady of the house allow a visitor to discern in the countenance that she was unwelcome, or for a man of taste to allow his contempt to transpire when shown by an amateur his artistic failures, or for the host to wince when an incautious guest has exposed the family skeleton! It is said that the late Lady Beaconsfield endured her finger to be jammed in the carriage-door without wince or cry, and continued listening or pretending to listen to her husband's conversation whilst driving to the House. All members of the cultured classes are similarly trained to smile and not change colour, to listen, perhaps to sing, when pinched and crushed and trodden on and in torture. Would a priest be endured in his parish if he did not receive every insult with a smile, or a barrister gain his cause if he suffered his face to proclaim his disbelief in its justice, or a doctor keep his patients if his countenance revealed what he thought of their complaints?

If we turn over the Holbein collection of portraits of the Court of Henry VIII. we see among princes and nobles the same faces that we find now in farmhouses and factories. The Wars of the Roses had dissolved all restraints, and men of the first Tudor reigns were the undisciplined children of an age of domestic anarchy. But it was otherwise later. The portraits of Van Dyck and Lely show us gentlemen and ladies of perfect dignity and self-restraint.

What is also remarkable is that each age in the past seems to have had its typal cast of countenance and form of expression. The cavaliers of Charles I. have their special characteristics that distinguish them as much from the courtiers of Elizabeth as from those of Charles II. With Queen Anne another phase of portraiture set in, because the faces were different. and again in the Hanoverian period how unlike were the gentlemen of the Regency from those of the first Georges! Difference in dress does not explain this difference of face. The men and women in each epoch had their distinct mode of thought, fashion in morals and manners, and the face accommodated itself to these.

And at the present day that which cleaves class from class is the mode of thought in each, the rule of association that governs intercourse in their several planes; and these affect the character of face in each, so that the classes are distinguished by their countenances as they were by ages in the past.

When collier Jack calls bargee Jim a blackguard, Jim replies with a curse on the collier's eyes, which he damns to perdition. But if collier Jack says the same thing to gentleman Percy, the latter raises his hat, bows, and passes on.

Education, if complete, does not merely sharpen the intellect and refine the manners, but it gives such a complete polish that affronts do not dint or adhere; they glide off instead, leaving no perceptible trace of impact. To the outward appearance, Christianity and culture produce an identical result, but only in outward appearance, for the former teaches the control of the emotions, whereas the latter merely forbids their expression.

The face of the gentleman who sat opposite this lady in the carriage was an intelligent, even clever face, but was somewhat hard. He looked at his companion once when he entered the carriage, hesitating whether to enter, and then glanced round to see whether there was another passenger in the compartment before he took a seat. There was at the time an elderly gentleman in the carriage, and this decided him to set his valise and rugs on the seat, and finally to take his place in the corner. If he had not seen that elderly man, with the repugnance single gentlemen so generally entertain against being shut in with a lady unattended, especially if young and pretty, he would have gone elsewhere. Where the carcase is there will the vultures gather. That is inevitable; but no sane dromedary will voluntarily cast himself into a cage with vultures.

The old gentleman left after a couple of stages, and then, for the rest of the journey, these two were enclosed together. As the man left, Philip looked out after him, with intent to descend, remove his baggage, and enter the next compartment, before or behind; but saw that one was full of sailor boys romping, and the other with a family that numbered among it a wailing baby. He therefore drew back, with discontent at heart, and all his quills ready to bristle at the smallest attempt of the lady to draw him into conversation.

The train was hardly in movement before that attempt was made.

'You are quite welcome to use my footwarmer,' she said.

'Thank you, my feet are not cold,' was the ungracious reply.

'I have had it changed twice since I left town,' she pursued, 'so that it is quite hot. The porters have been remarkably civil, and the guard looks in occasionally to see that I am comfortable.'

'In expectation of a tip,' thought the gentleman, but he said nothing.

'The French are believed to be the politest people in the world,' continued the lady, not yet discouraged, 'but I must say that the English railway porter is far in advance of the French one. On a foreign line you are treated as a vagabond, on the English as a guest.'

Still he said nothing. The lady cast an almost appealing glance at him. She had travelled a long way for a great many hours, and was weary of her own company. She longed for a little conversation.

'I cannot read in the train,' she said plaintively, 'it makes me giddy, and—I started yesterday from home.'

'In-deed,' said he in dislocated syllables. He quite understood that a hint had been conveyed to him, but he was an armadillo against hints.

The pretty young lady had not opened the conversation, if that can be called conversation which is one-sided, without having observed the young man's face, and satisfied herself that there was no more impropriety in her talking to one of so staid an air than if he had been a clergyman.

'What a bear this man is!' she thought.

He on his side said to himself, 'A forward missie! I wish I were in a smoking-carriage, though I detest the smell of tobacco.'

Pretty—uncommonly pretty the little lady was, with perfectly made clothes. The fit of the gown and the style of the bonnet proclaimed French make. She had lovely golden-red hair, large brown eyes, and a face of transparent clearness, with two somewhat hectic fire-spots in her cheeks. Her charming little mouth was now quivering with pitiful vexation.

A quarter of an hour elapsed without another word being spoken, and the gentleman was satisfied that his companion had accepted the rebuff he had administered, when she broke forth again with a remark.

'Oh, sir! excuse my seeming rudeness, but—you have been reading the newspaper, and I am on pins and needles to hear the news from France. It is true that I have just crossed the Channel from that dear and suffering—but heroic country; I am, however, very ignorant of the news. Unfortunately our journals are not implicitly to be relied on. The French are such a patriotic people that they cannot bring themselves to write and print a word that tells of humiliation and loss to their country. It is very natural, very noble—but inconvenient. That superb Faidherbe—I do trust he has succeeded in crushing the enemy.'

'He has been utterly routed.'

'Oh dear! Oh dear!' the little lady was plunged into real distress. 'This news was kept from me. That was why I was hurried away. I wanted to bring my nieces with me, the Demoiselles Labarte, but they clung to their mother and would not leave her. It was magnificent.' Then, after a sigh, 'Now, surely England will intervene.'

The gentleman shook his head.

'It is cruel. Surely one sister should fly to the assistance of the other.'

'The English nation is sister to the German.'

'Oh, how can you say so? William the Conqueror came from France.'

'From Normandy, which was not at the time and for long after considered a part of France.'

Then the gentleman, feeling he had been inveigled into saying more than he intended, looked out of the window.

Presently he heard a sob. The girl was crying. He took no notice of her trouble. He had made up his mind that she was a coquette, and he was steeled against her various tricks to attract attention and enlist sympathy. He would neither smile when she laughed, nor drop his mouth when she wept. His lips closed somewhat tighter, and his brows contracted slightly. He had noticed throughout the journey the petty attempts made by this girl to draw notice to herself—the shifting of her shawls, the opening and shutting of her valise, the plaintive sighs, the tapping of the impatient feet on the footwarmer. Though he had studiously kept his eyes turned from her, nothing she had done had escaped him, and all went to confirm the prejudice with which he was inclined to regard her from the moment of his entering the carriage. He rose from his place and moved to the further end of the compartment.

'I beg your pardon,' said the young lady, 'I trust I have not disturbed you. You must excuse me, I am unhappy.'

'Quite so, and I would not for the world trespass on your grief.'

'I have a husband fighting under the Tricouleur, and I am very anxious about him.'

The gentleman made a slight acknowledgment with his head, which said unmistakably that he invited no further confidences.

This she accepted, and turned her face to look out of the opposite window.

At that moment the brake was put on, and sent a thrill through the carriage. Presently the train stopped. The face of the guard appeared at the window, and the little lady at once lowered the glass.

'How are you getting on, miss?'

'Very well, I thank you; but you must not call me miss; I am a married woman. I have left my husband in France fighting like a lion, and I am sent away because the Prussians are robbing and burning and murdering wherever they go. I know a lady near Nogent from whose chateau they carried off an ormulu clock.' How unnecessary it was for her to enter into these details to the guard, thought the gentleman. He could not understand how a poor little heart full of trouble would long to pour itself out; how that certain natures can no more exist without sympathy than can plants without water.

'Don't you think, guard, that the English Government ought to interfere?'

'Well, ma'am, that depends on how it would affect traffic—on the Midland. Where are you going to, if I may ask?'

'Mergatroyd.'

'There has been a flood, and the embankment of the railway has been washed away. For a day there has not been any passing over the lines, and now we are ordered to go along uncommon leisurely.'

'But oh! guard, there is, I trust, no danger.'

'No, ma'am, none in the least; I'll take care that you come by no hurt. The worst that can happen is that we shall be delayed, and perhaps not be able to proceed the whole way in the same train. But rely on me, ma'am, I'll see to you.'

'Oh, guard, would you—would you mind? I have here a little bottle of nice Saint Julien, and I have not been able to touch it myself. Would you mind taking it? Also, here—here, under the bottle.'

She slipped some money into his hand.

The guard's red face beamed broad and benignant. He slipped the money into his waistcoat pocket, the bottle he stowed away elsewhere; then thrusting his head inside he said confidentially, 'Never fear. I'll make it all right for you, ma'am.'

When the lady, who was none other than Janet, the twin sister of Salome, mentioned Mergatroyd as her destination, the eyebrows of her fellow-passenger were slightly lifted. He was looking out of the opposite window to that at which she conversed with the guard. Now he knew that he would not be rid of his companion for the rest of the journey, for he also was on his way to Mergatroyd. There was but a single subject of comfort to him, that the distance to Mergatroyd was no longer great, and the time taken over it, in spite of the hint of the guard, which he discounted, could not be great either.

The short November day had closed in; and the remainder of the journey would be taken in the dark. The lamps had not yet been lighted in the carriage. To the west he could see through the window the brown light of the set day, the last rays of a wintry sun arrested by factory smoke. The gentleman was uneasy. If the dromedary will not voluntarily enter the cage of the vulture, he will not remain in it in darkness with her without tremors.

'When do you think, sir, that I shall reach Mergatroyd?' asked the young lady.

'That is a question impossible for me to answer,' replied the gentleman; 'as you heard from your friend,'—he emphasized this word and threw sarcasm into his expression—'the guard, there are conditions, about which I know nothing, which will interfere with the punctuality of the train.'

Then he fumbled in his pocket, drew forth an orange-coloured envelope, from this took a scrap of pink paper, and by the expiring evening light read the telegraphic message in large pencil-marks.

'Your uncle lost. Come at once. Salome.'

Salome!—who was Salome?

He replaced the paper in the envelope, which was addressed Philip Pennycomequick, care of Messrs. Pinch and Squeeze, Solicitors, Nottingham.

The message was a brief one—too brief to be intelligible.

Lost—how was Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick lost?

When the train drew up at a small station, the young man returned to the down side, by the lady, let down the glass and called the guard.

'Here! what did you say about the flood? I have seen it mentioned in the paper, but I did not understand that it had been at Mergatroyd.'

'It has been in the Keld Valley.'

'And Mergatroyd is in that valley?'

'Where else would you have it, sir?'

'But—according to my paper the great damage was done at Holme Bridge.'

'Well, so it was; and Holme Bridge is above Mergatroyd.'

Philip Pennycomequick drew up the glass again. Now he understood. He had never been to Mergatroyd in his life, and knew nothing about its situation. He had skimmed the account of the flood in his paper, but had given most of his attention to the narrative of the war in France. It had not occurred to him to connect the 'loss' of his uncle with the inundation. He had supposed the word 'loss' was an euphemism for 'going off his head.' Elderly gentlemen do not get lost in England, least of all in one of its most densely populated districts, as if they were in the backwoods or prairies of America.

But who sent him the telegram? He had no relative of the name of Salome. His aunt, Mrs. Sidebottom, who was now resident, as he knew, at Mergatroyd, was named Louisa, and she was the person who, he supposed, would have wired to him if anything serious had occurred requiring his presence.

His companion was going to Mergatroyd, and probably knew people there. If he asked her whether she was aware of a person of the peculiar Christian name of Salome at that place, it was possible she might inform him. But he was too reserved and proud to ask. He would not afford this flighty piece of goods an excuse for opening conversation with him. In half an hour he would be at his destination, and would then have his perplexity cleared.

The train proceeded leisurely. Philip's feet were now very cold, and he would have been grateful for the warmer, but could not now ask for permission to use what he had formerly rejected.

As the train proceeded the engine whistled.

There were men working on the line; at intervals coal fires were blazing and smoking in braziers. The train further slackened speed. Philip Pennycomequick could see that there was much water covering the country. The train had now entered the Valley of the Keld, and was ascending it.

What a nuisance it would be were he stopped and obliged to tarry for some hours till the road was repaired, tarry in cold and darkness, without a lamp in his carriage, caged in with that pretty, coquettish, dangerous minx, and with no third party present to serve as his protector.

The train came to a standstill. The young lady was uneasy. She lowered the glass and leaned out; and looked along the line at the flaming fires, the half-illumined navvies, the steam trailing away and mingling with the smoke, the fog that gathered over the inundated fields. A raw wind blew in at the open window.

Then up came the guard, sharply turned the handle and threw open the door. 'Everyone get out. The train can go no further.'

All the passengers were obliged to descend, dragging with them their rugs and bags, their cloaks, umbrellas, novels, buns and oranges—all the piles of impedimenta with which travellers encumber themselves on a journey, trusting to the prompt assistance of mercenary porters.

But on this night, away from any station, there were no porters. The descent from the carriage was difficult and dangerous. It was like clambering down a ladder of which some of the rungs were broken. It was rendered doubly difficult by the darkness in which it had to be effected, and the difficulty was quadrupled by the passengers having to scramble down burdened with their effects. It was not accordingly performed in silence, but with screams from women who lost their footing, and curses and abuses launched against the Midland from the men.

Mr. Philip was obliged by common humanity to assist the young lady out of the carriage, and to collect and help to carry her manifold goods; for the civil guard was too deeply engaged to attend to her. He had received his fee, and was, therefore, naturally lavishing his attention on others, in an expectant mood.

Mr. Philip Pennycomequick somewhat ungraciously advised the companion forced on his protection to follow him. He engaged to see her across the dangerous piece of road and return for those of her wraps and parcels which he and she were together unable to transport to the train awaiting them beyond the faulty portion of the line.

The walk was most uncomfortable. It was properly not a walk but a continuous stumble. To step in the dark from sleeper to sleeper was not easy, and the flicker of the coal fires dazzled and confused rather than assisted the sight. The wind, moreover, carried the dense smoke in volumes across the line, suddenly enveloping and half stifling, but wholly blinding for the moment, the unhappy, bewildered flounderers who passed through it. In front glared the two red lights of an engine that waited with carriages to receive the dislodged passengers.

'You must take my arm,' said Mr. Philip to his companion. 'This is really dreadful. One old lady has, I believe, dislocated her ankle. I hope she will make a claim on the company.'

'Oh, dear! And Salome!—what will she say?'

'Salome?'

'Yes—my sister, my twin-sister.'

When Philip Pennycomequick did finally reach his destination, it was with a mind that prejudged Salome, and was prejudiced against her.

CHAPTER IX.

ARRIVAL.

'What—no cabs? No cabs?' asked Philip Pennycomequick, on reaching the Mergatroyd Station. 'What a place this must be to call itself a town and have no convenience for those who arrive at it, to transport them to their destinations. Can one hire a wheelbarrow?' Philip was, as may be seen, testy. The train had not deposited him at the station till past seven, instead of four-eighteen, when due. He had been thrown into involuntary association with a young lady, whom he had set down to belong to a category of females that are to be kept at a distance—that is, those who, as he contemptuously described them, run after a hearth-brush because it wears whiskers. He misjudged Janet Baynes, as men of a suspicious temper are liable to misjudge simple and frank natures. There are men who, the more forward a woman is, so much the more do they recoil into their shells, to glower out of them at those who approach them, like a mastiff from its kennel, with a growl and a display of teeth.

Who this woman was with whom he had been thrown, Philip only knew from what she had told him and the guard. He was aware that she was the sister of his correspondent Salome, but he was ignorant as before who Salome was, less only the fact that she must be young, because the twin-sister of his fellow-passenger. If like her—and twins are usually alike—she must be pretty, and as mental characteristics follow the features, like her coquettish, and ready to make love—as Philip put it—to the hearth-brush because of its whiskers.

At the station he had reckoned on finding a cab and driving to his destination, whilst his companion went off in another. But to his vexation he found that there were no cabs. He must engage a porter to carry his traps on a truck. He resolved to go first of all to his uncle's house and inquire whether he was lost in the flood and if he had been heard of since the telegram was despatched. Then he would put up for the night at the inn, and his future movements would be regulated by the information he received.

'By the way,' said he to the porter, 'I suppose you have a decent hotel in the place, though it is deficient in cabs.'

'There are three inns,' answered the man, 'but all full as an excursion train on Good Friday. The poor folks that ha' been turned o't haase by t' water ha' been ta'en into 'em. Where art 'a going, sir?'

'To the house of Mr. Pennycomequick,' answered Philip.

'Right you are,' said the porter, 'Mrs. Baynes is also boun' to t'same, and I can take t'whole bag-o'-tricks on one barrow.'

Philip turned to Janet Baynes with an impatient gesture, which with all his self-control he was unable to repress, and said:

'You are going to Mr. Pennycomequick's, I understand, madam.'

There was no avoiding it. The tiresome association could not be dissolved at once, it threatened to continue.

'Yes,' answered Janet, 'I spent all my life there till I married, and my mother and sister are there now.'

'Not relations of Mr. Pennycomequick?'

'Oh dear no. He has been like a father to us, because our own father was killed by an accident in his service. That was a long time ago, I cannot remember the circumstance. Ever since then we have lived in the house. We always call Mr. Pennycomequick our uncle, but he is no real relative.'

Philip strode forward, ahead of the porter; from the station the road ascended at a steep gradient, and the man came on slowly with the united luggage. Janet quickened her pace, and came up beside Philip.

It was like being beset by a fly in summer.

'Are you going to Mr. Pennycomequick's?' asked Janet, panting. She was a little out of breath with walking to keep up with her companion.

'Yes.'

'I am not strong. My breath goes if I hurry, especially in going up-hill.'

'Then, madam, let me entreat you to spare your lungs and relax your pace.'

'But then—we shall be separated, and we are going to the same house. Would you mind going just a wee bit slower?'

Philip complied without a word.

He questioned for a moment whether he should inform his fellow-passenger of the news that the uncle was lost. But he reflected that he knew nothing for certain. The message he had received could hardly have been couched in vaguer terms. It was quite possible that his explanation of it was false; it was also not at all improbable that the alarm given was premature. If Salome were like the young scatter-brain walking at his side, she would be precisely the person to cry 'Wolf!' at the first alarm. He might have inquired of the porter whether Mr. Pennycomequick had met with an accident, or whether anything had occurred at his house; but he preferred to wait, partly because he was too proud to inquire of a porter, and partly because he was given no opportunity to questioning him out of hearing of his companion.

'Are you going to stay at uncle's?' asked Janet.

'I really am unable to answer that question.'

'But, as you have heard, all the inns are full. Have you any friends in Mergatroyd?'

'Relations—not friends.'

'What a delightful thing it must be to have plenty of relations! Salome and I have none. We were quite alone in the world, except for mother. Now I have, of course, all my husband's kindred, but Salome has no one.'

There was no shaking this girl off. She stuck to him as a burr. In all probability he would be housed at his uncle's that night, and so he would be brought into further contact with this person. She herself was eminently distasteful to him—but a sister unmarried!—Philip resolved to redouble his testy manner towards her. He would return to Nottingham on the morrow, unless absolutely compelled by circumstances to remain.

There was—there always had been—a vein of suspicion, breeding reserve of manner, in the Pennycomequick family. It was found chiefly in the men—in the women, that is, in Mrs. Sidebottom, it took a different form. As forces are co-related, so are tempers. It chilled their manner, it made them inapt to form friendships, and uncongenial in society.

Uncle Jeremiah had it, and that strongly. Towards his own kin he had never relaxed. The conduct of neither sister nor brother had been such as to inspire confidence. To the last he was hard, icy and suspicious towards them. But the warm breath of the little children had melted the frost in his domestic relations, and their conspicuous guilelessness had disarmed his suspicions. To them he had been a very different man to what he had appeared to others. Philip's father had behaved foolishly, withdrawn his money from the firm, and in a fit of credulity had allowed himself to be swindled out of it by a smooth-tongued impostor, Schofield. That loss had reduced him to poverty, and had soured him. Thenceforth, the Pennycomequick characteristics which had been in abeyance in Nicholas ripened rapidly. Philip had learned from his father to regard the bulk of mankind as in league against the few, as characterized by self-seeking, and as unreliable in all that affected their own interests. Philip was aged thirty-four, but looked older than his years. The experiences he had passed through had prematurely fixed the direction of his tendencies, and had warped his views of life. In photography, impressions made on the sensitive plate rapidly fade unless dipped in a solution which gives them permanency. So is it with the incidents of life; pictures are formed in our brains and pass unnoticed, unregistered, till something occurs to fix them. The great misfortune which had befallen his father had acted as such a bath to Philip's mind, leaving on it the indelible impression of universal rascality. He could remember the comfort in which his childhood had been passed, and the grinding penury afterwards. Obliged to work for his livelihood, he had chosen the law, a profession ill calculated to counteract the tendency in him, inherent, and already declared, to regard all men as knaves or fools.

Nicholas's last years had been spent in useless repinings over his loss, in grumbling at his brother and sister for not coming to his aid, and in hatred of the man who had ruined him.

He had been too proud to appeal to his half-brother, and was angry with Jeremiah for not coming forward unsolicited to relieve him. Had he gone to his brother, even written to him to express regret for his injudicious conduct, it is probable, nay, certain, that Jeremiah would have forgiven him; but the false pride of Nicholas prevented him taking this step, and Jeremiah would not move to his assistance without it.

Thus a mutual misunderstanding kept the half-brothers apart, and embittered their minds against each other.

Mrs. Sidebottom had been of as little help to her brother as had Jeremiah. Mr. Sidebottom had, indeed, taken Philip into his office as a clerk, but no Sidebottom contributions came to relieve the necessities of Nicholas. His sister was profuse in regrets and apologies for not doing anything for him, always weighting these apologies with a lecture on his wrong-doing in withdrawing his money from the firm; but she gave him nothing save empty words. Nicholas entertained but little love for his sister; and Philip grew up with small respect for his aunt.

By the time that Philip had reached the Pennycomequick door he was in as unamiable a temper as he had ever been during the thirty-four years of his life. He was damp, hungry, cold. He more than half believed that he had been brought to Mergatroyd on a fool's errand; he did not know where he was to sleep that night, and what he would get to eat. The inns, as he had heard, were full; no more trains would leave the station that night, owing to the condition of the line; there was not a cab in Mergatroyd, so that he could escape from the place only on foot, and that without his baggage.

Moreover, he was in doubt with what face he could appear before his uncle, were Jeremiah at home. His uncle, whom he had only once seen, and that at his father's funeral, had on that occasion shown him not the smallest inclination to make his acquaintance. Would it not appear as if, on the first rumour or suspicion of disaster, he had rushed to the spot without decorum, to seize on his uncle's estate, and with no better excuse than a vague telegram received from an irresponsible girl.

'Here is the door,' said the porter. Janet ran up the steps with alacrity and knocked.

Mr. Pennycomequick's house was formal as himself, of red brick without ornament; half-way up the hill, with its back to the road, and without even that mellow charm which old red brick assumes in the country, for this was red begrimed with soot, on which not a lichen or patch of moss would grow. The ugly back was towards the street; the uglier face looked into a garden that ran down the slope to the valley bottom. There were two square-headed windows on one side of the door, two similar windows on the other side, over each an exactly similar window, and over the door one with a round head that doubtless lighted the staircase. Above these was another story similar, but the windows less tall. Who does not know this kind of house? They are scattered in hundreds of thousands over the face of England, and who, with a grain of taste, would not a thousand times rather snuggle into a thatched cottage, with windows broad and low, winking out from under the brown eaves? Not if one lived to the age of the Wandering Jew could one become attached to one of these gaunt, formal, dingy mansions. The door was opened in answer to the bell and knocker, and Philip, after paying the railway porter, requested him to wait five minutes till he ascertained whether he was to spend the night there or go in quest of a bed.

Then he entered the gas-lighted hall, to see his travelling comrade locked in the arms of her sister, a young girl of the same age and height and general appearance, with the same red-gold hair, and the same clear complexion, who was flushed with excitement at meeting Janet.

A pretty sight it was—those lovely twins clinging to each other in an ecstasy of delight, laughing, kissing, fondling each other, with the tears of exuberant pleasure streaming over their cheeks.

But Philip remained unmoved or contemptuous. He saw his Aunt Louisa and Captain Lambert on the stairs.

'I know well what this bit of pantomime means,' thought Philip. 'The girls are showing off before two young men.'

'What! Philip here!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom, who hastened down the stairs to greet her nephew. 'Oh, Philip! how good of you to come! I made sure you would the moment you heard the news, and yet I was not sure but that you would shrink from it—as you were on such bad terms with your uncle. I am so glad you have arrived to assist us with your professional advice. This is a sad, a very sad case.'

'Mr. Philip Pennycomequick!' exclaimed Salome disengaging herself from her sister's embrace and standing before the young man. She lifted her great searching eyes to his face and studied it, then dropped them, ashamed at her audacity, and perhaps a little disappointed at what she had seen; for the moment he came towards her he assumed his most uncompromising expression.

'I beg your pardon,' said he stiffly. 'Whom have I the honour——'

'I am Salome Cusworth, who telegraphed to you.'

He bowed haughtily. 'I am glad.'

Then Salome, abashed, caught her sister's hand, and said to Mrs. Sidebottom: 'Oh, please, let me take Janet away first—she knows nothing, and you must allow me to break the terrible news to her myself.'

She drew her sister aside, with her arm round her waist, into a room on the ground-floor, where she could tell her privately the great sorrow that had fallen on them.

Philip looked inquiringly after them, and when the door had closed, said to his aunt: 'Who are they? What are they?'

'You may well ask,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'They are the petted and spoiled daughters of your uncle's housekeeper. He has brought them up beyond their station, and now they will be unfit to do anything when turned adrift.'

'But,' said Philip, 'one is married.'

'Oh yes, of course. She has caught her man. I know nothing of her husband, or how he was tackled. I dare say, however, he is respectable, but only a manufacturer.'

'And the unmarried sister is Salome.'

'Yes, an officious pert piece of goods.'

'Like her sister.'

'Now,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'what are you going to do? In this house you cannot well be accommodated. There are rooms—but everyone's head is turned, servants and all. No toast sent up at breakfast. Your best way will be to go to Lambert's quarters in my house. Here you would be amidst a party of tedious women——'

'I want to be as far as possible from those young ladies,' said Philip. 'One has been in the train with me for many hours, and has worried me beyond endurance.'

'Certainly. Go with Lambert. In my house you will be in Liberty Hall, where you can smoke——'

'I never smoke.'

'And drink whisky and water.'

'I take nothing at night.'

'And talk over social scandals.'

'In which I have not the smallest interest.'

'Well, well, we dine in a quarter of an hour here. You will stay. No dressing, quite en famille. Fried soles, a joint and cutlets à la tomato.'

'Thank you. I accept; for the inns, I learn, are quite full. I will give orders to the porter to take my traps over to your house, and then, perhaps, you will give me ten minutes to tell me what has happened to my uncle, for I am still in the dark respecting him.'

'So are we all,' said Lambert.

From the room into which Salome had drawn her sister, and which was the sitting-room of their invalided mother, could be heard the sobbing of Janet and the broken accents of the old lady and Salome. There were tears in all their voices.

Then there flashed through the mind of Philip Pennycomequick the thought that, here without in the hall, were the sister and two nephews of the lost man, who had been as yet scarcely alluded to by them, but he had been told about what there was for dinner; whereas, divided from them by a door were three persons unconnected with Uncle Jeremiah, who were moved by his death or disappearance as by that of a dear connection.

Philip, however, said nothing. He turned to the front door to speak to the porter, when a violent ring at the bell called his attention to another man who stood on the steps.

'Beg pardon,' said this man, 'where is Miss Salome?'

'I will call her,' said Philip. 'Who shall I say wants to speak to her?'

'The night-watchman, Fanshawe.'

'Oh, Mr. Fanshawe!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom, running through the hall to him, 'has he been found?'

'No such luck,' was the answer.

Philip tapped at the door through which the girls had retreated, and Salome opened it. Her eyes were glittering with tears, and her cheeks were moist.

'There is a fellow called Fanshawe wants a word with you,' said Philip.

The girl advanced through the hall to the door.

'Oh, miss!' said the night-watchman,'some o' us chaps aren't content to let matters stand as they be. For sewer t'owd gen'lman be somewheer, and we're boun' to mak' anither sarch. We thowt tha'd like to knaw.'

'But—where?'

'I't canal.'

'How?—By night?'

'For sewer. Wi' a loaf o' cake and a can'l.'

CHAPTER X.

WITH A LOAF AND A CANDLE.

With a loaf and a candle!

We live in the oldest world, where men labour to do the simplest things in the most roundabout way, and to put whatever they come in contact with to purposes other than those intended. We have seen champagne bottles used as candlesticks, and a bonnet given to a cat to kitten in, and a preacher haranguing in a theatre, and a pugilist occupying a pulpit, women dressing and cutting their hair like men, and men affecting girlish ways; members of Parliament exhibiting themselves as blackguards, and leaders of the people leading them to political suicide, as Jack the Giant-killer made Giant Gruff-me-gruff rip himself open. Those who have feet to walk on, affect standing on their heads, and those who have heads to reason with, think with their stomachs.

With a loaf and a candle!

Astronomers tell us that there are as many suns visible in the firmament as there are human beings in Great Britain—about thirty millions, and that each of these suns is presumably the centre of a system of worlds like our own, and perhaps peopled by beings of like calibre to ourselves. Let us say that each sun is given ten planets, that makes three hundred millions of worlds, having in them the same proportion of thoughtless, unreasoning beings as in this globe with which we are familiar. Who would have supposed that there was such a diffusion of silliness, wrongheadedness, and blunder brains diffused through space.

With a loaf and a candle!

It is the fashion to believe in evolution, to hold that mankind is developed through a long progression from something as inarticulate as frog spawn. And we believe it, because we see so much of this inchoate, inorganic spawn still taking the place of brain in the heads of humanity.

Men have grown and become vertebrate and have branched into members, but the spawn still lingers as it was in the cells of the skull.

With a loaf and a candle!

Full a score of in-the-main not unintelligent men were about to search for the body of their master with a loaf of cake and a candle.[#] How a loaf and a candle should conduce towards the finding the object they sought, it is not easy to see. What there was in the nature of the loaf or candle to make each appropriate to the purpose, not one of these in-the-main not unintelligent men asked.

[#] In Yorkshire, cake is white bread: bread is oatcake—Haver-bread.

The upper reach of the canal had drained itself away, but at the locks the rush of water had furrowed the bed, pent in as it had been between the walls, and had left deep pools. Below the locks the face of the land was flat, the fall slight, and there the canal was brimming, and much of the water that had overflowed still lay about in the fields. This portion of the Keld basin went by the name of the Fleet, which indicated a time, perhaps not remote, when it had been a waste of ooze and water channels, sometimes overflowed and sometimes dry.

The whole of the drained canal bed had been searched between the lock and the bridge that carried the road across the river and canal, a distance of three-quarters of a mile, but without success. The men who intended prosecuting the search in their own fashion were clustered below the shattered locks. But the gathering did not consist of men only. With them were some mill-girls from a factory on the slope that had not stopped, not having been affected by the flood. They wore scarlet or pink kerchiefs over their heads, pinned under the chin, and plain white pinafores to protect their dresses at their work from the oil, a custom as picturesque and becoming as convenient. These girls were there, because it was an unsuitable place for them—no other season will suffice to explain their presence. But women, water and wind, will penetrate everywhere.

Mrs. Sidebottom and Salome were also on the canal bank. They had no faith in the experiment about to be tried, but each for different reasons thought it expedient to be present. Salome would not be away, so intense was her anxiety about the fate of Uncle Jeremiah, and Mrs. Sidebottom would be there so as not to seem indifferent. Janet, tired from her long journey, and not strong, did not come out; she remained with her mother. Philip and Lambert Pennycomequick were there as a duty; a disagreeable and onerous duty the captain considered it, because it spoiled his dinner.

A loaf and a candle!

A good round loaf of baker's bread had a hole scooped out of it, and into this hole a tallow candle was thrust. The candle was lighted and sent adrift on the water of the canal.

The night was dark, the moon did not rise for another hour or more. All the mills in the valley were dark. Not only had they been brought to a standstill by the flood, but the main of the gas was broken. This was the cause of the eclipse likewise of the lamps on the road. The water had left the cottage of the lock-keeper, and the bodies of the dead man and his wife had been found and laid on the sodden bed. A yellow glimmer shone out of the window, for a candle burnt there, and a fire had been kindled. An old woman, a relation, driven from her home by the water, was sitting there, trying to coax a fire to keep in, in the wet and rusty grate, and supplying herself with gin to keep out the chill from her bones.

The town on the hill flank twinkled with lights, and just beyond the ridge pulsated the auroral flicker from the distant foundries. The lamps on the railway shone green and red. Some of those engaged in the search bore lanterns.

The cluster on the embankment with the moving lights, the occasional flash over a red kerchief or a white pinafore and the reflections in the water, united to form a striking picture.

'Si' there,' said one man, 't'leet' (light) 'be headin' agin t' stream.'

'There's no stream flowing,' said another.

'There owt ta be, and there is for sewer. T'can'l be gan'in up t' course.'

'Because t' wind be blawing frae t' east.'

It was true; the loaf of bread which had been placed in the water, instead of taking a seaward direction with the natural fall of the current, was swimming slowly but perceptibly upwards. The yellow flame of the candle was turned towards the locks, showing in which direction the wind set, and explaining naturally the phenomenon. The current was so slight that the wind acting on the loaf had power to overcome it.

'Sho's travellin' upwards,' said the first speaker. 'Sho's boun to seek him aht.'

Into the canal suddenly fell a mass of undermined bank, making a splash and sending the floating light, gyrating and dancing as the wavelets formed. One of the mill-girls, going too near the edge, had trodden on the loosened soil, and nearly fell in herself, provoking a laugh and a reprimand.

'Mind what tha'rt aboot, lass,' shouted one of the men.

'If tha falls in I'm none bound to hug thee aht.'

'I can crawl aht wi'out thy hugging, Bill,' answered the girl promptly.

'Eh!' said another, 'Effie, for sewer thou'rt not bawn to be drowned.'

Some byplay went on, a half romp, in the rear, between a young woolcomber and a girl reeler.

'Na then,' shouted the night-watch, 'we're none come aht for laikes' (games), 'and if you're gan'ing to remain you must be quiet.'

The incongruity of their behaviour with the gravity of the occasion struck the young people, and they desisted.

What had become of the refuge hut?

Curiously enough, till this moment no one had noticed its disappearance, perhaps because of the completeness with which it had been effaced. No sooner had the stream penetrated to its interior than it had collapsed, and every brick and slate and rafter had been swept away from the platform it had occupied.

The policeman had joined the party, carrying a bull's-eye lantern.

One of the men had provided grappling-irons, always kept near the bridge, because accidents were not uncommon in the canal and the river; drunken men fell in, children in play got pushed over, girls in paroxysms of despair threw themselves in.

The loaf with the light had now got above the spot where the bank had fallen in, and the ripple aided the wind in carrying it within the locks.

'Sho's got an idee!'

'Wheer? I't crust or i't crumb?'

'Sho's makin' reet ahead for t' deepest hoyle (hole) in all t' canal.'

It was so, the loaf had entered within the walls.

Every now and then, on a ripple, the bread leaped and the flame wavered as a banner. The draught snuffed the glowing wick, and carried some of the red sparks away and extinguished them in the black water.

The searchers now congregated on the paved platform, and looked timorously yet inquisitively into the gulf where lay the pool dark as ink. The candle-flame faintly irradiated the enclosing walls, and painted a streak of fire on the surface of the water.

When thus enclosed, the movements of the loaf were such as to give colour to the superstition, for it careered in circles, then struck across the canal, went back as if disappointed in its quest, ran up the course, and then turned and went down the enclosed space, and finally came forth from between the walls. There it halted a moment, and danced and careened over, and righted itself again, as relaxing from its search, and tossing the flame in a defiant manner, as if it was disgusted with its work and resolved no longer to prosecute the inquiry. But a minute later it came apparently to a better mind, the flame became steadier, it recommenced its gyrations, described a loop, and suddenly became stationary at a spot a little short of half way across the canal.

The strange conduct of the loaf was in reality caused by the currents and revolutions of the water, but as these were unperceived by those who looked on, they became impressed with the conviction that the loaf was really animated by a mysterious occult power that impelled it to fulfil the task allotted to it.

All now stood hushed for full five minutes, almost breathless, none stirring, every eye directed to the light, to see whether it would remain where it was, or recommence its wanderings.

Then the night-watch exclaimed:

'The moon!'

All turned to the east, and saw the orb rise red above a wooded hill. The darkness was at once sensibly relieved.

'Naw then!' shouted Bill; 'in wi't irons, just at place wheer t' can'l stands.'

The grapplers were cast in, and caught immediately in some object near the surface. The men drew at the ropes, and the waters gurgled and were disturbed about the loaf, producing a broad commotion. The loaf leaped, turned over, and the light was extinguished. It had accomplished its task.

'Whatever can't be?' asked one of the men. 'Sho might be a coil (coal) barge sunk i' t' canal. Sho's sae heavy.'

'Stay,' said the night-watch. 'T' water for sewer ain't deep here, nobbut up to t' armpits. Whativer it be, 'tis this at ha' caught and held t' cake. Ah fancy t' top o' t' concarn is just belaw t' surface. If some o' you chaps'll help, I'll get in, and together we'll hug it out.'

Two or three volunteered, and after much wading and splashing a cumbrous article was heaved out of the water, but not by three or four men, for several more, taunted by the mill-lasses, went in to the assistance of the first volunteers.

'Why,' rose in general exclamation, 'sho's a pi-ano!'

This discovery provoked a laugh, in which all shared.

'How iver could a piano ha' got there?' was asked.

'That beats a',' shouted another, 'that t' loaf and can'l shud tell where a piano lay drounded.'

'T' instrument 'ud sarve to produce a necessary accompaniment to some o' thy songs, Joe.'

The moon had risen by this time sufficiently to transform the whole sheet of water into one of light.

The bell of Mergatroyd Church-tower began to toll for evensong. Suddenly the laughter, the jokes, the exclamations of wonder died away—for something was seen that had risen from the depths, disturbed by the commotion of the water and mud when the piano was extracted. And see! the loaf with its extinguished candle was swimming towards the object. It reached it; it capered about it; it ran round it; and then attached itself to it.

'What was it?'

The glassy, silvery surface of the water was broken by it in several places.

Then there rushed by along the line a train, with the engine shrieking and shrieking continuously to give warning to workers on the embankment that it was coming. And that shriek so wrought on the nerves of some of the girls present that they screamed also in sudden terror, for, though no one answered the question what that blot on the canal surface was, everyone knew.

All stood motionless again, and waiting till the scream of the train was lost, and then, in silence, two men waded into the water, reached the object, drew it after them to the bank, and with the assistance of others raised it and laid it on the towpath.

Then the group drew towards it, after a momentary hesitation and recoil, and the policeman passed the ray of his bull's-eye lantern up and down it.

The question could no longer be asked, 'What was it?'

It must now be put, 'Who is it?'

Yes—who? For the body just recovered was defaced almost past recognition.

'Whoever he may be,' said the policeman, 'we must find out by his cloas, for his face and head be that mashed and mutilated—'tis a pictur'. For cartain the piano must ha' fallen on him, that is, on his head, and left not a feature to recognise.'

'And the clothing is queer,' observed the night-watch.

It was so. The body recovered was partially naked, with bare legs and feet, and wore nothing more than a nightshirt and a great-coat.

'Stand back,' ordered the policeman. 'Let Miss Cusworth come for'ard.'

And he stooped and spread his hankerchief over the face. There was no need for her to see that.

Salome stepped forward. She was shuddering, but spoke with composure, and not till she had thoroughly studied the corpse at her feet.

'This cannot be Mr. Pennycomequick,' she said; 'he was dressed in a black suit. He had been out to dinner.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, who had pushed forward; 'he was not dressed. I went into the bedroom as soon as I knew he was lost, and found that his dress-clothes were there and the bed disturbed.'

The policeman, kneeling, examined the pockets. From that in the breast of the overcoat he drew forth a card-case, and held it close to the lantern.

Salome said immediately:

'That is Mr. Pennycomequick's card-case.'

'And his cards are in it,' added the policeman.

Salome looked again attentively at the body.

'That is Mr. Pennycomequick's overcoat. I know it—but that cannot be Mr. Pennycomequick wearing it.'

Then, overcome with the horror of the scene, Salome shrank back.

The policeman had now extracted a letter from the pocket; the address was blotted, but after a little examination could be made out, 'J. Pennycomequick, Esq., manufacturer, Mergatroyd.'

'It is strange that he should be without his boots,' said the policeman.

'Not at all,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Anyone but a fool, as soon as he is in the water, kicks them off, as they fill and drag him down. I can swear to the identity—that is my brother. Remove the body to the house.'

CHAPTER XI.

EXPECTATION.

As Philip Pennycomequick came next day to the house of mourning—mourning, because three dress-makers were engaged in making it—he saw that all the blinds were down. In the hall he met Salome, who was there, evidently awaiting him. She looked ill and anxious, and her eyes were bright with a feverish lustre. She had not slept for two nights.

The extraordinary delicacy of her complexion gave her a look as of the finest porcelain, a transparency through which her doubting, disturbed and eager spirit was visible. Her pallor contrasted startlingly at this time with the gorgeous tone of her luxuriant hair. Her eyes were large, the irises distended as though touched with belladonna, and Philip felt his mistrust fall away from off him, as in some fairy tale the armour of a knight loosens itself, drops, and leaves him unharnessed before an enchantress. But the enchantment which dissolved his panoply of suspicion was an innocent one, it was the manifestation of real suffering. He could see that the girl was rendered almost ill by the mental distress caused by the loss of her friend and guardian. That she had loved him, and loved him with an innocent, unselfish affection, seemed to him undoubted.

'I beg your pardon for waylaying you, Mr. Pennycomequick,' she said, in a timid voice; one white hand lifted, with an uncertain shake in it, touching her lips. 'But I very much desire to have a word with you in private before you go upstairs to Mrs. Sidebottom.'

'I'm at your service.'

She led the way into the breakfast-room, recently cleared of the meal. She went to the window, and stood between the glass and the curtain, with her left hand entangled among the cords of the Venetian blind. In her nervousness it was necessary for her to take hold of something. Her delicate fingers ran up the green strings and played with them, as though they were the strings of a harp on which she was practising, and, strangely enough, Philip felt within him every touch; when she twanged a cord, some fibre in him quivered responsive, and was only lulled when she clasped the string and stopped its vibration.

A faint tinge rose in her white face to the cheek-bones and temples, touching them with more than colour, an apparent inner light, like the Alpine glow after sundown on the white head of the Jungfrau. As she spoke she did not look at Philip, but with eyes modestly lowered on the ground, or out of the window looking sideways down the street.

'What I wished to say to you, Mr. Pennycomequick, will soon be said. I shall not detain you long. I am sorry to differ from Mrs. Sidebottom, but I cannot share her conviction that the body found last night is that of your uncle.'

'You do not dispute that he is dead?'

'No,' she sighed; 'I think there can be no question about that.'

'Or that he was last seen on the canal bank at no great distance from where the discovery was made?'

'No,' she said, and her fingers unconsciously played on the blind cords the time of the melody in Chopin's 'Marche Funèbre.'

'Why do you say no?'

'Mr. Pennycomequick was full dressed when he went out—that is to say, he had on his great-coat and his boots and—in fact it was not possible that he could be discovered in the condition in which the body recovered from the canal was found.'

'It is, of course, difficult to account for it, but not impossible. My aunt declares that she went up to the bedroom of my uncle the same night, found the bed disturbed, and the dress clothes, or some of them, on the chair. She concludes that he pulled on his overcoat and went out half-dressed, that he got caught by the water somewhere in some place of temporary refuge, and saw that his only chance of escape was to strip and swim. That he drew on his great coat again as a protection against the cold, till the proper moment came for him to make the plunge—but she concludes that he never did start to swim, either his courage failed him, or the flood rose too rapidly and carried him away before he had removed the overcoat. This may be an over-ingenious explanation, nevertheless it is an explanation that accounts for all.'

'Not for all—the body is not that of Mr. Pennycomequick.' Salome spoke decidedly, and as she spoke her hand gripped the strings hard.

Philip stood by the table, resting his hand on it. The morning light fell strong on her face, and illumined her auburn hair. Philip took occasion to examine her countenance more closely than had been possible before. She was like her sister in build, in feature and in tone of colour, indeed strikingly like her, but in that only—certainly, Philip thought, in that only.

All at once she looked up and met Philip's eyes.

'No—a thousand times no,' she said. 'That is not uncle. He was brought here because Mrs. Sidebottom desired it, and is convinced of the identity. No objection that I can raise disturbs her. I thought that possibly, last night, I might have judged on insufficient evidence, and so I went this morning into the room to look at the corpse. Mrs. Sidebottom had sent last night for women who attended to it and it was laid out in the spare room.' She began to tremble now as she spoke, and her fingers played a rapid movement on the blind cords. 'I had made up my mind to look at him, and I did.'

She paused, to recover the control that was fast deserting her, as the delicate glow of colour in her face had now left it. 'It is not my uncle. I looked at his hands. The head is—is not to be seen, nothing is distinguishable there—but the hands are not those of Mr. Pennycomequick.'

'In what does the difference consist?'

'I cannot describe it. I knew his hands well. He often let me take them in mine when I sat on the stool at his feet by the fire, and I have kissed them.' The clear tears rose in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. 'I am quite sure—if those had been his dear hands that I saw on the bed this morning, I would have kissed them again, but I could not.' She shook her head, and shook away the drops from her cheeks. 'No—I could not.'

'Miss Cusworth,' said Philip, 'you are perhaps unaware of the great alteration that is produced by immersion for many hours.'

'They are not his hands. That is not uncle.'

She was so conspicuously sincere, so sincerely distressed, that Philip relaxed his cold manner towards her, and said in a gentle tone:

'Did my uncle wear a ring? There was none on the hands of the man found yesterday.'

'No; he wore no ring.'

'With what did he seal his letters?'

'Oh! he had a brass seal with his initials on it, with a handle, that was in his pen-tray. He used to joke about it, and say he was a J.P. without the Queen's commission.'

'For my own part,' said Philip, 'I am beyond forming an opinion, as I have seen my uncle but once since I was a boy, and then under circumstances precluding exact observation.'

Salome said nothing to this, but heaved a long breath. Presently Philip said:

'Your mother—has she been taken upstairs?'

'Oh no!' exclaimed Salome, excited as by a fresh terror. 'You do not know my mother. She has heart complaint, and we have to be most careful not unduly to excite and alarm her. She has suffered much on account of what has taken place; and the shock of seeing——' She shivered. 'It cannot be.'

'And your sister?'

'She turned faint when brought to the door, and I could not persuade her to enter. She has been much tried by the German invasion of France, and her hurried journey.'

'Is there anything further you have to say?'

'No; Mrs. Sidebottom is wrong, that is all.'

Philip withdrew.

The girl had gained in his estimation. There was strength in her such as lacked in her sister. She must have had courage and determination to go by herself into the room where lay the mutilated corpse, and she had formed her own opinion, independently, and held to it with a firmness there was no breaking down.

Philip ascended the stairs thoughtfully. It had seemed to him at the time that his aunt had rushed at identification with undue precipitation; still, she was the sister of Uncle Jeremiah, and therefore better capable than anyone else. Now he was himself uncertain.

When he entered the study where Mrs. Sidebottom was, she saluted him with:

'Well, so you have had your interview with Salome. She has been hanging about the hall all the morning for the purpose of catching you.'

Philip made no reply. Her light tone jarred on his feelings, coming as he did from the presence of a girl full of sadness.

'Has she gained you over to her side?'

'Upon my word, I do not know what to think.'

'Fiddlesticks!' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'she has made eyes at you. Girls with good eyes know how to use them; they are better advocates than their tongues.'

'The difficulty to identification seems to me insuperable.'

'Pshaw! I have no doubt at all. He had been to bed; he went out without his coat and waistcoat. He was last seen on the canal bank, not so very far from the place where the corpse was found. The body is discovered wearing the great-coat. I have told you how I explain that. I suppose Salome has made a point to you that the nightshirt was not that of Uncle Jeremiah? Her mother looked after his linen.'

'No; she said nothing of that.'

'But I identify the shirt.'

'You, aunt?'

'Yes; it is one I gave him.'

'You—gave him? An extraordinary present.'

'Not at all. I was his sister; and I know that an old bachelor's wardrobe would be in a sad state of neglect. I intended to replenish him with linen altogether.'

Philip was greatly surprised. He looked fixedly at his aunt, to make out whether she were speaking seriously. She dashed off, however, at once on another topic.

'That girl,' she said, 'naturally resisted the conclusions at which I have arrived.'

'Why naturally?'

'Oh, you greenhorn! Because if it be established that Jeremiah is dead, out goes the whole Cusworth brood. They have lived here and preyed on him so long that they cannot endure the notion of having to leave, and will fight tooth and nail against the establishment of his decease.'

'Not at all. You misjudge them. They allow that he is dead, but disbelieve in the identity of the corpse found with my uncle who is lost, which is another matter.'

'Out they shall go,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'It is painful for them to leave a house where they have been happy, and in which the young ladies have grown up from childhood.'

'Other people have to undergo painful experiences,' said his aunt; and again, 'Out they go.'

'Not at once.'

'As soon as the funeral is over.'

'But why act with such precipitation?'

'Because I cannot endure them. Do you remember the story of the Republican judge, when a gentleman contended before him for his paternal acres against a sans-culotte, who had appropriated them? "These acres," said the plaintiff, "have belonged to my family for four hundred years." "High time," said the judge, "that they should be transferred to others;" and he gave sentence for the defendant. These Cusworths have been in possession quite long enough. High time that they should budge, and make room for me.'

'But you must consider the feelings of the old lady. You have no excuse for acting peremptorily.'

'I shall inquire what wage she has received, pay her a month, and send her off. That is to say,' added Mrs. Sidebottom on further consideration, 'I will pay her as soon as I have got some of Jeremiah's money out of the bank.'

'And that cannot be touched till his will has been proved.'

'There is no will.'

'How do you know that?'

'I have searched every drawer, closet, and chest. I have looked everywhere. There is no will.'

'It will be at the lawyers'.'

'Jeremiah never had a lawyer. That was one of his fads.'

'Then at the bank.'

'I wrote to the bank the moment I heard of his death. I have received an answer. There is no will at the bank.'

'There is time enough to discuss this later.'

'No, there is not,' said Mrs. Sidebottom peremptorily. 'The factory must not be allowed to come to a stand, and the business to drift away. You have no claim.'