Chapter II

The Parson’s twins were out on the moor by now, and Dick began to laugh.

“I’m not going home yet, Nora. You’re a girl, of course, and can if you like.”

“Thank you, Dick, for nothing at all.”

“Father can’t be home for a long while yet. Of course, old Rossiter made a tale about the cutlass and the head bumping down the cliffs. But there _was_ a Black Garrowby, and they say his ghost walks where he killed the Preventive man. I’m going to see.”

“So am I,” said Nora, and marched very bravely by his side till they neared the top of Norland Point. Then she slipped an arm into his, and explained that she was not afraid, but tired.

“Black Garrowby will cure you of that,” Dick assured her. “You couldn’t be tired, watching him kill the Preventive, and dance a jig for joy.”

She clung closer to him. The sea-fret sobbed and moaned below. The gulls were restless, crying in their sleep. Long as they watched for Black Garrowby’s ghost, it did not come; but something else did.

Just behind them, a little glen ran down to the shore, and a man’s voice sounded—almost under their feet, it seemed. The breeze, blowing stiff from the sea, brought the words clearly and drowned Nora’s startled cry.

“What I says is, it was the staple trade of these parts not so long since. The great folk at the Hall were in it. The Parson was in it. So was every mother’s son about the parish.”

“Ay,” came a second voice. “The sea’s good harvest, they used to call it.”

“Well, what was good harvest in those days is good harvest now, I reckon. You know how times are with the other sort of fishing, Jake?”

“Know?” growled the second voice.

“But you don’t—not by a long way. If you’d a wife and childer, and you saw their faces when you came home with empty nets and empty pockets—you’d _begin_ to know.”

Parson’s Twins lay still in the heather, looking down into the shadowed glen. The two who talked there were no ghosts; but they frightened them, as Black Garrowby could never have put fear into them. They did not know what the men’s talk meant, but they half guessed it.

“I haven’t wife or childer,” Jake’s voice came up the breeze. “I haven’t a quid o’ baccy in my cheek, either. Queer times, I call ’em, when sailor-men can’t smuggle baccy, and can’t afford to buy it.”

“The storm’s brewing up. There’ll be ships making for the bay before so very long.”

“Foreign ships, we’ll hope?”

“Oh, ay, they’ll be foreign ships. And we’ll hope, too, the crew will swim ashore. It’s only the cargo we’re sinking, Jake—to feed our wives and childer.”

“Dick,” whispered Nora, “I’m afraid.”

_The two men passed close to the Twins._
]

He reached out a hand to hers, and held it close. “Not you,” he said; “and anyway we’ve got to listen.”

“It’s a rare devising, this o’ yours,” sounded Jake’s voice, harsh and rough. “You’ve got the lantern with you?”

“Would I forget a little thing like that? We’ve got the lantern and the weather, Jake, and it’s time we stepped up-cliff.”

The two men passed so close to Parson’s Twins that they nearly trod on them.

The twins stood stock-still for a moment. Without warning they were pitched headlong into the times they had sighed for—times come to life again. Two men—rough men and real—were going up to Norland Point, where the cliffs rose, ironbound and sheer, a thousand feet. This was no story listened to at the door of Rossiter’s cottage. Live men were going to the point with a lantern, and soon a light would flash out across the gathering storm.

Nora felt Dick’s hand tighten on hers as he dragged her forward. It was an awful thing that had met them on the cliff. Every story they had heard of wrecking days returned in a flash of memory.

“What can we do?” sobbed Nora. “They’re so big.”

“We can follow,” Dick broke in roughly. “That’s all I know.”

The whole top of Norland Point was rough with boulders and thick heather, and Dick, when they reached it, went on hands and knees, creeping forward like a weasel.

Nora, close behind him, lost her fright. The smell of the heather was friendly, and so was the cover it gave them as they crept forward. Dick was in front of her, too, and it was comforting to know that fear never made him feel very thin and cold, as it did a girl.

Dick’s heart was in his boots, if she had known it. For they had wriggled now so close to the edge of Norland Point that they could hear the two men talking. And it was eerie talk.

“There’s none to see,” laughed Jake.

“None to see, lad,” growled the other. “Just a home-light on the cliff, and a ship scudding safe for harbour.”

“And _crack_ she comes against what lies under us. Then we douse our light, and who is the wiser when we come down shore to-morrow for our share of the wreck?”

“It’s a foreign ship will come, you said?”

“To be sure, a foreign ship.”

“And the sailor-men will swim ashore?”

Dick, used enough to the free speech of the village, was aghast at the oath that Jake ripped out.

“Afraid o’ the business, are ye?”

“Not afraid, as you might say,” stammered the other; “but it’s only the cargo we want.”

“Ay, and it’s the cargo we’ll have, at any price. I’ve a wife and six starving brats down yonder, and they have to be fed. Here, give me the lantern. Your hands are quavering so they couldn’t shield a match to light it—not against this Wreckers’ Wind that’s blowing up.”

Dick lay in a little tunnel of heather—lay much as he had done when he listened to Old Rossiter’s tales not long since—and saw the lantern shoot its rays out into the grey weather brewing up across the twilight sea. And for a moment his heart failed him.