A Little Wizard, Page 3

  CHAPTER III.

  LANGDALE'S HORSE.

  It was well he did so, for the fiery cross had chosen that moment toarrive; Simon found his household waiting for him at the foldgate, andwith them a red-faced man from Settle, who had ridden across the fellswith the news that Langdale's people were harrying the place. Beforethe messenger had had time to come to details, the Puritan was himselfagain. The light of battle gleamed in his sober eyes, his face grewhard as his native rock. Knowing that he was looked for with anxiety,and that at the rendezvous few would be more welcome, he lost not amoment, but quickly, yet without hurry, fetched his pike and coat,girt on his pistols, and filled his bandoliers. Luke, who had had someminutes the start of him, and whose eyes burned with a sombreenthusiasm, showed himself equally forward. When the two stood readyat the gate, then, and then only, they discovered that the thirdbrother had no intention of accompanying them. He stood back on theinner side of the wall with a frown on his pale face, his attitude acurious mixture of shrinking and resolution.

  "Come, man, be quick!" Simon cried sharply. "What are you waitingfor?"

  "I'm not coming, Simon," was the reply.

  "Not coming?"

  "Some one must stay and take care of the place," the butler answered,wiping his forehead. "I'll stay. Your wife will need some one."

  "Fool! what can one man do here?" the Puritan retorted fiercely."Come, I say. This is no time for loitering when the work calls us."

  Gridley shook his head and moistened his lips with his tongue. "I'mnot a fighting man," he muttered feebly.

  For a moment the elder brother glared at him, as though he were mindedto cross the fence and strike him down. Fortunately, however, Simonfound a vent for his passion as effectual and more characteristic. "Ifyou do not fight, you do not eat," he said coldly. "At any rate in myhouse. Mistress," he continued to his wife, "see that my orders areobeyed. Give that craven neither bit nor sup until I come again. If hewill not fight he shall not feed!"

  And with that he went.

  When little Jack came back to the house an hour later, and crept shylyinto the kitchen, as his manner was, he found it empty. The light wasbeginning to wane, and the coming evening already filled the cornersof the gaunt, silent room, in which not even a clock ticked, withshadows. The boy stood awhile, looking about him and listening in thestillness for any movement in the inner room, or on the floor above.Hearing none, he went outside in a kind of panic; but there too hefound no one. Still, the light gave him courage to re-enter and mountthe stairs. He called "Gridley!" again and again, but no one answered.He tried Luke's room; it was empty. On this the lad was about to flyagain in a worse panic than before--for the loneliness of the housemight have appalled an older heart than his--when the sound offootsteps relieved his fears. He stole to the window, and saw thebutler and Mistress Gridley come round the corner of the house, theformer carrying a spade on his shoulder.

  Jack wondered timidly what they had been about with the spade, andwhere Simon and Luke were; but naturally he got no explanation, andwas glad to escape from the grim looks with which they greeted him. Itwas time for the evening meal, and the woman set it on, and gave himhis share as usual. The butler, however, he saw with surprise took nopart in it, but sat at a distance with a scowl on his face, andneither ate nor drank. On the other hand, Mistress Gridley ate morethan usual. Indeed, he had never seen her in better appetite orspirits, She rallied her companion, too, on his abstinence sopleasantly and with so much good-temper, that the child was quitecarried away by her humor, and went to bed in better spirits than hadbeen his since the beginning of his life at Malham.

  In the morning it was the same, with the exception that Gridley lookedstrangely pale about the cheeks. Again he took no share of the meal,but in the middle of breakfast he came up to the table in an odd,violent fashion, falling back only when Mistress Gridley snatched up aknife, and made a playful thrust at him. She laughed at the same time,but the laugh was not musical, and the child, detecting a false notein it, grew puzzled. Even for him the scene had lost its humor. Theman's face, as he retired cowed and baffled to the window-seat, wherethe side light brought out all that was most repulsive in his cravenfeatures, told a tale there was no mistaking. The child stayed awhile,fascinated by the spectacle, and saw the woman take her seat on themeal chest and spin, smiling and patient, while Gridley gnawed hisnails and devoured her with his eyes. But the longer he watched themore frightened he grew; and at last he broke the spell with aneffort, and fled to the purer air outside.

  He was wise, for the morn was at its best. It was the most perfectmorning of the year. Ingleborough had no cap on, Penighent stood uphard and sharp against the blue sky. The summer sunshine, unrelievedby a single cloud or so much as a wreath of mist, fell hotly on theopen moor, where the larks sank and the bees hummed, and the boy'sheart rose in sympathy with the life about him. Feeling an unwontedlightness and cheerfulness, he started to climb the fell at the backof the house, following the right bank of the hollow in which theyew-trees grew. This hollow, as it rose to a level with the uppermoor, spent itself in a dozen fissures, which, radiating in everydirection, drained the moss. Some were three or four feet deep, someten or twelve, with steep and everhanging edges.

  Presently the boy found his progress barred by one of these, andpeeping into its shadowy depths, which a little to his left meltedinto the gloom of the yew-trees, grew timid and stopped, sitting downand looking back the way he had come, to gain courage. For a while hiseyes dwelt idly on the sunny slope. Then on a sudden he saw a sightwhich he remembered all his life.

  A quarter of a mile below the house, a road crossed the moor. On thisa solitary horseman had just appeared, urging a piebald horse to atired trot, while continually looking back the way he had come. Theboy had scarcely remarked him and the strange color of his steed, whena second rider came into sight over the brow, with a man running byhis side and clinging to his stirrup-leather. To him succeeded twomore horsemen, trotting abreast and spurring furiously; and then whilethe lad wondered what it all meant, and who these people were, asingle footman topped the brow, and after running a score ofpaces--but not in the direction the others had taken--flung himselfdown on his face among the bracken.

  Flung himself on his face among the bracken.--Page 59.]

  He had scarcely executed this man[oe]uvre, when a party of six men,three mounted--the boy could see them rising and falling briskly intheir stirrups--and three running beside them, appeared above theridge, and quickening their pace followed with a loud cry on theothers' heels. The cry seemed to spur on the fugitives--such he nowsaw the first party to be--to fresh exertions, but despite this, thetwo horsemen who brought up the rear were quickly overtaken by thesix. The lad saw a tiny flash and heard a faint report. One of the twothrew up his arms and fell backwards. The other made as if he wouldhave turned his horse to meet his pursuers; but it shied and carriedhim across the moor. Two of the six rode after him, one on eitherside, and the lad saw the flash of their blades in the sunshine asthey rained cuts on his head and shoulders--which the poor wretchvainly strove to shield by raising his arms--till he too sank down,and the two turned back to their comrades, who were still followingafter the three who survived.

  The boy, sick and shuddering, and utterly unmanned by the sight he hadseen, hid his eyes; and for a time saw no more. His very heart meltedwithin him for terror and for pity. Sweating all over, he rolledhimself into a little hollow beside him where the ground sank, and laythere trembling. By-and-by he heard a scream, and then another, andeach time he drew in his breath and closed his eyes. Then silence fellagain upon the moor. The bees hummed round him. A peewit screamed andwheeled above his head.

  He plucked up heart after a while to peep fearfully over the edge ofthe little basin in which he lay, and saw that the six men wereretracing their steps, but not, as they had gone, in a body. They werenow beating the moor backwards in a long line, each man a score ofpaces from his neighbo
r. The lad, after watching them a moment, hadwit enough to understand what they were doing, and from his elevatedposition could see also their quarry, who had lost no time in removinghimself from the spot where he had first thrown himself down in thefern. He was half way up the fell now, on a level with the farm, and ahundred paces above the uppermost of his enemies. Apparently he wassatisfied with his position, or despaired of bettering it, for he laystill, though the searchers drew each moment nearer.

  Jack could see their flushed cheeks and streaming brows as they toiledalong in the sunshine, probing the fern with pikes and going sometimesmany yards out of the way to inspect a likely bush. He felt his heartstand still when they halted opposite the man's lair and seemed tosuspect something; and again he felt it race on as if it would chokehim, when they passed by unnoticing, and began to quarter the groundtowards the farm.

  Their backs were scarcely turned before the man, whose conduct fromthe first had proved him a hardy and resolute fellow, moved again, andcrawling stealthily on his stomach, as the ground afforded himshelter, began to make his way up the hill. The lad, lying still andfascinated, watched him; forseeing that the fugitive's course mustbring him, if pursued, to the hollow in which he lay, yet unable tomove or escape. It seemed an age before the man reached the mound, andwriggling himself up its least exposed side, pushed his headcautiously over the rim, and met the boy's eyes.

  Both started violently; but whereas Jack saw before him only aswollen, blood-stained face, white and haggard with fatigue, and halfdisguised by a kerchief which covered the man's brow and came down tohis eyes, the man saw more--much more.

  "Jack!" he muttered, the instinct of caution remaining with him evenin his great astonishment. "Jack! Why, don't you know me, lad? It isI, Frank."

  "Frank?"

  "Ay, Frank! You know me now."

  The boy did know him then, more by his voice than his face; and brokeinto a passion of weeping, holding out his hands and murmuringincoherent words. The fugitive whom chance had brought to his feet washis brother! the brother whom he had not seen for more than a year, ofwhose misfortunes and misdeeds he had dimly heard, the brother whom hehad mourned as dead!

  Twelve months of hardship and danger and rough companionship hadchanged Frank Patten much, inwardly as well as outwardly; but they hadnot sapped the family tie nor closed his heart against such a meetingas this. He crept into the hollow beside the child with every noblerfeeling in his nature aroused, and with one eye on the moor below andone on him strove to comfort him.

  Courage is contagious. The elder brother possessed it in a peculiardegree, uniting the daring of youth to the hardihood and resourcewhich as a rule come only of long experience; and Jack was not slow tofeel his influence. The boy quickly stilled his sobs and dried histears. In such crises resolutions are formed rapidly, the impulse tohelp is instinctive. In a few moments he was back in the old place,watching the moor; while Frank, whose bandaged head was so much morelikely to catch the eye and attract attention, lay resting in the lapof the hollow.

  "Do you see them now?" Frank asked presently, when he had somewhatrecovered his breath and strength.

  "They are standing in front of the farm," Jack answered. "Now they arebeating the ground towards the further brow."

  Frank nodded. "They think I must have doubled back," he said coolly."It was a narrow squeak, but I am all right as it is, if I can getthree things."

  "What are they, Frank?" Jack asked timidly, gazing with awe andadmiration at the ragged, blood-stained, sinewy figure beside him.

  "Water, food, and a hiding-place," his brother answered tersely; "butfirst, water. The sun has burned me to a cinder, and I am parched withthirst. I little thought when I rode gaily into Settle yester-eventhat this would come of it. But the game is not fought out yet."

  "Have they not beaten you?" Jack ventured to ask.

  "Not a bit of it!" his brother answered with a reckless laugh. "'Twasonly an affair of outposts, lad. In a week, Duke Hamilton will be atPreston with thirty thousand gallant fellows at his back. It will notbe a handful of disbanded troopers will scatter it. But I thirst,Jack, I thirst."

  Jack slid back into the hollow and sprang to his feet. "There is aspring at the back of the house," he said eagerly. "I can go to itthrough the yew-trees, Frank, and be back in five minutes, or ten atmost. But I have nothing to carry the water in, and the pitcher iskept in the house."

  In a trice Frank pulled off one of his long boots. "Take that," hesaid. "It is as nearly water-tight as awl and needle and good leathercan make it. Many a man has used a worse blackjack. But can you go andreturn unseen, lad?"

  "Trust me," said Jack, bravely, taking up the boot. "You shall see."

  He had just bethought him of the fissure in the moss which had set alimit to his explorations. It ran athwart the slope a few paces behindthe hollow in which he lay, and seemed to promise safe and secretaccess through the yew coppice to the rear of the house where the wellwas. Nodding confidently to his brother, he crawled back to the rift;then dropping into it where it grew shallow, a little to the right, heturned down it and followed it until it presently opened into the dellin which the yew-trees grew. Their cool shadow no longer terrifiedhim, for he was thinking of another, and had a purpose; two thingswhich form the best of armor against empty fears. Carrying the bootwith caution, so that it might not be seen easily or at once were hesurprised, he plunged into the gloom under the trees, and creepingalong, presently reached the spring, which lay a few paces only fromthe back of the house.

  It was clear of the trees, and here he had to venture something. Hewaited and listened, and presently heard Mistress Gridley's voice. Shewas on the farther side of the house talking to some of the Puritantroopers, who had dismounted at the wall of the fold, and werediscussing their victory. Taking his courage in his hand the boyadvanced to the spring, and dipping the boot, staggered back with itinto the shelter of the trees, where he lay a moment under cover toassure himself that he had not been observed. Quickly satisfied onthis point, and the more quickly as he discovered that the boot leakeda little, he lost no more time, but hastening back the way he hadcome, in three or four minutes reached the surface of the moor, andhad the satisfaction of seeing his brother plunge his burning faceinto the boot and quench his thirst with water of his providing.

  Never had the boy known so proud a moment. It was an epoch in hislife. He was athirst himself, his lips were parched and his mouth wasburning, but he would have suffered a hundred times as much before hewould have taken a drop. He looked on, glowing with happiness: fearand weakness, heat and thirst all forgotten. For he had done a man'sdeed.