Front matter (continued 4)

In spite of the eggs and bacon and the warm fire and Ginger seated opposite with the Athletic News propped against the coffee pot, a shudder crept through Henry Harper. He regretted bitterly that he should have allowed his thoughts to stray. But how could they go back to Cocky Footit and Leary Jeacock and the night school they attended in Driver's Lane, without taking a leap unbidden to that other lane which ran level with Driver's, with the rag and bone yard and the iron gates where dwelt Auntie and her cart whip, the only home at that time he had known?

He couldn't help shuddering at the picture in his mind. Where was Auntie now? How would she look to one who had sailed before the mast over all the oceans of the world?

The subject of Auntie had a morbid fascination. It held him as completely as the night school in Driver's Lane. The truth was, it was impossible to recall the one without envisaging the other.

As soon as he had finished breakfast, he put on the overcoat with the velvet collar and the smart tweed cap, stepped into Newcastle Street and began to wander across the canal bridge. Then he turned to the right through Clover Street, crossed the tram lines, passed the Crown and Cushion, his favorite public-house of yore, where he had listened many an evening to the music and singing that floated through the swing doors, with always a half formed thought at the back of his mind which he dared not face. As of old, he stood to listen, but there was no music now, for it was only ten o'clock in the morning, and it didn't begin until seven at night.

He was not afraid of the life of seven years ago. As he stood outside the Crown and Cushion that was the idea which exalted him. Henry Harper was not obliged to meet Auntie, but was going to do so out of curiosity, and because he owed it to himself to prove that he no longer went in fear of her.

That might be so, but as he passed through the old familiar streets and alleys, with bareheaded Aunties standing arms akimbo in conversation with the neighbors, while many a Henry Harper sprawled half naked in the gutter, his courage almost failed. The slums of Blackhampton had changed less than he in seven years.

Yes, this was Crow's Yard. And there at the door of No. 1, as of yore, was Mother Crow, toothless and yellow, unspeakably foul of word and aspect, whose man often threatened to swing for her and finally swung for another. Henry Harper stole swiftly through Crow's Yard, fearing at every step that he would be recognized.

With a thudding heart, he came into Wright's Lane. It was like a horrible dream; he nearly turned and ran. What if Auntie was still there? He had just seen Mother Crow and Meg Baker and Cock-eyed Polly and others of her circle. Well, if she was...?

The beating of his heart would not let him meet the question. He ought not to have come. All the same, there was nothing to be afraid of now.

No, there was nothing to be.... Again he nearly turned and ran. The iron gates were before him. There were the piles of stinking bones, old newspapers, foul rags, scrap iron, and all sorts of odds and ends. And there was the broken-down handcart he had trundled so often through the mud. The wheels were still on it, but they looked like new ones. And there on the wall of the shed was the nail.

A sick thrill passed through Henry Harper. He couldn't make out in the thick November halflight whether on that nail there was really what he thought there was. A wave of curiosity forced him to enter the yard. The whip was hanging there as usual. The heavy handle bound with strips of brass shone through the gloom. The sight of it seemed again to hold him in a thrall of terror. As if it were a nightmare he fought to throw it off. He had been a sailor; he was the goalkeeper for the Blackhampton Rovers; he was earning two pounds a week; he had a velvet collar to his overcoat; there was no need to be afraid of...

"Now, young man?"

A thick, wheezy grunt came out of the inner murk of the yard and sent a chill down the spine of Henry Harper.

"What can I do for yer?"

Auntie, cheerfully alcoholic as ever, stood before him in all her shapeless obscenity. She stood as of old, exuding gin and humor and latent savagery. She had changed so little that he felt he had not changed either. At first he could not believe that she did not recognize him.

Auntie stood eyeing him with disfavor. The good clothes, the clean collar, the polished boots told against him heavily. Most probably a detective.

"What do you want for that, missus?" He pointed to the nail.

"Not for sale." The light he had seen so often sprang to her eyes. "You can have anythink else. Scrap iron, rags and bones, waste paper, bedsteads, but yer can't have that." And Auntie looked at him, wheezing humorously at the idea of anyone wanting to buy such an article. Suddenly Henry Harper met again the eyes of Medusa in their depth and power.

At once he knew why he had stayed those long years under her roof. It was not merely that he had nowhere else to go. There was a living devil in the soul of Auntie and it was far stronger than anything at present in the soul of Henry Harper. Already he could feel the old helpless terror striking into him again. He was forgetting that he had been a sailor, he was forgetting the Blackhampton Rovers, he was forgetting his two pounds a week....

"Well, missus, if yer won't, yer won't," he said, with a mighty effort of the will.

Auntie laughed her old rich note of genial defiance, as if an affection for a thing of little value and less use must be defended. As she did so, a miserable cur sneaked out through the open door of the house beyond the archway. She turned to it humorously.

"I thought I told you to keep in."

The dog cast a look at her and sneaked in again.

"Mornin', missus."

"Mornin', young man. Sorry I can't oblige yer." It was the old note of affability that always endeared her to the neighbors.

But it was not of Auntie that Henry Harper was thinking when he got into Wright's Lane. It was of the dog. In the eyes of that animal he had seen his former self.

XIV

It had been Henry Harper's intention to go on across the Lammas and make inquiries about the night school. But his courage suddenly failed. As soon as he got into Wright's Lane, he felt that for one day at least he had seen enough of the haunts of his youth.

As he stood at the corner, trying to make up his mind what to do, an intense longing for Newcastle Street came upon him. It seemed wiser to postpone the night school until the afternoon.

He had not expected to find the other side of the canal quite so bad as it had proved to be. It seemed ages away in point of experience. There was no place for good clothes, a clean collar, and polished boots in the region the other side of the canal. It was very unfortunate that the night school lay in the middle of that area.

Henry Harper was in an unhappy frame of mind when he sat down to dinner with Ginger at one o'clock. A very bad aura enveloped him. The sight of Auntie in her lair would take him some little time to overcome. Then the sense of failure was unpleasant. It was unworthy of a sailor to have shirked his job. Every day made it more necessary for something to be done. His pretence of understanding the newspapers when he could hardly read a word was telling against him with Ginger. His contribution to the after-supper conversation was so feeble, as a rule, that Ginger was almost afraid "he was not all there."

However, he would inquire about the night school that afternoon. The matter was so urgent that he could have no peace until he had moved in it. But fate, having taken his measure, began to marshal silent invisible forces.

To begin with the forces were silent enough, yet they were not exactly invisible. A little after three, while the Sailor, still in the Valley of Decision, was looking into the fire, wondering whether it was possible after all to postpone the task until the following morning when he might be in a better frame of mind, Ginger looked out of the window, announced that "there wasn't half a fog coming over," and that he had a good mind to make himself comfortable indoors for the rest of the day.

This was enough for the Sailor. The fog put the night school out of the question for that afternoon; it must be postponed till the morrow. All the same, he fell into a black and bitter mood in which self-disgust came uppermost.

Ginger's good mind to stay indoors did not materialize. As soon as the clock chimed four he remembered that he had to play a hundred up with Dinkie at the Crown and Cushion.

At quarter-past four, Miss Foldal came in, drew down the blinds, lit the gas, and laid the cloth for tea. She then sought permission, as the fire was such a good one, to toast a muffin at it, which she proceeded to do with the elegance that marked her in everything.

The Sailor had never seen anybody quite so elegant as Miss Foldal in the afternoon. The golden hair was curled and crimped, the blonde complexion freshly powdered, there was a superb display of jewelry upon a fine bosom, she was tightly laced, and the young man watching her with grave curiosity heard her stays creak as she bent down at the fire.

Two ladies further apart than Miss Foldal and Auntie would be hard to conceive. Dimly the young man had begun to realize that it was a very queer cosmos in which he had been called to exercise his being. There were whole stellar spaces between Auntie and Miss Foldal.

The latter lady was not merely elegant, she was kind. Miss Foldal was very kind indeed to Mr. Harper. From the day he had entered her house, she had shown in many subtle ways that she wanted to make him feel at home. And Mr. Harper, who up till now only realized Woman extrinsically, already considered Miss Foldal a very nice lady.

It was true that Ginger referred to her rather contemptuously as Old Tidde-fol-lol, and saw, or affected to see, something deep in her most innocent actions. But the Sailor, with a natural reverence for her sex in spite of all he had suffered at its hands, was constrained to believe these slighting references to Old Tidde-fol-lol were lapses of taste on the part of his hero. Homer nods on occasion. Henry Harper was not acquainted with that impressive fact at this period of his life, but he was sure that Ginger was a little unfortunate in his references to Miss Foldal.

The Sailor was beginning to like Miss Foldal immensely. He did not go beyond that. The great apparition of Woman in her cardinal aspect had not yet appeared to him, and was not to do so for long days to come. As Ginger said, he was a kid at present, and hardly knew he was born. Still, he was beginning to take notice.

"Would you like me to pour out your tea, Mr. Harper?"

"Thank you, miss." He was no longer so ignorant as to say, "Thank you, lady."

"Sugar?"

"Please, miss."

He admired immensely the manipulation of the sugar tongs by those elegant hands. They were inclined to be fat and were perhaps rather broad to the purview of a connoisseur, but they were covered in rings set with stones more or less precious, and the soul of Henry Harper responded instinctively to all that they meant and stood for. The hands of Auntie were not as these.

"You do take two lumps and milk, of course?"

There was an ease and a charm about Miss Foldal that made the Sailor think of velvet.

"Now take a piece of muffin while it's warm."

She offered the muffin, already steeped in delicious butter, with the slightly imperious charm of a Madame Récamier, not that Henry Harper knew any more about Madame Récamier than he did about Homer at this period of his career. Yet he may have known all about them even then. He may have known all about them and forgotten all about them, and when the time came to unseal the inner chambers of his consciousness, perhaps he would remember them again.

Auntie had never handed him a muffin in such a way as that. Mrs. Sparks hadn't either. Ginger might sneer and call her Old Tidde-fol-lol, although not to her face—he was always very polite to her face—but there was no doubt she was absolutely a lady, and her muffins ... her muffins were extra.

This afternoon, Miss Foldal lingered over the tea table in most agreeable discourse. The fog was too thick for her to venture into the market place, where she wanted to go.

"If it's shopping you want, miss," said Mr. Harper, with an embarrassment that made her smile, "let me go and do it for you."

"I couldn't think of it, Mr. Harper."

"I will, miss, I'll be very glad to." She liked the deep eyes of this strikingly handsome young man.

"I couldn't think of it, Mr. Harper. I couldn't really. Besides, my shopping will keep till tomorrow."

"You know best, miss." There was resignation tempered by a certain chivalrous disappointment. Quite unconsciously, Mr. Harper was doing his utmost to rise to the standard of speech and manner of Miss Foldal, which was far beyond any he had yet experienced.

"I saw in the Evening Star that you won your match on Saturday."'

"Yes, miss, four-two." But the mention of the Evening Star was a stab. Every night the Evening Star presented its tragic problem.

"Mr. Jukes tells me you will be having a trial with the first team soon."

Mr. Jukes had told Miss Foldal nothing of the kind. She was the last person to whom he would have made any such confidence.

"Oh no, miss." The native modesty was pleasant in her ear. "I'm nothing near good enough yet."

"It will come, though. It is bound to come."

The young man was not stirred by this prophecy. His mind had gone back to the night school; it was tormenting itself with the problem ever before it now. He would have liked to bring the conversation round to the matter, if only it could be done without disclosing the deadly secret. But the memory of Mrs. Sparks was still fresh. There was no denying that for a chap of nineteen not to have the elements of the three r's was a disgrace; it was bound to prejudice him in the eyes of a lady of education.

Still, Miss Foldal was not Mrs. Sparks. Being a higher sort of lady perhaps she would be able to make allowances. Yet Henry Harper didn't want her or anyone else to make allowances. However, he could not afford to be proud.

Chance it, suddenly decreed the voice within. She won't eat you anyway.

XV

Miss Foldal, it seemed, had been trained in her youth for a board school teacher. In a brief flash of autobiography, she told Mr. Harper she had never really graduated in that trying profession, but had forsaken a career eminently honorable for the more doubtful one of the stage, and had spent the rest of her life in regretting it. But always at the back of her mind was the sense of her original calling to leaven the years of her later fall from grace.

Not only Miss Foldal, but the Sailor also was quick to see the hand of Providence, when that young man, coloring pink in the gaslight and eating his last muffin, made the admission, "that his readin' an' writin' was rusty because of havin' followed the sea." And she answered, "Reelly," in her own inimitable way, to which the Sailor rejoined, "Yes, miss, reelly, and do you fink you could recommend a night school?"

"Night school, Mr. Harper?" And this was where the higher kind of lady was able to claim superiority over Mrs. Sparks. "Please don't think me impertinent, but I would be delighted to help you all I could. You see, I was trained for a pupil teacher before I went on the stage against my father's wishes."

The heart of the Sailor leaped. In that tone of sincere kindness was the wish to be of use. If Miss Foldal had been trained as a pupil teacher, the night school in Driver's Lane might not be necessary, after all.

"What do you want to learn?" said Miss Foldal, with a display of grave interest. "I am afraid my French is rather rusty and I never had much Latin and Italian to speak of."

The Sailor was thrilled.

"Don't want no French, miss," he said, "or anythink swankin'. I just want to read the Evenin' Star an' be able to write a letter."

"Do you mean to say——" Like the lady she was, she checked herself very adroitly. "I am quite sure, Mr. Harper, that is easily arranged. How much can you read at present?"

"Nothink, miss." The plain and awful truth slipped out before he knew it had.

Miss Foldal did not flicker an eyelash. She merely said, "I'll go and see if I can find Butter's spelling-book. I ought to have it somewhere."

She went at once in search of it, and five minutes later returned in triumph.

"Do you mind not sayin' anythink about it to Ginger Jukes, miss?" the young man besought her.

"If it is your wish," said Miss Foldal, "I certainly will not."

Here was the beginning of wisdom for Henry Harper. The prophetic words of Klondyke came back to him. From the very first lesson, which he took that evening after tea before the return of Ginger from the Crown and Cushion, it seemed that reading and writing was the Sailor's true line of country. A whole new world was spread suddenly before him.

Mr. Harper was an amazingly diligent pupil. He took enormous pains. Whenever Ginger was not about, he was consolidating the knowledge he had gained, and slowly and painfully acquiring more. At Miss Foldal's suggestion, he provided himself with a slate and pencil. This enabled him to tackle a very intricate business in quite a professional manner.

It was uphill work making pothooks and hangers, having to write rows of a-b, ab, and having to make sure of his alphabet by writing it out from memory. But he did not weaken in his task. Sometimes he rose early to write, sometimes he sat up late to read; every day he received instruction of priceless value. And never once did his preceptress give herself airs, or sneer at his ignorance; above all, she did not give him away to Ginger.

These were great days. The beginning of real, definite knowledge gave Henry Harper a new power of soul. C-a-t spelled cat, d-o-g spelled dog; nine went five times into forty-five. There was no limit to these jewels of information. If he continued to work in this way, he might hope to read the Evening Star by the end of March.

In the meantime, while all these immense yet secret labors were going forward, he felt his position with Ginger was in jeopardy. Somehow as the weeks passed with the Sailor still in the second team, they did not seem to be on quite the terms that they had been. The change was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, yet it hurt the Sailor, who had a great capacity for friendship and also for hero worship. Ginger, to whom his present fabulous prosperity was due, must always be one of the gods of his idolatry.

The truth was, Ginger was one of those who rise to the top wherever they are, while Henry Harper lacked this quality. Ginger, although only in the second team at present, always talked and behaved as if he was a member of the first. There could be no doubt his honorable friendship with Dinkie Dawson—one of England's best, as the Evening Star often referred to him—was the foundation upon which he sedulously raised his social eminence.

In fact, Ginger seldom moved out of the company of the first team. He played billiards with its members at the Crown and Cushion; he played whist and cribbage with them at the same resort of fashion; they almost regarded him as one of themselves, although he had yet to win his spurs; moreover, and this was the oddest part of the whole matter, even the committee had come to look upon him favorably.

The Sailor was a little wounded now and then by Ginger's persiflage. Sometimes he held him up to ridicule in a way that hurt. He made no secret, besides, of his growing belief that there was not very much to the Sailor after all, that he was letting the grass grow under his feet, and that he was good for very little beyond getting down to a hot one. No doubt, the root of the trouble lay in the fact that during the first months of his service with the Rovers, the Sailor was less interested in football and the things that went with football than he ought to have been. He was secretly giving his nights and days to a matter which seemed of even greater importance than his bread and butter. This might easily have led to disaster had it not been for a saving clause ever present in the mind of Henry Harper.

His dream, as a shoeless and stockingless newsboy, miserably hawking his Result Edition through the mud of Blackhampton, had been that one day he would help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city. This thought had sustained him in many a desperate hour. Well, Henry Harper was something of a fatalist now. He had come very much nearer the realization of that dream than had ever seemed possible. Therefore, he was not going to let go of it. His mind was now full of other matters, but he must not lose sight of the fact that it was his bounden duty to make his dream come true.

To begin with he had to find his way into the first eleven. But the weeks went by. January came, and with it the first of the cup ties, but Henry Harper was still in the second team and likely to remain there. It was not that he did not continue to show promise. But something more than promise was needed for these gladiatorial contests when twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand persons assembled to cheer their favorites, whose names were in their mouths as household words. His time might one day come, if he kept on improving. But it would not be that year. As Ginger said, before he could play in a cup tie he would have to get a bit more pudding under his shirt.

During these critical months Henry Harper was getting other things to sustain him. Every week marked a definite advance in knowledge. Miss Foldal found him other books, and one evening at the beginning of March, he astonished her not merely by spelling crocodile, but by writing it down on his slate.

April came, and with it the end of the football season. Then arose a problem the Sailor had not foreseen. Would the Rovers take him on for another year? He was still untried in the great matches, he was still merely a youth of promise. Would he be re-engaged? It was a question for Ginger also. But as far as he was concerned, the matter did not long remain in doubt. One evening in the middle of that fateful month, he came in to supper after his usual "hundred up" at the Crown and Cushion.

"Well, Sailor," he said, a note of patronage in his tone. "I've fixed it with the kermittee. They are going to take me on for next year."

Sailor was not surprised. His faith in Ginger never wavered.

"Wish I could say the same for you, Sailor," said Ginger, condescendingly; "but the kermittee think you are not quite class."

"They are not goin' to take me on again!" said the Sailor in a hollow voice.

"No. They think you are not quite Rovers' form. They are goin' to give you back your papers."

Such a decree was like cold steel striking at the Sailor's heart. The dream of his boyhood lay shattered. And there were other consequences which just then he could not muster the power of mind to face.

XVI

Those were dark hours for Henry Harper. Not only must he yield great hopes, he must also give up a princely mode of life. Here was a disaster which must surely make an end of desires that had begun to dominate him like a passion.

In this time of crisis Ginger showed his faith. He was not a young man of emotional ardor, but the Sailor was a chap you couldn't help liking, and in his heart Ginger believed in him; therefore all the influence he could muster he brought to bear on those in high places.

This could not be done directly. Ginger was still in the second team himself, but his social qualities had given him a footing with the first. Among these, with the redoubtable Dinkie Dawson for his prop and stay, he let it be widely circulated that it would be an act of folly for the Rovers to turn down the Sailor without giving him a fair trial, because sooner or later he was bound to make good.

This view became so fashionable in the billiards' saloon at the Crown and Cushion that it came to the ears of its proprietor, who was no less a person than Mr. Augustus Higginbottom. Therefore one evening Ginger was able to hearten the Sailor in the depths of his despair.

"They are goin' to give you a trial with the first on Saturday, young feller. And just remember all depends on it. If you do well, you'll stay; if you don't, you'll have to pack your bag."

It was not very comforting for one so highly strung as the Sailor. But Ginger meant well; also he had done well; it was entirely due to him that the Sailor was to have his chance. And that chance would never have been his if Ginger's astuteness had not been very considerable.

Saturday came, and Henry Harper found himself in action with the first team at last. It was the end of the season and little importance was attached to the match, but the Sailor, as he took his place nervously in the goal, well knew that this game was to make or mar him. All was at stake. He had felt as he lay sleepless throughout the previous night that the issue would try him too highly. It was the penalty of imagination to be slain in battle before the battle came. But when the hour arrived and he stood in the goal, he was able after all to do his bit like a workman.

In his own way he was a fighter. And genius for goalkeeping stood to him, as Ginger had been confident it would. In the first minute of the game he gathered a hot one cleverly, got rid of it before the enemy could down him, and from that moment he had no further dread of losing his nerve.

"What did I tell yer, Dink?" said Ginger with an air of restrained triumph. "That young feller plays for England one o' these fine afternoons."

This was a bold statement, yet not unsanctioned in high places. That evening the Sailor was summoned to the Presence, and was offered a contract for another season with a promised rise if he continued to do well.

The months which followed meant much to Henry Harper. In many respects they were the best of his life. It was a time of dawning hope, of coming enlargement, of slow-burgeoning wisdom. During those golden summer mornings in which he wandered in the more or less vernal meadows engirdling the city, latent, unsuspected forces began to awake. Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, he craved continually. Every fresh victory won in an enchanted field was a lighted torch in the Sailor's soul.

He knew that the playing of football was but a means to an end. It gave him leisure, opportunity, wherewithal for things infinitely more important. During those months of his awakening, his desire became a passion. There were whole vast continents in the mind of man, that he could never hope to traverse. There was no limit to the vista opened up by those supreme arts of man's invention, the twin and cognate arts of reading and writing.

Knowledge is power. That statement had been made quite recently by his already well-beloved Blackhampton Evening Star. With his own eyes he had been able to read that declaration. Its truth had thrilled him.

He was making such progress now that he could read the newspaper almost as well as Ginger himself. He no longer dreaded the unmasking of his guilty secret because he no longer had one to unmask. Of course he had not Ginger's ease and facility; to tackle a leading article was a task of Hercules, but give him time and Marlow's Dictionary—Miss Foldal had marked his diligence by the gift of her own private copy—and he need not fear any foe in black and white.

September came, and with it football again. And from the first match it was seen that Sailor Harper, which was the name the whole town called him now, had taken a long stride to the front. By the end of that month his place in the first team was secure, and his fame was in the mouth of everybody.

For many years, in Mr. Augustus Higginbottom's judgment—and there could be none higher—the one need of the Blackhampton Rovers had been a goalkeeper of Class. They had one now. The Sailor was performing miracles in every match, and Ginger, his mentor, was going about with a permanent expression of, "What did I tell yer?" upon a preternaturally sharp and freckled countenance.

Ginger did not allow the grass to grow under his own feet either. He was now installed as billiards marker and general factotum at the Crown and Cushion; in fact he had already come to occupy quite a place at court. But even this was not the limit of that vaulting ambition, which was twofold: (1) to be the official right full back of the Blackhampton Rovers; (2) the acquisition of a tobacconist's shop in the vicinity of the Crown and Cushion. But the latter scheme belonged, of course, to the distant future.

Ginger was far-sighted, such had always been Dinkie Dawson's opinion, and Dinkie did not speak unless he knew. Therefore little surprise was caused by a startling rumor at the beginning of November of Ginger's engagement to Miss Maria Higginbottom. And it was coincident with Ginger's "making good" with the Rovers' first team.

It was said that the engagement had not the sanction of the chairman of the club. Nevertheless Ginger kept his place as general factotum at the Crown and Cushion; moreover, as understudy to Joe Pretyman who had been smitten with water on the knee, he stepped into the breach with such gallantry that the first part of his ambition was soon assured. By sheer fighting power, by his sovereign faculty of never knowing when he was beaten, Ginger in the first week of December was in a position that nature could hardly have meant him to grace.

"Blame my cats," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, whose thoughts were a little rueful. "That Ginger's mustard. He plays better an' better in every match."

"Yes, Gus, he does," said Mr. Satellite Albert.

On the evening of that proud day, Ginger obtained a rise in his salary. According to rumor, no sooner had it been granted than he urged Miss Maria Higginbottom to fix a date. It was said that, in spite of Ginger's recent triumphs, the lady declined the offer. Even money was freely laid, however, that within a twelvemonth Ginger would lead her to the altar.

During that glorious December, the Rovers won every match. While the Sailor continued to be a wonder among goalkeepers, Ginger quietly took his place as the authentic successor to the famous Joe Pretyman. Indeed, things were carried to such a perilous height of enthusiasm in the town of Blackhampton that two coming events were treated as accomplished facts: the Rovers would win the Cup and the Sailor would be chosen for England in the match against Scotland.

These were dream days for Henry Harper. He was performing miracles, yet compared with going aloft in a gale in latitude fifty degrees everything seemed absurdly simple. He had merely to stand on dry land, or on land dry more or less, since the ground of the Rovers was not so well drained as it might have been, in thick boots and a warm sweater, catching a football which was so much easier to seize than a ratline, and evading the oncoming forwards of the enemy who were not allowed to use their hands, let alone their knives. It was as easy as tumbling off a yard. But there was just one drawback to it, which he did not think of mentioning to anyone, not even to Miss Foldal. Every match in which he played seemed to increase a feeling of excitement he was never without.

This was queer. There was really so little to excite one who had been six years before the mast. At first he was inclined to believe it must be the presence of the crowd. But he ought to have got over that. Besides, it was not the crowd which caused the almost terrible feeling of tension that always came upon him now the night before a match.

After a great game on Christmas Eve, he was raised shoulder high by a body of admirers and carried off the field. The committee of the club marked his achievements by a substantial rise of wages and by obtaining his signature to a contract for the following year. Ginger also, who had performed wonderful deeds, was honored in a manner equally practical. That Christmas both were on the crest of the wave. But the highest pinnacle was reserved for the Sailor. It was not merely that he was tall and straight and strong as steel, that he could spring like a cat from one side of the goal to the other, or hang like a monkey from the crossbar, or fling his lithe body at the ball with calculated daring; it was perhaps his modesty which took the public captive.

It may have been this or it may not; there is so little of the corporate mind of man that can be reduced to set terms. Ginger's most partial worshiper would have had to look a long while to find modesty in the bearing of that hero, yet he was very popular also. Nothing succeeds like success, was an apothegm of the Blackhampton Evening Star. The Sailor knew that now from experience, but he was presently to know, as he had known before, that nothing fails like failure, at least in the minds of many for whom the Blackhampton Evening Star was the last word of wisdom.

XVII

"Sailor boy," said Ginger, on Christmas night, "what are you readin' now?"

"'Pickwick Papers,'" said the Sailor, trying to speak as if this was nothing out of the common.

"Potery?"

"It's by Charles Dickens," said the Sailor, with a thrill of triumph which he was quite unable to keep out of his voice.

When Ginger was out of his depth, which was not very often, he always took care not to give himself away. The only Charles Dickens with whom he was acquainted was doing great things just now at center half back for Duckingfield Britannia. But with all respect to Chas., Ginger did not believe that he was the author of the "Pickwick Papers." Therefore he made no comment. But silence did not debar him from the process of thought.

"Sailor boy," he said at last, "if you take the advice o' your father, you'll not go over-reading yerself. Them deep books what you get out o' the Free Libry is dangerous, that's my experience. Too much truck with 'em turns a chap's brain. Besides, they mean nothing when you've done."

The Sailor was less impressed than usual. But Ginger was very clear upon the point.

"I once knowed a chap as over-read hisself into quod. He was as sound a young feller as you could find in a month o' Sundays, but he took to goin' to the Free Libry to read Socialism, and that done him in. He come to think all men was equal and Mine is Thine, and that sort o' tommy, an' it took a pleadin' old Beak to set him right in the matter; at least he give him six months without the option, and even that didn't convince the youth. Some chaps take a deal o' convincin'. But the Free Libry was that chap's ruin, there's no doubt about it."

Ginger urged this view with a conviction that rather alarmed the Sailor. "Pickwick Papers," although very difficult and advanced reading, seemed harmless enough, but Ginger had such a developed mind, he appeared to know so much about everything, that the Sailor felt it would be the part of wisdom to consult Miss Foldal.

It had been her idea that he should join the Free Library. He had promptly done so, and from the perfectly amazing wealth of the world's literature garnered there had led off with the "Pickwick Papers," which he had heard was, next to the Bible and "Barriers Burned Away," the greatest book in the English language. His instinct pointed to "Barriers Burned Away"—he had read little bits of the Bible already, of which Miss Foldal had a private copy—but he felt that "Pickwick Papers" was the less difficult work of the two. For the present, therefore, he must be content with that famous book.

Miss Foldal reassured him wonderfully. She was convinced that Mr. Jukes took an extreme view. She had never read any of the works of Dickens herself, she simply couldn't abide him, he was too descriptive for her, but she was sure there was no harm in him, although she had heard that with Thackeray it was different. Not that she had read Thackeray either, as she understood that no unmarried lady under forty could read Thackeray and remain respectable.

The Sailor was strengthened by Miss Foldal's view of Dickens, but her reference to the rival and antithesis of that blameless author was in a sense unfortunate. Mr. Harper wanted to take back "Pickwick Papers" at once; he had had it three weeks and had only just reached Chapter Nine; he would exchange it for the more lurid and worldly works of the licentious Thackeray. But Miss Foldal dissuaded him. For one thing, she had the reputation of her household to consider. She had once had an aunt, an old lady very widely read and of great literary taste, who always maintained that the "Vanity Fair" of Thackeray ought to have been burned by the common hangman, and that nothing but good would have been done to the community if the author had been burned along with it. Miss Foldal allowed that her aunt had been an old lady of strong views; all the same, she was of opinion that Thorough must be Mr. Harper's motto. He had begun "Pickwick Papers," and although she allowed it was dry, he must read every word for the purpose of forming his character, before he even so much as thought about Thackeray.

"Rome was not built in a day," said Miss Foldal. "Those who pursued knowledge must not attempt to run before they could walk. Thackeray was so much more advanced than Dickens that to read the one before the other was like going to a Robertson comedy or Shakespeare before you had seen a pantomime or the Moore and Burgess Minstrels."

The ethics of Miss Foldal were a little too much for the Sailor. But one fact was clear. For once Ginger was wrong: no possible harm could come of reading Charles Dickens.

Thus Henry Harper was able to continue his studies in ease of mind. And at the beck of ambition one thing led to another in the most surprising way. His appetite for knowledge grew on what it fed. Reading was only one branch; there was the writing, also the ciphering. The latter art was not really essential. It was rather a side-dish, and hors-d'oeuvre—Miss Foldal's private word—but it was also very useful, and in a manner of speaking you could not lay claim to the education of a gentleman without it.

The Sailor did not at present aspire to a liberal education, but he remembered that Klondyke had always set great store by ciphering and had taught him to count up to a hundred. It was due perhaps to that immortal memory rather than to Miss Foldal's somewhat fanciful and romantic attitude towards the supremely difficult science of numbers that Henry Harper persevered with the multiplication table. At first, however, the difficulties were great. But his grit was wonderful. Early in the winter mornings, while Ginger was still abed, and Miss Foldal also, he would come downstairs, light the gas in the sitting-room, put on his overcoat and sit down to three hours' solid study of writing and arithmetic. Moreover, he burned the midnight oil. Sometimes with the aid of Marlow's Dictionary, he read the "Pickwick Papers" far into the night, with a little of the Bible for a change, or the Blackhampton Evening Star. And if he had not to be on duty with the club, he would spend all his time in these exacting occupations.

In the meantime, the Blackhampton Rovers were making history. They were an old established club; for many years they had had one of the best teams in the country, and although on two occasions they had been in the semi-final round for the Cup, they had never got beyond that critical stage; therefore the long coveted trophy had not yet been seen in the city of Blackhampton.

However, the Cup was coming to Blackhampton this year, said the experts in football with whom the town was filled. The Rovers had not lost a match since September 12. They had won three cup ties already, beating on each occasion a redoubtable foe, of whom one was that ancient and honorable enemy, the Villa. One more victory and the Rovers would be in the semi-final again.

As far as local knowledge could discern there was none to thwart the Rovers now. In the words of Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, every man was a trier, the whole team was the goods. They had the best goalkeeper in England, and Ginger, in whom he had never really believed, had turned out mustard. The proprietor of the Crown and Cushion, with that largeness of mind which is not afraid to change its opinions, expressed himself thus a few minutes before closing time in the private bar when he took "a drop of summat" to stimulate the parts of speech and the powers of reason.

The Rovers could not fail to win the Cup. According to rumor, after the triumph over the Villa, they were freely backed. This may have been the case or it may not. But no body of sportsmen could have been more confident than the thirty thousand odd who paid their shillings and their sixpences with heroic regularity, who followed the fortunes of the Rovers in victory or defeat.

For this noble body of partisans there was one authentic hero now. Dinkie Dawson was class, Erb Mullins was a good un, Mac was as good a one as ever came over the Border, Ginger was a terror for his size and never knew when he was beat, but it was the Sailor in goal who caught and held every eye. There was magic in all the Sailor did and the way he did it, which belonged to no one else, which was his own inimitable gift.

Sailor Harper was the idol of the town. He might have married almost any girl in it. People turned round to look at him as he walked over the canal bridge towards the market place. Even old ladies of the most fearless and terrific virtue seemed involuntarily to give the glad eye to the fine-looking lad "with all the oceans of the world in his face," as a local poet said in the Evening Star, when he got into a tram or a bus. If the Sailor had not been the soul of modesty, he would have been completely spoiled by the public homage during these crowded and glorious weeks.

It was a rare time for Blackhampton, a rare time for the Rovers, a rare time for Henry Harper. The very air of the smoke-laden and unlovely town seemed vibrant with emotion. A surge of romance had entered his heart. The wild dream of his newsboy days was coming true. He was going to help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city. Such a thought made even the "Pickwick Papers," now Chapter Twenty-three, seem uninspired. He had not ventured on Shakespeare; he was not ripe for it yet, said Miss Foldal. Shakespeare was poetry, and the crown of all wisdom, the greatest man that ever lived with one exception, but the time would come even for the Bard of Avon. On the night the Rovers brought home the Cup, Miss Foldal volunteered a promise to read aloud "Romeo and Juliet," the finest play ever written by Shakespeare, in which she herself had once appeared at the Blackhampton Lyceum, although that was a long time ago.

However, there the promise was. But when it came to the ears of Ginger he expressed himself as thoroughly disgusted.

"Keep your eyeballs skinned, young feller," said that misogynist. "That's the advice of your father. She's after your four pound a week. Take care you are not nabbed. You ain't safe with old Tidde-fol-lol these days, you ain't reelly."

The Sailor was hurt by such reflections on one to whom he owed much. It is true that a recent episode after supper in the passage had rather disconcerted him, but it would be easy to make too much of it, as he was never quite sure whether Miss Foldal did or did not intend to kiss him, even if she put her arms round his neck. Also he had once seen her take a bottle of gin to her bedroom, but he was much too loyal to mention to Ginger either of these matters; and, after all, what were these things in comparison with her elegance and her refinement, her knowledge of Shakespeare and the human heart?

XVIII

Great was the excitement in the town when the Evening Star brought out a special edition with the news that the Rovers had to play Duckingfield Britannia in the fourth round of the Cup.

Duckingfield was the center of a mining district about fifteen miles away, and the rivalry between the Britannia and the Rovers was terrific. In the mind of any true Blackhamptonian there was never any question as to their respective merits. The Rovers had forgotten more about football than the Britannia would ever know. One was quite an upstart club; the other, as all the world knew, went back into the primal dawn of football history. The Rovers practiced the science and culture of the game; the Britannia relied on brute force and adjectival ignorance.

Still, Duckingfield Britannia were doughty foes, and although the Rovers had no need to fear anyone, the feeling at the Crown and Cushion was that they rather wished they had not to play them. The truth was, in their battles with these upstarts, the Rovers never seemed able to live up to their reputation. Whether they met at Duckingfield or at Blackhampton, and in no matter what circumstances, the Rovers invariably got the worst of the deal. This was odd, because the Rovers were much the superior team in every way, always had been, always would be. They didn't know how to play football at Duckingfield, whereas Blackhampton was the home of the game.

Moreover, there was one historic meeting between these neighbors which was always a causa foederis at any gathering of their partisans. It was a certain match on neutral ground in which they met in the semi-final for the Cup, when to the utter confusion and bewilderment of all the best judges, the Rovers, who in their own opinion had really won the Cup already, were beaten four goals to nothing. It is true that a snowstorm raged throughout the match, and to this fact the defeat of the Rovers was always ascribed by the lovers of pure football. It could never be accounted for on any other hypothesis. No comparison of the real merits of the teams was possible, any more than it was possible to compare the towns whence they sprang. You could not mention a town like Duckingfield in the same breath as a town like Blackhampton; to speak of the Britannia being the equal of the Rovers merely betrayed a fundamental ignorance of what you were talking about.

All the same the feeling in the private bar of the Crown and Cushion on the night of the announcement that the Rovers and the Britannia must meet once more in a cup tie was one of anxiety. It had long been felt in Blackhampton that the fates never played quite fairly in the matter of Duckingfield Britannia. No reasonable person outside the latter miserable place ever questioned the Rovers' immense superiority, but there was no glossing over the fact that a clash of arms with these rude and unpolished foemen ended invariably in darkness and eclipse. "It's what I always say," Mr. August Higginbottom would affirm on these tragic occasions, "they don't know how to play footba' at Duckingfill. Bull-fighting's their game. Brute force and—hignorance, that's all there is to it."

For ten days nothing was talked of in Blackhampton but the coming battle. But there could be only one result. Britannia was bound to be wiped off the face of the earth. Still, the whole town would breathe more freely on Saturday evening, when this operation had been performed and the Rovers were safely in the semi-final round.

On the eve of the match, it was whispered all over Blackhampton that big money was on. The confidence of the enemy was overweening, ridiculous, pathetic; partisans of the Britannia were said to be backing their favorites for unheard-of sums. "Rovers would be all right if they had a front parlor to play in," was a favorite axiom of these unpolished foemen. "Britannia plays footba'. They don't play hunt-the-slipper nor kiss-in-the-ring."

The great day dawned. A chill February dawn it was. Queerly excited by the coming match, Henry Harper had hardly closed his eyes throughout the previous night. He knew that wonders were expected of him; there seemed no reason, under Providence, why he should not perform them; in match after match, he had gone from strength to strength; yet on the eve he hardly slept.

He had not been sleeping for some little time now. He had paid no heed to the warnings of Ginger, who was quite sure "he was over-reading hisself," but he didn't believe this was the case. No doubt he had studied hard; his thirst for knowledge grew in spite of the copious draughts with which he tried to quench it. Only too often before a match, he felt nervous, overstrung, but it did not occur to him that he was on the verge of disaster.

On the morning of a never-to-be-forgotten day, the Sailor rose before it was light to practice writing and to study arithmetic—he was as far as vulgar fractions now. He sat in an overcoat in a fireless sitting-room for three hours before breakfast, and continued his labors for several hours afterwards. Then, after a light luncheon, he walked with Ginger to the ground.

The famous field of the Rovers was called Gamble's Pleasance. History has not determined the source of its name. Extrinsically it was hard to justify. Only one tree was visible, and not a single blade of grass. It was surrounded on four sides by huge roofed structures of wood and iron, towering tier upon tier; it had capacity for fifty thousand people. When Ginger and the Sailor came on the scene, these had taken up their places already, the gates had been closed, and disappointed enthusiasts were turning away by the hundred. There was not room in Gamble's Pleasance for another human being.

It was a scene truly remarkable that met the eyes of Ginger and the Sailor. Tier upon tier, wall upon wall of solid humanity rose to the sky. The Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band fought nobly but in vain against fifty thousand larynxes, and mounted police did their best to prevent their owners bursting through the barriers to the field of play.

The majority were strong partisans of the Rovers and wore favors of chocolate and blue. But there had been an invasion of the Huns. Barbarians from the neighboring town of Duckingfield could be picked out at a glance. One and all wore aggressively checked cloth caps, on which a red-and-white card was pinned bearing the legend, "Play up, Britannia."

The supporters of that upstart club were massed in solid phalanxes about the scene of action. They waved red-and-white banners, they shook rattles, they discoursed the strains of "Rule, Britannia" on trumpets and mouth-organs, they let off fireworks, and far worse than all this, they indulged in ribald criticism of their distinguished opponents' style of play. "They were goin' to mop the floor with 'em as usual." The consequence was hand-to-hand conflicts became general all over the ground between the dignified supporters of True Football, and these Visigoths who were ignorant of that godlike science. These encounters pleasantly assisted the efforts of the mounted police and the Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band to beguile the fleeting minutes until the combatants appeared on the field of honor.

"Yer talk about yer Sailor," said a red-and-white-rosetted warrior with a rattle in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. "We'll give him Sailor. Rovers can swank, but they can't play footba'."

"Villa didn't think so, anyway," said another sportsman, who flaunted a chocolate-and-blue rose in his buttonhole without intending any affront to horticulture.

"Villa," said the Duckingfield barbarian. "Who's Villa! Play oop, Britann-yah!" He then proceeded to render the slogan of Britannia on the mouth-organ, until some seething superpatriot hit him on the head from behind with a rattle.

In the midst of the "scrap" that followed this graceful rebuke, which two unmounted members of the Blackhampton Constabulary regarded from a strategic distance with the utmost detachment, a cry of "'Ere they come!" was loosed from at least thirty-five thousand throats, and such a roar rent the heavens as must have disturbed Zeus considerably just as he was settling down for the afternoon.

"Play up, Rovers!"

Blackhampton might well be proud of the eleven wearers of the chocolate and blue. A finer-looking set of warriors would have been hard to find. And it did not lessen the pride of their friends that among the eleven only the goalkeeper could claim to be representing the place of his birth.

"Play up, Sailor!"

The slender, handsome boy, looking rather fine-drawn, but with something of the turn of limb of a thoroughbred racehorse, came into the goal and was duly greeted by his admirers.

"'E plays for England," proclaimed one of these.

"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a mouth-organ.

"Play up, Dink!"

The great Dinkie, side-stepping with the loose-limbed elegance of a ragtime dancer, looked as smart as paint.

"There's not a better inside left playing footba'," said another enthusiast, looking round for contradiction.

"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a rattle.

"Play up, Ginger!"

Ginger, with head of flame, looking more bow-legged, prick-eared and pugnacious than ever, was a veritable pocket edition of the "Fighting Temeraire."

"'E's a daisy, ain't 'e?" said the enthusiast.

"I don't think," quoth the Visigoth.

Another roar was loosed, this time by fifteen thousand Duckingfield larynxes.

"'Ere they are. Play oop, Britann-yah. Play oop, me little lads."

All this was merely the prelude to such a game as never was seen on Gamble's Pleasance. The Rovers were on the crest of the wave. They had not lost a match since September 12, and this day was Saturday, February 20. They were proud and confident, they were playing on their own ground in the presence of their friends, and they had a very long score to settle with Duckingfield Britannia.

And yet deep in the hearts of the wearers of the chocolate and blue was the sense of fate. And it is a stronger thing than any that has yet existed in the soul of man. Fought they never so fiercely, under no matter what conditions, whenever the haughty Rovers met these unpolished foemen they had invariably to bite the dust or the mud, as the case might be.

The pace was a corker to start with. It was as if twenty-two parti-colored tigers had been suddenly let loose. But it was not football that was played. Britannia was not capable of expounding the noble science as it was understood by the polished and urbane Rovers of Blackhampton.

"Goin' to be a dog-fight as usual," proclaimed Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, who was seated in the exact center of the members' stand.

This grim remark was a concession to the fact that the Britannia was already fiercely attacking the Rovers' goal, and that Ginger, under great pressure, had been compelled to give a corner kick.

From the word "go" it was a terrific set-to. Up and down, down and up, ding dong, hammer and tongs, east, west, north and south of that turfless, sand-strewn area surged the tide of battle. Every yard of ground was yielded at the point of death; at least so it seemed to fifty thousand spectators and six mounted constables who could hardly breathe for excitement.

"Durn me, if that Ginger ain't top weight," hoarsely remarked the chairman of the club to Mr. Satellite Albert.

Ginger had just laid out the center forward of the enemy when a goal seemed sure. The advantage of the proceeding was twofold. In the first place, the Rovers' citadel was still uncaptured, in spite of the fact that thirty-five thousand persons had as good as yielded it to the enemy, fifteen thousand of whom were already hooting with delight at receiving it; while in the second place, Ginger's fellow warriors, who were gasping and holding their sides, were provided with a "breather."

"If Britannia would only play footba', it wouldn't matter," roared the Rovers' chairman in a bull's voice above the din.

Five minutes' grace, the fruit of Ginger's timely action, was much appreciated by his comrades, who were able to recover their wind while the enemy's center forward, supine and attended by the club trainer with a sponge and a cordial, recovered his. Nevertheless, the referee, a cock-sparrow in knickerbockers, who tried to spoil a fine game by stopping it without visible reason for doing so, felt he could do no less than caution Ginger for dangerous play.

"Turn him off." Fifteen thousand Duckingfielders besought the referee. "Turn him off. Dirty dog!"

"Good old Ginger! Played, Ginger! Good on yer, Ginger!" proclaimed thirty-five thousand stalwart Blackhamptonians.

Had Ginger received marching orders thirty-five thousand Blackhamptonians would know the reason why.

"Don't know what footba' is at Duckingfill," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, glaring around with a truculence awful to behold.

But they were at it again. Quarter was neither asked nor given. Duckingfield Britannia couldn't play for rock cakes, they couldn't play for toffee and bananas, but had not the Sailor in goal performed one of his miracles just before the referee blew his whistle for half time, the Rovers would have been a goal down at that sorely needed interval.

As it was, when, at the end of forty-five minutes' pounding, the twenty-two warriors limped off the ground to the strain of "Hearts of Oak," rendered with extraordinary vehemence by the Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band, no goal had been scored, and fifty thousand persons and six mounted policemen appeared for the time being reasonably content.

"Can't call it footba', but you mark my words, Albert, it is goin' to be a hell of a second half."

Mr. Satellite Albert could only faintly concur with the chairman of the club. He had a rather weak heart.

XIX

In the Rovers' dressing-room the trainer, an obese individual in a dirty cloth cap and dirtier sweater, handed round a plate of sliced lemons to the team. But, white as a ghost, sat the Sailor in a corner apart from the rest. He realized that the match was only half over, and with all his soul he wished it at an end. He was in no mood for sucking lemons just now. The hand of fate was upon him.

Everything seemed to be going round. He was so oddly and queerly excited that he could hardly see. How in the world he had stopped that shot and got rid of the ball with two Britannias literally hurling themselves upon him, he would never know. But he understood dimly, as he sat chin in hand on the farthest bench by the washing basins, that anything might happen before the match was over. The truth was, and he simply dared not face it, this terrific battle of giants was a bit too much for him. No, he dared not face that thought, he, whose dream, whose imperial destiny it was to bring the Cup for the first time to his native city.

"Buck up, Sailor boy."

Ginger, the greatest hero of them all, had laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

"Buck up, Sailor boy. You'll never stop a better nor that one. We've got 'em boiled."

Mr. Augustus Higginbottom appeared in the dressing-room, fur coat, chocolate waistcoat, blue tie, spats, watch-chain and all. His face had a grim and dour expression.

"Me lads," said he, "if ye can make a draw on it there's two pound apiece for ye. And if ye can win there's four. Understand?"

They all understood but Sailor. At that moment he could neither hear nor see the chairman of the committee. The only person he could see was a certain young Arris in a certain tree, and all he knew was that a decree of inexorable fate compelled him to stand in the shadow of that tree for forty-five minutes by the clock, with the gaze of fifty thousand people and six mounted policemen centered upon him.

The second half of the match began with a sensation. In the very first minute, the dauntless Ginger checked a rush by the enemy's left, gave the ball a mighty thump with his good right boot, and more by luck than anything it fell at the feet of Dinkie Dawson. And he, as all the world knew, was, on his day and in his hour, a genius. He trapped the ball, he diddled and dodged, he pretended to pass but he didn't. He merely kept straight on, yet feinting now to the right and now to the left of him. Britannia's center half back, a bullet-headed son of Hibernia, challenged him ruthlessly, but at the psychological instant Dinkie side-stepped in a way he had, and he of the bullet head barged fathoms deep into the mud of Gamble's Pleasance. Britannia's left full back now came up to see what was the matter, a singularly ill-advised proceeding; he ought to have waited for trouble instead of going to look for it was the unanimous opinion of fifteen thousand Duckingfielders, who shrieked with dismay as Dinkie and the ball went past the ill-advised one before you could say "knife." And then it was that fifty thousand persons and six mounted policemen suddenly grew alive to an intensely critical situation.

It was this. Only one thing under Providence could now save Britannia's citadel. A very fine and notable thing it was, no less than the agile yet majestic goalkeeper, Alexander MacFadyen by name, late of Glasgow Caledonians, and many times an international player. There was no better in the world to cope with such a titanic situation, but in times like these Dinkie Dawson was not as other men.

The heroic Scot knew that, but he didn't flinch or turn a hair. All the same, he must not go to Dinkie, as his puir fulish Saxon comrade had; Dinkie must come to him. "Yes, ma laddie," said the dour visage of Alexander MacFadyen, "I'll be waitin' for ye, I'm thinkin'."

It was such a moment as no pen—leaving out Shakespeare and the football reporter for the Evening Star—could do justice to. "I'm waitin' for ye, Dinkie, ma laddie," said Alexander MacFadyen, with Dinkie coming on and on, his dainty feet twinkling to the tunes of faërie. Hardly so much as the horse of a mounted policeman ventured to breathe. For a fraction of an instant, the two warriors eyed each other like tiger-cats about to spring. Crash! It was sheer inspiration. Dinkie had drawn a bow at a venture. The ball lay in the corner of the goal net, the citadel was captured, Britannia's flag was down.

It was, undoubtedly, in the opinion of thirty-five thousand souls the finest goal seen on Gamble's Pleasance within the memory of man. In the considered judgment of the other fifteen thousand it was such a wicked fluke that a well contested game was covered with ridicule.

Over the scene that followed it is kind to draw the veil. People of all ages and both sexes made themselves so indescribably ridiculous that Zeus of the Bright Sky, in dudgeon no doubt for the ruin of his afternoon, drew down the blinds and sought to cool their courage with one of his honest showers of rain.

It seemed all over, bar the shouting. There was only twenty minutes to play. The Rovers were still leading one goal to nothing, the attacks of the Britannia were being shattered against the rock of an impregnable defense, when a string of tragic incidents befell which turned a sure triumph into dire disaster.

Some maintain it was the rain alone which caused the débâcle. None can deny that the ball was greased by Jupiter's shower. But even that fact cannot cover all that happened. As for the other sinister explanation, which is firmly believed at Blackhampton to this day, it was never accepted by the fellow players of him who gave away the match.

Fate was at the root of the tragedy. There were twenty minutes to play, the Rovers were leading one to nothing, and the Sailor had to take a free kick from goal. He could do this at his leisure; according to the laws of the game no opponent was allowed to approach. But as he placed the ball for the kick, he somehow failed to notice in the gathering gloom that Ginger was right in the line of fire. Of course he ought to have done so. Yet so great was his excitement now that he did not know what he was doing. He took the kick; the ball struck Ginger full in the middle of the back and rebounded through the goal.

It was growing so dark that at first not a soul realized what had happened. By the time the goalkeeper, like a man in a dream, had retrieved the ball from the net, the awful truth was known. The Sailor had given away the match.

Henry Harper never forgot to his dying day the look in the eyes of Ginger. In the presence of their grim reproach his one desire was for the earth to open and swallow him.

Pandemonium had been unchained, but the Sailor heard it not, as he leaned against the goalpost feeling like a man in a nightmare. At that moment his whole being was dominated by a single thought. He had given away the match.

Strictly speaking, all was not yet lost. But the Sailor was completely unnerved by his crime, and Ginger's eyes were haunting him. As he leaned against the post, the farthest from the tree sacred to the memory of young Arris, he knew that if anything came to him now, he would not be able to stop it.

Another shot came. It was inevitable. The gift of the gods was as wine in the veins of Duckingfield Britannia. They were tigers again: eleven parti-colored tigers. But the second shot was just a slow trickling affair that any goalkeeper in his senses ought to have been able to deal with. But the Sailor bungled it miserably. He didn't know how, he didn't know why, but the ball wriggled slowly out of his hands through the goal, and the match was lost beyond hope of recovery.

There could be no thought now of the Cup coming to Blackhampton. He daren't look at Ginger. He tried not to hear, he tried not to see. It must all be a hideous dream. But there to the left was the historic tree simply alive with young Arrises cursing and scorning him. Suddenly there was a mighty surge by the crowd in the farthest corner of the ground, which called for all the address of the mounted police to restrain.

"Sailor, you've sold the match."

The ugly words were being bellowed at him out of the night. He could hear the loud and deep curses of the Rovers' partisans; he imagined he could see their fists being shaken at him. He wished he was dead, but he had to stand there another twelve minutes exposed to the public ignominy.

In that twelve minutes, Duckingfield Britannia scored four goals more. All was darkness and eclipse. The Rovers, noble warriors as they were, had done all that mortal men could do; in the case of the heroic Ginger, they might even be said to have done a little more. But fate was too much for them. The last line of defense, on which all depended, had played them false. The Sailor muddled hopelessly everything that came to him now. The end of the game was not merely a defeat for the Rovers, it was a disaster, a rout.

The referee blew his whistle for the last time, and Act One of the tragedy was at an end. But its termination was merely the signal for Act Two to begin. The crowd, in a frenzy of rage, surged over the ground. "Sailor's sold the match," was the cry of the angry thousands.

The oncoming hordes had no terrors for Henry Harper. Let them do with him as they liked. Death would have been more than welcome as he leaned against the goalpost, not seeking to escape the tender mercies of the mob.

It was Ginger who realized the danger.

"Dink," he called hoarsely, "Mac, Peter, Joe, they are coming for Sailor. They'll kill him if they catch holt on him."

It was true. And it seemed that the sternest fight of that terrific day was yet to be. An angry mob is not responsible for its actions. There was a fierce set-to between a handful of good men, with help from six mounted constables, and many hundreds bereft by an excitement which at that moment made them little better than savages.

"Scrag 'im! Scrag 'im!"

Henry Harper could hear their voices all about him, but little he cared. Indeed they were almost pleasant to his ears. Again it was a case of hard pounding, with the police bearing a gallant part, and the goalkeeper's escort taking blows and freely returning them.

There was a vision in the mind of Henry Harper which he never forgot, of the blood streaming down the face of Ginger as he dealt out blows to the right and to the left of him. He never forgot the look on the face of Dinkie as they kept driving on and driving home.

Times and again it seemed as if the Rovers' partisans must tear their late hero in pieces. But his escort got him somehow to the dressing-room, and a strong force of the Blackhampton Constabulary watched over it for a solid hour by the pavilion clock. By that time, the crowd had dispersed, the ground was clear, and Henry Harper was able to go home.

XX

"You are late for your tea, Mr. Harper," said Miss Foldal. "It's twenty past seven. It will be supper time soon."

The Sailor apologized in his gentle, rather childlike way.

"Do you know where Ginger Jukes is, miss?" he asked, in a queer voice.

"He came in for his tea and then went out again," said Miss Foldal, regulating her tone with care.

She had been told already by the Evening Star that the Rovers, after leading by a goal within twenty minutes of the end of the game, had suffered a crushing and incomprehensible defeat, that the crowd had made an infuriated attack on Harper, the goalkeeper, and in the blank space reserved for the latest news, it said that in deference to public feeling, the committee of the club had decided to hold an inquiry into his conduct.

Miss Foldal was far too discreet to refer to the match. But if ever she had seen tragedy in a human countenance, it was now visible in the face of this young man. She poured out a cup of tea for him, which he declined. Then he said, in that queer voice which did not seem to belong to him, that he would not be in need of supper.

"If you want my opinion, Mr. Harper," said Miss Foldal, "you have been working too hard. I really think the best thing for you is bed."

The young man stood white as a sheet with a face not pleasant to look upon.

"I do reelly. Go to bed now, and I'll bring you a basin of gruel with a little something in it."

A basin of gruel with a little something in it was Miss Foldal's specific for all the ills to which flesh is heir. Mention of it was clear proof that Mr. Harper's present condition gave cause for anxiety.

"I don't want nothing, miss," said the young man, in a voice quite unlike his own. "It's very kind of you, but the only thing I want just now is to be let be."

Had Mr. Jukes or any of her other lodgers made that speech it would have seemed uncivil, but Miss Foldal knew that Mr. Harper was incapable of any kind of intentional rudeness. He was as gentle as a child. Perhaps that was why the look now in his eyes hurt her so much.

Without saying anything else, the young man went up to his bedroom.

Time passed. The supper hour came and went. Mr. Jukes did not return and Mr. Harper did not come down again. But it was this latter fact that disconcerted the landlady. She could not get the look of those eyes out of her brain. Only once had she seen such a look in the eyes of any human being, and that was in those of her Uncle Frederick just before he destroyed himself.

Nine struck. There was no sound from the room above. Miss Foldal grew horribly afraid. Memories of her Uncle Frederick had descended very grimly upon her.

Perhaps Mr. Harper had gone to bed. She hoped and believed that he had. And yet she could not be sure. It was her duty to go up to his room and inquire. But it was too much for her nerves to be quite alone in the house. Ethel, the maid-servant, had gone out shopping as it was Saturday night, and Mr. Jukes had not yet come in for his supper.

Miss Foldal was not a brave woman. Her deepest instinct was against going up those stairs. It was much to her credit that she did go up at a quarter past nine. The door of Mr. Harper's room was shut, but a light was coming from under it.

She knocked so timidly that a mouse would not have heard her.

No answer.

She knocked again, a little louder, as she imagined, but no louder in reality.

Still no answer.

"It is exactly as I feared." Miss Foldal began to shake, and the spirit of her Uncle Frederick crept out from under the door.

She wanted to scream; indeed, she was about to act in this futile manner, when it suddenly occurred to her that screaming would be no use whatever. Far wiser to open the door, if only out of deference to the manes of her uncle, whose end had taught her that suicide was not such a terrible thing after all.

At last Miss Foldal opened the door of the bedroom. A great surprise was in store, but it was not of the kind that had been provided by her Uncle Frederick.

Mr. Harper, wearing his overcoat and cap, was in the act of strapping together a bag full of clothes. The relief of Miss Foldal was great; at the same time a quaver in her voice showed that she was full of anxiety.

"Why, Mr. Harper, you are never going away?"

"Yes, miss."

"Without your supper?"

"Yes, miss."

"Mr. Harper, wherever are you going to?"

"Dunno, miss." The gentle voice had a stab in it for the woman's heart of his landlady. "'Ere's my board and lodging, miss." He took a sovereign from his pocket, and put it in her hand. "I'll be very sorry to go. I'm thinking I'll never 'ave another 'ome like this."

Miss Foldal thought so too. Somehow she was not the least ashamed of the sudden tears which sprang into her eyes. There was some high instinct in her, in spite of her rather battered and war-worn appearance, which seemed to urge her to protect him.

"I cannot hear of you going away like this, Mr. Harper, not at this time of night and without your supper, I cannot reelly."

It was vain, however, of Miss Foldal to protest. Moreover, she knew it was vain. There was a look in Mr. Harper's face that all the Miss Foldals in the world could not have coped with.

"Well, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry," was all she could gasp, and then he was gone.

XXI

Bag in hand he entered the February night. As he turned up the collar of his overcoat his excitement crystallized into a definite thought. Whatever happened he must not meet Ginger.

He didn't know where he was going; he had neither purpose nor plan; his only guide was a vague desire to get a long way from Blackhampton in a short space of time.

In obedience to this instinct, he passed over the canal bridge, the main highway to the center of the city, turned down several byways in order to avoid the Crown and Cushion, threaded a path through a maze of slums and alleys, and emerged at last, almost without knowing it, within twenty yards of Blackhampton Central Station.

This seemed a special act of Providence; and subsequent events confirmed Henry Harper in that view. He walked through the station booking-hall, yet without taking a ticket, since in a dim way he felt it was not wise to do so before you have given the least thought to where you are going.

A train was standing in the station. The porters were closing the doors, the guard had taken out his whistle.

"Jump in, sir, we're off."

Henry Harper pitched head foremost into a first non-smoker, his bag was pitched in after him, the door was slammed, and the train was already passing through the long tunnel at the end of the station before he was able to realize what had happened.

An old lady was the only other occupant of the compartment. She was a stern looking dame, with a magnificent fur cloak, a dominant nose, fearless eyes, and a large black hat with plenty of trimming but without feathers.

It was clear from the demeanor of the old lady that she was inclined to regard the intruder with disfavor. However, as she was a person not without consequence in her own small world, this was her fixed attitude of mind in regard to the vast majority of her fellow creatures. But she never allowed herself to be afraid of them, partly out of pride, also because it was good for the character. All the same, a nature less powerful might easily have pulled the cord and communicated with the guard, such was the look of wildness in the eyes of her fellow traveler. Moreover, he had fallen into her lap, and had trodden on her foot rather severely, and she was not sure that he had apologized.

Between Duckingfield Junction and High Moreton she became involved in quite a train of speculations. In the first place, he was obviously not a gentleman. That was her habitual jumping-off point in her survey of the human male. In fact, she would have ignored his existence had it been possible to do so. But her foot had suffered so much from his clumsiness that she was not able to put him out of her mind. Besides, she was a sharp and quizzical old thing, and from the height of her own self-consequence she stole glances at him that were a nice mingling of caution and truculence. It was an honest, open, unusual face, there was that to be said for it. The behavior, the manner, and the portmanteau marked H.H. were unconventional, to say the least; there was an absence of gloves, but the eyes were remarkable. Probably a young poet on his way to Oxford for the week-end. Although they confessed to two of these unfortunate persons in her own family, it was an article of her faith that a poet was never a gentleman.

Somehow the young man in the corner interested the old lady so much that when the last of the tunnels was safely passed, a temperament by nature adventurous as became three grandsons in the Household Cavalry led her to study him at closer quarters.

"Do you mind having the window down a little?"

"No, lady."

He sprang to his feet and lowered the window, and the old lady, pitying herself profoundly that she could ever have thought about him at all, settled herself in her corner and was very soon asleep.

This cynical proceeding had no effect upon the young man opposite. As far as he was concerned she did not exist, any more than he now existed for her; moreover, she never had existed for him, therefore the balance of indifference was in his favor.

The Sailor's one preoccupation, as the long and slow succession of stations passed, was the face of Ginger. It was gazing through the window at him out of the intense darkness of the night. And what a face it was, with the blood streaming down it and a look in the eyes he would never forget.

Where was he going? He didn't know and he didn't care, if only it was far enough from Blackhampton. Presently he began to feel cold and hungry and horribly lonely. Now he was beginning to realize that Ginger and Miss Foldal and Dinkie and the Rovers were things of the past, his misery grew more than he could bear. His dream was shattered! He would never bring the Cup to Blackhampton. And there was the face of Ginger looking in at the window, and he nearly woke the old lady by jumping up with a cry of agony.

There was nothing left for him now but to go on into unending night. He was moving out of an unspeakable past into a future of panic and emptiness. And then he tried to sleep, but strange and awful thoughts prevented him. The old lady awoke with a start, only to find that her feet were cold in spite of their hot water bottle, which was also cold, and was great negligence on the part of the railway company. Still, she hoped to be at the end of her journey soon. In that reflection the old lady was more fortunate than her fellow traveler, who had no such hope to console him.

XXII

The train went on and on. Its stoppings and startings were endless; the night grew very cold; the old lady, gathering her fur cloak around her, resettled herself in her corner and slept again. The chill in the heart of the Sailor was now a deadly thing. Repose for him was out of the question. Red and white striped phantoms converged upon him through the gloom; tier upon tier of massed humanity rose shrieking to the sky; but there was only one face that he could recognize, and it was a face he would never forget.

At last the Sailor dozed a little. And then the train stopped once more, and an official of the railway company entered the carriage with a demand for tickets. The old lady found hers without difficulty, but the young man opposite had no ticket, it appeared. Also his behavior was so odd that at first the official seemed to think he was drunk. He had no idea of where he was going. But the next station, it seemed, was Marylebone, and that was as far as he could go.

While the old lady watched from her corner grimly, the official was able to gather that this unsatisfactory traveler had come from Blackhampton, which, as he had been so unwise as to travel first class, meant a sovereign in coin of the realm.

The traveler was able to produce a sovereign from a belt which he wore round his waist—a proceeding which seemed to stimulate the curiosity of his fellow traveler in the highest degree—and paid it over without a murmur. The official wrote out a receipt with an absurd stump of pencil.

"Thank you, mister," said the young man.

The train moved on.

A few minutes later it had come to the end of a long and wearisome journey. The old lady was the first to leave the carriage. She was assisted in doing so by the ministrations of a very tall and dignified footman.

As the Sailor stepped to the platform, bag in hand, there was a great clock straight before him pointing to the hour of midnight. Where was he? He had never heard of Marylebone. It might be England, it might be Scotland; in his present state of mind it might be anywhere.

"Keb, sir?" The inquiry surged all round him, but the Sailor did not want a cab.

His first feeling as he stood on the platform of that immense station was one of sheer bewilderment. He didn't know where he was, he had nowhere to go, he had no plans. An intense loneliness came over him again. Soon, however, it was merged in the exhilaration of the atmosphere around him. This was a different place from Blackhampton; it was larger, more vital, more mysterious.

As he walked slowly down the platform the importance of everything seemed to increase. He would have to think things out a bit, although just now any kind of thinking was torment.

He had learned much during his sixteen months at Blackhampton, not only in regard to the world in which he lived, but also—and as he moved down the platform with his bag the thought gave him a thrill of joy—to read and write. He felt these things, bought and paid for at a heavy cost, were so infinitely precious that he need not fear the future.

Straight before his eyes was the legend, "Cloak Room." Sixteen months ago it would have been High Dutch. But the new knowledge told him it was the place to leave your bag. Accordingly, he went and left it, paid his twopence, and put the ticket in exchange carefully in his belt, where nineteen sovereigns and twelve half-sovereigns were secure.

He had learned the meaning of money during his six years at sea. Perhaps it was the sight of so much and the knowledge of its value that gave him a thrill of power as he passed out of the station into the wide, peopled immensity of this unknown land. There was a policeman standing on an island in the middle of the road, and the time had long passed since those grim days when he would have been as likely to fly to the moon as to address a question to the police.

"What place is this, mister?"

"Marylebone Road."

The information did not seem very valuable. Still, the policeman's tone implied that it might be. As the Sailor stood in the middle of the road he was suddenly comforted by the sight of manna in the wilderness. Across the way was a coffee stall. Such a bright vision told him how sore was his need.

All the same he was not hungry. He drank two cups of coffee, but he was too excited to eat. That was odd, because there was nothing to excite him. But when he turned away from the stall and started to walk he didn't know where, something curious, and terrible had begun again to lay hold of his brain. Nevertheless, he went on and on through streets interminable, fully determined to free himself of that eerie, horrible feeling.

Had it not been for the face of Ginger perhaps all would have been well. But it was lurking everywhere amid the gloom and byways of the night. The place he was in was endless; it was a waste of bricks and mortar. Even Liverpool and the waterfront at Frisco could not compare with it. Then it suddenly came upon him that he was a guy. This place was London. It was the only place it could be.

There was something in the mere thought which fired the imagination of the Sailor. The Isle of Dogs had been London in a manner of speaking, but this was surely the heart of the city. He could not remember to have seen such houses as he was passing now. Liverpool and Frisco had had them no doubt. But in his present mood the mass and gloom of these great bulks addressed him strangely. This vastness immeasurable, debouching upon the lamps at the corners of the streets, was instinct with the magic of the future. It was as if this world of bricks and mortar towering to the night was girt with fabulous secret riches.

Symbols of opulence spoke to the Sailor as he walked. Somehow he felt he could claim kinship with them. He had his store of riches also. No, it was not contained in the belt around his body. That was only a very little between him and the weather; a man like Klondyke would soon have done it in. But Henry Harper could now read and write, that was the thought which nerved him to meet the future, that was his store of secret and fabulous wealth.

God knew he had paid a price for Aladdin's lamp. A week ago that night he had seen performed at the Blackhampton Lyceum the first play of his life, "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp." He had sat in the pit, Dinkie Dawson one side of him, Ginger the other. He had now his own wonderful lamp. It was glowing and burning, a mass of dull fire, in the right-hand corner of his brain. It was a talisman which had come to him at the cost of blood and tears; a magic gift of heaven that he must guard with life itself.

On and on he went. Now and again the face of Ginger tried to overthrow him, but the presence of the talisman meant much to him now....

After weary hours his pace began to fail. There were no more houses as far as he could tell. Grass was under his feet; bushes of furze and a clean smell of earth enveloped him. The darkness was less, but everything was very still. Suddenly he felt strangely tired. And then an awful feeling crept upon him.

A low wooden seat was near, and he sat on it. It was still dark, and the weather was particularly chill February. As he drew his overcoat across his knees, he was overmastered by a sense of terror. Somehow it seemed more subtle and more deadly than all the fear he had ever known; of Auntie, of Jack the Ripper, of the Chinaman, of the Old Man, of the Island of San Pedro, of Duckingfield Britannia, of even that blood-stained visage of which he could still catch glimpses in the darkness. It was a stealthy distrust of Aladdin's lamp, the wonderful talisman glowing like a star in the right-hand corner of his brain.

Long he sat in the February small hours. He would wait for the light, having neither inclination nor strength to continue his journey into regions unknown. It grew very cold. And then a new fear crept over him. He felt he was going to become very ill.

However, he determined to use all the force of his will. This feeling was pure imagination, he was sure. He would put it out of his mind. It was a matter of life and death not to be ill now. And not for a moment must he think of dying, now a wonderful talisman had been given him which was about to unlock the doors of worlds beyond his own.

With fierce determination he rose from the seat unsteadily. And as he did so he saw the cold, cold light of the morning paling the tops of the distant trees. He began to move forward again. He would have to keep going somehow if he was not to be overtaken by darkness and eclipse. Whatever he did, he must hold on to his identity. Whatever he did, he must keep secure the treasure rare and strange that was now within himself.

Suddenly in the light of the dawn, he made out a man's figure coming towards him. It was a policeman.