‘Well,’ thought Lancelot to himself, ‘this great heart has gone down to the root of the matter—the right and wrong of it. He, at least, has not forgotten God. Well, I would give up all the Teleologies and cosmogonies that I ever dreamt or read, just to believe what he believes—Heigho and well-a-day!—Paul! hist? I’ll swear that was an otter!’
‘I hope not, sir, I’m sure. I haven’t seen the spraint of one here this two years.’
‘There again—don’t you see something move under that marl bank?’
Tregarva watched a moment, and then ran up to the spot, and throwing himself on his face on the edge, leant over, grappled something—and was instantly, to Lancelot’s astonishment, grappled in his turn by a rough, lank, white dog, whose teeth, however, could not get through the velveteen sleeve.
‘I’ll give in, keeper! I’ll give in. Doan’t ye harm the dog! he’s deaf as a post, you knows.’
‘I won’t harm him if you take him off, and come up quietly.’
This mysterious conversation was carried on with a human head, which peeped above the water, its arms supporting from beneath the growling cur—such a visage as only worn-out poachers, or trampling drovers, or London chiffonniers carry; pear-shaped and retreating to a narrow peak above, while below, the bleared cheeks, and drooping lips, and peering purblind eyes, perplexed, hopeless, defiant, and yet sneaking, bespeak their share in the ‘inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.’—Savages without the resources of a savage—slaves without the protection of a master—to whom the cart-whip and the rice-swamp would be a change for the better—for there, at least, is food and shelter.
Slowly and distrustfully a dripping scarecrow of rags and bones rose from his hiding-place in the water, and then stopped suddenly, and seemed inclined to dash through the river; but Tregarva held him fast.
‘There’s two on ye! That’s a shame! I’ll surrender to no man but you, Paul. Hold off, or I’ll set the dog on ye!’
‘It’s a gentleman fishing. He won’t tell—will you, sir?’ And he turned to Lancelot. ‘Have pity on the poor creature, sir, for God’s sake—it isn’t often he gets it.’
‘I won’t tell, my man. I’ve not seen you doing any harm. Come out like a man, and let’s have a look at you.’
The creature crawled up the bank, and stood, abject and shivering, with the dog growling from between his legs.
‘I was only looking for a kingfisher’s nest: indeed now, I was, Paul Tregarva.’
‘Don’t lie, you were setting night-lines. I saw a minnow lie on the bank as I came up. Don’t lie; I hate liars.’
‘Well indeed, then—a man must live somehow.’
‘You don’t seem to live by this trade, my friend,’ quoth Lancelot; ‘I cannot say it seems a prosperous business, by the look of your coat and trousers.’
‘That Tim Goddard stole all my clothes, and no good may they do him; last time as I went to gaol I gave them him to kep, and he went off for a navvy meantime; so there I am.’
‘If you will play with the dogs,’ quoth Tregarva, ‘you know what you will be bit by. Haven’t I warned you? Of course you won’t prosper: as you make your bed, so you must lie in it. The Lord can’t be expected to let those prosper that forget Him. What mercy would it be to you if He did let you prosper by setting snares all church-time, as you were last Sunday, instead of going to church?’
‘I say, Paul Tregarva, I’ve told you my mind about that afore. If I don’t do what I knows to be right and good already, there ain’t no use in me a damning myself all the deeper by going to church to hear more.’
‘God help you!’ quoth poor Paul.
‘Now, I say,’ quoth Crawy, with the air of a man who took the whole thing as a matter of course, no more to be repined at than the rain and wind—‘what be you a going to do with me this time? I do hope you won’t have me up to bench. ’Tain’t a month now as I’m out o’ prizzum along o’ they fir-toppings, and I should, you see—’ with a look up and down and round at the gay hay-meadows, and the fleet water, and the soft gleaming clouds, which to Lancelot seemed most pathetic,—‘I should like to ha’ a spell o’ fresh air, like, afore I goes in again.’
Tregarva stood over him and looked down at him, like some huge stately bloodhound on a trembling mangy cur. ‘Good heavens!’ thought Lancelot, as his eye wandered from the sad steadfast dignity of the one, to the dogged helpless misery of the other—‘can those two be really fellow-citizens? fellow-Christians?—even animals of the same species? Hard to believe!’
True, Lancelot; but to quote you against yourself, Bacon, or rather the instinct which taught Bacon, teaches you to discern the invisible common law under the deceitful phenomena of sense.
‘I must have those night-lines, Crawy,’ quoth Tregarva, at length.
‘Then I must starve. You might ever so well take away the dog. They’re the life of me.’
‘They’re the death of you. Why don’t you go and work, instead of idling about, stealing trout?’
‘Be you a laughing at a poor fellow in his trouble? Who’d gie me a day’s work, I’d like to know? It’s twenty year too late for that!’
Lancelot stood listening. Yes, that wretch, too, was a man and a brother—at least so books used to say. Time was, when he had looked on a poacher as a Pariah ‘hostem humani generis’—and only deplored that the law forbade him to shoot them down, like cats and otters; but he had begun to change his mind.
He had learnt, and learnt rightly, the self-indulgence, the danger, the cruelty, of indiscriminate alms. It looked well enough in theory, on paper. ‘But—but—but,’ thought Lancelot, ‘in practice, one can’t help feeling a little of that un-economic feeling called pity. No doubt the fellow has committed an unpardonable sin in daring to come into the world when there was no call for him; one used to think, certainly, that children’s opinions were not consulted on such points before they were born, and that therefore it might be hard to visit the sins of the fathers on the children, even though the labour-market were a little overstocked—“mais nous avons changé tout cela,” like M. Jourdain’s doctors. No doubt, too, the fellow might have got work if he had chosen—in Kamschatka or the Cannibal Islands; for the political economists have proved, beyond a doubt, that there is work somewhere or other for every one who chooses to work. But as, unfortunately, society has neglected to inform him of the state of the Cannibal Island labour-market, or to pay his passage thither when informed thereof, he has had to choose in the somewhat limited labour-field of the Whitford Priors’ union, whose workhouse is already every winter filled with abler-bodied men than he, between starvation—and this—. Well, as for employing him, one would have thought that there was a little work waiting to be done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which I used to tramp over last winter—but those, it seems, are still on the “margin of cultivation,” and not a remunerative investment—that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy a present of ten acres of them when he came of age, and commanded him to till that or be hanged, whether he would not have found it a profitable investment? But bygones are bygones, and there he is, and the moors, thanks to the rights of property—in this case the rights of the dog in the manger—belong to poor old Lavington—that is, the game and timber on them; and neither Crawy nor any one else can touch them. What can I do for him? Convert him? to what? For the next life, even Tregarva’s talisman seems to fail. And for this life—perhaps if he had had a few more practical proofs of a divine justice and government—that “kingdom of heaven” of which Luke talks, in the sensible bodily matters which he does appreciate, he might not be so unwilling to trust to it for the invisible spiritual matters which he does not appreciate. At all events, one has but one chance of winning him, and that is, through those five senses which he has left. What if he does spend the money in gross animal enjoyment? What will the amount of it be, compared with the animal enjoyments which my station allows me daily without reproach! A little more bacon—a little more beer—a little more tobacco; at all events they will be more important to him than a pair of new boots or an extra box of cigars to me.’—And Lancelot put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a sovereign. No doubt he was a great goose; but if you can answer his arguments, reader, I cannot.
‘Look here—what are your night-lines worth?’
‘A matter of seven shilling; ain’t they now, Paul Tregarva?’
‘I should suppose they are.’
‘Then do you give me the lines, one and all, and there’s a sovereign for you.—No, I can’t trust you with it all at once. I’ll give it to Tregarva, and he shall allow you four shillings a week as long as it lasts, if you’ll promise to keep off Squire Lavington’s river.’
It was pathetic, and yet disgusting, to see the abject joy of the poor creature. ‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘if he deserves to be wretched, so do I—why, therefore, if we are one as bad as the other, should I not make his wretchedness a little less for the time being?’
‘I waint come a-near the water. You trust me—I minds them as is kind to me’—and a thought seemed suddenly to lighten up his dull intelligence.
‘I say, Paul, hark you here. I see that Bantam into D * * * t’other day.’
‘What! is he down already?’
‘With a dog-cart; he and another of his pals; and I see ’em take out a silk flue, I did. So, says I, you maunt be trying that ere along o’ the Whitford trout; they kepers is out o’ nights so sure as the moon.’
‘You didn’t know that. Lying again!’
‘No, but I sayed it in course. I didn’t want they a-robbing here; so I think they worked mainly up Squire Vaurien’s water.’
‘I wish I’d caught them here,’ quoth Tregarva, grimly enough; ‘though I don’t think they came, or I should have seen the track on the banks.’
‘But he sayed like, as how he should be down here again about pheasant shooting.’
‘Trust him for it. Let us know, now, if you see him.’
‘And that I will, too. I wouldn’t save a feather for that ’ere old rascal, Harry. If the devil don’t have he, I don’t see no use in keeping no devil. But I minds them as has mercy on me, though my name is Crawy. Ay,’ he added, bitterly, ‘’tain’t so many kind turns as I gets in this life, that I can afford to forget e’er a one.’ And he sneaked off, with the deaf dog at his heels.
‘How did that fellow get his name, Tregarva?’
‘Oh, most of them have nicknames round here. Some of them hardly know their own real names, sir.’ (‘A sure sign of low civilisation,’ thought Lancelot.) ‘But he got his a foolish way; and yet it was the ruin of him. When he was a boy of fifteen, he got miching away in church-time, as boys will, and took off his clothes to get in somewhere here in this very river, groping in the banks after craw-fish; and as the devil—for I can think no less—would have it, a big one catches hold of him by the fingers with one claw, and a root with the other, and holds him there till Squire Lavington comes out to take his walk after church, and there he caught the boy, and gave him a thrashing there and then, naked as he stood. And the story got wind, and all the chaps round called him Crawy ever afterwards, and the poor fellow got quite reckless from that day, and never looked any one in the face again; and being ashamed of himself, you see, sir, was never ashamed of anything else—and there he is. That dog’s his only friend, and gets a livelihood for them both. It’s growing old now; and when it dies, he’ll starve.’
‘Well—the world has no right to blame him for not doing his duty, till it has done its own by him a little better.’
‘But the world will, sir, because it hates its duty, and cries all day long, like Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”’
‘Do you think it knows its duty? I have found it easy enough to see that something is diseased, Tregarva; but to find the medicine first, and to administer it afterwards, is a very different matter.’
‘Well—I suppose the world will never be mended till the day of judgment.’
‘In plain English, not mended till it is destroyed. Hopeful for the poor world! I should fancy, if I believed that, that the devil in the old history—which you believe—had had the best of it with a vengeance, when he brought sin into the world, and ruined it. I dare not believe that. How dare you, who say that God sent His Son into the world to defeat the devil?’
Tregarva was silent a while.
‘Learning and the Gospel together ought to do something, sir, towards mending it. One would think so. But the prophecies are against that.’
‘As folks happen to read them just now. A hundred years hence they may be finding the very opposite meaning in them. Come, Tregarva,—Suppose I teach you a little of the learning, and you teach me a little of the Gospel—do you think we two could mend the world between us, or even mend Whitford Priors?’
‘God knows, sir,’ said Tregarva.
* * * * *
‘Tregarva,’ said Lancelot, as they were landing the next trout, ‘where will that Crawy go, when he dies?’
‘God knows, sir,’ said Tregarva.
* * * * *
Lancelot went thoughtful home, and sat down—not to answer Luke’s letter—for he knew no answer but Tregarva’s, and that, alas! he could not give, for he did not believe it, but only longed to believe it. So he turned off the subject by a question—
‘You speak of yourself as being already a member of the Romish communion. How is this? Have you given up your curacy? Have you told your father? I fancy that if you had done so I must have heard of it ere now. I entreat you to tell me the state of the case, for, heathen as I am, I am still an Englishman; and there are certain old superstitions still lingering among us—whencesoever we may have got them first—about truth and common honesty—you understand me.—
‘Do not be angry. But there is a prejudice against the truthfulness of Romish priests and Romish converts.—It’s no affair of mine. I see quite enough Protestant rogues and liars, to prevent my having any pleasure in proving Romanists, or any other persons, rogues and liars also. But I am—if not fond of you—at least sufficiently fond to be anxious for your good name. You used to be an open-hearted fellow enough. Do prove to the world that cœlum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.’
CHAPTER IX: HARRY VERNEY HEARS HIS LAST SHOT FIRED
The day after the Lavingtons’ return, when Lancelot walked up to the Priory with a fluttering heart to inquire after all parties, and see one, he found the squire in a great state of excitement.
A large gang of poachers, who had come down from London by rail, had been devastating all the covers round, to stock the London markets by the first of October, and intended, as Tregarva had discovered, to pay Mr. Lavington’s preserves a visit that night. They didn’t care for country justices, not they. Weren’t all their fines paid by highly respectable game-dealers at the West end? They owned three dog-carts among them; a parcel by railway would bring them down bail to any amount; they tossed their money away at the public-houses, like gentlemen; thanks to the Game Laws, their profits ran high, and when they had swept the country pretty clean of game, why, they would just finish off the season by a stray highway robbery or two, and vanish into Babylon and their native night.
Such was Harry Verney’s information as he strutted about the courtyard waiting for the squire’s orders.
‘But they’ve put their nose into a furze-bush, Muster Smith, they have. We’ve got our posse-commontaturs, fourteen men, sir, as’ll play the whole vale to cricket, and whap them; and every one’ll fight, for they’re half poachers themselves, you see’ (and Harry winked and chuckled); ‘and they can’t abide no interlopers to come down and take the sport out of their mouths.’
‘But are you sure they’ll come to-night?’
‘That ’ere Paul says so. Wonder how he found out—some of his underhand, colloguing, Methodist ways, I’ll warrant. I seed him preaching to that ’ere Crawy, three or four times when he ought to have hauled him up. He consorts with them poachers, sir, uncommon. I hope he ben’t one himself, that’s all.’
‘Nonsense, Harry!’
‘Oh? Eh? Don’t say old Harry don’t know nothing, that’s all. I’ve fixed his flint, anyhow.’
‘Ah! Smith!’ shouted the squire out of his study window, with a cheerful and appropriate oath. ‘The very man I wanted to see! You must lead these keepers for me to-night. They always fight better with a gentleman among them. Breeding tells, you know—breeding tells.’
Lancelot felt a strong disgust at the occupation, but he was under too many obligations to the squire to refuse.
‘Ay, I knew you were game,’ said the old man. ‘And you’ll find it capital fun. I used to think it so, I know, when I was young. Many a shindy have I had here in my uncle’s time, under the very windows, before the chase was disparked, when the fellows used to come down after the deer.’
Just then Lancelot turned and saw Argemone standing close to him. He almost sprang towards her—and retreated, for he saw that she had overheard the conversation between him and her father.
‘What! Mr. Smith!’ said she in a tone in which tenderness and contempt, pity and affected carelessness, were strangely mingled. ‘So! you are going to turn gamekeeper to-night?’
Lancelot was blundering out something, when the squire interposed.
‘Let her alone, Smith. Women will be tender-hearted, you know. Quite right—but they don’t understand these things. They fight with their tongues, and we with our fists; and then they fancy their weapons don’t hurt—Ha! ha! ha!’
‘Mr. Smith,’ said Argemone, in a low, determined voice, ‘if you have promised my father to go on this horrid business—go. But promise me, too, that you will only look on, or I will never—’
Argemone had not time to finish her sentence before Lancelot had promised seven times over, and meant to keep his promise, as we all do.
About ten o’clock that evening Lancelot and Tregarva were walking stealthily up a ride in one of the home-covers, at the head of some fifteen fine young fellows, keepers, grooms, and not extempore ‘watchers,’ whom old Harry was marshalling and tutoring, with exhortations as many and as animated as if their ambition was ‘Mourir pour la patrie.’
‘How does this sort of work suit you, Tregarva, for I don’t like it at all! The fighting’s all very well, but it’s a poor cause.’
‘Oh, sir, I have no mercy on these Londoners. If it was these poor half-starved labourers, that snare the same hares that have been eating up their garden-stuff all the week, I can’t touch them, sir, and that’s truth; but these ruffians—And yet, sir, wouldn’t it be better for the parsons to preach to them, than for the keepers to break their heads?’
‘Oh?’ said Lancelot, ‘the parsons say all to them that they can.’
Tregarva shook his head.
‘I doubt that, sir. But, no doubt, there’s a great change for the better in the parsons. I remember the time, sir, that there wasn’t an earnest clergyman in the vale; and now every other man you meet is trying to do his best. But those London parsons, sir, what’s the matter with them? For all their societies and their schools, the devil seems to keep ahead of them sadly. I doubt they haven’t found the right fly yet for publicans and sinners to rise at.’
A distant shot in the cover.
‘There they are, sir. I thought that Crawy wouldn’t lead me false when I let him off.’
‘Well, fight away, then, and win. I have promised Miss Lavington not to lift a hand in the business.’
‘Then you’re a lucky man, sir. But the squire’s game is his own, and we must do our duty by our master.’
There was a rustle in the bushes, and a tramp of feet on the turf.
‘There they are, sir, sure enough. The Lord keep us from murder this night!’ And Tregarva pulled off his neckcloth, and shook his huge limbs, as if to feel that they were all in their places, in a way that augured ill for the man who came across him.
They turned the corner of a ride, and, in an instant, found themselves face to face with five or six armed men, with blackened faces, who, without speaking a word, dashed at them, and the fight began; reinforcements came up on each side, and the engagement became general.
‘The forest-laws were sharp and stern,
The forest blood was keen,
They lashed together for life and death
Beneath the hollies green.
‘The metal good and the walnut-wood
Did soon in splinters flee;
They tossed the orts to south and north,
And grappled knee to knee.
‘They wrestled up, they wrestled down,
They wrestled still and sore;
The herbage sweet beneath their feet
Was stamped to mud and gore.’
And all the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his wing. Oh! if pheasants had but understanding, how they would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies which civilised Christian men perpetrate for their precious sake!
Had I the pen of Homer (though they say he never used one), or even that of the worthy who wasted precious years in writing a Homer Burlesqued, what heroic exploits might not I immortalise! In every stupid serf and cunning ruffian there, there was a heart as brave as Ajax’s own; but then they fought with sticks instead of lances, and hammered away on fustian jackets instead of brazen shields; and, therefore, poor fellows, they were beneath ‘the dignity of poetry,’ whatever that may mean. If one of your squeamish ‘dignity-of-poetry’ critics had just had his head among the gun-stocks for five minutes that night, he would have found it grim tragic earnest enough; not without a touch of fun though, here and there.
Lancelot leant against a tree and watched the riot with folded arms, mindful of his promise to Argemone, and envied Tregarva as he hurled his assailants right and left with immense strength, and led the van of battle royally. Little would Argemone have valued the real proof of love which he was giving her as he looked on sulkily, while his fingers tingled with longing to be up and doing. Strange—that mere lust of fighting, common to man and animals, whose traces even the lamb and the civilised child evince in their mock-fights, the earliest and most natural form of play. Is it, after all, the one human propensity which is utterly evil, incapable of being turned to any righteous use? Gross and animal, no doubt it is, but not the less really pleasant, as every Irishman and many an Englishman knows well enough. A curious instance of this, by the bye, occurred in Paris during the February Revolution. A fat English coachman went out, from mere curiosity, to see the fighting. As he stood and watched, a new passion crept over him; he grew madder and madder as the bullets whistled past him; at last, when men began to drop by his side, he could stand it no longer, seized a musket, and rushed in, careless which side he took,—
‘To drink delight of battle with his peers.’
He was not heard of for a day or two, and then they found him stiff and cold, lying on his face across a barricade, with a bullet through his heart. Sedentary persons may call him a sinful fool. Be it so. Homo sum: humani nihil à me alienum puto.
Lancelot, I verily believe, would have kept his promise, though he saw that the keepers gave ground, finding Cockney skill too much for their clumsy strength; but at last Harry Verney, who had been fighting as venomously as a wild cat, and had been once before saved from a broken skull by Tregarva, rolled over at his very feet with a couple of poachers on him.
‘You won’t see an old man murdered, Mr. Smith?’ cried he, imploringly.
Lancelot tore the ruffians off the old man right and left. One of them struck him; he returned the blow; and, in an instant, promises and Argemone, philosophy and anti-game-law prejudices, were swept out of his head, and ‘he went,’ as the old romances say, ‘hurling into the midst of the press,’ as mere a wild animal for the moment as angry bull or boar. An instant afterwards, though, he burst out laughing, in spite of himself, as ‘The Battersea Bantam,’ who had been ineffectually dancing round Tregarva like a gamecock spurring at a bull, turned off with a voice of ineffable disgust,—
‘That big cove’s a yokel; ta’nt creditable to waste science on him. You’re my man, if you please, sir,’—and the little wiry lump of courage and conceit, rascality and good humour, flew at Lancelot, who was twice his size, ‘with a heroism worthy of a better cause,’ as respectable papers, when they are not too frightened, say of the French.
* * * * *
‘Do you want any more?’ asked Lancelot.
‘Quite a pleasure, sir, to meet a scientific gen’lman. Beg your pardon, sir; stay a moment while I wipes my face. Now, sir, time, if you please.’
Alas for the little man! in another moment he tumbled over and lay senseless—Lancelot thought he had killed him. The gang saw their champion fall, gave ground, and limped off, leaving three of their party groaning on the ground, beside as many Whitford men.
As it was in the beginning, so is it to be to the end, my foolish brothers! From the poacher to the prime minister—wearying yourselves for very vanity! The soldier is not the only man in England who is fool enough to be shot at for a shilling a day.
But while all the rest were busy picking up the wounded men and securing the prisoners, Harry Verney alone held on, and as the poachers retreated slowly up the ride, he followed them, peering into the gloom, as if in hopes of recognising some old enemy.
‘Stand back, Harry Verney; we know you, and we’d be loth to harm an old man,’ cried a voice out of the darkness.
‘Eh? Do you think old Harry’d turn back when he was once on the track of ye? You soft-fisted, gin-drinking, counter-skipping Cockney rascals, that fancy you’re to carry the county before you, because you get your fines paid by London-tradesmen! Eh? What do you take old Harry for?’
‘Go back, you old fool!’ and a volley of oaths followed. ‘If you follow us, we’ll fire at you, as sure as the moon’s in heaven!’
‘Fire away, then! I’ll follow you to—!’ and the old man paced stealthily but firmly up to them.
Tregarva saw his danger and sprang forward, but it was too late.
‘What, you will have it, then?’
A sharp crack followed,—a bright flash in the darkness—every white birch-stem and jagged oak-leaf shone out for a moment as bright as day—and in front of the glare Lancelot saw the old man throw his arms wildly upward, fall forward, and disappear on the dark ground.
‘You’ve done it! off with you!’ And the rascals rushed off up the ride.
In a moment Tregarva was by the old man’s side, and lifted him tenderly up.
‘They’ve done for me, Paul. Old Harry’s got his gruel. He’s heard his last shot fired. I knowed it ’ud come to this, and I said it. Eh? Didn’t I, now, Paul?’ And as the old man spoke, the workings of his lungs pumped great jets of blood out over the still heather-flowers as they slept in the moonshine, and dabbled them with smoking gore.
‘Here, men,’ shouted the colonel, ‘up with him at once, and home! Here, put a brace of your guns together, muzzle and lock. Help him to sit on them, Lancelot. There, Harry, put your arms round their necks. Tregarva, hold him up behind. Now then, men, left legs foremost—keep step—march!’ And they moved off towards the Priory.
‘You seem to know everything, colonel,’ said Lancelot.
The colonel did not answer for a moment.
‘Lancelot, I learnt this dodge from the only friend I ever had in the world, or ever shall have; and a week after I marched him home to his deathbed in this very way.’
‘Paul—Paul Tregarva,’ whispered old Harry, ‘put your head down here: wipe my mouth, there’s a man; it’s wet, uncommon wet.’ It was his own life-blood. ‘I’ve been a beast to you, Paul. I’ve hated you, and envied you, and tried to ruin you. And now you’ve saved my life once this night; and here you be a-nursing of me as my own son might do, if he was here, poor fellow! I’ve ruined you, Paul; the Lord forgive me!’
‘Pray! pray!’ said Paul, ‘and He will forgive you. He is all mercy. He pardoned the thief on the cross—’
‘No, Paul, no thief,—not so bad as that, I hope, anyhow; never touched a feather of the squire’s. But you dropped a song, Paul, a bit of writing.’
Paul turned pale.
‘And—the Lord forgive me!—I put it in the squire’s fly-book.’
‘The Lord forgive you! Amen!’ said Paul, solemnly.
Wearily and slowly they stepped on towards the old man’s cottage. A messenger had gone on before, and in a few minutes the squire, Mrs. Lavington, and the girls, were round the bed of their old retainer.
They sent off right and left for the doctor and the vicar; the squire was in a frenzy of rage and grief.
‘Don’t take on, master, don’t take on,’ said old Harry, as he lay; while the colonel and Honoria in vain endeavoured to stanch the wound. ‘I knowed it would be so, sooner or later; ’tis all in the way of business. They haven’t carried off a bird, squire, not a bird; we was too many for ’em—eh, Paul, eh?’
‘Where is that cursed doctor?’ said the squire. ‘Save him, colonel, save him; and I’ll give you—’
Alas! the charge of shot at a few feet distance had entered like a bullet, tearing a great ragged hole.—There was no hope, and the colonel knew it; but he said nothing.
‘The second keeper,’ sighed Argemone, ‘who has been killed here! Oh, Mr. Smith, must this be? Is God’s blessing on all this?’
Lancelot said nothing. The old man lighted up at Argemone’s voice.
‘There’s the beauty, there’s the pride of Whitford. And sweet Miss Honor, too,—so kind to nurse a poor old man! But she never would let him teach her to catch perch, would she? She was always too tender-hearted. Ah, squire, when we’re dead and gone,—dead and gone,—squire, they’ll be the pride of Whitford still! And they’ll keep up the old place—won’t you, my darlings? And the old name, too! For, you know, there must always be a Lavington in Whitford Priors, till the Nun’s pool runs up to Ashy Down.’