Chapter II

A movement in the room awoke me. I opened my eyes slowly, and in the grey light I put out my hand and missed Sally. She had left my side.

I put some clothes on and went down the little steep single stairs, lit only by one dirty, cobwebby window. The scanty twilight, for that was all it was as yet, slid in and on to the white lintels, cracked and seamed with age--I never liked the dawn, when people die. The moon was paling quietly in the sky. The morning star still lingered there. At the corner where the stairs turned sharply, I looked down at my feet and remembered the job we had to get Mary past it! Drops of sweat broke out on my forehead just as they had done then. That and the dawn! I was very nervous. It was nearly the same as that other night.

Sally was not in the house place. I stood--turning on my heels--and wondered where she was. I made no doubt that she was walking in her sleep--that seeing me had brought back all the sensations of that dreadful night, and that she was repeating them. Perhaps she had remembered the light on the lintel, the turn of the stair too?… What I feared was that she had gone wandering along the same dreary path through the wood, as far as the shaft. And then, when she got there, suppose her remorse was too much for her and she were mad enough to throw herself over!… Such things have happened--I had seen _The Bells_ and _Macbeth_. Sally was rather like Lady Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth, strong-minded as she was, rued her deed, and walked in her sleep, and rubbed her hands. Sally had no blood to think about--only dew on the hem of her nightgown that time.… You couldn’t tell blood from dew at night.…

I heard a click--something like the sound made by one earthenware pan rubbing against another, in the wash-house.… I had maligned Sally in my thoughts. She had merely gone downstairs to feed Roger! The last remark she had made on going to bed was that he looked weakly, and on his last legs, and should by rights be put away before he suffered pain. Dogs die so hard, she had said. I opened the door that led into the old stone-paved chapel Sally used as a wash-house, and stood the beer-casks in.

Sally, in her plain nightgown, was standing there barefoot on the cobbled stones. She looked a bit cranky. Her black hair hung partly down her back, and in elf locks, that were curls overnight, in her eyes. She had a great quantity of hair, and out of vanity she never took it all down when she went to bed, but half arranged it with pins and coloured ribbons. Her arm was raised to a high shelf whence she had taken Roger’s provender earlier in the day. The movement made the fronts of her nightgown gape, and show her breast.

She started when I came in, and dropped her arm guiltily.

“Go away, go away!” she screamed, and put her hand behind her back. “Go away, and let me finish the job!”

“What job, in Heaven’s name,” I cried, “at this hour of night? We saw to the dog--no need to feed him again!”

“Feed him, you idiot!… Poison him, more likely--anything to get him out of the way!”

I went up to her and laid my hand on her arm.

“I do believe the sight of Roger, who saw you murder Mary, has put you clean out of your wits, Sally, my dear.”

“And what about you and your wits, bringing the beast here----!”

She rushed at poor Roger, who squatted at the extreme length of his cord, staring at her calmly, boldly, as if inviting her to stick him with the knife she brandished. He was never like any other dog. He did not plunge or bark. I saved him, I took the knife out of her hand, and flung it into a meal-tub close by.

“Fool, fool!” she yelled, but I put my hand over her mouth, and forced her back on the tub, so that she sat on the knife. I was so sure she was going mad that it made me calm and strong, and I tried to soothe her and speak gently to her, as one does to an invalid.

“What do you want to kill my poor old dog for, Sally?”

“I must. I must. He’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous without a sound tooth in his head?”

“He has a tongue in his head----”

She looked at me narrowly, dragging down the outside corners of her eyelids like a bulldog. Then she pulled the fronts of her nightdress to, and tried to speak reasonably. She succeeded more or less, but it was a great effort to her.

“Don’t you know what has happened here while you have been away sulking at the other end of the world?”

I said nothing on purpose, so as not to put her back up. She stood staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I was so long, she began to shake in the cold.… And Sally never could keep quiet for long. Her temper broke out and she shouted at me.

“Don’t look so stupid, George!… God, it sends me mad!”

“Dear, try and tell me quietly.” I sat down on an empty barrel. “Come here. Sit on my knee----”

She waved me away. She moistened her lips. “Don’t treat me like a child or a madwoman, George. It is serious, sober earnest. I am telling you facts--not lies. The police--damn them!--have got a new weapon, and they use it for all it is worth.…”

She wrung her hands and walked up and down.

“Oh, to think that all this time we have made pets of these wretched animals, and trusted them--I had a pet dog once--I put it away because it watched me, though I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Yes, we used to let them go about with us, and see all we did, and listen to all we said! Who minded talking secrets with an animal in the room, or doing anything one liked in a whole farmyard of beasts--then? We didn’t know that dog of yours was lying at the foot of the bed when Mary was done for: I never even thought of him! We actually let him go with us to the edge of the shaft and see us throw her in! God, what fools we were!”

“But what can a dog do, you silly darling?”

“He can get us hanged! Get us both hanged! Why, your beast there--the very moment he got into England he must have learnt his power; he must have blabbed our whole story, and to that animal of Dysart’s, too, the very last person----!”

I tried to soothe her.

“Sally, my dear, it’s awfully cold here! You’re shivering. Do let us get back to bed!”

I said that, but indeed I was getting to be afraid of her, in bed or out of it.

She took no notice of me, but went on--

“You never looked at a paper, you tell me, and yet they were full of it two years ago--the wonderful new discovery. Since then I’ve never known a moment’s peace. My life has been hell. You may thank your stars you were out of it and had left me to bear the whole brunt of it.”

“For goodness’ sake explain!” I said crossly.

She came quite close to me and whispered, “The police! It’s a new dodge of the police. I hate ’em and their filthy methods! They get hold of animals--dogs preferred, because they’re more intelligent--and shut them down there in cellars, behind locked doors, and then they torture them, rack them.… George, can you bear the idea of Roger tortured, racked,--kept without water for a week! Oh, if you had heard, as I have, scores of times, only I’ve run away and said nothing because of my guilty conscience--if you’d heard the pitiful howls and whines at the back of the police station there, and knew that some poor helpless beast was being made to betray and give evidence----”

“But I don’t see how a dog, or any animal indeed, could let on to what it knew even if it tried,” I said, as grave as a judge, to pacify her.

“Oh, that’s a mere matter of detail. The police have got a code--they manage to communicate with the beasts. They count the barks----”

“Ha! ha!” I laughed.

“Don’t dare to laugh, you ignorant fool. Have you never heard of those spiritualist affairs? The spirits rap, and the medium tells you what they are saying. Well, the dog barks--it comes to the same thing----”

She sighed deeply and seemed relieved. It was now quite day. Her candle flared. She was waiting for me to speak. I was thinking of what would be the most soothing thing to say.… It would not come. I was at my wits’ end. The only thing I could think of was to get her back to bed and send for a doctor.

I moved slightly in my indecision. She caught my hand. Hers was very hot.

“George, what are you going to do? I’ve explained clearly, haven’t I?”

“Quite.” I had now fixed on a plan of action.

“And now, Sally darling,” I said softly, “just you get back to bed, and I’ll settle Roger, and then I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea.”

That plan failed. She screamed, and beat the air with her hands.

“Settle him? Not you. It takes a man to do that--or a woman like me! No, I know you. You want me to go quietly, while you untie the dog, and let him go free to get us hanged--me, at any rate. I murdered Mary--you only looked on. And your dog. What’ll _you_ get? I shall swing for it. He’s sure to have told Dysart’s dog, and the police’ll get wind of it--Dysart’ll take care of that. He’s only waiting--has been these ten years. And then they can howk Mary up--what’s left of her--and the damned dog’ll tell them who put her there.”

“Do you suppose Roger would betray us?” I said, humouring her. She was crying now, violently, against my heart.

“But, George--under torture--there is no knowing what he might do. Is there, Roger?”

She left me, contemptuously, and bending down a little, spoke to Roger as if he were a human being. That gave me a turn, and I felt very queer. She seemed so sure of herself, and her tale. Roger appeared to listen. He barked three times… then four times… then more. I lost count. But Sally didn’t, apparently. She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her nightgown, tossed her head back and cried triumphantly--

“There, he says I had better warn you! He can’t be quite sure--he’s not so young as he was--his power of endurance is weakened! That’s what he says, as well as he can--to me who understand him.… Did you notice,” she continued, “how Dysart’s dog limps? Well, that’s because--every one knows it, though it’s supposed to be a secret--the police examined him--tormented, I call it--a year ago, in connection with a case of arson. Dysart’s ricks were set on fire----” she chuckled.

“Who was accused?”

“Me.”

“And did you----”

“That’s not the point. But Dysart’s dog was got to admit that he had seen one of my men loitering about at an awkward time--the time when it happened, in fact. The police couldn’t make anything of his evidence--it was too scanty, luckily; but all the same, he’s gone lame ever since. I hate the police as I hate sin.… Brutes they are!… Roger, good dog, tell me how did you learn the code in this short time?”

Roger barked gently, a little chain of barks.

“From Dysart’s dog, he says. It’s quite simple. Well, George, look here--no, I’m not cold when I’m interested--I’ll go on getting it from Roger, and perhaps I’ll be able to convince you that for his own sake, Roger had better be put out of the way. He wishes it.…”

“I _am_ convinced,” I said. I was convinced that she was off her head on this particular point, and that a good rest would set her right. I put my arm round her, and tried to kiss her and lead her away. But she pushed me off.

“Go and sit over there. Don’t worry me. I want all my wits about me now, and once you see the danger--if you love me you won’t set the life of an old toothless, worn-out dog against mine, for that’s what it comes to.”

“I do love you, Sally.… Now, Roger, stand and deliver. Answer the lady.”

There is no good fighting hallucinations, it is best to humour them. Any doctor would have agreed with me that it was useless to argue with a woman so terribly excited as Sally was. There she stood, barefooted on the stone floor, in the light circle that the candle made, waving her arms and casting shadows of awful length and shape. The black jagged ends of the rafters of the broken flooring over her head framed her in spikes, as they sagged and drooped towards the middle of the room where she was. Nice home-coming for a man after all those years!… I wished, then--how I wished!--I had stayed in Wyoming with my faithful Roger, and only seen Sally as I remembered her, plucky, resolute and sensible, instead of the all-to-pieces madwoman remorse had made of her.

But she was determined to go through with the mad farce. She stooped, tossed back her hair and fixed Roger with her eyes. He met them as dogs do without flinching or turning away. Poor dear old Roger was so faithful and so old, I did wish she would leave him alone. But no--

“Roger,” she said solemnly, “did Dysart’s dog warn you of the state of things here, and of what might happen to you?”

A lot of little orderly barks answered her. Though Roger always did bark when you spoke to him in a certain domineering tone, it was fairly horrible.

Sally turned to me, and her voice was lifted with pride.

“He says yes, that he is fully informed. Moreover, Dysart’s dog has told him that his master has had suspicions of you ever since a certain tramp woman he met on the Witton-Gilbert road was so keen on finding her way to you. William Dysart told her she would probably find you in bed with me, blast and curse him! I am glad I burnt five of his ricks!”

“Come, come, Sally, does my dog really say all that?” I mocked her.

“He says that and a lot more. That Dysart went straight to the police this morning after seeing you and your dog walk across the market-place--now, then!”

“Damn it all, that’s where Roger picked up the cur first,” I called out, for I own this struck me. And the dog’s manner was disquieting. All this was exciting and very bad for him. He shivered and whined very low.

“Roger, Roger, old man!” I caressed him and talked to him as if he was human and sensible, as indeed he was, but only as dogs--the best of them--are. “Don’t take on so! What is it? What’s the matter?”

“He’ll tell you fast enough,” Sally said, grinning. She went up to him, too, and passed her hands over his back. “Come, tell us all about it, good dog.”

I couldn’t bear to see her lay her Judas hand on him. I shouted, “Don’t you touch my dog, you----” I couldn’t find a word bad enough for her--not even one of the worst; all my love for her had gone, melted away.

“All right!” she answered carelessly, desisting.

So we both stood at an equal distance from Roger, who barked incessantly for about five minutes. I thought I noticed gaps between the groups of barks, as it were, but even now I cannot be quite sure. Sally had got me into the same state as the dog, we were both beside ourselves--fairly bewitched, I think.

Now Sally translated, in a level voice. Her quiet was more awful than her bluster.

“He says, ‘Master, save me from the torture. I am old, I have not many months to live. Shoot me first. I may not be able to stop myself from betraying you--and her. Shoot me, in mercy! Shoot me!’”

“Is that so, Roger?” I asked him. The spell wrought on me so that I began to believe it. “Do you want me to kill you?”

He barked--yes, he barked horribly.

Then I turned on Sally, and she held up her head and looked me with insolence in the face, and the dog began to plunge and strain on the cord, barking furiously all the time.

“You devil,” I yelled, “you are taking me in! This is all a plan got up to make me put away my faithful old dog!”

“Look at your dog!” she said, calmly. “He has more sense than you. Do you know what he is trying to do? He’s trying to commit suicide--he says it’s his only chance, if you won’t shoot him. You coward! Afraid to put him out of his misery and help him to get out of the way before he’s forced to betray you! Go and get your gun! Kill him, man--or let me.”

I came out of my maze just in time. I saw Sally whip the knife out from under her and go for Roger with it. The dog had nearly succeeded in strangling himself--he had come to make gurgling noises in his throat.… But I was all there, now.…

“Don’t you do it, old dog!” I up and shouted. “I’ll settle her, as she settled Mary!”

* * * * * * *

And that is why I am sitting here in Durham gaol waiting to be hanged, and a good riddance too. I don’t care to live.… Poor Roger did manage to commit suicide. He knew.

THE BAROMETER

There existed a few years ago, in the Yorkshire wolds, a state of affairs in which the barometer was more consulted than the Bible, and the only barometer in the district hung in the hall of the Vicarage and belonged to the parson, who scanned it daily and out of its abstruse lettering gave no hope to his pining household. The relentless needle stood ever at “set fair,” and the terrible drought, which had already lasted for six whole weeks, continued. The dreary sheet of sky overhead stretched in its pitiless blueness over the baked brown earth that lay beneath, parched and cracked and yawning for rain. In between the rift set apart for their habitation, walked sad human beings, sighing and complaining, full of vague physical uneasiness and sense of stress of longing.

The Church and Vicarage of Barmoor, and the few cottages to which it ministered, made the only break in the wilderness of moorland that stretched away for miles to Pickering on the one side and Danby Moor on the other. Three trees grew near the Vicarage: the boughs of one hung over the roof of the lean-to, and made a land-mark over the moor. In the early spring they had been fine bunches of verdure. Now their tattered and disconsolate foliage hung motionless, shrinking day by day into the brown semblance of what were once green leaves. A little beck ran at the bottom of the parson’s garden, but it was now all but dry. Everything was dried and wasted, except the heather which sprouted and thickened and browned under the desolating shine of the pitiless sun, while the air above it quivered with refraction.

“The air is dancing!” cried the parson’s boys, lying in the thick tufts and looking towards the low ridges that bounded their moor to the north. Later on it grew so hot that the very sun was veiled in mist, and the air did not dance any more, but stood still with weariness, so the children said, again. A lighted candle, held in the kitchen garden, flared straight up, like a pillar.

The children tried it--they tried everything--everything permissible under the strict system of Vicarage discipline--to amuse themselves, in these days, when their elders were too tired and cross to undertake to keep them happy. They wandered about together, their arms heavily linked round each other’s shoulders, dragging their feet along the cinder paths in an irritating unison. They stood now, in their baggy little home-made clothes, on the path that led down the kitchen garden, bordered with feeble flowers. It was only bordered; the middle patch of ground was, perforce, devoted to useful vegetable cultivation. The living of Barmoor was not a rich living, and the Rev. Matthew Cooper, its incumbent, stood very low in position, birth, and education.

His gardener, who was also the sexton, was digging the potatoes for early dinner. He grunted while he dug, and his back was turned to the children, who watched, with a kind of fascination born of ennui, the turn of the fork and the roll of the loose mould, and the horny hand that came down every now and then and gathered up the harvest of his toil and flung it into a basket. Saunders was careless, and let several potatoes roll back into the furrow, out of the eight or so that each turn of the fork should yield.

“Oh, Saunders, look, ye’ve missed one!” piped the youngest child.

“Happen I have, Master John,” replied the old man. “It’s ower hot to be fashed!”

The child sighed.

“Won’t it really rain soon, Saunders dear?” he asked wearily. He had heard so much lately of this wonderful rain that was to heal all ills and make the world a pleasant place again. Child-like, he had forgotten what rain was like, and how he hated it, since it kept him indoors, and spoiled his play.

“Happen it may, happen it mayn’t!” muttered the old servant sulkily. With a sudden access of spite, he added, “Didn’t the master pray for it i’ church last Sunda’? But some folks has no influence with the Almighty. A’m sayin’ that the Lord ought to do it for His ain sake--the bonny garden’s fair perished for the want of a little kindly moisture.”

“I think it will rain soon!” said the youngest child again gravely. In his blue eyes was something of the rapt look of a visionary.

“Well, it doesna’ look much like it,” grumbled the old fellow, pointing up with his fork to the sky that hung above, a wall of greyness, and coming very close to earth, somehow. “What for suld it rain, think’st tha’?”

“Because it must in the end,” replied the child sturdily. “It wants to rain so badly. It is like me, when I want to cry and can’t. Oh, Saunders, there’s another potato you’ve left. What a lot you miss!”

“Gan awa’! Gan awa’,” said Saunders impatiently, “and let me get done. Gan awa’ an tew Hannah!”

He shook his pitchfork at them with playful savagery, and they turned away.

“Listen, Willie,” said the child called John, confidentially taking his brother’s arm, and leading him towards the kitchen, a low, one-storied outhouse attached to the house, overshadowed by the biggest of the elm trees. “Listen, Willie; I think the sky is like a great wall, very thick, and yet very brittle. There’s all sorts of queer things going on the other side of it, that we can’t see.”

“Tell us,” said the elder boy, dimly interested.

“There’s great bulls roaring, and sparks flying, like in Hobbie Noble’s forge, and a noise--such a noise! If there comes a hole in the wall; we shall see it.” His eyes dilated; he squeezed his less poetical minded brother’s hand.

“Hout!” said the listener, “I don’t care for that story much. Let us go in, and bide with Hannah a bit.”

The Vicarage rooms were damp and insufficiently lighted, but the Vicarage kitchen was bright and pleasant. Hannah’s lime and marl floor was freshly washed, her copper vessels as bright as the mirror in Mrs. Cooper’s best bedroom; but in spite of all these signs of previous activity the girl herself was sitting in a limp and weary attitude, her knees apart, and a great bowl of peas between them, which she was “podding” for dinner. Her eyes were heavy; her big lump of flaxen hair hung on one side of her head; her clumsy red hands moved among the pods lazily and inattentively. “Deary me--a deary me!” she murmured to herself at short intervals.

“Now, bairns!” She roused herself as the two slunk in. “I’ve not time for none of you. Gan awa’ and play, there’s good childer!”

“Don’t be cross, Hannah!” said the eldest timidly. “We’ve only comed in for a sup of milk.”

“The milk is all gone sour,” she replied shortly. “Ye mun just content yersel’s wi’ a drink of water from the pump. Now be off with you!”

She gave the thin, inoffensive house-cat a hoist with her foot, and settled down to her peas again.

The pump in the garden had gone dry long since and Hannah knew it. The water they used in the household--that all the village used--came from one place, the well at the bottom of the village, which had luckily continued its functions in spite of the drought.

The children, as Hannah knew well enough, did not really want anything to drink, they wanted nothing but the antidote of human conversation to the restlessness and uneasiness that they shared with Hannah and Saunders, and what their father was apt to call “the lower animals.” The house-dog was as restless as they, and would neither play with them nor stay quiet in his kennel. The hens fluttered brusquely in the hen-house, and the feverish rushing of wings that went on there made it an unpleasant abiding-place for the children. They sometimes amused themselves by going in to hunt for eggs, but they left them alone to-day, and wandered on to the open study window, where the Reverend Matthew Cooper, in hot, black clothes, was working at his sermon for next Sunday, putting his hand up to his head every now and again.

The two little boys were always somewhat in awe of their stern father, and all they dared do now was to stand and watch him, until the intermittent scraping of their feet on the walk in front of the window roused him from his meditations. He looked up; his brow was pained.

“Well, my laddies, what do you want?” He spoke kindly enough, but his voice dragged with fatigue and oppression.

“Father,” asked the eldest child, “Father, tell us; why don’t they send rain when you pray for it?”

“You had better go and ask your mother,” said the Vicar, with the sort of grim humour in which he usually dealt. He was by nature a hard, cold, God-fearing, painstaking, undeveloped man, conscious of having a wife who managed him. “What about your lessons? Willie, I gave you a chapter to write out. Go and do some work if you can’t play.”

“But we’ve got a headache, Father.”

“So have I--splitting. Run away now, and let me go on with my sermon. I haven’t even chosen my text yet.… ‘_Who doeth great things and unsearchable.… Behold, He withholdeth the waters and they dry up.… He bindeth the waters in His thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them.… He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.… If the scourge slay suddenly, He will laugh at the trial of the innocent!_’”

The children left him, in desperation, and, going down to the bottom of the garden, took off their socks and sat with their feet in the diminished brook. The dog would not come with them, but snapped and growled at John when he tried to make overtures to it. Hannah, who came to look for them to fetch them to early dinner, could not find them, though they were only under the shade of the big rowan-bush near the brook-head. But she did not trouble herself to look very far, she herself could not have told you what ailed her.

“I cannot find them, mistress,” she said to their mother sitting, carving-knife in one hand and fork in the other, before the family joint, which Hannah had set before her, previous to going in search of the truants.

“Oh, very well! if they don’t choose to come in to their meals!”

Mrs. Cooper helped her husband to a plateful, and sent it in to him to his study, which he had intimated he was too busy to leave. She ate a small portion herself--not much--it was too hot to be hungry. She was a hard woman, and the absence of her two little sons did not affect her appetite in the least.

The kind-hearted maid gave them what she called “a bite and a sup” later on, when they came and put their apprehensive heads round the door cheek. She did not scold them. The youngest boy looked very pale and white, and avoided her eyes.

“Poor bairn!” she said, “he wants setting up with the sea air.”

The two children lay down after they had eaten, and slept on a heap of sacking, very clean and dry, near the woodstack. Their little bedroom was over the kitchen, and easy of access, but very dreary in the daytime because of the huge tree that overshadowed it. Hannah did not think of sending them up there, but flung a sack over their bare legs as they lay, and did not disturb them.

As the afternoon wore on to evening the hush became oppressive. Not a breath, not a sound of birds twittering, of fowls fluttering. Only the far-away moo of a discontented cow in an outhouse somewhere in the hills sounded like a faint trumpet call, and emphasized the stillness. The sky seemed nearer than ever now, and oppressively near, and all-encompassing.

As Hannah crossed the yard, just before supper, to throw a pail of scrapings into the pig-trough, she heard a noise. It was not Hodgson’s cow.… It might have been the grinding of one of Miller Farsyde’s flour wagons on the quartz that sprinkled the road up there beyond the brow--half-a-mile away. She did not know what it was--a very faint rumble. She thought no more of it, but as she crossed the courtyard on her way back something dropped on to the back of her hand which she could have sworn was a rain-drop.…!

The thought passed. Her country mind again was a blank. She gave the boys a shake as she passed in. “Come now, wake up! ’Tis supper time!”

The youngest boy stirred and frowned.

“Is it come?” he said--“the hole in the wall?”

“Whatten hole? Whatten wall? Whatten rubbish is the child talking about?” she said carelessly, brushing the loose straws off his jacket with strong sideway pats, and leading him in to the dining-room where supper was spread. Willie, the elder and more prosaic of the two, manifested some interest in the items of the meal. It was beans and bacon and porridge, too solid fare for such a day as this had been. The Vicar had finished his sermon, and was sitting in his place, as pale as his white tie, but otherwise placable enough. The eldest child went round to his own high chair in silence, but the youngest crossed the room to his mother’s side and pulled her by the sleeve.

“What ails ye, laddie?” she asked not unkindly.

“Will you give me a kiss, Mammy?” he asked shamefacedly and in a low voice, lest his brother should hear, and taunt him for being a “mammy pet.”

“What nonsense!” Mrs. Cooper said, with all the helpless shyness of a hard woman. She stooped down and kissed her little appealing son, nevertheless. “Now, sit down, and eat your supper quietly. Well, Mr. Cooper, how have ye got on with your sermon?”

“Badly!” replied her husband. “I seem to have such a weight on my brain--an oppression! It is quite dreadful. It is so bad, it really can’t last--something must happen. Eat your supper, John, and don’t stare.”

For the youngest child’s eyes were constantly fixed on his father, and little questions seemed to be trembling on his lips. He said nothing until supper was over, when he begged his mother to read to them, in which request he was seconded by his elder brother.

She got the big family Bible and reverently flirted the pages.…

“Read about the Israelites and the Plagues of Egypt,” suggested Willie.

“Very well,” the mother said equably. Her day’s work was done, she had time now, and was willing to please the children in their own way.

“‘_And Moses stretched forth his rod towards the heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail----_’”

“I wish He would,” murmured the Vicar.

“‘_And the fire ran along the ground, and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt.…_’”

She was going on in her monotonous, uneducated voice, when the youngest child suddenly screamed and hid his face in the cushions of the sofa.

“Whisht, whisht!” she called out, by way of soothing him. “Why, you silly body, haven’t ye heard it all before?”

The child continued to sob.

His face remained hidden. Sternly his parent ignored his hysterical outburst.

“How old were the children of Israel?” asked Willie, by way of distracting the attention of his elders from this bad conduct on his brother’s part, which would assuredly end in both being sent off to bed. Crying was never allowed. “Were they as old as me, or only as old as John?”

Mrs. Cooper now gave her mind to the destruction of this erroneous impression under which her children had been labouring, and when it was done she raised her voice, and called “Hannah!” to the maid, who was to be heard moving heavily about in the passage.

John raised his tear-stained face from the sofa, a wild terror in his eyes. Willie clasped his hands together, and together they pleaded with an unaccountable vehemence.…

“Oh, no, no, Mother; please, Mother--we don’t want to go to bed. We can’t! We can’t!” both wailed.

“And what for no?” asked the mother, raising her strongly marked black eyebrows. “Why not to bed, to-night, same as other nights?”

“Because--because--oh, Mother! because we want another story. We want Abram and Isaac,” pleaded William. It was only an excuse, and the mother knew it.

“One story is quite enough for one evening,” she answered severely; “and John did not behave particularly well over that; I won’t hear any fond nonsense. Now you just trot along both of you! You are both as cross and sleepy as you can be. Bed’s the safest place for you!”

Her rough soothing was of no value. The children’s faces, as Hannah came in, were blanched with terror. John ran up to the kindly servant-maid, and hid his face in the folds of her linsey gown.

“I want to speak to you,” he sobbed.

“Noo, what then, ma honey?” said Hannah good-humouredly, stooping, till her smooth head touched his touzled one. “Well!”--as she raised her head--“did ye ever hear the like? What sets ye asking that? Mistress, he wants to know if they mayn’t creep in aside of father and mother to-night?”

“Please let us, Mother,” they murmured, almost inaudibly.

“I never heard anything so fond!” exclaimed Mrs. Cooper, laughing grimly. “Be off with ye both quietly, now, and let me hear no more nonsense.”

“We did once, Mother!”

“Once! Yes! when they were mending the roof of your bedroom; but the roof’s safe and sound over your heads now, at any rate. Why,” she laughed, “why, when I give ye a nice big bed to yourselves, should I go and cram my own and the master’s with two tiresome children, to kick me black and blue before morning? What are ye afeared of, I say?”

But they would own to nothing, and averted their eyes. A little underswell of sobbing, whimpering breaths testified to their distress.

“What’s come to the bairns, I wonder?” She was puzzled, through her thick mental hide of unsympathy. “They’re as fractious! It’s this unked weather sets us all out of our wits.”

“It _must_ break,” said her husband, “there’s no sense in it. We may have rain to-morrow. I forgot to look at the glass as I passed in to-night. There may be a change soon, nay, there must be.… Come here, children, and say your prayers, and let’s have no more crying.”

They all at once realized the hopelessness of it all, and came meekly to his knee, Hannah folded her hands and looked on approvingly at the two flaxen heads, as in their innocent, pretty, piping voices they begged blessings on their hardened elders, and murmured deep contrition for the sins they had not yet committed. They wound up as usual with the prayer--

“‘_Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of Thine only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen._’”

Sadly they rose and kissed their parents, who had so carelessly crossed them in their strong instinctive desire, and murmured inaudible good-nights. Then Hannah, taking a little submissive hand of each, led them out of the room.

They went past the weather-glass in the hall, whose strongly marked signs and signals of change they were too young, and Hannah too ignorant, to understand, and walked round by half roofless passages to the kitchen. Then Hannah, laughingly propelling “mischief in front of her,” inducted them up the shaky wooden staircase that led into the large room where they always slept, brooded over by the enormous over-arching elm-tree. Its branches tapped the little skylight pane when it was windy, but now they hung still like a drooping banner in a calm.

“I do believe it’s that ugly, girt tree they’re feared of!” Hannah thought to herself.

During the passage towards their sleeping place they said nothing, but the fingers of the younger child closed and unclosed round the maid’s stout thumb, and the touch struck her as very cold.

“I’d let you both creep in aside o’ me,” she said, “only I’m that fleyed o’ the mistress! She’d find us out, as sure as my name is Hannah Cawthorne.”

She set down the candle on the chest in the long, low, empty loft-room. The chest and the bed were almost the only articles of furniture in it. The wooden rafters that supported the roof made fanciful bars and arches over the white dimity quilt. The bed was large, clean and comfortless.

When the two children had undressed and lain down, Hannah Cawthorne, of a gloomy North Country turn of mind that ran continually on omens and predestinations, could not help thinking how like two corpses laid out they looked, lying so straight, their little bodies outlined under the quilt, their eyes wide open and staring at the roof. It made her uncomfortable.

“There’s nought to be afeared on,” she thought, trying to bring comfort to herself merely, for the children were still, submissive and past all repining now. “It’s as safe as a church, but all the same.… Now shut your eyes,” she said aloud, “there’s good lads, and say ‘Gentle Jesus’ till ye feel the sleep coming on ye. Oh, ye’ll sleep fine, trust me. Shall I leave ye the light?”

This was a wild stretch of authority. She might have lost her place over it. She was relieved when they shook their heads and declined it.

“See here,” she went on, producing an apple from her pocket. “See here, ye can munch this atween ye.”

She laid it down on the coverlet, but no little hand came forth to take it.

“Poor bairns, they’re sad-like.… Eh, she’s a hard woman, is the mistress! If they were mine, shouldn’t I like them to nestle in aside o’ me! This room is fair lonesome. Naebody could hear them if they were to skrike out.…”

“What are ye looking at, my honey?” she asked John curiously, for the child’s eyes remained obstinately fixed on the roof, as if he saw something there.

“He’s looking at the hole in the wall,” volunteered the eldest boy at last. “He’s shiverin’.”

“Hap him up in your arms, ma bonny bairn, that’ll soon warm him.… Now I must be going, lads.… Good-night to ye both.…”

Hesitating, reluctant, she took up her candle and made a start for the door.

“I don’t half like leaving them,” she murmured, as she stole out casting a last look at the two children, lying clasped, according to her recommendation, in each other’s arms. Their faces were hidden in each other’s necks, their sad apprehensive eyes were closed, obediently summoning sleep.

Gently snecking the door, she blundered down the rickety staircase, and made her way back into the other, safer part of the house. Ignorant, she passed by the mysterious oracle hanging in the hall, unable to read or understand the plain meaning which its hands now bore.

“Eh, but she’s a right hard woman, is the mistress, and master follows her in all things. _He’d_ have let the poor childer come in aside him, when they begged and prayed fit to turn a heart of stone.…”

She did not toss on her hard pallet, but lay stupefied in the heavy slumber that was the meed of her arduous existence. Upstairs, in the best bedroom, the Reverend Matthew Cooper slept off his headache. His wife did not drowse, but lay by her husband’s side, straight and still as she had laid down, congratulating herself on the great healing storm that was even now breaking over the Vicarage, gloating over its promise of recomfiture and peace.… It thundered and lightened for two hours.

When morning dawned the great drought was over, and the air was refreshed.

Hannah, the maid, rose and went about her duties with a light heart, and presently, having started the kitchen fire, called the parson and his wife to resume theirs.

When it was time, she pulled her dirty kitchen apron aside, put the kettle where it could not for the moment boil over, and went to call the parson’s children.

She went up the crooked stair and opened the door gently, “not to waken them sudden.” The first thing she saw, before she screamed, was the wide, jagged hole on the rafters above the bed where they still lay in each other’s arms. The lightning that, guided by the tree which hung over the roof, had passed through to the innocent children and dealt them their unearned and undeserved death, had not divided them. They were quiet and unchanged in appearance except for some little blue marks like shot in the forehead of the one and the breast of the other.

THE TIGER-SKIN