The Project Gutenberg eBook, Luke Barnicott, by William Howitt This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Luke Barnicott And Other Stories: The Story of Luke Barnicott--The Castle East of the Sun--The Holidays at Barenburg Castle Author: William Howitt Release Date: July 18, 2013 [eBook #43245] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUKE BARNICOTT*** E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/lukebarnicottoth00howiiala LUKE BARNICOTT. BY WILLIAM HOWITT. AND OTHER STORIES. Twenty-Eighth Thousand. CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE. CONTENTS PAGE The Story of Luke Barnicott 5 The Castle East of the Sun 49 The Holidays at Barenburg Castle 67 After Young Luke. THE STORY OF LUKE BARNICOTT BY WILLIAM HOWITT. The village of Monnycrofts, in Derbyshire, may be said to be a distinguished village, for though it is not a city set on a hill, it is a village set on a hill. It may be seen far and wide with its cluster of red brick houses, and its tall gray-stone church steeple, which has weathered the winds of many a century. The distant traveller observes its green upward sloping fields, well embellished by hedgerow trees, and its clumps of trees springing up amongst its scenes, and half hiding them, and says to himself as he trots along, "a pleasant look-out must that hamlet have." And he is right; it has a very pleasant look-out for miles and miles on three sides of it; the fourth is closed by the shoulder of the hill, and the woods and plantations of old Squire Flaggimore. On another hill some half-mile to the left of the village, as you ascend the road to it, stands a windmill, which with its active sails always seems to be beckoning everybody from the country round to come up and see something wonderful. If you were to go up you would see nothing wonderful, but you would have a fine airy prospect over the country, and, ten to one, feel a fine breeze blowing that would do your heart good. You would see the spacious valley of the Erwash winding along for miles, with its fields all mapped out by its hedges and hedgerow trees, and its scattered hamlets, with their church towers, and here and there old woods in dark masses, and on one side the blue hills of the Peak beckoning still more enticingly than Ives's Mill, to go there and see something wonderful. On another side you would see Killmarton Hall and its woods and plantations, and, here and there amongst them, smoke arising from the engine-houses of coal mines which abound there; for all the country round Monnycrofts and Shapely, and so away to Elkstown, there are or have been coal and ironstone mines for ages. Many an old coal mine still stands yawning in the midst of plantations that have now grown up round them. Many a score of mines have been again filled up, and the earth levelled, and a fair cultivation is here beheld, where formerly colliers worked and caroused, and black stacks of coals, and heaps of grey shale, and coke fires were seen at night glimmering through the dark. Near this mill, Ives's mill, there is another hamlet called Marlpool, as though people could live in a pool, but it is called Marlpool, as a kettle is said to boil when only the water boils in it, because it stands on the edge of a great pool almost amounting to a lake, where marl formerly was dug, and which has for years been filled with water. The colliers living there call it the eighth wonder of the world, because they think it wonderful that a pool should stand on the top of a hill, though that is no wonder at all, but is seen in all quarters of the world. But the colliers there are a simple race, that do not travel much out of their own district, and so have the pleasure of wondering at many things that to us, being familiar, give no pleasure. So it is that we pay always something for our knowledge; and the widow Barnicott who lived on this hill near Ives's mill, at the latter end of the time we are going to talk of, used to congratulate herself when her memory failed with age, that it was rather an advantage, because, she said, everything that she heard was quite new again. But at the time when my story opens, Beckey Barnicott was not a widow. She was the wife of Luke Barnicott, the millers man, that is, Ives's man. Luke Barnicott had been the miller's man at Ives's mill some time; he was a strapping, strong young fellow of eight-and-twenty. Old Nathan Abbot had the mill before Ives had it, and Luke Barnicott was Nathan Abbot's miller. There are many tales of the strength and activity of Luke Barnicott still going round that part of the country. Of the races that he ran on Monnycrofts' common side, and on Taghill Delves, amongst the gorse and broom and old gravel pits: of the feats he did at Monnycrofts and Eastwood wakes, and at Elkstown cross-dressing, where the old Catholic cross still stood, and was dressed in old Catholic fashion with gilded oak leaves and flowers at the wakes: of the wrestlings and knocking-down of the will-pegs, and carrying off all the prizes, and of jumping in sacks, and of a still greater jumping into and out of twelve sugar hogsheads all set in a row, and which feat Luke was the only one of the young fellows from all the country round that could do. Luke was, in fact, a jolly fellow when Beckey married him, and she was very proud of him, for he was a sober fellow, with all his frolics and feats, and Beckey said that the Marlpool might be the eighth wonder of the world, but her Luke was the ninth, because he could take his glass and be social-like, but never came home drunk. And, in fact, no millers get drunk. I can remember plenty of drunken fellows of all trades, but I don't remember a drunken miller. There is something in their trade that keeps them to it, and out of the ale-house. The wind and the water will be attended to, and so there is not much opportunity to attend to the beer or the gin-shop. Besides, if a miller were apt to get drunk, he would be apt to get drowned very soon, in the mill stream, or knocked on the head by a sail. There's something pleasant and sober and serious in a mill. The wheel goes coursing round, and the pleasant water sparkles and plunges under it, or the great sails go whirling and whirling round, and the clear air of the hill top gives you more cheeriness than any drink; and the clapper claps pleasantly; and the mill keeps up a pleasant swaying and tremor, and the flour comes sliding down the hoppers into the sacks, and all is white and dusty, and yet clean; the mill and the sacks and the hoppers and the flour, and the miller's clothes, and his whiskers, and his hat; and his face is meally, and ruddy through the meal, and all is wholesome and peaceful, and has something in it that makes a man quietly and pleasantly grave. Luke Barnicott was now the staid and grey-haired man of sixty: he had no actual need of the hair-powder of the mill to make him look venerable. On Sundays, when he was washed and dressed-up to appear at church, his head seemed still to retain the flour, though it had gone from his clothes, and his ruddy face had no mealy vail on it. Beckey, his wife, was grown the sober old woman, but still hale and active. She came to church in her black gipsy hat, all her white mob cap showing under it, in large patterned flouncing gown, in black stockings, high-heeled shoes, and large brass buckles that had been her grandmother's. On week days she might be seen in a more homely dress fetching water from the spring below, or digging up the potatoes in the garden for dinner. At other times she sat knitting in the fine weather on a seat facing to the evening sun, but giving shade in the earlier part of the day, under a rude porch of poles and sticks over the door, up which she trained every year a growth of scarlet runners, whilst around and under the windows grew the usual assortment of herbs, rue and camomile, rosemary and pennyroyal. The Barnicotts lived at the old Reckoning House, so called because, when the collieries were active, just in that quarter, the men were paid their wages there. It was a very ordinary-looking brick tenement, now divided into two dwellings, in one of which to the west lived Luke and Beckey, and on the east side lived Tom Smith, the stockinger or stocking- weaver, and Peggy his wife. Tom Smith's frame kept up a pretty constant grating and droning sound, such as you hear in many a village of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire, and in some parts of Normandy, and it was almost the only sound that you heard about the Reckoning House, for neither of the families had any children, except one boy, the young Luke Barnicott, the grandson of the old Barnicotts. The Barnicotts' only son Patrick had been a great trouble to his parents, the shadow-spot in their lives. He had got amongst a wild set of young fellows of the neighbourhood, had been sharply scolded by old Luke, and in a fit of passion had gone for a soldier. He had died in the war in Spain, and his wife had died soon after of a fever, caught in nursing somebody suffering under that contagious affection. They had left their only child to the old folks, who was now a lad of about fourteen, and as mercurial and mischievous an imp as the neighbourhood could furnish. From the moment that he could run about he was in some scrape or some danger. He strolled about the common, plaguing asses and sheep and cattle that were grazing there, hunting up birds' nests and wasps' nests, hanging over the sides of a deep pond just below the Reckoning House, surrounded by thick trees, and more than once had gone headlong in, and came home streaming with water like a spout on a rainy day. Old Luke said he would go after his father if he escaped drowning or tumbling into some pit; and poor old Beckey was just like a hen with a duckling with this one little vagabond. Sometimes he was seen climbing on the mill sails, sometimes on the very ridge of a house, and looking down the chimney for swallow nests, at other times he was up in trees so high, swinging out on a long bough after some nests, so dizzily, that it made his poor old granny's head ache for a week after. They put him as soon as possible to the school in Monnycrofts to keep him out of danger, but sometimes, instead of reaching the school, he had been wiled away by his love of rambling into some distant wood, or along some winding brook, and looking after fish, when he should be conning his lesson. At others, instead of returning home at night after school, he was got into the blacksmith's shop, watching old Blowbellows at the glowing forge, and often in danger of having his eyes burnt by the large flying sparks, or having a kick from a horse that was being shod. Sometimes poor old Beckey had to go to the village of a dark stormy winter's evening to hunt up the truant with her lanthorn, and would find him after all at one of the pits sitting by the blazing fire, in a cabin made of blocks of coal, listening to the talk of the colliers over their ale. When, however, young Luke Barnicott had nearly reached the age of fourteen, and had been set to scare birds in the fields, and to drive plough for the farmers, and gather stones from the land, and had gleaned in the autumn, and slid on the Marlpool in the winter, he took a fancy to become a collier. He was arrayed in a suit of coarse flannel, consisting of wide trousers and a sort of short slop, with an old hat with the brim cut off, and was sent down sitting on a chain at the end of a rope into the yawning pit sixty yards deep. There he was sent to drive a little railway train of coal waggons drawn by a pony in these subterranean regions, from the benk or face of the coal stratum, where the colliers were at work, to the pit's mouth; but Luke soon grew tired of that. He did not fancy living in the dark, and away from the sun and pleasant fields, so one day, as the master of the pits was standing on the pit-bank, up was turned Luke Barnicott, as invalided. He was lifted out of the chain by the colliers, and as he writhed about and seemed in great pain, the coal- master asked where he was hurt. He replied, in his leg. "Show me the place," said the master. Luke, with a good deal of labour and a look of much distress, drew off a stocking and showed a leg black enough with coal dust, but without any apparent wound. "Where is the hurt?" asked the master. "Here," said Luke, putting his hand tenderly on the calf. The master pressed it. Luke pretended to flinch, but the master did not feel satisfied. "Bring some water and wash the leg," he said, and water was soon brought in an old tin. The leg was washed, but no bruise, no blueness were visible. "Pshaw!" said the master, "that is nothing to make a squeak about." "Oh, it is the other leg, I think," said Luke. "The other leg!" exclaimed the master. "What! the fox has a wound and he does not know where! Pull off the other stocking." The stocking was pulled off by the colliers, but no injury was to be found! "Come, Barnicott," said the master, "so you are playing the old soldier over us! Why, what is the meaning of it?" "To say the truth, master," said Luke, with a sheepish look, "the fact was—I was daunted!" At this confession the colliers set up a shout of laughter; and the master, with a suppressed smile, bade him begone about his business. After this Luke was some time at a loose end; he had nothing to do, and nobody would employ him. The story of his being "daunted" flew all round the neighbourhood, and he was looked on as a lazy, shifty lad, that was not to be trusted to. He strolled about the common, the asses and the sheep, and the geese, and the young cattle grazing there had a worse time of it than ever. The old people were in great distress about him; the grandfather's prediction that he would go after his father seemed every day more certain of fulfilment. Luke was active enough in setting traps for birds, and digging out rabbits, and even in setting a snare for a hare, which came by night to browse in the pretty large garden of cabbage and potatoes that surrounded the Reckoning House. And he was pretty successful in noosing hares and unearthing rabbits, but neither his grand-parents nor Tom Smith would let them come into their houses, lest they should get into trouble, and because that would have wholly confirmed the lad in his wild habits. Luke got through his days somehow, and in the evenings he used to go up and play with the lads at the Marlpool, and here he found plenty of people ready to take in slyly the fruits of his poaching, and give him a share of the feast at night. Old Luke meantime went in his mealy garb and with his care-marked and powdered face, to his mill and back, and many an hour of sad cogitation he had, as his clappers knocked and his sacks filled, on what was to become of this wild lad. Many a tear poor old Beckey shed over her knitting, and many a shake of his head gave Tom Smith, as he heard Beckey and Peggy talk of him. One day Luke had found his way to the common, beyond the Marlpool, where the shaft of a new coal-pit was sinking. Nobody was to be seen on the ground about the pit as he approached, but when he came up and looked down, he saw a man at work in the bottom. The pit was sunk some thirty yards or so, and he recognised a man of the Marlpool, named Dick Welland, busy with his pick and shovel. It was evident that his butty or mate had gone away somewhere temporarily, probably for beer. There stood the windlass, with the rope depending, and the box at the bottom filled, ready to be drawn up at the man's return. Till then Dick Welland was a prisoner below. Luke lay down on his stomach, and looked down the shaft. He called to the collier, and drew his attention to a brick which he held in his hand. "Dick," said he, "I've a good mind to drop a brick on thee!" The man in great terror cried out to him not to do it; for he had no means of escaping from the blow, which must kill him on the spot. There was yet no horizontal working under which he might run and take shelter. Luke was delighted with the opportunity of frightening the man, and laughing, still held the brick over the pit mouth, saying, "Now, now! it's coming. Look out!" The pitman was in agonies of terror; he entreated, he shouted, he moved from side to side of the pit, but still Luke, with the true spirit of a tyrant and an inquisitor, held aloft the brick, and cried, "I'll drop it, Dick. Now, it is coming!" This scene had continued for a quarter of an hour, during which time the man had endured ages of agony and terror, when Dick perceived the other man coming over the common with a little keg of beer: he quietly arose, and disappeared amongst the furze and broom. It was time for Luke Barnicott to be going. No sooner did the man below perceive his butty above, than turning the earth out of the "cauf" or box, he sprang into it, and called to him to draw him up with all his might. Once on the bank, he cast a rapid glance round, and telling his mate in a few hurried words what had happened, they both dashed in amongst the furze bushes in quest of the culprit. They ran fiercely hither and thither; they doubled and crossed and beat over the whole common, as a sportsman beats for his game. But their game was nowhere to be found. Luke, aware of the vengeance that he had provoked, had securely hidden himself somewhere. His pursuers could discover him nowhere. They returned to the Marlpool, and related the atrocious deed. The whole place arose in a fury. All men and women vowed to pay the young tormentor off. Dick Welland's wife, a tall, stout amazon of a woman, the head taller than any woman of the whole country round; strong, good-looking, and accustomed to walk with the stout strides and the air of a virago, vowed merciless retribution on the culprit if ever she laid hands on him. Tarring and feathering are a trifle to what was promised him; he was to be dipped head foremost into the Marlpool, and held to within an inch of his life. He was to be flogged and cuffed, and pinched and nettled, and, in short, the whole blood of the Marlpool boiled and seethed in vengeful anticipation of horrors to be inflicted upon him. But "no catch me, no have me!" A week went by and no Luke Barnicott re-appeared. Old Luke Barnicott went to his mill and back as usual, but with a much sadder and darker air; poor old Beckey's eyes were red with weeping, and her frame seemed all at once withered and grown shaky. The incensed colliers and the redoubtable virago, Doll Welland, his wife, had been seen watching the Reckoning House, night after night, suspecting that the culprit must steal there in the dark to get something to live on, for he could not live on the air. But Tom Smith solemnly assured inquirers that no Luke had been seen near home since the day when he flourished the brick over the pit-mouth; and that the old folks were miserable about him. How Luke lived or where, no one could guess; but those who knew him best imagined that he managed to keep soul and body together by nuts, and beech-nuts, and pig-nuts, which last he was very expert in digging out of pastures. Besides, farmer Palethorpe of the Youlgreaves, not far off, complained that his cows were heard running about one or two nights, and he believed somebody had been trying to milk them. "That's Barnicott!" said Welland, and he and his gigantic Doll carefully hunted over the woods and copses near Youlgreaves farm, but to no purpose. About a week after Luke's disappearance, and when his grandfather and grandmother began to think that he had gone quite off to seek his fortune, some boys who had been nutting in the Badger Dingles, near Youlgreaves, came racing home out of breath, saying they had either seen a ghost or Luke Barnicott, for he seemed to start out of the ground amongst the bushes, gave an unearthly shriek, and darted away through bush and "breer," and was gone. Poor old Beckey Barnicott swooned away, for she said she was sure the poor lad had been "clammed" to death in the woods, because he dared not come home; but Welland took another view of the matter, and starting off to the Badger Dingles, he and his strapping wife hunted the thickets again well over. They were near giving up their search when it occurred to them to examine an old hovel in a field up above the Dingles, and there they found a heap of fern in which somebody had evidently lain for some time, and in the very last night. Sure that Luke was lurking somewhere not far off, they renewed their search with fresh eagerness. They hunted the dingles all over again, and just when they came to the end they saw something swing itself over a gate and disappear. The Marlpool boys would have run off, thinking it the ghost again, but Welland rushed forward, leapt the gate, and saw Luke Barnicott sure enough racing at full speed to gain the dense Hillmarton spruce plantations. Welland and wife gave chase. According to their account Luke plunged into the plantation before they could come up with him, but being hot on his trail they beat up the plantations, and again started him. In the afternoon the people of the Marlpool saw an extraordinary sight. It was Luke, ragged and haggard, without his hat, and his light brown hair flying in the wind, running for his life over the common, and Welland and his wife panting after him as if half tired down, for they were people approaching their fiftieth year, though hale and active, and stimulated by their vengeance to run to the last. Luke was evidently aiming for the Reckoning House. All Marlpool was out to watch the race. There was loud shoutings, and cries of "Stop him!" and by others, "Nay, fair play! let the lad run." Old Luke Barnicott came out on his mill-stairs, and cried with a voice which was never forgotten by those who heard it to the day of their death, "Murderers! let the child alone." Old Luke came down the mill-stairs like a frantic man and ran to meet and protect his grandson, who was now speeding along the banks of the Marlpool in a narrow larch copse that bordered the path's side, and was not two hundred yards from his grandfather, when Welland met and turned him. Young Luke wheeled like a hare, and dashing through the pool, for he could swim like a fish, reached the other side before Welland and his neighbours could recover from their surprise. Old Luke was in the midst of them; he aimed a blow at Welland which felled him to the ground, and then he dealt his blows round him with such effect, that five or six great fellows lay sprawling on the earth. Old Luke was too furious to speak at first, but he at length burst out with, "Shame on you, cowards! murderers!" Luke had such a reputation for strength and skill in the arts of wrestling and boxing that, though an old man, not one of the fellows whom he had felled dare touch him. But, meantime, Welland was up again, and scouring through the copse along the pool-side like a maniac. His tall wife was running along the other side of the pool after the lad. Old Luke threw off his mealy jacket and ran too. It was many a day since he had run before, but every one was amazed at the speed with which he went. Down the hill towards Askersick well, in the direction of the Hillmarton plantations, went Welland and his wife; down followed old Luke, stout and elderly as he was, but with a vigour that seemed wonderful. The young fugitive was seen to leap the fence into the plantations; Welland and his wife were seen to crush through the fence after him, and soon after old Luke followed headlong through the gap, and all disappeared. The people of the Marlpool stood on their hill watching this chase, and when the flyers rushed into the plantation some ran down in that direction. But the chasers were lost for nearly half an hour, when young Luke was seen flying along the side of the Hillmarton dams—large reservoirs of water that stretched in a chain along the valley amongst woods and copses—and Welland was fagging after him like a dogged blood-hound after a tired stag, or rather fawn. But pursuer and pursued appeared dead beat with fatigue when they disappeared behind a mass of trees. No old Luke, no Doll Welland were seen anywhere, for that wily woman, as old Luke pursued through the plantation, had seized a pole that lay on the ground, and, standing amongst some bushes, suddenly poked it between the old man's legs as he ran, and caused him to tumble forward and fall with a heavy dash on the ground, where, exhausted by his unwonted exertion, and stunned by the shock, he lay breathless and almost senseless. The huge woman then, as he lay on his face on the earth, coolly seated herself upon him, and kept him there whilst her husband pursued the boy. Meantime the young men from the Marlpool, running in the direction in which they had seen Luke and his pursuer, at length found Welland seated on the bank of the lake, intently watching a part of the water where a mass of reeds grew, and where the boughs of the wood overhung the water. "Where's Luke?" cried the young men. "He's there!" said Welland, red and panting, and scarcely able to bolt the words from his chest. "He's in the reeds!" Some of the young men ran round into the wood, and looked down into the reed bed by climbing along the boughs of the trees, but nothing was to be seen there. "He's not there, Welland!" they shouted, but Welland stoutly maintained that he was there; he saw him go in, and that he could not go out again without his seeing him. To make all sure, one young fellow stripped and swam to the reeds, and beat all amongst them, and declared that there was no Luke there. "Oh! the cunning beggar is lurking somewhere up to the nose in the water!" shouted Welland; but the young man paddled all about, declared the place very deep of mud, but to the certainty nothing human was there. At this Welland rose up in great wrath but after going round into the wood, said, moodily, "The young scamp has done me again, but I'll settle him yet." And with that he turned homewards, and the young men with him. Old Luke had before this recovered his breath somewhat, and, rolling his incubus from him with wonderful ease, had risen up and gone towards the dams, followed by the virago, who furiously abused him all the way, and flung stones and masses of turf at him. When old Luke reached a keeper's lodge near the dams, old John Rix, who lived there, told him Welland and a lot of men had gone up the field towards the Marlpool. Luke then hastened back, with the vengeful grenadier of a woman still following and saying all the evil things she could think of. She upbraided the old man for his bringing up of both this young Luke and of his father. "Bad crow, bad egg!" she said. "Old rogue! you were no great shakes, I reckon, in your young days, and the son was no better; no good came to him; and as for this wicked boy, he'll come to the gallows, I'll warrant, if a tree be left in the country to make one on." Old Luke went on, as King David did in his time when Shimei was hailing stones and curses on him in his trouble, and took no notice. But he was mightily troubled in his mind as he went on in silence. All his former troubles with his son were brought back upon him, and he wondered how it was that he was so much the more afflicted than other people with his children. He began to think that he must have been a much more wicked man than he had thought himself, and so he said, "Let her talk; may-happen I've desarved it." But when he got home, and heard that young Luke had been chased into the lake by Welland, and that he could not be found, he sat down in his chair, and never stirred or spoke for an hour. Poor old Beckey, who had enough to bear of her own, was terribly frightened, and laid hold on him, and shook him, saying, "Luke, man! Luke, speak! what ails thee? Hast a gotten a stroke?" But Luke neither spoke nor stirred, but continued looking hard on the ground. The poor woman was in the greatest distress, and began to call, "Peggy! Peggy! come here! Peggy Smith." But at that old Luke suddenly rose. "Hold thy tongue! dunna bring anybody here. They've killed the lad, an' they've killed me!" and, giving a deep groan, he began to stagger upstairs, and soon undressed himself and went to bed. There was an end of old Luke. The violent agitation of his mind; the violent exertion that he had made; the fall that he had got; and, no doubt, the abuse and upbraidings that the great virago had heaped upon him, all had done their part. He never spoke after he was in bed: a stroke of apoplexy had indeed fallen on him, and, though the doctor came and bled him, he only opened his eyes for a moment, and then died. When the death of old Luke was made known, there was a great sensation, and the more so that nothing further was seen or heard of young Luke. A great revulsion in the public mind took place immediately. These transactions were the sole topic of conversation, not only in Marlpool and Monnycrofts, and Shapely, but in every hall and hamlet and solitary farm-house, the whole country round. They were the theme of discussion in every ale-house, and at every barber's and blacksmith's shop, and in every street-parliament far and near. They got into the local newspapers, and assumed a variety of shapes the farther the rumours spread. The Marlpoolians and Monnycroftians who had called young Luke all manner of names as the most incorrigible of scapegraces, now pitied him as a very ill-used and persecuted lad. "Why, all lads are full of mischief," said Mrs. Widdiwicket of the Dog and Partridge public-house. "I would not give a potato for a lad without a bit of mischief in him. Poor lad! it was only his spirit, and what sort of a man is to grow out of a boy without a spirit?" "True," said old Pluckwell, the gardener, as he took his evening pot, "what's weeds in one place is flowers in another. Why, they tell me flowers here are weeds in other countries; and, as to this Luke, he must ha' grown into a prime spaciment with cultivation." "Just so," said Nasal Longdrawn, the parish-clerk; "it seems to me that these Wellands had real downright mischief an' malice in 'em, to chase, and worry, and threaten a poor fatherless and motherless orphant so. Poor lad! he was often very aggravating when he got upo' th' church after th' starlings, and loosened the tiles, but I canna help feeling for th' poor chap, now he's gone." "Gone!" said Mrs. Widdiwicket; "and where's he gone, thinken ye?" All shook their heads, and Roddibottom, the schoolmaster, got up and strode about the house, and then suddenly turning round, facing the company, with his hands thrust into his waistcoat pocket,—"Where's he gone? why, ma'am, why, neighbours, if they put me into the jury box. I should give my verdict that Welland knows!" "Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed Mrs. Widdiwicket; and all the rest again shook their heads, and said, "Likely enough; that Welland is a savage un. What but a hard un could chase a poor lad so?" "And what was he doing sitting there by the bank, and pointing to the water, and saying, 'He's there!' and that he could not have got out without him seeing him? How do we know what happened after they were out of sight? A knock on the poor lad's head with a stick or a stone, and a plunge into the dam! Eh? eh? I think that pond should be dragged." And with that Roddibottom drank off his glass of ale, and walked out with an air of inconceivable sagacity, and leaving all the company in wonder and horror. "By leddy! what the mester says is right," said Pluckwell. "Who knows what happened? and the boy has never been seen since." "Ay, the dam should be dragged," said Longdrawn; "there's a mystery there." And looking full of mystery himself, he followed the schoolmaster out. The feeling at the "Dog and Partridge" was the feeling everywhere. The poor boy was invariably pitied, old Luke was pitied, poor old Beckey was pitied, and the Wellands were looked upon as most savage and bloodthirsty wretches. The excitement became great as time went on. The dam was dragged where Welland had been seen sitting, but nothing was found; search and inquiry were made after young Luke all round the country, but not a trace of him could be found. The feeling that Welland had killed the poor lad, and secreted his body somewhere in the bushes, and only pretended for a blind that he had gone into the water, became very strong. The Wellands were both taken up and tried for the murder, his wife as accessary before the fact; and he was also charged with contributing to old Luke's death, for though he had never opened his mouth after his return but in one instance, it was—"They've killed him, and they've killed me." Doll Welland had boasted how she had thrown the old man down by putting the pole between his legs, and having sat upon him after his fall, and what more she might have done nobody could tell. Besides, both her husband and herself had vowed most bitterly, or, as the country neighbours said, "most saverly," that they would finish the lad if they caught him. And the persevering animosity with which they had contrived to hunt him up, and to hunt him down at the last, betrayed a most murderous mind and intent. Luke never turned up, and, at the March assizes at Derby, the Wellands were tried; and numbers of the Marlpool people who had quite sided with them till after the boy was missing now gave fully their evidence against them, repeating the vengeful expressions which they had used against poor Luke, and that they had said twenty times, "They'd finish him, if they ever laid hands on him." All these things, and the general feeling of the country telling against them, both husband and wife were condemned for the murder of the lad, though there was no direct evidence of the fact. Nobody would believe anything else after the fierce chase and the savage threats, and the disappearance of Luke just where Welland was found sitting. As the evidence, however, was but circumstantial, though very aggravated, the husband and wife were condemned to transportation for life, and were shipped off to Sydney, with the hearty expression of satisfaction of all Marlpool, Monnycrofts, Hillmarton Hall and hamlet, of the farmers, and all the world besides. As the Wellands had five or six children, there was a subscription in that part of the country to send them out with their convict parents, and thus to rid this happy land of the whole "seed, breed, and generation" of the bloodthirsty Wellands, according to the phraseology of the Marlpool. Years went on: no Luke Barnicott ever re-appeared or ever was heard of; and though the body was never found— never rose to the surface of Hillmarton dam, nor was discovered in the wood—it became a settled feeling that Welland knew if he pleased to tell, where the remains could be found. But Welland and his family were broiling in the sandy fields of Paramatta, cultivating the hot ground, and planting orange and lemon orchards, which now embellish that neighbourhood, and show their dark masses covered with golden fruit in mile-long woods to the people sailing up the river past Kissing Point, and many another pleasant promontory, with their mangrove trees standing in the water, and their charming houses overlooking their rocky shores and well-kept lawns, dark and lustrous with the Indian and Moreton Bay figs, the India-rubber trees, and many a quaint Banksia and blooming shrub from sandy Botany Bay. Years rolled on: the story of these events was forgotten everywhere except in the immediate neighbourhood, where it was getting less and less frequently adverted to. It was stereotyped in every one's mind of those of more than infantine years at that period; but it was only when some strange murder or some mysterious occurrence took place in the country at large that it was revived and talked of far around. Fifteen years had passed: poor old Beckey Barnicott was now between seventy and eighty. She was still living at the Reckoning House, but she was blind—stone blind. She lost her eyes soon after the shocking death of her husband and the loss of her grandson. It was supposed that she wept herself blind; and no doubt her grief of mind helped to produce this catastrophe. It was found that old Luke Barnicott had saved a small sum, which brought Beckey in ten pounds a year; and she had been advised by the clergyman of Monnycrofts to sink the sum in an annuity, as she had no one to succeed her, and so she had an income then of five- and-twenty pounds a year. She was well off in that respect; and she had a middle-aged woman, a widow out of the village, Amy Beckumshire, to live with her and take care of her. Tom and Peggy Smith were both dead, and the new miller, John Groats, used that part of the house to store corn in. Poor old Beckey Barnicott used to get out into the garden by help of a long wand, with which she felt her way, and she had learned to know every part of the garden, and could feel the rosemary and lavender plants, and used to sit in the sun in the rude porch and bask herself; and when it was too hot, she took her place under a great elder tree, which hung from a high bank on the far side of the garden, where a seat was placed. There she used to knit diligently, for she could knit without her sight wonderfully; and there for many a long hour she used to think about old times, when her husband was full of health and strength, and used to keep the mill up above spinning round like a great giant, beckoning all the country round to come up and see something wonderful. And when Tom Smith and he used to read the "Nottingham Review," and all about Bonaparte, and Wellington, and Lord Nelson, and talked over the affairs of the country. And then her thoughts would turn on poor little Luke, as she called him, and her heart clung to his memory with a wonderful tenderness; for he seemed to have been misunderstood, and so cruelly used. She remembered many things that he had done for her, and how he used to bring her heaps of nuts and blackberries and mushrooms, and catch sparrows in winter to make nice dumplings, and she thought to herself, "Ay, poor thing, he wasna so bad after all! It was, Mrs. Widdiwicket always said, only his spirit; he wanted more room for his life than he got here, and should have been a soldier or a traveller, or something or another where he would always be moving." She had often dreamt of her husband, who appeared to her and said he was waiting for her in a very pleasant place; but he never mentioned little Luke, and she never dreamed of him except as racing before Welland and his giant wife, or plunging into Hillmarton dam, all amongst the dark weeds and deep, slimy mud. It was a fine breezy summer's day, Mrs. Barnicott was sitting under the great hanging elder, and her knitting-needles were going very fast for so old a woman. She was stooping and wrinkled and lean, but there was a quick motion in her darkened eyes and their twinkling lids, and there was a motion about her withered mouth, and she gave every now and then deep sighs as she shifted her needles, and seemed to look down at her knitting, which she could not see, and then paused awhile, let her work fall on her knee upon her check-apron, and raised her sightless eyes towards the sky and seemed to think. Just then she heard an active step as if a young man came along the brick pavement along the garden to the house-door. There was a knock, and she heard a young man's voice—she was sure it was a young man—ask if Mrs. Barnicott was at home. Amy Beckumshire said, "Ay, there she sits, sir, knitting under the elder." The young man advanced, and old Beckey rose up in wonder who it could be. "Good day to you, Mrs. Barnicott," said the young man. "You don't know me, but I have heard of you some years ago, and being in this part of the country, I thought I should like to see you." "You're very good, sir, to come to see an old blind woman like me!" She guessed that it was all about the sad business of her husband and grandson that the gentleman had heard. "Pray you, sit down, sir," she added, "there's room on the bench." "Thank you," said the young man. There was a little silence, and then the young man said, "I've often heard of this neighbourhood, and I always thought it must be very pleasant, and really I find it so. Why, I seem to know all about it, as if I had seen it. The old windmill, and the pool below here, and the Marlpool above, and the old church tower of Monnycrofts." Beckey was silent and pondering. "And pray," she said, after a time, "where might you hear all this about this country place?" "Well, it was very far from here. You must know Mrs. Barnicott, that I have been a sailor, and have sailed nearly all over the world; and we sailors make acquaintance in different ships with men from all parts. I was on board the Swallow, bound for Pernambuco, in South America, for a cargo of cotton and coffee, and I had a mate there that I took a great fancy to; he came from some part of this country, Cosser or Hawsworth, or some such place." "Ay, ay," said Beckey, "these are places not far off; you may see 'em from th' mill up yonder. But it's many a year sin I seed 'em." "Ay, more's the pity!" said the young man; "but you can hear, and I think I can tell you some good news." "What good news?" said old Beckey, suddenly giving a start, and turning her blind eyes fixedly on him. "What good news can come to a poor old creature like me?" "I should not like to agitate you," said the youth, "by going into things long past, and very dark things too; but this mate of mine told me several times of what happened here years ago; and I wonder," he used to say, "whether any of the Barnicotts be living, and if they ever heard of the lad that was lost?" "What do you mean?" said old Beckey; "do you know anything of little Luke? is he alive? can he be alive? Speak, man! speak!" "Well, this young man thought he was alive." "What!" said old Beckey, "what! oh laws! you've made my heart jump into my mouth. What did he know? Did he know Luke, and had he seen him?" "Well," he said, "he was alive and was a sailor." "A sailor! alive!" Poor old Beckey trembled like an aspen leaf, and dropped her knitting from her knee. "Oh me! if this should be true!" she said; "but my strength fails me; it is more nor I can bear." The young man took hold of her to support her, and bade her not agitate herself; he believed her grandson was alive, and that they should be able in time to learn more about him. "And you dunna know where he is? Are you sure he is alive? are you sure?" "Well, I feel pretty sure. I know my mate said he was alive and well, and a fine active sailor, five years ago; for he sailed to Ceylon, in the Indies, with him." "Luke alive! oh laws! this is too much. Amy! Amy!" Amy Beckumshire, who was standing at the door all curiosity and astonishment, came the moment that old Beckey called, and the poor old woman, shaking and trembling as with the ague, said to her, "Dost hear? Luke's alive, and is a sailor, and has been i' th' Indies, and this gentleman has seen a sailor as knew him!" "Is that so?" said Amy, in a voice of wondering inquiry, and looking in distant respect at the handsome young gentleman. "I quite believe it is true, missis," said the young man; "I never knew Sam Birchin tell me a lie." "He comes from Cosser or Hawsworth, that sailor does," said old Beckey, all eagerness, "and knows all about this country, and all the old doings here." "Gracious me!" said Amy, "how wonderful!" "O Lord," said old Beckey, lifting her sightless brow towards heaven, "only let me once see Luke, and then take me— take me—that I may tell my husband. But, laws-a-me! maybe he knows all about it." Poor old Beckey then asked the stranger a hundred questions: if he knew what sort of a looking lad Luke was? how tall he was, and how he looked? if he had heard that he had blue eyes and a very fair skin, and hair very light coloured? To all these questions the young man said he could give no answer; but he would write to Sam Birchin, who would be in port soon, and ask him all about it. He then rose up and said he had ordered his dinner at the Dog and Partridge, and must go there, but that he meant to stay a few weeks in the country, and go and find out Birchin's relations at Cosser. He did not mean to go to sea again; he had been to Australia, and got enough gold to live on, and he meant to settle down somewhere in the country. He should often come and see her while he stayed. Old Beckey prayed God to bless him for the good news he had brought; an angel from heaven could not have brought more blessed tidings; and as he went across the garden she tottered after him, leaning on her frail wand, and stood at the gate to listen to his steps going down the field. Then she had to tell the wonderful news all over to Amy, and to ask a hundred questions. What sort of looking young man was he, light or dark? and how he was dressed, and how tall he was? Though he'd been a sailor, she was sure he was a gentleman by his talk. Amy said he was a handsome young man, and quite a gentleman in his dress. He was as finely dressed as young Squire Flaggimore himself. His eyes were dark blue. "Blue, says ta?" broke in old Beckey. "Luke's were blue." "They are dark blue or black," said Amy. "And his hair very light?" asked Beckey. "No. Light! ravenly black." "Oh, then, he's not like Luke. Luke's hair," said Beckey, "was very light, and a little sandy." "What! thou artna dreaming that this is Luke himself, Beckey" "Oh laws, no!" said Beckey. "It's not Luke, Amy; I was only wondering whether it was like him. But thinkster I should not know Luke's voice? Ay, that voice I shall never forget; it's down in my heart as clear as a bell, though it's fifteen years come Michaelmas since I heard it, poor fellow! And to think as he's alive, and 's a been a sailing all over the world ever since! And now, thou sees, Amy, that's the reason that he never came, like his grandfayther, in my dreams. How could he come, and was alive all the time? But thou mun run, Amy, and tell the parson, and Mrs. Widdiwicket, and the schoolmaster, as Luke has been seen i' th' Indies." Amy was in a hurry to throw on her shawl and bonnet, and away to the village; for we all like to tell a bit of news; it is a pleasure that we enjoy immensely, and yet don't reckon it amongst our pleasures. But we all feel like electric clouds charged with pleasant fire, and in haste to let it off. No sooner is the word dropped in one ear than it is out upon the tongue, and turns away to some other ear, and encircles round the world like sunshine. Amy had the pleasure of stopping two or three people before she got across the fields to the village, and telling them that Mrs. Barnicott had heard of Luke, and that he was a fine young sailor, and had been in the Indies and all over the world, and the young gentleman at the Dog and Partridge had brought the news, and had seen young Birchin of Cosser, who had sailed with him. Before Amy reached the clergyman's the news had slipped down the village, and was all over it, and flowing out at each end by people who were going to the neighbouring villages. Mrs. Widdiwicket had heard the news from the young gentleman in the parlour herself, and she said the young gentleman had hired her horse, and was gone to Cosser to see Sam Birchin's relations. As Amy issued into the street again, everybody was on the look-out for her, and she had to stop, to her great satisfaction, and tell the story again, and to correct some errors that had already got with it, for it was already said that the young gentleman, who had been at Mrs. Widdiwicket's all night, and had borrowed Mrs. Widdiwicket's horse, had been with Luke, and had sailed with him to the Indies and all over the world. At the top of the village street stood Roddibottom, the schoolmaster, and Longdrawn, the clerk, and Sandy Spark, the blacksmith, discussing the whole affair, and they had already raised a great wonder how it happened that Luke had never sent word to his old grandmother that he was alive. They were, moreover, now greatly disposed to lament the fate of Welland and his wife, who had been transported for life for having killed Luke when he was not killed, and were very near being hanged for it. The whole of Monnycrofts was in a state of ferment on this great discovery, and all the neighbouring villages soon partook of the excitement; and it very soon communicated itself to the county papers, and very wise reflections were attached to it on the dangers of condemning people on circumstantial evidence. It was thought that no time should be lost in recommending to Government to send out an order to recal Welland and his wife home. Meantime old Beckey herself had managed to hobble up to the mill, and thence to the Marlpool, where the story made the most amazing stir. All the people were soon out of doors discussing the affair, and those who had seen the chase on that memorable day pointed out all the incidents of it. They showed where little Luke was running when old Luke rushed down from the mill, and where he knocked down Welland and about twenty more, according to their account, and so they went through the whole story. Beckey, and so indeed a...