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COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS


TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

=============

VOL. 966.

THE RED COURT FARM.

BY
MRS. HENRY WOOD.

IN TWO VOLUMES.--VOL. 2.



LEIPZIG: BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.
PARIS: C. REINWALD & CIE, 15, RUE DES SAINTS-PÈRES.
PARIS: THE GALIGNANI LIBRARY, 224, RUE DE RIVOLI,
     AND AT NICE, 48, QUAI ST. JEAN BAPTISTE.


_This Collection is, published with copyright for Continental
circulation, but all purchasers are earnestly requested not to
introduce the volumes into England or into any British Colony_.






COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS.

VOL. 966.
---------
THE RED COURT FARM BY MRS. HENRY WOOD.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.






THE
RED COURT FARM.

A NOVEL.

BY
MRS. HENRY WOOD,
AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE," "TREVLYN HOLD," ETC.


_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.



LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1868.

_The Right of Translation is reserved_.







CONTENTS

OF VOLUME II.

CHAP.
      I. At School in London.
     II. Captain Copp.
    III. Isaac Thornycroft's Stratagem.
     IV. In Love.
      V. Wilful Disobedience.
     VI. The Half-moon Beach.
    VII. My Lady at the Red Court.
   VIII. A Last Interview.
     IX. The Crowd in the Early Morning.
      X. Shot down from the Heights.
     XI. The Coroner's Inquest.
    XII. Robert Hunter's Funeral.
   XIII. Curious Rumours.
    XIV. Robert Hunter's Ghost.
     XV. In the Churchyard Porch.
    XVI. In the Dog-cart to Jutpoint.
   XVII. Ladies disputing.
  XVIII. Disclosing it to Justice Thornycroft.






THE RED COURT FARM.



PART THE THIRD.




CHAPTER I.
At School in London.


Two years have gone by, and it is June again.

A good, substantial house in one of the western suburbs of the
metropolis--Kensington. By the well-rubbed brass plate on the iron
gate of the garden, and the lady's name on it--"Miss Jupp"--it may be
taken for a boarding-school. In fact, it is one: a small select school
(as so many schools proclaim themselves now; but this really is such);
and, kept by Miss Jupp, once of Katterley. That is, by Miss Jupp and
two of her sisters, but she wisely calls it by her own name singly,
avoiding the ugly style of the plural "Miss Jupp's establishment."

Fortune changes with a great many of us; every day, every hour of our
lives, some are going up, others down. When death removed old Mr. Jupp
(an event that occurred almost close upon poor Mrs. Lake's), then his
daughters found that they had not enough to get along in the world.
Wisely taking time and circumstances by the forelock, the three elder
ones, Mary, Margaret, and Emma, removed to London, took a good house
at Kensington, and by the help of influential friends very soon had
pupils in it. Dorothy and Rose were married; Louisa remained at
Katterley with her widowed mother. They professed to take ten pupils
only: once or twice the number had been increased to twelve; the terms
were high, but the teaching was good, and the arrangements were really
first-class. It was with the Miss Jupps that Mary Anne Thornycroft had
been placed. And she did not run away from them.

Quite the contrary. The summer holidays have just set in, and she is
to go home for them; as she did the previous midsummer; but she is
expressing a half wish, now as she stands before Miss Margaret Jupp,
that she could spend them where she is, in London. Long and long ago
has she grown reconciled to the regularity of a school life, and to
regard Miss Jupp's as a second and happy home. She spent the first
Christmas holidays with them; the second Christmas (last) at
Cheltenham with her stepmother; she and her brother Cyril.

Lady Ellis (retaining still the name) is in very ill health now.
Almost simultaneously with quitting the Red Court after her marriage,
a grave inward disorder manifested itself. Symptoms of it indeed had
been upon her for some time, even before leaving India; but--as is the
case with many other symptoms--they had been entirely disregarded,
their grave nature unsuspected. Instead of leading a gay life at the
gay inland watering-place, flaunting her charms and her fashion in the
eyes of other sojourners, Lady Ellis found herself compelled to live a
very quiet one. She has a small villa, an establishment of two
servants only; and she does not wish for more. In heart, in nature,
she is growing altered, and the refining, holy influence that very
often--God be praised!--changes the whole heart and spirit with a
change which is not of this world, is coming over her. Two visits only
has she paid to the Red Court Farm, staying about six weeks each time,
and Mr. Thornycroft goes to Cheltenham two or three times a year. Miss
Thornycroft and her stepmother are civil to each other now, not to say
friendly; and when she invited the young lady and her brother Cyril
for the holidays last Christmas, they went. The previous midsummer
they had spent together at Coastdown, it having been one of the
periods of my lady's two visits. Fortune had contrived well for Lady
Ellis, and her marriage with the wealthy master of the Red Court Farm
enabled her to enjoy every substantial comfort in her hour of need.

Two other young ladies connected in a degree with this history are at
Miss Jupp's this evening; the rest of the pupils have left. One of the
two we have met before, one not. They are in the room now, and you may
look at them. All three, including Miss Thornycroft, are about the
same age--between eighteen and nineteen. She, Mary Anne, is the same
tall, stately, fair, handsome, and (it must be owned) haughty girl
that you knew before; the fine face is resolute as ever, the cold blue
eyes as honest and uncompromising. She had been allowed to dress as
expensively at Miss Jupp's as her inclination leads: to-day she wears
a rich pale-blue silk; blue ribbons are falling from her fair hair.
She is standing doing nothing: but sitting in a chair by her side,
toying with a bit of fancy-work, is a plain, dark, merry-looking girl
in a good useful nut-brown silk, Susan Hunter. She is the sister of
Robert Hunter, several years his junior, and has been sent up from
Yorkshire by her aunt, with whom she lives, to have two years of
"finish" at a London school. Accident--not their having once known
something of her brother--led to the school fixed on being Miss
Jupp's. And now for the last.

In a grey alpaca dress, trimmed with a little ribbon velvet of the
same hue, her head bent patiently over a pile of drawings that she is
touching up, sits the third. A very different footing in the school,
hers, from that of the other two; _they_ pay the high, full terms;
_she_ pays nothing, but works out her board with industry. Have you
forgotten that pale, gentle face, one of the sweetest both in feature
and expression ever looked upon, with the fine silky chestnut hair
modestly braided round it, and the soft brown eyes that take all the
best feelings of a genuine heart by storm? The weary look telling of
incessant industry, the pile of work that she does not look up from,
the cheap holiday-dress (her best) costing little, all proclaim
sufficiently her dependent position in the house--a slight, graceful
girl of middle height, with a sort of drooping look in her figure, as
if she were, and had been all her life, in the habit of being pushed
into the background?

It is Anna Chester. Her life since we saw her has been like that
of a dray horse. Mrs. Chester placed her at an inferior school as
pupil-teacher, where she had many kinds of things to do, and the
mistress's own children to take care of in the holidays. For a year
and a half she stayed at it, doing her best patiently, and then the
Miss Jupps took her. She has to work very much still, and her health
is failing. Captain and Mrs. Copp have invited her to Coastdown for a
change, and she goes down to-morrow with Miss Thornycroft. Miss Hunter
spends the holidays at school.

Mrs. Chester? Mrs. Chester quitted Guild, to set up a fashionable
boarding-house in London. It did not answer; the mass of people
remained cruelly indifferent to its advertisements; and the few who
tried it ran away and never paid her. She then removed to Paris, where
(as some friends assured her) a good English boarding-house was much
wanted; and, if her own reports are to be trusted, she is likely to do
pretty well at it.

There remains only one more person to mention of those we formerly
knew; and that is Robert Hunter. Putting his shoulder to the wheel in
earnest, as only a resolute and capable man can put it; I had almost
said as one only who has some expiation to work out; his days are
spent in hard industry. He is the practical energetic man of business;
never spending a moment in waste, never willingly allowing himself
recreation. The past folly, the past idleness of that time, not so
very long gone by, recurs to his memory less frequently than it used,
but ever with the feeling of a nightmare. He is still with the same
firm, earning a liberal salary. Since a day or two only has he been in
London, but there's some talk of his remaining in it now. Nothing
seems to be further from his thoughts than any sort of pleasure: it
would seem that he has one vocation alone in life--work.

These three young ladies were going out this afternoon. To a grand
house, too: Mrs. Macpherson's. The professor, good simple man, had
been content, socially speaking, with a shed on the top of Aldgate
pump: not so madam. As the professor rose more and more into
distinction, _she_ rose; and the residence in Bloomsbury was exchanged
for a place at Kensington. Possibly the calling occasionally on the
Miss Jupps, had put it into her head. A house as grand as its name
in the matter of decoration; but not of undue size: Mrs. Macpherson
had good common sense, and generally exercised it. A dazzling white
front with a pillared portico and much ornamentation outside and
in--"Majestic Villa." The professor had wanted to change the name, but
madam preferred to retain it. It was not very far from Miss Jupp's,
and these young ladies were going there to spend the evening.

In all the glory of her large room, with its decorations of white and
gold, its mirrors, its glittering cabinets, its soft luxurious carpet,
its chairs of delicate green velvet, sat Mrs. Macpherson, waiting for
these young guests. In all her own glory of dress, it may be said, for
that was not less conspicuous than of yore, and that of to-day looked
just as if it were chosen to accord with the hangings--a green satin
robe with gold leaves for trimmings, and a cap that could not be seen
for sprays and spangles. In her sense of politeness--and she possessed
an old-fashioned stock of it--Mrs. Macpherson had dressed herself
betimes, not to leave the young ladies alone after they came. Thus,
when they arrived, under the convoy of Miss Emma Jupp, who left them
at the door, Mrs. Macpherson was ready to receive them.

It was the first time they had been there for many weeks; for the
professor had been abroad on a tour in connexion with some of the
ologies, as his wife expressed it, in which she had accompanied him.
The result of this was, that Mrs. Macpherson had no end of Parisian
novelties, in the shape of dress, to display to them in her chamber.

"I know what girls like," she said, in her hearty manner, "and that
is, to look at new bonnets and mantles, and try 'em on."

But Mary Anne Thornycroft--perhaps because she could indulge in such
articles at will--cared not a jot for these attractions, and said she
should go down to see the professor.

He had some rooms at the back of the house, where his collection of
scientific curiosities--to call things by a polite name--had been
stowed. And here the professor, when not out, spent his time. Mary
Anne quite loved the man, so simple-minded and yet great-minded at one
and the same time, and never failed to penetrate to his rooms when
occasion offered. Quickly wending her way through the passages, she
opened the door softly.

It was not very easy to distinguish clearly at first, what with the
crowd of things darkening the windows, and the mass of objects
generally. At a few yards' distance, slightly bending over a sort of
upright desk, as if writing something, stood a gentleman; but
certainly not the professor. His back was towards her; he had
evidently not heard her enter, and a faint flush of surprise dawned on
Mary Anne's face, for in that first moment she thought it was her
brother Cyril. It was the same youthful, supple, slender figure; the
same waving hair, of a dark auburn, clustering round the head above
the collar of the coat. Altogether, seen in this way, there was a
certain resemblance; and that was the first primary link in the chain
that attracted Mary Anne to him. The door, which she had left open,
closed with a slight bang, and the gentleman spoke, without lifting
his head.

"I have worked it out at last. You were right about its being less
than the other."

"Is Dr. Macpherson not here?"

He turned sharply at the words, a pencil in his hand, surprise on his
face. A good face; for its old gay careless look had departed for
ever, and the dark blue eyes--darker even than of yore--wore a serious
gravity that never left them, a gravity born of remorse. The face was
older than the figure, and not in the least like Cyril Thornycroft's;
it looked fully its seven-and-twenty years--nay, looked nearer thirty;
but all its expression was merged in surprise. No wonder; to see a
beautiful girl in blue silk, with blue ribbons in her fair hair,
standing there; when he had only expected the professor, in his old
threadbare coat and spectacles. It was Robert Hunter.

"I beg your pardon," he said, coming forward. "Can I do anything for
you?"

"I thought Dr. Macpherson was here. I came to see him."

Never losing her calm self-possession on any occasion, as so many
young ladies do on no occasion at all, Miss Thornycroft stepped up to
the side glass cases to examine the curiosities, talking as easily to
him as though she had known him all her life. Without being in the
least free, there was an openness of manner about her, an utter
absence of tricks and affectation, a straightforward independence,
rather remarkable in a young lady. For Robert Hunter it possessed a
singular charm.

Before the professor came in, who had forgotten himself down in his
cellar, where he had gone after a cherished specimen in the frog line;
before Mr. Hunter had pointed out to her a quarter of the new
acquisitions in the glass cases--animal, vegetable, and mineral--they
knew all about each other: that he was Susan Hunter's brother, and
that she was Miss Thornycroft of Coastdown. At mention of her name, a
brief vision connected with the past floated across Robert Hunter's
brain--of a certain summer evening when he was returning to Guild with
his poor young wife, and saw the back of a high open carriage bowling
away from his sister's gate, which he was told contained Mr. and Miss
Thornycroft. Never since that had he heard the name or thought of the
people.

"Do you know, when I came into the room just now, and you were
standing with your back to me, I nearly took you for one of my
brothers. At the back you are just like him."

Robert Hunter smiled slightly. "And not in the face?"

"Not at all--except, perhaps, a little in the forehead. Cyril has
hazel eyes and small features. The hair is exactly like his, the same
colour, and grows just as his does in front, leaving the forehead
square. If you were to hide your face, showing only the top of the
forehead and the hair, I should say you were Cyril."

The professor appeared, and they went into the more habitable part of
the house. Robert had not seen his sister since she was a little girl;
he had not seen Anna since they parted at Guild. It was altogether an
acceptable meeting; but he looked at Anna's face somewhat anxiously.

"Have you been working very much, Anna?" he took occasion to ask,
drawing her for a moment aside.

"I am always working very hard," she answered, with her sweet smile of
patient endurance. "There is a great deal to be done in schools, you
know; but I am well off at Miss Jupp's compared to what I was at the
other place. They are very kind to me."

"You have a look upon you as if you felt tired always. It is a curious
impression to draw though, perhaps, considering I have seen you but
for ten minutes."

"I do feel tired nearly always," acknowledged Anna. "The Miss Jupps
think London does not agree with me. I am going to Coastdown for a
change for the holidays; I shall get better there."

He thought she would require a longer change than a few holiday weeks.
Never in the old days had it struck him that Anna looked _fragile_;
but she certainly did now.

"And now, Robert Hunter, you'll stay with us, as these young ladies
are here?" said hospitable Mrs. Macpherson.

He hesitated before replying. Very much indeed would he have liked to
remain, but he had made an appointment with a gentleman.

"Put it off," said Mrs. Macpherson.

"There's no time for that. Certainly--if I am not at the office when
he comes, one of the partners would see him. But--"

"But what?" asked the professor. "Would not that be a solution of the
difficulty?"

"A way out of the mess," put in the professor's wife.

Mr. Hunter laughed. "I was going to say that I have never put away any
business for my own convenience since--since I took to it again."

The attraction, or whatever it might be, however, proved too strong
for business this afternoon, and Robert Hunter remained at the
professor's. When he and Miss Thornycroft parted at night, it seemed
that they had known each other for years.

It was very singular; a thing of rare occurrence. We have heard of
this sudden mutual liking, the nameless affinity that draws one soul
to another; but believe me it is not of very frequent experience. The
thought that crossed Robert Hunter's mind that evening more than once
was--"I wish that girl was my sister." Any idea of another sort of
attachment would be a very long while yet before it penetrated to him
as even a possibility.

In the evening, when they got home, at an early hour--Miss Jupp had
only given them until eight o'clock, for there was packing to do--Mary
Anne Thornycroft went into a fever of indignation to think that no
message had been left by or from any of her brothers.

"It is so fearfully careless of them! That is just like my brothers.
Do they expect we are to travel alone?"

"My dear, do not put yourself out," said Miss Jupp. "Two young ladies
can travel alone very well. You will get there quite safely."

"So far as that goes, ma'am, I could travel alone fearlessly to the
end of the world," spoke Mary Anne. "But that is not the question;
neither does it excuse their negligence. For all they know, I might
have spent all my money, and have none to take me down."

Miss Emma Jupp laughed. "They would suppose that we should supply
you."

"Yes, Miss Emma, no doubt. But they had no business to send me word
that one of them would be in London to-day to take charge of me home,
unless--"

The words were brought to a sudden standstill by the opening of the
door. One of the maids appeared at it to announce a guest.

"Mr. Isaac Thornycroft."

There entered the same noble-looking young man, noble in his towering
height and strength, that we knew two years ago at Coastdown; he came
in with a smile on his bright face--on its fair features, in its blue
eyes. Miss Emma Jupp's first thought was, what a likeness he bore to
his sister; her second that she had never in her whole life seen any
one half so good-looking. It happened that she had never seen him
before. Mary Anne began to reproach him for carelessness. He received
it all with the most ineffable good humour, the smile brightening on
his sunny face.

"I know it is too late, quite wrong of me, but I missed the train at
Jutpoint, and had to come by a later one. Which of these two young
ladies is Miss Chester?" he added, turning to the two girls who stood
together. "I have a--a trifle for her from Captain Copp."

"You shall guess," interposed Mary Anne. "One of them _is_ Anna
Chester. Now guess."

It was not difficult. Miss Hunter met his glance fearlessly in a merry
spirit; Anna blushed and let fall her eyes. Isaac Thornycroft smiled.

"This is Miss Chester."

"It is all through your stupid shyness, Anna," said Mary Anne in a
cross tone. Which of course only increased her confusion. Isaac
crossed the room, his eyes bent on the sweet blushing face, as he held
out the "trifle" forwarded by Captain Copp.

"Will you accept it, Miss Chester? Captain Copp charged me to take
particular care of it, and not to touch it myself."

It was a travelling wickered bottle, holding about a pint. Anna looked
at it with curiosity, and Emma Jupp took it out of her hand.

"What can it be?"

"Take out the cork and smell it," suggested Mr. Isaac Thornycroft.

Miss Emma did so; giving a strong sniff. "Dear me! I think it is rum."

"Rum-and-water," corrected Isaac. "Captain Copp begged me to assure
Miss Chester that it was only half-and-half, she being a young lady.
It is for her refreshment as she goes down to-morrow."

"If that's not exactly like Sam Copp!" exclaimed Miss Jupp with some
asperity, while the laugh against Anna went round. "He will never
acquire an idea beyond his old sea notions; never. _I_ remember what
he was before his leg came off."

"He came all the way to Jutpoint in the omnibus after me when I had
driven over, to make sure, I believe, that Mrs. Copp should not be
privy to the transaction. It was through his injunctions as to the
wicker bottle that I missed my train," concluded Isaac--his eyes, that
were bent on Anna Chester, dancing with mirth. At which hers fell
again.

If all of us estimated people alike, especially in regard to that
subtle matter of "liking" or "disliking" on first impression, what a
curious world it would be! Miss Emma Jupp considered Isaac Thornycroft
the best-looking, the most attractive man she had ever seen. Mary Anne
Thornycroft, on the contrary, was thinking the same of somebody else.

"I never saw anybody I liked half so much at first sight as Robert
Hunter," she softly said to herself, as she laid her head on her
pillow.




CHAPTER II.
Captain Copp.


Captain Copp was a true sailor, gifted with more good nature than
common sense. On the rare occasion of receiving a young lady visitor
under his roof, his hospitality and his heart alike ran riot. Anna
Chester, the pretty, friendless girl whom he had heard of but never
seen, was coming to him and his wife to be nursed into strength and
health, and the captain anticipated the arrival as something to be
made a fête of.

A feast too, by appearances. It was a bright summer morning, with a
fresh breeze blowing from the sea; and the captain was abroad betimes
with some flowing purple ribbons fastened round his glazed hat.
Greatly to the grievance of Mrs. Copp: who had ventured to say that
Anna was not a captured prize-ship, or a battle won, or even a
wedding, that she should be rejoiced over to the extent of streamers.
All of which Captain Copp was deaf to. He started by the ten o'clock
omnibus for Jutpoint, having undertaken first of all to send home
provisions for dinner. A pair of soles and two pounds of veal cutlet
had been meekly suggested by Mrs. Copp.

The morning wore on. Sarah, the middle-aged, hard-featured,
sensible-looking, thoroughly capable woman-servant, who was bold
enough to dispute with her master, and not in the least to care at
being likened to pirates and other disrespectful things, stood in the
kitchen making a gooseberry pudding, when the butcher-boy came in
without the ceremony of announcing himself; unless a knocking and
pushing of his tray against the back-door posts, through awkwardness,
could be called such.

"Some dishes, please," said he.

"Dishes!" retorted Sarah, who had one of the strongest tongues in
Coastdown. "Dishes for what?"

"For this here meat. The captain have just been in and bought it, and
master have sent it up."

He displayed some twelve or fifteen pounds of meat--beef, veal,
lamb. Sarah's green eyes--good, honest, pleasant eyes in the
main--glistened.

"Then your master's a fool. Didn't I tell him not to pay attention to
the captain when he took these freaks in his head?" she demanded.
"When he goes and buys up the whole shop--as he did one day last
winter because he was expecting a old mate of his down--your master's
not to notice him no more nor if he was a child. An uncommon soft
_you_ must be, to bring up all them joints! Did you think you was
supplying the Red Court? Just you march back with 'em."

There was an interruption. While the boy stood staring at the meat,
hardly knowing what to do, and rubbing his fingers amidst his shining
black hair, Mrs. Copp entered the kitchen, and became acquainted with
the state of affairs. She wore a pale muslin gown, as faded as her
gentle self, with pale green ribbons.

"Dear me," she meekly cried, "all that meat! We could not get through
the half of it while it was good? Do you think, James, your master
would have any objection to take it back?"

"Objection! He'll take it back, ma'am, whether he has any objection or
not," cried the positive Sarah. "Now then! who's this?"

Somebody seemed to be clattering up in clogs. A woman with the fish:
three pairs of large soles and a score or two of herrings, which the
captain had bought and paid for. Mrs. Copp, fearing what else might be
coming, looked inclined to cry. The exasperated Sarah, more practical,
took her hands out of the paste, wiped the flour off them on her check
apron, and went darting across the heath without bonnet to the
butcher's shop, the boy and his tray of rejected meat slowly following
her. There she commenced a wordy war with the butcher, accusing him of
being an idiot, with other disparaging epithets, and went marching
home in triumph carrying two pounds of veal cutlet.

"And that's too much for us," she cried to her mistress, "with all
that stock of fish and the pudding. What on earth is to be done with
the fish, I don't know. If I fry a pair for dinner, and pickle the
herrings, there'll be two pair left. _They_ won't pickle. One had need
to have poor folk coming here as they do at the Red Court. Master's
gone off with purple streamers flying from his hat; I think he'd more
need to put on bells."

Scarcely had she got her hands into the flour again, when another
person arrived. A girl with a goose. It was in its feathers, just
killed.

"If you please, ma'am," said she to Sarah, with a curtsey, "mother
says she'll stick the other as soon as ever she can catch him; but
he's runned away over the common. Mother sent me up with this for
'fraid you should be waiting to pluck him. The captain said they was
to come up sharp."

Sarah could almost have found in her heart to "stick" her master. She
was a faithful servant, and the waste of money vexed her. Mrs. Copp,
quite unable to battle with the petty ills of life, left the
strong-minded woman to fight against these, and ran away to her
parlour.

The respected cause of all this, meanwhile, had reached Jutpoint, he
and his streamers. There he had to wait a considerable time, but the
train came in at last, and brought the travellers.

They occupied a first-class compartment in the middle of the train.
There had been a little matter about the tickets at starting. Isaac
Thornycroft procured them, and when they were seated, Anna took out
her purse to repay him, and found she had not enough money in it. A
little more that she possessed was in her box. Accustomed to travel
second-class, even third, the cost of the ticket was more than she had
thought for. Eighteenpence short!

"If you will please to take this, I will repay you the rest as soon as
I can get to my box," she said, with painful embarrassment--an
embarrassment that Isaac could not fail to notice and to wonder at.
Reared as she had been, money wore to her an undue value; to want it
in a time of need seemed little short of a crime. She turned the
silver about in her hands, blushing painfully. Miss Thornycroft
discerned somewhat of the case.

"Never mind, Anna. I dare say you thought to travel second-class. You
can repay my brother later."

Isaac's quick brain took in the whole. This poor friendless girl, kept
at the Miss Jupps' almost out of charity, had less money in a year for
necessities than he would sometimes spend in an hour in frivolity.
Anna held out the silver still, with the rose-coloured flush deepening
on her delicate cheeks.

"What is it, Miss Chester?" he suddenly said. "Why do you offer me
your money?"

"You took my ticket, did you not?"

"Certainly," he answered, showing the three little pieces of card in
his waistcoat. "But I held the money for yours beforehand. Put up your
purse."

"Did you," she answered, in great relief, but embarrassed still. "Did
Mrs. Copp give it you?--or--Miss Jupp?--or--or the captain?" Isaac
laughed.

"You had better not inquire into secrets, Miss Chester. All I can tell
you is, I had the money for your ticket in my pocket. Where is that
important article--the wicker bottle? Captain Copp will expect it
returned to him--empty."

"It is empty now; Miss Jupp poured out the rum-and-water," she
answered, laughing. "I have it all safe."

She put up her purse as she spoke, inquiring no further as to the
donor in her spirit of implicit obedience, but concluded it must have
been Miss Jupp. And she never knew the truth until--until it was too
late to repay Isaac.

At the terminus, side by side with the captain and his streamers,
stood Justice Thornycroft. Anna remembered him well; the tall, fine,
genial-natured man whom she had seen three years before in the day's
visit to Mrs. Chester. All thought of her had long ago passed from his
memory, but he recognised the face--the pale, patient, gentle face,
which, even then, had struck Mr. Thornycroft as being the sweetest he
had ever looked upon. It so struck him now.

"Where have I seen you?" he asked. And Anna told him.

The carriage, very much to the displeasure of Mary Anne, had not come
over for her. Mr. Thornycroft explained that one of the horses he
generally drove in it was found to be lame that morning. They got into
the omnibus, the captain preferring to place himself with his ribbons
and his wooden leg flat on the roof amidst the luggage. On the
outskirts of Jutpoint, in obedience to his signal, the driver came to
a standstill before the door of the "White Cliff" public-house, and
the captain's head appeared at the back window, in a hanging position,
inquiring whether brandy or rum would be preferred; adding, with a
somewhat fierce look at Mr. Thornycroft and Isaac, that _he_ should
stand glasses round this time. Very much to the captain's
discomfiture, the young ladies and the gentlemen declined both; so the
only order the crestfallen captain could give the White Cliff was for
two glasses of rum, cold without; that were disposed of by himself and
the driver.

"Mind, Anna! I feel three-parts of a stranger in this place, and have
really not a friend of my own age and condition in it, so you must
supply the place of one to me during these holidays," said Miss
Thornycroft, as the omnibus reached its destination--the Mermaid.
"Part of every day I shall expect you to spend at the Red Court."

"I beg to second that," whispered Isaac, taking Anna's hand to help
her out. And she blushed again that day for about the fiftieth time
without knowing why or wherefore.

Not upon these summer holidays can we linger, because so much time
must be spent on those of the next winter. _On those of the next
winter!_ If the inmates of the Red Court Farm could but have foreseen
what those holidays were to bring forth for them! or Mary Anne
Thornycroft dreamt of the consequences of indulging her own self-will!
Just a few words more of the present, and then we go on.

Anna Chester's sojourn at Coastdown was passing swiftly, and she
seemed as in a very Elysium. The days of toil, of servitude, of
incessant care for others were over, temporarily at any rate, and she
enjoyed comfort and rest. The hospitable, good-hearted sailor-captain,
with his tales of the sea-serpent, the mermaid he had seen, and other
marvels; the meek, gentle, ever-thoughtful Mrs. Copp, who caused Anna
to address her as "aunt," and behaved more kindly to her than any aunt
did yet; the most charming visits day by day to the Red Court Farm,
and the constant society of Isaac Thornycroft. Ah, there it lay--the
strange fascination that all things were beginning to possess around
her--in the companionship of _him_. To say that Isaac Thornycroft,
hitherto so mockingly heart-whole, had fallen in love with Anna the
first evening he saw her at Miss Jupp's, would be going too far, but
he was certainly three-parts in love before they reached Coastdown the
following day. To watch her gentle face became like the sweetest music
to Isaac Thornycroft. To see her ever-wakeful attentions to her
entertainers, her gratitude for their kindness, her prompt help of
Sarah when extra work was to be done, her loving care for the
friendless and poor, was something new to Isaac, altogether out of his
experience. Come weal, come woe, he resolved that this girl should be
his wife. People, in their thoughtless gossip, had been wont to
predict a high-born and wealthy bride for the attractive second son of
Justice Thornycroft; this humble orphan, the poor daughter of the many
years poor and humble curate, was the one he fixed upon, with all the
world before him to choose from. How Fate changes plans! "L'homme
propose, mais Dieu dispose," was one of the most solemn truisms ever
penned. Long ere the six weeks of holidays had passed, Isaac
Thornycroft and Anna Chester had become all in all to each other: and
he, a man accustomed to act upon impulse, spoke out.

It was during an evening walk to the Red Court Farm. Anna was going to
tea there; Isaac met her on the heath--no unusual thing--and turned to
walk by her side. Both were silent after the first greeting: true love
is rarely eloquent. With her soft cheeks blushing, her pale eyelids
drooping, her heart wildly beating, Anna sought--at first in vain--to
find some topic of conversation, and chose but a lame one.

"Has Mary Anne finished her screen?"

Isaac smiled. "As if I knew!"

"She has the other one to do; and we shall be going back in a week."

"Not in a week!"

"The holidays will be up a week to-morrow."

A vista of the miserable time after her departure, when all things
would be dark and dreary, wanting her who had come to make his heart's
sunshine, cast its foreshadowing across the brain of Isaac. He turned
to her in his impulse, speaking passionately.

"Anna, I cannot lose you. Rather than that, I must--I must--"

"Must what?" she asked, innocently.

"Keep you here on a visit to myself--a visit that can never
terminate."

Insensibly, she drew a little from him. Not that the words would have
been unwelcome had circumstances justified them; how welcome, the
sudden rush of inward joy, the wild coursing on of all her pulses,
told her. But--loving him though she did; conscious or half-conscious
of his love for her--it never occurred to the mind of Anna Chester
that a union would be within the range of possibility. She--the poor
humble slave--be wedded by a great and wealthy gentleman like Isaac
Thornycroft!

"Would you object to the visit, Anna--though it were to be for life?"

"It could not be," she answered, in a low tone, not affecting to
misunderstand him.

"Oh, couldn't it!" said Isaac, amused, and taking up rather the wrong
view of the words. "But if you and I say it shall?"

"Halloa! Is it you, Isaac? How d'ye do, Miss Chester?"

Richard Thornycroft, coming suddenly into the path from a side
crossing, halted as he spoke. Isaac, put out for once in his life, bit
his lips.

"I want you, Isaac. I was looking for you. Here's some bother up."

"What bother?" testily rejoined Isaac.

"You had better come down and hear it. Tomlett--Come along."

Seeing plainly that his walk with Anna was over for the time, Isaac
Thornycroft turned off with his brother, leaving Anna to go on alone
to the gate, which was in sight.

"Good-day for the present, Anna," he said, with apparent carelessness.
"Tell Mary Anne not to wait tea for me. I may not be in."

More forcibly than ever on this evening, when she sat in the spacious
drawing-room surrounded by its many elegancies, did the contrast
between the Red Court and her own poor home of the past strike on the
senses of Anna Chester. Nothing that moderate wealth could purchase
was _here_ wanting. Several servants, spacious and handsome rooms,
luxuries to please the eye and please the palate. Look at the
tea-table laid out there! The delicately-made Worcester china, rich
in hues of purple and gold; the chased silver tea and coffee service
on their chased silver stands; small fringed damask napkins on the
purple and gold plates. Shrimps large as prawns, potted meats, rolled
bread-and-butter, muffins, rich cake, and marmalade, are there; for it
is Justice Thornycroft's will that all meals, if laid, shall be laid
well. Sometimes a cup of tea only came in for Miss Thornycroft, as it
used to do for my lady when she was there. It almost seemed to Anna
Chester as if she were enacting a deceit, a lie, in sitting at it, its
honoured guest, for whom these things were spread, when she thought of
the scrambling meals in her former home with Mrs. Chester's children.
The odd teacups--for as one got broken it would be-replaced by another
of any shape or pattern, provided it were cheap; saucers notched;
cracked cups without handles; the stale loaf on the table; the scanty,
untidy plate of salt butter, of which she had to cut perpetual slices,
like Werther's Charlotte; the stained table without a cover, crumbs
strewing it. Look on this picture and on that. Anna did, in deep
dejection; and the thought which had faintly presented itself to her
mind when Isaac Thornycroft spoke his momentous words, grew into grim
and defined shape, and would not be scared away--that she could be no
fit wife for Isaac. She resolved to tell him of these things, and of
her own unfitness; how very poor she was, always had been, always
(according to present prospects) would be; and beg him to think no
more of her; and she did not doubt he would unsay his words of his own
accord when he came to know of it. It is true she winced at the task:
but her conscience told her it must be done, though her heart should
faint at it. She could imagine no fate so bright in the wide world as
that of becoming the wife of Isaac Thornycroft.

"What makes you so silent this evening?"

Anna started at Miss Thornycroft's words. That young lady was eyeing
her with curiosity.

"I was only thinking," she answered, with a vivid blush. "Oh, and I
forgot: your brother wished me to ask you not to wait tea for him."

"My brother! Which of them?"

"Mr. Isaac."

"Very considerate, I'm sure! seeing that I never do wait, and that if
I did he would probably not come in."

There was a mocking tone in her voice that Anna rather winced at as
applied to Isaac. She went on explaining where she saw him; that he
and Richard had walked away together--she fancied to Tomlett's.

"They are a great deal too intimate with Tomlett," spoke Miss
Thornycroft, curling her lip. "He is no better than a boatman. My
belief is, they go and drink gin-and-water with him. They ought to
have more pride."

"Mr. Richard said there was some 'bother.'"

"Oh! of course; any excuse before you. I tell you, Anna, they are just
a couple of loose young men."

The "loose young men" came in shortly; Richard to go away again, Isaac
to remain. He had told Mrs. Copp he would see her home safely. "Let it
be by daylight, if you please," answered that discreet lady.

Not by daylight, but under the stars of the sweet summer's night, they
went out. There was no one to see; the way was lonely; and Isaac drew
Anna's hand within his arm for the first time, and kept it a prisoner.

"I must take care of you, Anna, as you are to become my own property."

"But I--I am not to become that; I wish I could, but it is
impossible," she stammered, setting about her task in hesitating
perplexity.

"Anna, do you understand me? I am asking you to be my wife."

"Yes, I--I believe I understood; and I feel very grateful to you, all
the same."

"All the same!" Isaac Thornycroft released her hand and turned to face
her.

"Just tell me what you mean. Don't you care for me?"

Agitated, embarrassed, she burst into tears. Isaac took both her hands
now, holding them before him. They had reached the churchyard, and its
graves were distinct in the twilight; the stars looked down on them
from the blue sky above; the sound of the surging sea came over with a
faint murmur.

"I thought you loved me, Anna. Surely I cannot have been steering on a
wrong tack?"

As the soft eyes glanced at him through their tears, he saw enough to
know that she _did_ love him. Reassured on that score, he turned and
walked on again, her arm kept within his.

"Now, tell me what you mean," he said, quietly. "There can be no other
bar."

"I do not know how to tell you," she answered. "I do not like to tell
you."

"Nonsense, Anna. I shall keep you out here pacing the heath until you
do tell, though it be until morning, which would certainly send Mrs.
Copp into a fit."

Not very awkwardly when she had fairly entered upon it, Anna told
her tale--her sense of the unfitness, nay, the impossibility of the
union--of the wide social gulf that lay between them. Isaac met the
communication with a laugh.

"Is that all! It is my turn now not to understand. You have been
reared a gentlewoman, Anna."

"Papa was a clergyman. I have been reared, I think, to nothing but
work. We were so very poor. My home--ah! if you could see, if you
could imagine the contrast it presented to this of yours! As I sat in
your drawing-room to-night I could not help feeling the difference
forcibly."

If Isaac Thornycroft had not seen what she spoke of, he had seen
something else--that never in his whole life had he met any one who
gave him so entirely the idea of a gentlewoman--a refined, well-bred
gentlewoman--as this girl now speaking with him, Anna Chester. He
continued in evident amusement.

"Let us see how your objections can be refuted. You play and sing?"

"A little."

"You draw?"

"A little."

"You can dance?"

"Yes; I can dance."

"Why, then--not to enter on other desirable qualities--you are an
accomplished young lady. What _do_ you mean about unfitness?"

"I see you are laughing at me," she said, the tears struggling to her
eyes again. "I am so very poor; I teach for the merest trifle: it
barely finds me in the cheapest clothes. I only looked forward to a
life of work. And you are rich--at least Mr. Thornycroft is."

"If we have a superfluity of riches, there's all the more cause for me
to dispense with them in a wife. Besides, when I set up my tent, it
will not be on the scale of my father's house. Anna, my darling!" he
added, with a strange gravity in his eye and tone, "we are more on an
equality than you may deem."

She made no reply, having enough to do to keep her tears from falling.

"I have sufficient for comfort--a sort of love-in-a-cottage
establishment," went on Isaac; "and I am heartily sick of my
bachelor's life. It leads me into all sorts of extravagances, and is
unsatisfactory at the best. You must promise to be my wife, Anna."

"There are the lights in Captain Copp's parlour," said she, with
singular irrelevance.

"Just so. But you do not go in until I have your promise."

"They were saying one day, some of them--I think it was Mrs.
Connaught--that you would be sure to marry into one of the good county
families," murmured Anna.

"Did they? I hope the disappointment won't be too much for them. I
shall marry you, Anna, and none other."

"But what would your family say? Your father--your sister?"

"Just what they pleased. Anna, pardon me, I am only teasing you.
Believe me, they will only be too glad to hear of it; glad that the
wild, unsteady (as Mary Anne is pleased to call me on occasion) Isaac
Thornycroft should make himself into a respectable man. Anna! can you
not trust me?"

She had trusted all her life, yielded implicitly to the sway of those
who held influence over her; little chance was there, then, that she
could hold out now. Isaac Thornycroft received the promise his heart
hungered for, and sealed it.

Her face gathered against his breast; her slight form shrinking in his
strong arms; he kept her there a prisoner; his voice breathing soft
love-vows; his blue eyes bent greedily on her blushing face; his
kisses, the only honest kisses his life had known, pressed again and
again upon her lips.

"Who on earth _is_ that? Avast, thieves! Bea serpents! pirates!"

The gallant Captain Copp, his night-glass pushed out at the open
window to an acute angle, had been contemplating these puzzling
proceedings for some time. Fortunately he did not distinguish very
clearly, and remained ignorant of the real matter. Ill-conditioned
people, tipsy fishermen and else, their brains muddled with drink,
found their way to the heath on occasion, and the captain considered
it a duty to society to order them off. Sweeping the horizon and the
nearer plain to-night, his glass had shown him some object not easy to
make out. The longer Captain Copp waited for it to move, the longer it
stayed stationary; the more he turned his glass, the less chance did
it appear to give of revealing itself. Naturally, two people in close
proximity, the head of the taller one bent over the other so as to
leave no indication of the human form, would present a puzzling
paradox when viewed through a night-glass: the captain came to the
conclusion that it was the most extraordinary spectacle ever presented
to his eyes since they had looked on that sea serpent in the Pacific;
and he raised his voice to hail it when suspense was becoming quite
unbearable.

Isaac Thornycroft, adroitly sheltering his companion, glided up the
little opening by Mrs. Connaught's. In a few minutes, when the captain
had drawn his head and glass in for a respite, he walked boldly up to
the door by the side of Anna.

"Good evening, captain."

"Good evening," blithely responded the captain. "Sorry you should have
the trouble of bringing her home. Come in, Anna. I say, did you meet
any queer thing on the heath?"

"Queer thing?" responded Isaac.

"A man without a head, or anything of that light sort?"

"No. There's a strange horse browsing a bit lower down," added Isaac.
"Some stray animal."

The captain considered, and came to the conclusion that it could not
well have been the horse. What it really was he did not conjecture.

Meanwhile Anna Chester had gone upstairs to the pleasant little room
she occupied, and took off her bonnet in a maze of rapture. The world
had changed into a heavenly Elysium.




CHAPTER III.
Isaac Thornycroft's Stratagem.


A still evening in October. The red light in the west, following on a
glorious sunset, threw its last rays athwart the sea; the evening star
came out in its brightness; the fishing boats were bearing steadily
for home.

Captain Copp's parlour was alight with a ruddy glow; not of the sun
but of the fire. It shone brightly on the captain's face, at rest now.
He had put down his pipe on the hearth, after carefully knocking the
smouldering ashes out, and gone quietly to sleep, his wooden leg laid
fiat on an opposite chair, his other leg stretched over it. Mrs. Copp
sat knitting a stocking by fire-light, her gentle face rather
thoughtful; and, half-kneeling, half-sitting on the hearth-rug,
reading, was Anna Chester.

She was here still. When Mary Anne Thornycroft returned to school
after the summer holidays, Captain Copp had resolutely avowed Anna
should stay with him. What was six weeks, he fiercely demanded, to get
up a lady's health: let her stop six months, and then he'd see about
it. Mrs. Copp hardly knew what to say, between her wish to keep Anna
and her fear of putting the Miss Jupps to an inconvenience.
"Inconvenience be shot!" politely rejoined the captain; and Mary Anne
Thornycroft went back without her, bearing an explanatory and
deprecatory letter.

It almost seemed to the girl that the delighted beating of her
heart--at the consciousness of staying longer in the place that
contained _him_--must be a guilty joy,--guilty because it was
concealed. Certainly not from herself might come the first news of her
engagement to Isaac Thornycroft: she was far too humble, too timid, to
make the announcement. Truth to say, she only half believed in it: it
seemed too blissful to be true. While Isaac did not proclaim it, she
was quite content to let it rest a secret from the whole world. And so
the months had gone on; Anna living in her paradise of happiness;
Isaac making love to her privately in very fervent tenderness.

In saying to Anna Chester that his family would be only too glad to
see him married, Isaac Thornycroft (and a doubt that it might prove so
lay dimly in his mind when he said it) found that he had reckoned
without his host. At the first intimation of his possible intention,
Mr. Thornycroft and Richard rose up in arms against it. What they said
was breathed in his ear alone, earnestly, forcibly; and Isaac, who saw
how fruitless would be all pleading on his part, burst out laughing,
and let them think the whole a joke. A hasty word spoken by Richard in
his temper as he came striding out of the inner passage, caught the
ear of Mary Anne.

"Isaac, what did he mean? Surely you are not going to be married?"

"They thought I was," answered Isaac, laughing. "I married! Would
anybody have me, do you suppose, Mary Anne?"

"I think Miss Tindal would. There would be heaps of money and a good
connexion, you know, Isaac."

Miss Tindal was a strong-minded lady in spectacles, who owned to
thirty years and thirty thousand pounds. She quoted Latin, rode
straight across country after the hounds, and was moreover a baronet's
niece. A broad smile played over Isaac's lips.

"Miss Tindal's big enough to shake me. I think she would, too, on
provocation. She can take her fences better than I can. That's not the
kind of woman I'd marry. I should like a meek one."

"A meek one!" echoed Mary Anne, wondering whether he was speaking in
derision. "What do you call a meek one?"

"A modest, gentle girl who would _not_ shake me. Such a one as--let me
see, where is there one?--as Anna Chester, say, for example."

All the scorn the words deserved seemed concentrated in Miss
Thornycroft's haughty face.

"As good marry a beggar as _her_. Why, Isaac, she is only a working
teacher--a half-boarder at school! She is not one of _us_."

He laughed off the alarm as he had done his father's and brother's a
few minutes before, the line of conduct completely disarming all
parties. She would not tolerate Miss Chester, they would not tolerate
his marriage at all: that was plain. Isaac Thornycroft did not care
openly to oppose his family, or be opposed by them: he let the subject
drop out of remembrance, and left the future to the future. But he
said not a word of this to Anna; she suspected nothing of it, and was
just as contented as he to let things take their course in silence. To
her there seemed but one possible calamity in the world; and that lay
in being separated from him.

Sitting there on the hearth-rug, in the October evening, her eyes on
the small print by the firelight, getting dim now, Anna's heart was
a-glow within her, for that evening was to be spent with Isaac
Thornycroft. A gentleman with his daughter was staying for a couple of
days at the Red Court, and Anna had been asked to go there for the
evening, and bear the young lady company.

"My dear," whispered Mrs. Copp, in the midst of her knitting, "is it
not getting late? You will have the daylight quite gone."

Anna glanced up. It was getting late; but Isaac Thornycroft had said
to her, "I shall fetch you." Still the habit of implicit obedience
was, as ever, strong upon her, and she would fain have started there
and then, in compliance with the suggestion.

"What a noise Sarah's making!"

"So she is," assented Mrs. Copp, as a noise like the bumping about of
boxes, followed by talking, grew upon their ears. Another moment, and
Sarah opened the door.

"A visitor," she announced, in an uncompromising voice, and the
captain started up, prepared to explode a little at being aroused.
Which fact Sarah was no doubt anticipating, and she spoke again.

"It is your mother, sir."

"Yes, it's me, Sam;" cried an upright wiry lady, very positive and
abrupt in manner. Her face looked as if weather-beaten, and she wore
large round tortoiseshell spectacles.

"Who's that?" she cried, sitting down on the large sofa, as Anna stood
up in her pretty silk dress, with the pink ribbons in her hair. "Who?
The daughter of the Reverend James Chester and his first wife! You are
very like your father, child, but prettier. Where's my sea-chest to
go, Sam?"

"I am truly glad to see you, dear mother," whispered Amy Copp, in her
loving way. "The best bedroom is not in order, but----"

"And can't be put in order before to-morrow," interposed Sarah, who
had no notion of being taken by storm in this way. "The luggage had
better be put in the back kitchen for to-night."

"Is there much luggage?" asked the captain.

"Nothing to speak of," said Mrs. Copp; who, being used to the
accommodation of a roomy ship, regarded quantity accordingly. Sarah
coughed.

"My biggest sea-chest, four trunks, two bandboxes, and a few odd
parcels," continued the traveller. "I am going to spend Christmas with
some friends in London, but I thought I'd come to you first. As to the
room not being in apple-pie order, that's nothing I'm an old sailor;
I'm not particular."

"Put a pillow down here, if that's all," cried the captain, indicating
the hearthrug. "Mother has slept in many a worse berth, haven't ye,
mother?"

"Ay, lad, that I have. But now I shall want some of those boxes
unpacked to-night. I have got a set of furs for you, Amy, somewhere; I
don't know which box they were put in."

Amy was overpowered. "You are too good to me," she murmured, with
tears in her eyes.

"And I have brought you a potato-steamer; that's in another," added
Mrs. Copp. "I have taken to have mine steamed lately, Sam; you'd never
eat them again boiled if you once tried it."

In the midst of this bustle Isaac Thornycroft walked in. Anna, in a
flutter of heart-delight, but with a calm manner, went upstairs, and
came down with her bonnet on, to find Isaac opening box after box
in the back kitchen, under Mrs. Copp's direction, in search of the
furs and the potato-steamer, the captain assisting, Amy standing by.
The articles were found, and Isaac, laughing heartily in his gay
good-humour, went off with Anna.

"What time am I to fetch you, Miss Anna?" inquired Sarah, as they went
out.

"I will see Miss Chester home," answered Isaac: "you are busy
to-night."

Mrs. Copp, gazing through her tortoiseshell spectacles at the
potato-steamer, as she pointed out its beauties, suddenly turned to
another subject, and brought her glasses to bear on her son and his
wife.

"Which of the young Thornycrofts _is_ that? I forget."

"Isaac; the second son."

"To be sure; Isaac, the best and handsomest of the bunch. You must
take care," added Mrs. Copp, shrewdly.

"Take care of what?"

"They might be falling in love with each other. I don't know whether
he's much here. He is as fine a fellow as you'd see in a day's march;
and she's just the pretty gentle thing that fine men fancy."

Had it been anybody but his mother, Captain Copp would have shown his
sense of the caution in strong language. "Moonshine and rubbish,"
cried he. "Isaac Thornycroft's not the one to entangle himself with a
sweetheart; the young Thornycrofts are not marrying men; and if he
were, he would look a little higher than poor Anna Chester."

"That's just it, the reason why you should be cautious, Sam," rejoined
Mrs. Copp. "Not being suitable, there'd be no doubt a bother over it
at the Red Court."

Amy, saying something about looking to the state of the spare room,
left them in the parlour. Truth to say, the hint had scared her. Down
deep in her mind, for some short while past, had a suspicion lain that
they were rather more attached to each other than need be. She had
only hoped it was not so. She did not by any means see her way clear
to hinder it, and was content to let the half fear rest; but these
words had roused it in all its force. They had somehow brought a
conviction of the fact, and she saw trouble looming. What else could
come of it? Anna was no match for Isaac Thornycroft.

"Sam," began Mrs. Copp, when she was alone with her son, "how does Amy
continue to go on? Makes a good wife still?"

Captain Copp nodded complacently. "Never a better wife going. No
tantrums--no blowings off: knits all my stockings and woollen
jerseys."

"You must have a quiet house."

"Should, if 'twere not for Sarah. She fires off for herself and Amy
too. I'm obliged to keep her under."

"Ah," said Mrs. Copp, rubbing her chin. "Then I expect you get up some
breezes together. But she's not a bad servant, Sam."

"She's a clipper, mother--A 1; couldn't steer along without her."

What with the boxes, and what with the exactions of the spare bed-room
to render it habitable for the night, for Mrs. Copp generally chose to
put herself into everybody's business, and especially into her own,
the two ladies had to leave Captain Copp very much to his own society.
Solitude is the time for reflection, we are told, and it may have been
the cause of the captain's recurring again and again to the hint his
mother had dropped in regard to Isaac Thornycroft. That there was
nothing in it _yet_ he fully assumed, and it might be as well to take
precautions that nothing should be in it for the future. Prevention
was better than cure. Being a straightforward man, one who could not
have gone in a roundabout or cautious way to work, it occurred to the
captain to say a word to Mr. Isaac on the very first opportunity.

It was the first evening Anna had spent at the Red Court since
Miss Thornycroft left it. The walk there, the sojourn, the walk
home again by moonlight, all seemed to partake of heaven's own
happiness--perfect, pure, peaceful. There had been plenty and plenty
of opportunities for lingering together in the twilight on the heath
in coming home from the seashore, but this was the first long
legitimate walk they had taken; and considering that they were sixty
minutes over it, when they might have done it in sixteen, it cannot be
said they hurried themselves.

The captain was at the window, not looking on the broad expanse of
heath before him, but at the faint light seen now and again from
some fishing vessel cruising in the distance. It was his favourite
look-out; and, except on a boisterous or rainy night, the shutters
were rarely closed until ten o'clock.

"Come in and have a glass of grog with me," was his salutation to
Isaac Thornycroft as he and Anna came to the gate. "'Twill be a
charity," added the captain. "I'm all alone. Mother's gone up to bed
tired, and Amy's looking after her."

Isaac came in and sat down, but wanted to decline the grog. Captain
Copp was offended, so to pacify him he mixed some. As Anna held out
her hand to the captain to say good night he noticed that her soft
eyes were full of loving light; her generally delicate cheeks were a
hot crimson.

"Hope it hasn't come of kissing," thought the shrewd and somewhat
discomfited sailor.

"How well your mother wears!" observed Isaac.

"She was always tough," replied Captain Copp, in a thankful accent.
"Hope she will be for many a year to come. Look here, Mr. Isaac, I
meant to say a word to you. Don't you begin any sweethearting with
that girl of ours, or talking nonsense of that sort. It wouldn't do,
you know."

"Wouldn't it?" returned Isaac, carelessly.

"Wouldn't it! Why, bless and save my wooden leg, _would_ it? A pretty
uproar there'd be at the Red Court. I'd not have such a thing happen
for the best three-decker that was ever launched. I'd rather quarrel
with the whole of Coastdown than with your folks."

"Rather quarrel with me, captain, than with them, I suppose," returned
Isaac, stirring his grog.

Captain Copp looked hard at him. "I should think so."

By intuition, rather than by outward signs, Isaac Thornycroft saw that
the obstinate old sailor would be true to the backbone to what he
deemed _right_; that he might as well ask for Amy Copp as for Anna
Chester, unless he could produce credentials from his father. And so
he could only temporize and disarm suspicion. Honourable by nature
though he was, he considered the suppression of affairs justifiable,
on the score, we must suppose that "All stratagems are fair in love
and war."

"Good health, captain," said he, with a merry laugh--a laugh that
somehow reassured Captain Copp. "And now tell me what wonderful event
put you up to say this."

"It was mother," answered the simple-minded captain. "The thought
struck her somehow--you were both of you good-looking, she said. _I_
knew there was no danger; 'the young Thornycrofts are not marrying
men,' I said to her. But now, look here, you and Anna had not better
go out together again, lest other people should take up the same
notions."

With these words Captain Copp believed he had settled the matter, and
done all that was necessary in the way of warning. He said as much to
Amy, confidentially. Whether it might have proved so, he had not the
opportunity of judging. On the following morning that lady received a
pressing summons to repair to London. One of her sisters, staying
there temporarily, was seized with illness, and begged the captain's
wife to come and nurse her. By the next train she had started, taking
Anna.

"To be out of harm's way," she said to herself. "To help me take care
of Maria," she said to the captain.

Mrs. Wortley was a widow without children. So many events have to be
crowded in, and the story thickens so greatly, that nothing more need
be said of her. The lodgings she had been temporarily occupying were
near to old St. Pancras Church, and there Mrs. Sam Copp and Anna found
her--two brave, skilful, tender nurses, ever ready to do their best.

Never before had Anna found illness wearisome; never before thought
London the most dreary spot on earth. Ah, it was not in the locality;
it was not in the illness that the ennui lay; but in the absence of
Isaac Thornycroft. He called to see them once, rather to the chagrin
of the captain's wife, and he met Anna the same day when she went for
her walk. Mrs. Sam Copp did not suspect it.

They had been in London about a month, the invalid was better, and
Mrs. Copp began to talk of returning home again; when one dark
November morning, upon Anna's returning home from her walk--which Mrs.
Copp, remembering her past weak condition, the result of work and
confinement, insisted on her taking--Isaac Thornycroft came in with
her. He put his hat down on the table, took Mrs. Copp's hands in his,
and was entering upon some story, evidently a solemn one, when Anna
nearly startled Mrs. Copp into fits by falling at her feet with a
prayer for forgiveness, and bursting into tears.

"Oh, aunt, forgive, forgive me! Isaac over-persuaded me; he did
indeed."

"Persuaded you to what?" asked Mrs. Copp.

"To become my wife," interposed Isaac. "We were married this morning."

The first thing Mrs. Copp did was to sink into a chair, her hair
rising up on end; the next was to go into hysterics. Isaac, quiet,
calm, gentlemanly as ever, sent Anna away while he told the tale.

"I thought it the best plan," he avowed. "When I met Anna out
yesterday--by chance as she thought--I got a promise from her to meet
me again this morning, no matter what the weather might be. It turned
out a dense fog, but she came. Through the fog I got her into the
church door, and took her to the clergyman, waiting at the altar for
us, before she well knew what was going to be."

Mrs. Copp threw up her hands, and screamed, and cried, and for once in
her life called another creature deceitful--meaning Anna. But Anna--as
he hastened to explain--had not been deceitful; she had but yielded to
his strong will in the agitation and surprise of the moment.
Calculating upon this defect in her character--if it could be called a
defect, brought up as she had been--Isaac Thornycroft had made the
arrangements at St. Pancras church without saying a word to her; and,
as it really may be said, surprised her into the marriage at the time
of its taking place.

"There's the certificate," he said; "I asked the clergyman to give me
one. Put it up carefully, dear Mrs. Copp."

"To be married in this way!" moaned poor Mrs. Copp. "My husband had
liqueur glasses of rum served out in the vestry at our wedding, but
that was not half as bad as this. Not a single witness on either side
to countenance it!"

"Pardon me; my brother Cyril was present," answered Isaac. "I
telegraphed for him last night, and he reached town this morning."

Isaac Thornycroft had sent for his brother out of pure kindness to
Anna, that the ceremony might so far be countenanced. It had turned
out to be the most crafty precaution he could have taken. Seeing
Cyril, Anna never supposed but that the Thornycroft family knew of it;
otherwise, yielding though she was in spirit, she might have withstood
even Isaac. Cyril gave her away.

"And now," said Isaac, in an interval between the tears and moans, "I
am going to take Anna away with me for a week."

Little by little Mrs. Copp succeeded in comprehending Mr. Isaac's
programme. To all intents and purposes he intended this to be a
perfectly secret marriage, and to remain so until the horizon before
them should be clear of clouds. When Mrs. Copp went back home, Anna
would return with her as Miss Chester, and they must be content with
seeing each other occasionally as ordinary acquaintances.

Mrs. Copp could only stare and gasp. "Away with you for a week! and
then home again with me as Miss Chester? Oh, Mr. Isaac! you do not
consider. Suppose her good name should suffer?"

A slight frown contracted the capacious brow of Isaac Thornycroft. "Do
you not see the precautions I have taken will prevent that? On the
first breath of need my brother Cyril will come forward to testify to
the marriage, and you hold the certificate of it. Believe me, I
weighed all, and laid my plans accordingly. I chose to make Anna my
wife. It is not expedient to proclaim it just yet to the world--to
your friends or to mine; but I have done the best I could do under the
circumstances. Cyril will be true to us and keep the secret; I know
you will also."

Mrs. Sam Copp faintly protested that she should never get over the
blow. Isaac, with his sunny smile, his persuasive voice, told her she
would do so before the day was out, and saw her seal the certificate
in a large envelope and lock it up.

Then he started with his bride to a small unfrequented fishing village
in quite the opposite direction to Coastdown. And Anna had been
married some days before she knew that her marriage was a secret from
her husband's family, Cyril excepted, and to be kept one.




CHAPTER IV.
In Love.


Robert Hunter sat in his chambers--as it is the fashion to call
offices now. They were in a good position in Westminster, and he was
well established; he had set up for himself, and was doing fairly--not
yet making gold by shovelfuls, as engineers are reputed to have done
of late years, but at least earning his bread and cheese, with every
prospect that the gold was coming.

Plans were scattered on the desk at which he sat; some intricate
calculations lay immediately before him. He regarded neither. His eyes
were looking straight out at the opposite wall, a big chart of some
district being there, but he saw it not; nothing but vacancy. Very
unusual indeed was it for Robert Hunter the practical to allow his
thoughts to stray away in the midst of his work, as they had done now.

During the past few months a change had come over his heart. It was of
a different nature from that which, some two or three years before,
after the death of his wife, had changed himself--changed, as it
seemed, his whole nature, and made a man of him. Even now he could not
bear to look back upon the idle, simple folly in which his days had
been passed; the circumstances that had brought this folly home to his
mind, opened his eyes to it, as it were, had no doubt caused him to
acquire a very exaggerated view of it; but this did no harm to others,
and worked good for himself.

With the death of his wife, Robert Hunter had, so to say, put aside
the pleasant phase, the ideal view of life, and entered on the hard,
the stern, the practical--as he thought for ever. He had not
calculated well in this. He forgot that he was still a young and
attractive man (though his being attractive or the contrary was not at
all to the purpose); he forgot that neither the feelings nor the heart
can grow old at will. It might have been very different had his heart
received its death-blow; but it was nothing but his conscience; for he
had not loved his wife. But of that he was unconscious until lately.

Love--real love--the sweet heart's dream that can never but once visit
either man or woman, had come stealing over Robert Hunter. Never but
once. What says a modern poet?


     "Few hearts have never loved; but fewer still
        Have felt a second passion. None a third.
      The first was living fire; the next, a thrill;
        The weary heart can never more be stirred:
        Rely on it, the song has left the bird."


Truer words were rarely said or sung. The one only glimpse of Paradise
vouchsafed to us on earth--a transitory glimpse at the best--cannot be
repeated a second time. When it flies away it flies for ever.

Ah, how different it was, this love, that was making a heaven of
Robert Hunter's life, from that which had been given to his poor dead
wife--the child-wife, who had been so passionately attached to him!
He understood her agony now--when she had believed him false to her;
when he, her heart's idol, had apparently gone over to another's
worship--he did not understand it then. When inclined to be very
self-condemnatory, to bring his sins and mistakes palpably before him,
he would ask himself, looking back, what satisfaction he had derived
from my Lady Ellis's society, taking it at its best. A few soft
glances; a daily repetition of some sweet words; a dozen kisses--they
had not been more--snatched from her face; and some hand pressing when
they met or parted. Literally this was all: there had been nothing,
nothing more; and Mr. Hunter had not even the poor consolation of
knowing now that any love whatever on his side, or hers, had entered
into the matter from the beginning to the ending. It was for this his
wife had died; it was for this he had laden his conscience with a
weight that could never wholly leave it. He was not a heathen; and
when, close upon the death, remorse had pressed sorely upon him, an
intolerable burthen of sin grievous to be borne, he had, in very pity
for his own miserable state, carried it where he had never before
carried anything. Consolation came in time, a sense of mercy, of help,
of pardon; but the _recollection_ could never be blotted out, or the
sense of too late repentance quit him.

He remembered still; he repented yet. Whenever the past occurred to
him, it brought with it that terrible conviction--a debt of atonement
owing to the dead, which can never be rendered--and Robert Hunter
would feel the most humble man on the face of the earth. This sense of
humiliation was no doubt good for him; it came upon him at odd times
and seasons, even in the midst of the new passion that filled his
heart.

"Shall I ever win her?" he was thinking to himself, seated at his for
once neglected desk. "Nay, must I ever dare to tell her of my love? A
flourishing engineer, with his name up in the world, and half a score
important undertakings in progress, might be deemed a fitting match
for her by her people at the Red Court; but what would they say to me?
I am not to be called flourishing yet; my great works I must be
content to wait for; they will come; I can foresee it; but before then
some man with settlements and a rent-roll may have stepped in."

It was not a strictly comforting prospect certainly, put in this
light; and Mr. Hunter gave an impatient twist to some papers. But he
could not this morning settle down to work, and the meditations began
again.

"I know she loves me; I can see it in every turn of her beautiful
face, hear it in every tone of her voice. This evening I shall see
her; this evening I shall see her! Oh, the----"

"Mr. Barty is here, sir."

The interruption came from a clerk; it served to recal his master to
what he so rarely forgot, the business of every-day life. Mr. Barty
was an eminent contractor, and Robert Hunter's hopes went up to
fever-heat as he welcomed him. One great work entrusted to him from
this great man, and the future might be all plain sailing.

He was not wholly disappointed. Mr. Barty had come to offer him
business; or rather, to pave the way for it; for the offer was not
positively entered on then, only the proposed work--a new line of
rail--discussed. There was one drawback--it was a line abroad--and
Robert Hunter did not much like this.

Mary Anne Thornycroft had not many friends in London; nearly all her
holidays during the half-year had been passed at Mrs. Macpherson's.
Susan Hunter invariably accompanied her; and what more natural than
that Robert should (invited, or uninvited, as it might happen) drop in
to meet his sister? There had lain the whole thing--the intercourse
afforded by these rather frequent meetings--and nothing more need be
said; they had fallen in love with one another.

Yes. The singular attraction each had seemed to possess for the other
the first time they met, but increased with every subsequent
interview. It had not needed many. Mary Anne Thornycroft, who had
scarcely ever so much as read of the name of love, had lost her heart
to this young man, the widower Robert Hunter, entirely and hopelessly.
That he was--at any rate at present--no suitable match for her, she
never so much as glanced twice at: the Thornycrofts were not wont
to regard expediency when it interfered with inclination. Not a word
had been spoken; not a hint given; but there is a language of the
heart, and they had become versed in it. Clever Mrs. Macpherson, so
keen-sighted generally in the affairs of men and women, never so much
as gave a thought to what was passing under her very eyes; Miss
Hunter, who had discernment too, was totally blind here. As to the
professor, with his spectacled eyes up aloft in the sky or buried in
the earth, it would have been far too much to suspect him of seeing
it. A very delightful state of things for the lovers.

When Robert Hunter reached Mrs. Macpherson's that dark December
evening, he saw nobody in the drawing-room. He had been invited to
dinner; five o'clock sharp, Mrs. Macpherson told him; for the
professor had an engagement at six which would keep him out, and she
did not intend that he should depart dinnerless.

This was Miss Thornycroft's farewell visit; in two days she was going
home for Christmas, not again to return to school. She had invited
Susan Hunter (who would remain at school until March), to come down
during the holidays and spend a week at the Red Court Farm; and her
brother was to accompany her.

It wanted a quarter to five when Mr. Hunter entered. The drawing-room
was not lighted, and at first he thought no one was in it. The large
fire had burnt down to red embers; as he stood before it, his head and
shoulders reflected in the pier-glass, he (perhaps unconsciously) ran
his hand through his hair--hair that was darker than it used to be;
the once deep auburn had become a reddish-brown, and--_and_--some grey
threads mingled with it.

"How vain you are!"

He started round at the sound--it was the voice he loved so well. Half
buried in a lounging chair in the darkest corner was she. She came
forward, laughing.

"I did not see you," he said, taking her hand "You are here alone!"

A conscious blush tinged her cheeks; she knew that she had stayed in
the room to wait for him.

"They have gone somewhere, Susan and Mrs. Macpherson--to see a new cat
of the professor's, I think. I have seen so many of those stuffed
animals."

"When do you go down home?"

"The day after to-morrow. Susan has fixed the second week in January
for her visit. Will that time suit you?"

"The time might suit," he replied, with a slight stress on the word
"time," as if there were something else that might not. "Unless,
indeed--"

"Unless what?"

"Unless I should have left England, I was going to say. An offer has
been made me to-day--or rather, to speak more correctly, an intimation
that an offer is about to be made me--of some work abroad. If I accept
it, it will take me away for a couple of years."

She glanced up, and their eyes met. A yearning look of love, of dire
tribulation at the news, shone momentarily in hers. Then they were
bent on the carpet, and Mr. Hunter looked at the fire--the safest
place just then.

"Are you obliged to accept it?" she inquired.

"Of course not. But it would be very much to my advantage. It would
pave the way for--for----" He hesitated.

"For what?"

"Wealth and honours. I mean such honours (all might not call them so),
as are open to one of my profession."

A whole array of sentences crowded into her mind--begging him not to
go; what would the days be without the sunshine of his presence? They
should be far enough apart as things were; he in London, she at home;
but the other separation hinted at would be like all that was good in
life dying out. This and a great deal more, lay in her thoughts; what
she said, however, was cold and quiet enough.

"In the event of your remaining at home, then, the second week in
January would suit you? It is Susan who has fixed it."

Not immediately did he reply. Since the first intimation of this visit
to Coastdown, a feeling of repugnance to it had lain within him; an
instinct, whenever he thought of it, warning him against accepting it.
Ah! believe me, these instinctive warnings come to us. They occur
oftener than we, in our carelessness, think for. Perhaps not one in
ten of them is ever noticed, still less heeded; we go blindly on in
disregard; and, when ill follows, scarcely ever remember that the
warning voice, if attended to, would have saved us.

Just as Robert Hunter disregarded this. But for his visit, destined to
take place at the time proposed, the great tragedy connected with the
Red Court Farm had never taken place.

Stronger than ever was the deterring warning on him this evening. He
said to himself that his repugnance lay in the dislike to be a guest
in any house that Lady Ellis was connected with; never so much as
thinking of any other cause. He fully assumed there would be no chance
of meeting herself: he knew she lived in Cheltenham. Miss Thornycroft
had once or twice casually mentioned her stepmother's name in his
presence, but he had not pursued the topic; and the young lady did not
know that they had ever met.

"You do not reply to me, Mr. Hunter. Would the time be inconvenient
for you?"

"It is not that," he answered, speaking rather dreamily. "But--I am a
stranger to your father: would he like me to intrude, uninvited by
himself?"

"It would be a strange thing if I could not invite a dear school
friend, as Susan is, down for a week, and you to accompany her,"
returned Miss Thornycroft, rather hotly. "You need not fear; papa is
the most hospitable man living. They keep almost open house at home."

"You have brothers," returned Mr. Hunter, seeking for some further
confronting argument. At which suggestion a ray of anger came into
Miss Thornycroft's haughty blue eyes.

"As if my brothers would concern themselves with me or my visitors!
They go their way, and I intend to go mine."

"Your stepmother--"

"She is nobody," quickly interposed Miss Thornycroft, mistaking what
he was about to say. "Lady Ellis lives in Cheltenham. She is ill, and
Coastdown does not suit her."

"Why does she still call herself Lady Ellis?" he asked, the question
having before occurred to him.

"It is her whim. What does it signify? She is one of the most
pretentious women you can imagine, Mr. Hunter--quite a parvenu, as I
have always felt--and 'my lady' is sweeter to her ears than 'madam.'"

"What is it that is the matter with her?"

"It is some inward complaint; I don't quite understand what. The last
time I saw my brother Cyril, he told me she was growing worse; that
there was not the least hope of her cure."

"She does not come to the Red Court?"

"No, thank fortune! She has not been there at all during this past
year. I believe she is now too ill to come."

Mr. Hunter glanced at the speaker with a smile. "You do not seem to
like her."

"Like her! Like Lady Ellis! I do not think I could pretend to like her
if she were dead. You do not know her."

A flush of remembrance darkened the brow of Robert Hunter. Time had
been when he knew enough of her.

"She is a crafty, wily, utterly selfish woman," pursued Miss
Thornycroft, who very much enjoyed a fling at her stepmother. "How
ever papa came to be taken in by her--but I don't care to talk of
_that_."

She seized the poker and began to crack the fire into a blaze. Mr.
Hunter took it from her, and he adroitly kept her hand in his.

"Had she been a different woman, good and kind, she might have won me
over to love her. The Red Court wanted a mistress at that time, as
papa thought; and, to confess it, so did I. A little self-willed,
perverse girl I was, rebellious to my French governess, perpetually
getting into scrapes, running wild indoors and out."

Entirely unconscious was Miss Thornycroft how mistaken was one of her
assumptions--"papa thought the Red Court wanted a mistress." Mr.
Thornycroft had been rather too conscious that it did _not_ want one,
looking at it from his point of view; though his daughter did.

"Ah, well; let bygones be bygones. You will promise to come, Mr.
Hunter?"

"Yes," he answered, in teeth of the voice that seemed to haunt him.
"If I have not gone away from England on this expedition, I will
come."

"Thank you," she said, with a soft flush.

He turned and looked fully at her. Her hand was in his, for he had not
relinquished it. Only about half a minute had he held it; it takes
longer to tell these things than to act them. The poker was in his
other hand, and he put it down with a clatter, which prevented their
hearing the footsteps of Mrs. Macpherson on the soft carpet outside.
That discreet matron, glancing through the partially open door, took
the view of what she saw with her keen brain, and stood transfixed.

"My heart alive, is there anything between _them?_" ran her surprised
thoughts. "Well, that would be a go! Robert Hunter ain't no match for
her father's child. Hand in hand, be they! and his eyes dropped on her
face as if he was a-hungering to eat it. Not in this house, my good
gentleman."

With a cough and a shuffling, as if the carpet had got entangled with
her feet, Mrs. Macpherson made her advent known. When she advanced
into the room the position of the parties had changed: he was at
one corner of the fire-place, she at the other, silent, demure,
innocent-looking both of them as two doves.

Not a word said Mrs. Macpherson. Miss Hunter came in, the professor
followed, the announcement of dinner followed him. And somehow there
arose no further opportunity for as much as a hand-shake between the
suspected pair. But on the next day Mrs. Macpherson drove round to
Miss Jupp's, and made to that lady a communication.

"I don't say as it is so, Miss Jupp; mind that; their fingers might
have got together accidental. I am bound to say that I never noticed
nothing between 'em before. But I'm a straightforward body, liking to
go to the root o' things at first with folks, and do as I'd be done
by. And goodness only knows what might have become of us if I'd not
been, with the professor's brain a-lodging up in the skies! I'll go to
Miss Jupp, says I to myself last night; and here I am."

"I think--I hope that it is quite unlikely," said Miss Jupp;
beginning, however, to feel uncomfortable.

"So do I. I've told you so. But it was my place to come and put you on
your guard. I declare to goodness that never a thought of such a thing
struck me, or you may be sure I'd not have had Robert Hunter to my
house when she was there. 'When the steed's stole, one locks the
stable door."

"Miss Hunter tells me that she and her brother are going to spend a
week at Coastdown."

"And so much the better," said Mrs. Macpherson, emphatically. "If
there _is_ anything between 'em, her folks won't fail to see it, and
they can act accordingly. And now that I've done my duty, and had my
say, I'll be going."

"Thank you," said Miss Jupp. "Is the professor well?"

"As well as getting up at three o'clock on a winter's morning and
starting off in the dark and cold'll let him be," was the response.
"I told him last night he shouldn't go; there's no sense in such
practices; but he wouldn't listen. It's astronomicals this time."

Watching her departure, remaining for a few minutes in undecisive
thought, Miss Jupp at length made up her mind to speak, and sent for
Mary Anne Thornycroft. No prevision was on the young lady's mind of
the lecture in store; upright, elegant, beautiful, in she swept and
stood calmly before her governess. Miss Jupp spoke considerately,
making light of the matter, merely saying that Mrs. Macpherson thought
she and Mr. Hunter were rather fond of "talking" together. "I thought
it as well just to mention it to you, my dear; school-girls--and you
are but one as yet, you know--should always be reticent."

Mary Anne Thornycroft's haughty blue eyes, raised in general so
fearlessly, drooped before Miss Jupp's gaze, and her face turned to a
glowing crimson. Only for a moment: the next she was looking up again,
_meeting_ the gaze and answering with straightforward candour.

"Nothing has ever passed between me and Mr. Hunter that Mrs.
Macpherson might not have heard and seen. I like Mr. Hunter very much.
I have frequently met him there; but why should Mrs. Macpherson seek
to make mischief out of that?"

"My dear girl, she neither seeks to make mischief nor has she made
any. All I would say to you--leaving the past--is a word of caution.
At your age, with your good sense, you cannot fail to be aware that it
is advisable young ladies should be circumspect in their choice of
acquaintances. A mutual inclination is sometimes formed, which can
never lead to fruition, only to unhappiness."

Mary Anne did not answer, and the eyes dropped again.

"I have a great mind to tell you a little episode of my life," resumed
poor Miss Jupp, her cheeks faintly flushing. "Such an inclination as I
speak of arose between me and one with whom, many years ago when out
on a visit, I was brought into daily contact. We learnt to care for
each other as much as it is possible for people to care in this world.
So much so, that when it was all past and done with, and I received an
excellent proposal of marriage, I _could_ not accept it. That early
attachment was the blight of my life, Mary Anne. Instead of being a
poor school-mistress, worried with many anxieties--a despised old
maid--I should now have been a good man's wife, the mistress of a
prosperous home."

Miss Jupp kept her rising tears down; but Mary Anne Thornycroft's eyes
were glistening.

"And that first one, dear Miss Jupp: could you not have married him?"

"No, my dear. Truth to tell, he never asked me. He dared not ask me;
it would have been quite unsuitable. Believe me, many an unmarried
woman could give you the same history nearly word for word. Hence you
see how necessary it is to guard against an intimacy with unsuitable
acquaintances."

"And you put Mr. Hunter into the catalogue?" returned Miss
Thornycroft, affecting to speak lightly.

"Most emphatically--as considered in relation to you," was Miss Jupp's
answer. "Your family will expect you to marry well, and you owe it to
them to do so. Mr. Hunter is in every respect unsuitable. Until
recently he was only a clerk; he has his own way to carve yet in the
world; he is much older than you; and--he has been already married."

"Of course I know all that," said Miss Thornycroft, with the deepest
colour that had yet come over her. "But don't you think, ma'am, it
would have been quite time to remind me of this when circumstances
called for it?"

"Perhaps not. At any rate, my dear, the warning can do you no harm. If
unrequired in regard to Mr. Hunter--as indeed I believe it to be--it
may serve you in the future."

Miss Jupp said no more. "I have put it strong," she thought to
herself, as the young lady curtsied and left the room. "It was well to
do so."

"Engineers rise to honours, as he said, and I know he is going on for
them," quoth Mary Anne Thornycroft, with characteristic obstinacy,
slowly walking along the passage. "I should never care for anyone else
in the world. As to money, I daresay I shall have plenty of that; so
will he when he has become famous."

They travelled to Coastdown together--Isaac Thornycroft and his
sister, Mrs. Copp and Anna Chester, as we must continue to call
her--by a pleasant coincidence, as it was deemed by Miss Thornycroft.
Mrs. Copp, living upon thorns--but that is a very faint figure of
speech to express that timid lady's state of mind was ready some days
before, but had to await the arrival of Anna. Isaac kept her out
longer than the week, getting back just in time to take charge of his
sister.

As they sat in the carriage together, what a momentous secret it was
that three of them held, and had to conceal from the fourth! If Anna's
eyes were bright with happiness, her cheeks looked pale with
apprehension; and Mrs. Copp might well shiver, and lay it upon the
frost. Not so Isaac. Easy, careless, gay, was he--"every inch a
bridegroom." After all, there was not so very much for _him_ to dread.
It was expedient to keep his marriage secret, if it could be kept so;
if' not, why he must face the explosion at home as he best could: the
precautions he had taken would ward off reproach from his wife.

"Here's Jutpoint!" exclaimed Mary Anne Thornycroft. "How glad I am to
come back!"

"How glad I should be if I were going away from it!" thought poor Mrs.
Copp.

As they were getting out of the carriage, Isaac contrived to put his
arm before Anna, an intimation that he wanted to detain her. The
others were suffered to go on.

"What makes you look so pale?"

"Oh, Isaac! can you ask? Your father--my uncle--may be here waiting
for us. I feel sick and faint at the thought of meeting them."

"But there's no reason in the world why you should. One minute after
seeing them the feeling will wear off. Ce n'est quo le premier pas qui
coute."

"If they should suspect!--if they should have heard! It seems to me
people need only look in my face to learn all. I have never once met
your sister's eyes freely in coming down."

He laughed lightly. "Reassure yourself, my darling. There's no fear
that it will be known one hour before we choose it should be."

"I am remembering always that stories may get abroad about me."

"What you have to remember is that you are my honest wife," gravely
returned Isaac. "I told Mrs. Copp--I have told you--that on the
faintest breath of a whisper, I should avow the truth. You cannot
doubt it, Anna; nothing in the world can be so precious to me as my
wife's fair fame. They are looking back for us. God bless you, my
darling, and farewell. For the present, you know--and that's the worst
of the whole matter--you are not my wife, but Miss Chester."




CHAPTER V.
Wilful Disobedience.


Mary Ann Thornycroft sat in the large, luxurious, comfortable
drawing-room of the Red Court Farm. The skies without were grey and
wintry, the air was cold, the sea was of a dull leaden colour; but
with that cheery fire blazing in the grate, the soft chairs and sofas
scattered about, the fine pictures, the costly ornaments, things were
decidedly bright within. Brighter a great deal than the young lady's
face was; for something had just occurred to vex her. She was leaning
back in her chair; her foot, peeping out from beneath the folds of her
flowing dress, impatiently tapping the carpet: angry determination
written on every line of her countenance. Between herself and Richard
there had just occurred a passage at arms--as is apt to be the case
with brother and sister, when each has a dominant and unyielding will.

At home for good, Miss Thornycroft had assumed her post as mistress
of the house in a spirit of determination that said she meant to
maintain it. The neighbours came flocking to see the handsome girl, a
woman grown now. She had attained her nineteenth year. They found a
lady-like, agreeable girl, with Cyril's love for reading, Isaac's fair
skin and beautiful features, and Richard's resolute tone and lip. Very
soon, within a week of her return, the servants whispered to each
other that Miss Thornycroft and her brothers had already begun their
quarrelling, for both sides wanted the mastery. They should have said
her brother--very seldom indeed was it that Isaac interfered with
her--Cyril never.

She had begun by attempting to set to rights matters that probably
never would be set right; regularity in regard to the serving of the
meals. They set all regularity at defiance, especially on the point of
coming in to them. They might come, or they might not; they might sit
down at the appointed hour, or they might appear an hour after it.
Sometimes the dinners were simple, oftener elaborate; to-day they
would be alone, to-morrow six or eight unexpected guests, invited on
the spur of the moment, would sit down to table; just as it had been
in the old days. Mr. Thornycroft's love of free-and-easy hospitality
had not changed. To remedy _this_, Mary Anne did not attempt--it had
grown into a usage; but she did wish to make Richard and Isaac pay
more attention to decorum.

"They cannot be well-conducted, these two brothers of mine,"
soliloquized Miss Thornycroft, as she continued to tap her impatient
foot. "And papa winks at it. I think they must have acquired a love
for low companions. I hear of their going into the public-house, and,
if not drinking themselves, standing treat for others. Last night they
came in to dinner in their velveteen coats, and gaiters all mud--after
keeping it waiting for five-and-forty minutes. I spoke about their
clothes, and papa--papa took their part, saying it was not to be
expected that young men engaged in agriculture could dress themselves
up for dinner like a lord-in-waiting. It's a shame!"

Richard and Isaac did indeed appear to be rather loose young men in
some things; but their conduct had not changed from what it used to
be--the change lay in Miss Thornycroft. What as a girl she had not
seen or noticed, she now, a young woman come home to exact propriety
after the manner of well-conducted young ladies, saw at once, and put
a black mark against. Their dog-cart, that ever-favourite vehicle,
would be heard going out and coming in at all sorts of unseasonable
hours; when Richard and Isaac lay abed till twelve (the case
occasionally) Miss Thornycroft would contrive to gather that they had
not gone to it until nearly daylight.

The grievance this morning, however, was not about any of these
things: it concerned a more personal matter of Miss Thornycroft's.
While she was reading a letter from Susan Hunter, fixing the day of
the promised visit, Richard came in. He accused her of expecting
visitors, and flatly ordered her to write and stop their coming. A few
minutes of angry contention ensued, neither side giving way in the
smallest degree: she said her friends should come, Richard said they
should not. He strode away to find his father. The justice was in the
four-acre paddock with his gun.

"This girl's turning the house upside down," began Richard. "We shall
not be able to keep her at home."

"What girl? Do you mean Mary Anne?"

"There's nobody else I should mean," returned the young man, who was
not more remarkable for courtesy of speech, even to his father, than
he used to be. "I'd pretty soon shell out anybody else who came
interfering. She has gone and invited some fellow and his sister down
to stay for a week, she says. We can't have prying people here just
now."

"Don't fly in a flurry, Dick. That's the worst of you."

"Well, sir, I think it should be stopped. For the next month, you
know--"

"Yes, yes, I know," interposed the justice. "Of course."

"After that, it would not so much matter," continued Richard. "Not but
that it would be an exceedingly bad precedent to allow it at all. If
she begins to invite visitors here at will, there's no knowing what
the upshot might be."

"I'll go and speak to her," said Mr. Thornycroft. "Here, take the gun,
Dick."

Walking slowly, giving an eye to different matters as he passed,
speaking a word here, giving an order there, the justice went on after
the fashion of a man whose mind is at ease. It never occurred to him
that his daughter would dispute his will.

"What is all this, Mary Anne?" he demanded, when he reached her.
"Richard tells me you have been inviting some people to stay here."

Miss Thornycroft rose respectfully.

"So I have, papa. Susan Hunter was my great friend at school; she is
remaining there for the holidays, which of course is very dull, and I
asked her to come here for a week. Her brother will bring her."

"They cannot come," said Mr. Thornycroft.

"Not come!"

"No. You must understand one thing, Mary Anne--that you are _not at
liberty_ to invite people indiscriminately to the Red Court I cannot
sanction it."

A hard look of resentment crossed her face; opposition never answered
with the Thornycrofts, Cyril excepted: he was just as yielding as the
rest were obstinate.

"I have invited them, papa. The time for the visit is fixed, the
arrangements are made."

"I tell you, they cannot come."

"Not if Richard's whims are to be studied," returned Miss Thornycroft,
angrily, for she had lost her temper. "Do you wish me to live on in
this house for ever, papa, without a soul to speak to, save my
brothers and the servants? And cordial companions _they_ are," added
the young lady, alluding to the former, "out, out, out, as they are,
night after night! I should like to know where it is they go to.
Perhaps I could find out if I tried."

A fanciful person might have thought that Mr. Thornycroft started.
"Daughter!" he cried, in a hoarse whisper, hoarse with passion, "hold
your peace about your brothers. What is it to you where they go or
what they do? Is it seemly for you, a girl, to trouble yourself about
the doings of young men? Are you going to turn out a firebrand amongst
us? Take care that you don't set the Red Court alight."

The words might have struck her as strange, might indeed have imparted
a sort of undefined fear, but that she was so filled with anger and
resentment as to leave no room for other impressions. Nevertheless,
there was that in her father's face and eye which warned her it would
not do to oppose him now, and her rejoinder was spoken more civilly.

"Do you mean, papa, that you will never allow me to have a visitor?"

"I do not say that. But I must choose the times and seasons. This
companion of yours may come a month later, if you wish it so very
much. Not her brother. We have enough young men in the house of our
own. And I suppose you don't care for him."

Miss Thornycroft would have liked to say that he was the one for whom
she did care--not the sister--but that was inexpedient. A conscious
flush dyed her face; which Mr. Thornycroft attributed to pain at her
wish being opposed. He had not yet to learn how difficult it was to
turn his daughter from any whim on which she had set her will.

"Write to-day and stop their coming. Tell Miss--what's the name?"

"Hunter," was the sullen answer.

"Tell Miss Hunter that it is not convenient to receive her at the time
arranged, but that you hope to see her later. And--another word, Mary
Anne," added Mr. Thornycroft, pausing in the act of leaving the room;
"a word of caution; _let your brothers alone_; their movements are no
business of yours, neither must you make it such. Shut your eyes and
ears to all that does not concern you, if you want to live in peace
under my roof."

"Shut my eyes and ears?" she repeated, looking after him, "that I
never will. I can see how it is--papa has lived so long under the
domineering of Richard that he yields to him as a habit. It is less
trouble than opposing him. Richard is the most selfish man alive. He
thinks if we had visitors staying at the court, he must be a little
more civilized in dress and other matters, and he does not choose to
be so. For no other reason has he set his face against their coming;
there can be no other. But I will show him that I have a will as well
as he, and as good a right to exercise it."

Even as Miss Thornycroft spoke, the assertion, "there can be no
other," rose up again in her mind, and she paused to consider whether
it was strictly in accordance with facts. But no; look on all sides as
she would, there appeared to be no other reason whatever, or shadow of
reason. It was just a whim of Richard's; who liked to act, in small
things as in great, as though he were the master of the Red Court
Farm--a whim which Miss Thornycroft was determined not to gratify.

And, flying in the face of the direct command of her father, she did
not write to stop her guests.

The contest had not soothed her, and she put on her things to go out.
The day was by no means inviting, the air was raw and chill, but Miss
Thornycroft felt dissatisfied with home. Turning off by the plateau
towards the village, the house inhabited by Tomlett met her view. It
brought to her remembrance that the man was said to have received some
slight accident, of which she had only heard a day or two ago. More as
a diversion to her purposeless steps than anything else, she struck
across to inquire after him. Mrs. Tomlett, an industrious little woman
with a red face and shrill voice, as you may remember, stood at the
kitchen table as Miss Thornycroft approached the open door, peeling
potatoes. Down went the knife.

"Don't disturb yourself, Mrs. Tomlett. I hear your husband has met
with some hurt. How was it done?"

For a woman of ordinary nerve and brain, Mrs. Tomlett decidedly showed
herself wanting in self-possession at the question. It seemed to scare
her. Looking here, looking there, looking everywhere like a frightened
bird, she mumbled out some indistinct answer. Miss Thornycroft had
seen her so on occasions before, and as a girl used to laugh at her.

"When did it happen, Mrs. Tomlett?"

"Last week, miss; that is, last month--last fortnight I meant to say,"
cried Mrs. Tomlett, hopelessly perplexed.

"What _was_ the accident?" continued Miss Thornycroft. "Well, it was
a--a--a pitching of himself down the stairs, miss."

"Down which stairs? This house has no stairs."

Mrs. Tomlett looked to the different points of the room as if to
assist her remembrance that the house had none.

"No, miss, true; it wasn't stairs. He got hurted _some_ way," added
the woman, in a pang of desperation. "I never knowed clear how. When
they brought him home--a carrying of him--his head up, as one might
say, and his legs down, my senses was clean frightened out o' me: what
they said and what they didn't say, I couldn't remember after no more
nor nothing. May be 'twas out o' the tallet o' the Red Court stables
he fell, miss: I think it was."

Miss Thornycroft thought not; she should have heard of that. "Where
was he hurt?" she asked. "In the leg, was it not?"

"'Twas in the arm, miss," responded Mrs. Tomlett. "Leastways, in the
ankle."

The young lady stared at her as a natural curiosity. "Was it in both,
Mrs. Tomlett?"

Well, yes, Mrs. Tomlett thought it might be in both. His side also had
got grazed. Her full opinion was, if she might venture to express it,
that he had done it a climbing up into his boat. One blessed thing
was--no bones was broke.

Miss Thornycroft laughed, and thought she might as well leave her to
the peeling of the potatoes, the interruption to which essential duty
had possibly driven her senses away.

"At any rate, whatever the hurt, I hope he will soon be about again,"
she kindly said, as she went out.

"Which he is a'most that a'ready," responded Mrs. Tomlett, standing on
the threshold to curtsey to her guest.

No sooner was the door shut than Tomlett, a short, strong, dark man,
with a seal-skin cap on, and his right arm bandaged up, came limping
out of an inner room. The first thing he did was to glare at his wife;
the second, to bring his left hand in loud contact with the small
round table so effectually that the potatoes went flying off it.

"Now what do _you_ think of yourself for a decent woman?"

Mrs. Tomlett sat down on a chair and began to cry. "It took to me,
Ben, it did--it took to me awful," she said, deprecatingly, in the
midst of her tears; "I never knowed as news of the hurt had got
abroad."

"Do you suppose there ever was such a born fool afore as _you?_" again
demanded Mr. Tomlett, in a slow, subdued, ironical, fearfully telling
tone.

"When she come straight in with the query--what was Tomlett's hurt and
how were it done?--my poor body set on a twittering, and my head went
clean out o' me," pleaded Mrs. Tomlett.

"A pity but it had gone clean _off_ ye," growled the strong-minded
husband; "'tain't o' no good _on_."

"What were I to say, took at a pinch like that? I couldn't tell the
truth; you know that, Tomlett."

"Yes, you could; you might ha' told enough on't to satisfy her:--'He
was at work, and he fell and hurt hisself.' Warn't that enough for any
reasonable woman to say? And if she'd asked where he fell, you might
ha' said you didn't know. Not you! He 'throwed hisself down the
stairs,' when there ain't no stairs to the place; he 'fell out o' the
tallet;' he 'done it a climbing up into his boat!' Yah!"

"Don't be hard upon me, Tomlett, don't."

"'And the hurt,' she asked, 'was that in the leg?'" mercilessly
continued Mr. Tomlett. "'No, it weren't in the leg, it were in the
arm, leastways, in the ankle,' says you; and a fine bobbin o'
contradiction that must ha' sounded to her. Yah again! Some women be
born fools, and some makes theirselves into 'em."

"It were through knowing you'd get a listening, Tomlett. Nothing never
scares the wits out o' me like that. When I see the door open a
straw's breadth, I knew your ear was at it; and what with her afore me
talking, and you ahind me listening, I didn't know the words I said no
more nor if it wasn't me that spoke 'em. Do what I will, I'm blowed
up."

"Blowed up!" amiably repeated Mr. Tomlett; "if you was the wife o'
some persons, you'd get the blowing up and something atop of it. Go on
with them taturs."

Leaving them to their domestic bliss and occupations--though from the
above interlude Tomlett must not be judged: he made in general a good
husband, only he had been so terribly put out--we will go after Miss
Thornycroft. As she struck into the road again she saw Anna Chester
talking to one of her two elder brothers, it was too far off to
distinguish which; and indeed Richard and Isaac were so much alike in
figure, that the one was often taken for the other. That it was the
latter, Miss Thornycroft judged; there appeared to be a sort of
intimacy--a friendship--between Isaac and Anna that she by no means
approved of, and Isaac had taken to go rather often to Captain Copp's.

Anna came on alone; her gentle face beaming, her pretty lips breaking
into smiles. But Miss Thornycroft was cold.

"Which of my brothers were you talking to?"

"It was Isaac," answered Anna, turning her face away, for the trick of
colouring crimson at Isaac's name, acquired since her return, was all
too visible.

"Ah, yes, I knew it must be Isaac. What good friends you seem to be
growing!"

"Do you think so?" returned Anna, stooping to do something or other to
her dainty little boot, and speaking as lightly as the circumstances
permitted. "He stopped me to say that Captain Copp was going to dine
at the Red Court this evening, and so asked if I would accompany him."

"Oh, it's to be one of their dinner gatherings this evening, is it?"
replied Mary Anne, alluding to her brothers with her usual scant
ceremony. "Well, I hope you will come, Anna; otherwise I shall not go
in."

"Thank you. Yes."

"But look here. If you get telling Isaac things again that I tell you,
you and I shall quarrel. What is he to you that you should do it?"

Not for a long while had Anna felt so miserably bewildered. She began
ransacking her memory for all she had said. At these critical moments,
discovery seemed very near.

"This morning, Richard chose to question me about Susan Hunter's
coming down. He had heard of it from Isaac. Now I had not mentioned it
to Isaac, or to any one else at home: time enough for that when the
day was fixed; and Isaac could only have learnt it from you."

"I--I am not sure--I can't quite tell--it is possible I did mention it
to him," stammered poor Anna. "I did not think to do harm."

"I dare say not. But it _has_ done harm; it has caused no end of
mischief and disturbance at home, and got me into what my brothers
politely call a 'row.' Kindly keep my affairs to yourself for the
future, Anna."

She turned away with the last words, and the poor young wife, in a sea
of perplexity and distress, continued her way. The life she was
leading was exceedingly unsatisfactory; never a moment, save in some
chance and transitory meeting in the village or on the heath, did she
obtain one private word with Isaac. Isaac was rather a frequent
dropper-in now at Captain Copp's; but the cautious sailor, remembering
the warning hint of his mother, took care to afford no scope for
private talking; or, as he phrased it, sweethearting; and Mrs.
Copp--her terror of discovery being always fresh upon her guarded Anna
zealously. Could she have had her way, they would have passed each
other with a formal nod whenever they met.

"Never again," murmured Anna. "I must never again speak to him
about his home--unless it be of what the whole world knows. How
I wish this dreadful state of things could terminate! I have heard
of secrets--concealments--wearing the life away; I believe it now."

The former resident superintendent of the coastguard, Mr. Dangerfield,
had left Coastdown, and been replaced by Mr. Kyne. Private opinion ran
that Coastdown had not changed for the best; Mr. Supervisor
Dangerfield (the official title awarded him by Coastdown) having been
an easy, good-tempered, jolly kind of man, while Mr. Supervisor Kyne
was turning out to be strict and fussy on the score of "duty." Justice
Thornycroft, the great man of the place, had received him well, and
the new officer evidently liked the good cheer he was made welcome to
at the Red Court Farm.

On this same morning Mr. Thornycroft, strolling out from his home, saw
the supervisor on the plateau, and crossed the rails to join him. Mr.
Kyne, a spare man of middle age, with a greyish sort of face and hair
cut close to his head, stood on the extreme edge of the plateau,
attentively scanning the sea. He slowly turned as Mr. Thornycroft
approached.

"Looking out for smugglers?" demanded the justice, jestingly. For this
new superintendent had started the subject of smuggling soon after he
came to Coastdown, avowing a suspicion that it was carried on; the
justice had received it with a fit of laughter, and lost no
opportunity since of throwing ridicule on it.

"Shall I tell him, or not?" mentally debated Mr. Kyne. "Better not,
perhaps, until we can get hold of something more positive. He would
never believe it; he would resent it as a libel on Coastdown."

The fact was, Mr. Kyne had received information some short while
before, from what he considered a reliable source, that smuggling to a
great extent _was_ carried on at Coastdown, or on some part of the
coast lying nearly contiguous to it. He was redoubling his own
watchfulness and his preventive precautions: to find out such a thing
would be a great feather in his cap.

"You won't ridicule me out of my conviction, sir."

"Not I," said the justice; "I don't want to."

"I shall put a man on this plateau at night."

Mr. Thornycroft opened his eyes. "What on earth for?"

"Well--I suspect that place below."

"Suspect that place below!" repeated the justice, advancing to the
edge and looking down. "What is there on it to suspect?"

"Nothing--that's the truth. But if contraband things are landed,
that's the most likely spot about. There is no other at all that I see
where it _could_ be done."

"And so you look at it on the negative principle," cried the justice,
curling his lip. "Don't be afraid, Kyne. If the Half-moon had but a
bale of smuggled goods on it, there it must be until you seized it. Is
there a corner to hide it in, or facility for carrying it away?"

"That's what I say to myself," rejoined Mr. Kyne. "It's the only thing
that makes me easy."

"Don't, for humanity's sake, leave your poor men here on a winter's
night; it would be simply superfluous in the teeth of this
impossibility! The cold on this bleak place might do for some of them
before morning, or a false step in the dark send them over the cliff.
Not to speak of the ghost," added the justice, with a grim smile.

The supervisor gave an impromptu grunt, as if the latter sentence had
jarred on his nerves.

"That ghost tale is the worst part of it!" cried he. "Cold they are
used to, danger they don't mind; but there's not one of them but
shudders at the thought of seeing the ghost. I changed the men when I
found how it was; sent the old ones away, and brought fresh ones here;
well, will you believe me, justice, that in two days after they came
they were as bad as the old ones? That fellow, Tomlett, with two or
three more that congregate at the Mermaid, have told them the whole
tale. I can hardly get 'em on here since, after nightfall--though it's
only to walk along the plateau and back again."

Mr. Thornycroft looked straight out before him. The supervisor noticed
the grave change that had come to his face; and remembered that this,
or some other superstitious fear, was said to have killed the late
Mrs. Thornycroft. What with this story, what with the other deaths
spoken of, taking their rise remotely or unremotely in the ghost, what
with the uncomfortable feeling altogether that these things left on
the mind in dark and lonely moments, Mr. Supervisor Kyne might have
confessed, had he been honest enough, to not caring to stay himself on
the plateau at night. But for this fact, the place would have been
better guarded, since his men, in spite of the ghost, must have
remained on duty.

"Do you happen to know a little inlet of a spot lying near to
Jutpoint?" asked Mr. Thornycroft. "They say that used to be famous for
smuggling in the old days. If any is carried on still--a thing to be
doubted--there's where you must look for it."

"Ay, I've heard before of that place," remarked the supervisor. "They
say it's quiet enough now."

"I should have supposed most places were," said the justice, a mocking
intonation again in his tone, which rather told on the ears it was
meant for. "We revert to smuggling now as a thing of the past, not the
present. What fortunes were made at it!"

"And lost," said the supervisor.

Mr. Thornycroft shrugged his shoulders. "Were they? Through bad
management, then. Before that exposure of the custom-house frauds,
both merchants and officers lined their pockets. And do still, no
doubt."

They were slowly walking together, side by side on the brow of the
plateau, as they talked. Mr. Thornycroft stole a glance at his
companion. The supervisor's face was composed and cold; nothing to be
gathered from it.

"It has its charms, no doubt, this cheating of the revenue," resumed
the justice. "Were I a custom-house officer, and had the opportunity
offered me, I might be tempted to embrace it. Look at the toil of
these men--yours, for example--work, work, work and responsibility
perpetually; and then look at the miserable pittance of pay. Why, a
man may serve (and generally does) until he's fifty years of age,
before he has enough salary doled out to him to keep his family in
decent comfort."

"That's true," was the answer; "it keeps many of us from marrying. It
has kept me."

"Just so. One can't wonder that illegitimate practices are considered
justifiable. The world in its secret conscience exonerates you, I can
tell you that, Mr. Supervisor."

Mr. Supervisor walked along, measuring his steps, as if in thought;
but he did not answer.

"Why, how can it be otherwise?" continued the magistrate, warming with
his subject and his sympathy. "Put the case before us for a moment as
it used to be put. A merchant--Mr. Brown, let us say--has extensive
dealings with continental countries, and imports largely. Every
ship-load that comes for him must pay a duty of four hundred pounds,
more or less, to the customs. Brown speaks to the examining officer'
'You wink at this ship-load, don't see it; and we'll divide the duty
between us; you put two hundred in your pocket, and I'll put two.' Who
is there among us that would not accede? Not many. It enables the
poor, ill-paid gentleman to get a few comforts; and he does it."

"Yes; that is how many have been tempted."

"And I say we cannot blame them. No man with a spark of humanity
within his breast could give blame. Answer for yourself, Kyne: were it
possible that such a proposal could be made to you in these days,
would _you_ not fall in with it?"

"No," said the officer, in a low but decisive tone "I should not."

"No?" repeated Mr. Thornycroft, staring at him.

"It killed my father."

Mr. Thornycroft did not understand. The supervisor, looking straight
before him as if he were seeing past events in the distance,
explained, in a voice that was no louder than a whisper.

"He was tempted exactly as you have described; and yielded. When the
exposures took place at the London Customs, he was one of the officers
implicated, and made his escape abroad. There he died, yearning for
the land to which he could not return. The French doctors said that
unsatisfied yearning killed him; he had no other discoverable malady."

"What a curious thing!" exclaimed Mr. Thornycroft.

"There were some private, unhappy circumstances mixed with it. One
was, that his wife would not share in his exile. I could not; I had
already a place in the Customs. Just before he died I went over, and
he extorted a solemn promise from me never to do as he had done. I
never shall. No inducement possible to be offered would tempt me."

"It is a complete answer to the supposititious case propounded," said
the justice, laughing pleasantly.

"Supposititious, indeed!" remarked Mr. Kyne. "It could not occur in
these days."

"Certainly not. And _therefore_ your theory of present smuggling must
explode. I must be going. Will you come in to-night and dine with us,
Kyne? Copp is coming, and a few more. We've got the finest turbot, the
finest barrel of natives you ever tasted."

Inclination led Mr. Supervisor Kyne one way, duty another. He thought
he ought not to accept it; the dinners at the Red Court were always
prolonged until midnight at least, and his men would be safe to go off
the watch. But--a prime turbot! and all the rest of it! Mr. Kyne's
mouth watered.

"Thank you, sir; I'll come."

The evening dinner-gathering took place. Mr. Kyne and others, invited
to attend it, assembled in the usual unceremonious fashion, and were
very jolly to a late hour. Miss Thornycroft and Anna sat down to
table, quitting the gentlemen as soon as dinner was over. Ladies, as a
rule, were never invited to these feasts, but if Miss Thornycroft
appeared at table, the justice had no objection to her asking a
companion to join her. Generally speaking, however, her dinner on
these occasions was served to her alone.

"My darling, I am unable to take you home tonight; I--I cannot leave
my friends," whispered Isaac, finding himself by a happy chance alone
with Anna. Going into the drawing-room for a minute, he found his
sister had temporarily left it to get a book.

"Sarah is coming for me."

"Yes, I know."

His arms pressed jealously round her for the first time since they
parted, his face laid on hers, he took from her lips a shower of
impassioned kisses. Only for a moment. The sweeping trail of Miss
Thornycroft's silk dress was even then heard. When she entered, Anna
sat leaning her brow upon her raised fingers; Isaac was leaving the
room, carelessly humming a scrap of a song. Yes, it was an
unsatisfactory life at best--a wife and no wife; a heavy secret to
guard; apprehension always.

The days went on. Miss Thornycroft, defiantly pursuing her own will,
directly disobeying her father's command, did not write to stop the
arrival of her guests; and yet an opportunity offered her of doing so.
I fully believe that these opportunities of escape from the path of
evil are nearly always afforded once at least in every fresh
temptation, if we would but recognise and seize upon them.

It wanted but two days to that of the expected arrival, when a hasty
note was received from Miss Hunter saying she was prevented coming; it
concluded with these words: "My brother is undecided what to do; he
thinks you will not want him without me. Please drop him just one
line; or if he does not hear he will take it for granted that you
expect him."

_There_ was an opportunity!--"Just one line," and Mary Anne
Thornycroft would have had the future comfort of knowing that she had
(in substance at least) obeyed her father.

But she did not send it.




CHAPTER VI.
The Half-moon Beach.


Dodging about between the village and the Red Court Farm, went Miss
Thornycroft. Her mind was not at rest. The day on which she had
expected her guests--or rather, one of them--had passed. It was on
Saturday; here was Monday passing, and nobody had come. Each time the
omnibus had arrived from Jutpoint, the young lady had not been far
off. It had not brought anybody in whom she was interested. Forty-five
minutes past three now; ten minutes more, and it would be in again.
She was beginning to feel sick with emotional suspense.

But, for all this dodging, Miss Thornycroft was a lady; and when the
wheels of the omnibus were at length heard, and it drew up at the
Mermaid, she was at a considerable distance, apparently taking a cold
stroll in the wintry afternoon. One passenger only got out; she could
see that; and--_was_ it Robert Hunter?

If so, he must be habited in some curious attire. Looking at him from
this distance, he seemed to be all white and black. But, before he had
moved a step; while he was inquiring (as might be inferred) the way to
the Red Court Farm; the wild beating of Mary Ann Thornycroft's heart
told her who it was.

They met quietly enough, shaking hands calmly while he explained that
he had been unable to get away on Saturday. Miss Thornycroft burst
into a fit of laughter at the coat, partly genuine, partly put on to
hide her tell-tale emotion. It was certainly a remarkable coat; made
of a smooth sort of white cloth, exceedingly heavy, and trimmed with
black fur. The collar, the facings, the wrists and the back pockets
had all a broad strip. He turned himself about for her inspection,
laughing too.

"I fear I shall astonish the natives. But I never had so warm a coat
in my life. I got it from the professor."

"From the professor!"

Mr. Hunter laughed. "Some crafty acquaintance of his, hard up,
persuaded him into the purchase of two, money down, saying they had
just come over from Russia--latest fashion. Perhaps they had; perhaps
they are. The professor does not go in for fashion, but he cannot
refuse a request made to him on the plea of unmerited poverty, and all
that. I happened to be at his house when he brought them home in a
cab. You should have heard Mrs. Mac."

"I should have liked to," said Mary Anne.

"First of all she said she'd have the fellow taken up who had beguiled
the professor into it; next she said she'd pledge them. It ended in
the professor making me a present of one and keeping the other."

"And you are going to sport it here!"

"Better here than in London; as a beginning. I thought it a good
opportunity to get reconciled to myself in it. I should like to see
the professor _there_ when he goes out in his."

"They must have taken you for somebody in the train."

"Yes," said Mr. Hunter. "I and an old lady and gentleman had the
carriage to ourselves all the way. She evidently took me for a lord;
her husband for a card-sharper. But I think I shall like the coat."

Opinions might differ upon it--as did those of the old couple in the
train. It was decidedly a handsome coat in itself, and had probably
cost as much as the professor gave for it; but, taken in conjunction
with its oddity, some might not have elected to be seen wearing it.
Mr. Hunter had brought no other; his last year's coat was much worn,
and he had been about to get another when this came in his way.

"And what about Susan?" Miss Thornycroft asked.

"Susan is in Yorkshire. Her aunt--to whom she was left when my mother
died--was taken ill, and sent for her. I do not suppose Susan will
return to London."

"Not at all?"

Mr. Hunter thought not. "It would be scarcely worth while; she was to
have gone home in March."

Thus talking, they reached the Red Court Farm. When its inmates saw
him arrive, his portmanteau carried behind by a porter, they were
thunderstruck. Mr. Thornycroft scarcely knew which to stare at most,
him or his coat. Mary Anne introduced him with characteristic
equanimity. Richard vouchsafed no greeting in his stern displeasure,
but the justice, a gentleman at heart, hospitably inclined always,
could do no less than bid him welcome. Cyril, quiet and courteous,
shook hands with him; and later, when Isaac came in, he grasped his
hand warmly.

There is no doubt that the learning he was a connexion of Anna
Chester's (it could not be called a relative) tended to smooth
matters. As the days passed on, Mr. Hunter grew upon their liking; for
his own sake he proved to be an agreeable companion; and even Richard
fell into civility--an active, free, pleasant-mannered young fellow,
as the justice called him, who made himself at home indoors and out.

Never, since the bygone days at Katterley, had Robert Hunter deserved
the character; but in this brief holiday he could but give himself up
to his perfect happiness. He made excursions to Jutpoint; he explored
the cliffs; he went in at will to Captain Copp's and the other houses
on the heath; he put out to sea with the fishermen in the boats; he
talked to the wives in their huts: everybody soon knew Robert Hunter,
and especially his coat, which had become the marvel of Coastdown; a
few admiring it--a vast many abusing it.

Miss Thornycroft was his frequent companion, and they went out
unrestrained. It never appeared to have crossed the mind of Mr.
Thornycroft or his sons as being within the bounds of possibility that
this struggling young engineer, who was not known to public repute as
an engineer at all, could presume to be thinking of Mary Anne, still
less that she could think of him; otherwise they had been more
cautious. Anna Chester was out with them sometimes, Cyril on occasion;
but they rambled about for the most part alone in the cold and frost,
their spirits light as the rarefied air.

The plateau and its superstition had no terror for Mr. Hunter, rather
amusement: but that he saw--and saw with surprise--it was a subject of
gravity at the Red Court, he might have made fun of it. Mary Anne
confessed to him that she did not understand the matter; her brothers
were reticent even to discourtesy. That some mystery was at the bottom
of it Mr. Hunter could not fail to detect, and was content to bury all
allusion to the superstition.

He stood with Miss Thornycroft on the edge of the plateau one bright
morning--the brightest they had had. It was the first time he had been
so far, for Mary Anne had never gone beyond the railings. Not the
slightest fear had she; for the matter of that, nobody else had in
daylight; but she knew that her father did not like to see her there.
In small things, when they did not cross her own will, the young lady
could be obedient.

"I can see how dangerous it would be here on a dark night," observed
Robert Hunter in answer to something she had been saying, as he drew a
little back from the edge, over which he had been cautiously leaning
to take his observations. "Mary Anne! I never in all my life saw a
place so convenient for smuggling as that Half-moon below. I daresay
it has seen plenty of it."

Before she could make any rejoinder Mr. Kyne came strolling up to them
in a brown study, and they shook hands. Robert Hunter had dined with
him at the Red Court.

"I was telling Miss Thornycroft that the place below looks as if it
had been made for the convenience of smuggling," began Robert Hunter.
"Have you much trouble here?"

"No; but I am in hopes of it," was the reply. And it so completely
astonished Mr. Hunter, who had spoken in a careless manner, without
real meaning, as we all do sometimes, that he turned sharply round and
looked at the supervisor.

"I thought the days of smuggling were over."

"Not yet, here--so far as I believe," replied Mr. Kyne. "We have
information that smuggling to an extent is carried on somewhere on
this coast, and this is the most likely spot for it that I can
discover. I heard of this suspicion soon after I was appointed to
Coastdown, and so kept my eyes open; but never, in spite of my
precautions, have I succeeded in dropping on the wretches. I don't
speak of paltry packets of tobacco and sausage-skins of brandy, which
the fishermen, boarding strange craft, contrive to stow about their
ribs, but of more serious cargoes. I would almost stake my life that
not a mile distant from this place there lies hidden a ton-load of
lace, rich and costly as ever flourished at the Court of St.
James."[2]


[Footnote 2: This was just before the late alteration in the Customs'
import laws, when the duty on lace and other light articles was large:
making the smuggling of them into England a clever and enormously
profitable achievement, when it could be accomplished with impunity.]


Robert Hunter thought the story sounded about as likely as that of the
ghost. The incredulous, amused light in his eye caused Mary Anne to
laugh.

"Where can it be hidden?" she asked of the supervisor. "There's no
place."

"I wish I could tell you where, Miss Thornycroft."

Anything but inclined to laugh did he appear himself. The fact was,
Mr. Kyne was growing more fully confirmed in his opinion day by day,
and had come out this morning determined to do something.
Circumstances were occurring to baffle all his precautions, and he
felt savage. His policy hitherto had been secrecy, henceforth he meant
to speak of the matter openly, and see what that would do. It was very
singular--noted hereafter--that Robert Hunter and this young lady
should have been the first who fell in his way after the resolution to
speak was taken. But no doubt the remark with which Mr. Hunter greeted
him surprised him into it.

"But surely you do not think, Mr. Kyne, that boat-loads of lace are
really run here!" exclaimed Robert Hunter.

"I do think it. If not in this precise spot,"--pointing with his
finger to the Half-moon beach underneath--"somewhere close to it.
There's only one thing staggers me--if they run their cargoes there,
where can they stow it away? I have walked about there"--advancing to
the edge cautiously and looking down--"from the time the tide went off
the narrow path, leading to it round the rocks, until it came in
again, puzzling over the problem, and peering with every eye I had."

"Peering?"

"Yes. We have heard of caves and other hiding-places being concealed
in rocks," added the supervisor, doggedly; "why not in these? I cannot
put it out of my head that there's something of the sort here; it's
getting as bad to me as a haunting dream."

"It would be charming to find it!" exclaimed Mary Anne. "A cave in the
rocks! Ah, Mr. Kyne, it is too good to be true. We shall never have so
romantic a discovery at Coastdown."

"If such a thing were there, I should think you would have no
difficulty in discovering it," said Mr. Hunter.

"I have found it difficult," returned Mr. Kyne, snappishly, as if
certain remembrances connected with the non-finding did not soothe
him. "There's only one thing keeps me from reporting the suspicions at
head quarters."

"And that is--?"

"The doubt that it may turn out nothing after all."

"Oh, then, you are not so sure; you have no sufficient grounds to go
upon," quickly rejoined Mr. Hunter, with a smile that nettled the
other.

"Yes, I have grounds," he returned, somewhat incautiously perhaps, in
his haste to vindicate himself. "We had information a short time
back," he continued after a pause, as he dropped his voice to a low
key "that a boat-load of something--_my_ belief is, it's lace--was
waiting to come in. Every night for a fortnight, in the dark age of
the moon, did I haunt this naked plateau on the watch, one man with
me, others being within call. A very agreeable task it was, lying
_perdu_ on its edge, with my cold face just extended beyond!"

"And what was the result?" eagerly asked Mr. Hunter, who was growing
interested in the narrative.

"Nothing was the result. I never saw the ghost of a smuggler or a boat
approach the place. And the very first night I was off the watch, I
have reason to believe the job was done."

"Which night was that?" inquired Miss Thornycroft.

"This day week, when I was dining at the Red Court. I had told my men
to be on the look-out; but I had certainly told them in a careless
sort of way, for the moon was bright again, and who was to suspect
that they would risk it on a light night? They are bold sinners."

The customs officer was so earnest, putting, as was evident, so much
faith in his own suspicions, that Robert Hunter insensibly began to go
over to his belief. Why should cargoes of lace, and other valuable
articles, not be run? he asked himself. They bore enough duty to tempt
the risk, as they had borne it in the days gone by.

"How was it your men were so negligent?" he inquired.

"There's the devil of it!" cried the supervisor. "I beg your pardon,
young lady; wrong words slip out inadvertently when one's vexed. My
careless orders made the men careless, and they sat boozing at the
Mermaid. Young Mr. Thornycroft, it seems, happened to go in, saw them
sitting there with some of his farm-labourers, and, in a generous fit,
ordered them to call for what drink they liked. They had red eyes and
shaky hands the next morning."

"How stupid of my brother!" exclaimed Mary Anne. "Was it Richard or
Isaac?"

"I don't know. But all your family are too liberal: their purse is
longer than their discretion. It is not the first time, by many, they
have treated my fellows. I wish they would not do so."

There was a slight pause. Mr. Kyne resumed in a sort of halting tone,
as if the words came from him in spite of his better judgment.

"The greatest obstacle I have to contend with in keeping the men to
their duty on the plateau here, is the superstition connected with
it. When a fellow _is_ got on at night, the slightest movement--a
night-bird flying overhead--will send him off again. Ah! _they_ don't
want pressing to stay drinking at the Mermaid or anywhere else. The
fact is, Coastdown has not been kept to its duty for a long while. My
predecessor was good-hearted and easy, and the men did as they liked."

"How many men do you count here?"

"Only three or four, and they can't be available all together; they
must have some rest, turn on, turn off. There's a longish strip of
coast to pace, too; the plateau's but a fleabite of it."

"And your theory is that the smugglers run their boats below here?"
continued Robert Hunter, indicating the Half-moon beach.

"I think they do--that is, if they run them anywhere," replied Mr.
Kyne, who was in a state of miserable doubt, between his firm
convictions and the improbabilities they involved. "You see, there is
nowhere else that privateer boats can be run to. There's no
possibility of such a thing higher up, beyond that point to the right,
and it would be nearly as impossible for them to land a cargo of
contraband goods beyond the left point, in the face of all the
villagers."

There was a silence. All three were looking below at the scrap of
beach over the sharp edges of the jutting rocks, Miss Thornycroft held
safe by Mr. Hunter. She broke it.

"But, as you observe, Mr. Kyne, where could they stow a cargo there,
allowing that they landed one? There is certainly no opening or place
for concealment in those hard, bare rocks, or it would have been
discovered long ago. Another thing--suppose for a moment that they do
get a cargo stowed away somewhere in the rocks, how are they to get it
out again? There would be equal danger of discovery."

"So there would," replied Mr. Kyne. "I have thought of all these
things myself till my head is muddled."

"Did you ever read Cooper's novels, Mr. Kyne?" resumed Miss
Thornycroft. "Some of them would give you a vast deal of insight into
these sort of transactions."

"No," replied the officer, with an amused look. "I prefer to get my
insight from practice. I am pretty sharp-sighted," he added with
complacency.

Robert Hunter had been weighing possibilities in his mind, and woke up
as from sudden thought, turning to the supervisor.

"I should like to go down there and have a look at these rocks. My
profession has taken me much amidst such places: perhaps my experience
could assist you."

"Let us walk there now!" exclaimed the supervisor, seizing at the
idea--"if not taking you out of your way, Miss Thornycroft."

"Oh, I should be delighted," was the young lady's reply. "I call it
quite an adventure. Some fine moonlight night I shall come and watch
here myself, Mr. Kyne."

"They don't do their work on a moonlight night. At least," he hastened
to correct himself; with a somewhat crestfallen expression, "not
usually. But after what happened recently, I shall mistrust a light
night as much as a dark one."

"Are you sure," she inquired, standing yet within them on the plateau,
"that a cargo was really landed the night you speak of?"

"I am not sure; but I have cause to suspect it."

"It must be an adventurous life," she remarked, "bearing its charms,
no doubt."

"They had better not get caught," was the officer's rejoinder,
delivered with professional gusto; "they would not find it so charming
then."

"I thought the days of smuggling were over," observed Mr. Hunter:
"except the more legitimate way of doing it through the very eyes and
nose of the custom-house. Did you know anything personally of the
great custom-house frauds, as they were called, when so many officers
and merchants were implicated, some years ago?"

"I did. I held a subordinate post in the London office then, and was
in the thick of the discoveries."

"You were not one of the implicated?" jestingly demanded Mr. Hunter.

"Why, no--or you would not see me here now. I was not sufficiently
high in the service for it."

"Or else you might have been?"

"That's a home question," laughed Mr. Kyne. "I really cannot answer
for what might have been. My betters were tempted to be."

He spoke without a cloud on his face; a different man now, from the
one who had betrayed his family's past trouble to Justice Thornycroft.
Not to this rising young engineer, attired in his fantastic coat,
which the supervisor always believed must be the very height of _ton_
and fashion in London; not to this handsome, careless, light-hearted
girl, would he suffer aught of that past to escape. He could joke with
_them_ of the custom-house frauds, which had driven so many into
exile, and _one_--at least, as he believed--to death. On the whole, it
was somewhat singular that the topic should have been again started.
Miss Thornycroft took up the thread with a laugh.

"There, Mr. Kyne! You acknowledge that you custom-house gentlemen are
not proof against temptation, and yet you boast of looking so sharply
after these wretched fishermen!"

"If the game be carried on here as I suspect, Miss Thornycroft, it is
not wretched fishermen who have to do with it; except, perhaps, as
subordinates."

"Let us go and explore the Half-moon beach below," again said Robert
Hunter. Mr. Kyne turned to it at once: he had been waiting to do so.
The engineer's experience might be valuable. He had had somewhat to do
with rocks and land.

It was a short walk as they made their way down to the village, and
thence to the narrow path winding round the projection of rock. The
tide was out, so they shelved round it with dry feet, and ascended to
the Half-moon beach. They paced about from one end of the place to the
other, looking and talking. Nothing was to be seen; nothing; no
opening, or sign of opening. The engineer had an umbrella in his hand,
and he struck the rocks repeatedly: in one part in particular, it was
just the middle of the Half-moon, he struck and struck, and returned
to strike again.

"What do you find?" inquired Mr. Kyne.

"Not much. Only it sounds hollow just here."

They looked again: they stooped down and looked; they stood upon a
loose stone and raised themselves to look; they pushed and struck at
the part with all their might and main. No, nothing came of it.

"Did you ever see a more convenient spot for working the game?" cried
the supervisor. "Look at those embedded stones down there, rising from
the lower beach: the very things to moor a boat to."

"Who do you suspect does this contraband business?" inquired Robert
Hunter.

"My suspicions don't fall particularly upon any one. There are no
parties in the neighbourhood whom one could suspect, except the
boatmen, and if the trade is pushed in the extensive way I think, they
are not the guilty men. A week ago (more or less) they ran, as I tell
you, one cargo; I know they did; and may I be shot this moment, if
they are not ready to ran another! That's a paying game, I hope."

Ready to run another! The pulses of Mr. Kyne's hearers ran riot with
excitement. This spice of adventure was intensely charming.

"How do you know they are?" asked Robert Hunter.

"By two or three signs. One of them, which I have no objection to
mention, is that a certain queer craft is fond of cruising about here.
Whenever I catch sight of her ugly sides, I know it bodes no good for
her Majesty's revenue. She carries plausible colours, the hussey, and
has, I doubt not, a double bottom, false as her colours. I saw her
stern, shooting off at daybreak this morning, and should like to have
had the overhauling of her."

"Can you not?"

"No. She is apparently on legitimate business."

"I thought that her Majesty could search any vessel, legitimate or
illegitimate."

Again Mr. Kyne looked slightly crestfallen. "I boarded her with my men
the last time she was here, and nothing came of it. She happened by
ill-luck to be really empty, or we were not clever enough to unearth
the fox."

The reminiscence was not agreeable to Mr. Kyne. The empty vessel had
staggered him professionally; the reception he met with insulted him
personally. Until the search was over, the captain, a round, broad
Dutchman, had been civil, affording every facility to the revenue
officers; but the instant the work was done, he ordered them out of
the ship in his bad English, and promised a different reception if
they ever came on it again. That was not all. The mate, another
Dutchman, was handling a loaded pistol the whole time on full cock,
and staring at the superintendent in a very strange manner. Altogether
the remembrance was unpleasant.

The tide was coming up, and they had to quit the strip of beach while
the road was open. Mr. Kyne wished them good morning and departed on
his own way. Robert Hunter turned towards the plateau again, which
surprised Miss Thornycroft. "Just for a minute or two," he urged.

They ascended it, and stood on the brow as before, Robert Hunter in
deep thought. His face, now turned to the sea, now to the land, wore a
business-like expression.

"We are now standing exactly above the middle of the rocks on the
Half-moon beach below," he remarked presently, "just where they had a
hollow sound."

"Yes," she replied.

"And the Red Court, as you see, lies off in a straight line. It is a
good thing your father lives there, Mary Anne."

"Why?"

"Because if suspicious persons inhabited it, I should say that house
might have something to do with the mystery. If Kyne's conclusions are
right--that smuggled goods are landed on the beach below, they must be
stowed away in the rocks; although the ingress is hidden from the
uninitiated. Should this be really the case, depend upon it there is
some passage, some communication, in these rocks to an egress inland."

"But what has that to do with our house?" inquired Mary Anne,
wonderingly.

"These old castles, lying contiguous to the coast, are sure to have
subterranean passages underneath, leading to the sea. Many an escape
has been made that way in time of war, and many an ill-fated prisoner
has been so conducted to the waves, and put out of sight for ever.
Were I your father, I would institute a search. He might come upon the
hoarding-place of the smugglers."

"But the smugglers cannot get to their caverns and passages through
our house!"

"Of course not. There must be some other opening. How I should like to
drop upon the lads!"

Mr. Hunter spoke with animation. Such a discovery presented a tempting
prospect, and he walked across the plateau as one who has got a new
feather stuck in his cap. In passing the Round Tower, he turned aside
to it, and stepped in through the opening. He found nothing there that
could be converted into suspicion by the most lively imagination. The
worn grass beneath the feet was all genuine; the circular wall,
crumbling away, had stood for ages. Satisfied, so far, they crossed
the railings on their way home.

Mr. Thornycroft was in the dining-room writing a note; Richard, who
had apparently just stepped in to ask a question, held a gun; Cyril
lay back in an easy-chair, reading. When Mary Anne and their gentleman
guest burst in upon them with eager excitement, the one out-talking
the other, it was rather startling.

"Such an adventure! Papa, did you know we probably have smugglers on
the coast here?"

"Have you ever explored underneath your house, sir, under the old
ruins of the castle? There may be a chain of subterranean passages and
vaults conducting from here to the sea."

"Not common smugglers, papa, the poor tobacco-and-brandy sailors, but
people in an extensive way. Boat-loads of lace they land."

"If it be as the man suspects, there may be often a rare booty there.
There may be one at this very moment; I would lay any money there is,"
added Robert Hunter, improving upon the idea in his excitement. "Mr.
Richard, will you bet a crown with me?"

The words had been poured forth so rapidly by both, that it would seem
their hearers were powerless to interrupt. Yet the effect they
produced was great. Cyril started upright, and let his book drop on
his knees; Mr. Thornycroft pushed his glasses to the top of his brow,
an angry paleness giving place to his healthy, rosy colour; while
Richard, more demonstrative, dashed the gun on the carpet and broke
into an ugly oath. The justice was the first to find his tongue.

"What absurd treason are you talking now? You are mad, Mary Anne."

"It is not treason at all, sir," replied Mr. Hunter, regarding Richard
with surprise. "It is a pretty well ascertained fact that contraband
goods are landed and housed in the rocks at the Half-moon. It will be
loyalty, instead of treason, if we can contrive to lay a trap and
catch the traitors."

Richard Thornycroft moved forward as if to strike the impetuous
speaker. It would seem that one of the fits of passion he was liable
to was coming on. Cyril, calm and cool, placed himself across his
brother's path.

"Be quiet, Richard," he said, in a tone that savoured of authority;
"stay you still. Where did you pick up this cock-and-bull story?" he
demanded with light mockery of Robert Hunter.

"We had it from the supervisor. He has suspected ever since he came,
he says, that this station was favoured by smugglers, and now he is
sure of it. One cargo they landed a few days ago, and there's another
dodging off the coast, waiting to come in. He intends to drop upon
that."

"It is a made-up lie!" foamed Richard. "The fellow talks so to show
his zeal. I'll tell him so. Smuggled goods landed here!"

"Well, lie or no lie, you need not fly in a passion over it," said
Mary Anne. "It is not our affair."

"Then, if it is not our affair, what business have you interfering in
it?" retorted Richard. "Interpose your authority, sir, and forbid her
to concern herself with men's work," he added, turning sharply to his
father. "No woman would do it who retains any sense of shame."

"Miss Thornycroft has done nothing unbecoming a lady," exclaimed Mr.
Hunter, in a tone of wonder. "You forget that you are speaking to your
sister, Mr. Richard. What can you mean?"

"Oh, he means nothing," said Mary Anne, "only he lets his temper get
the better of his tongue. One would think, Richard, you had something
to do with the smugglers, by your taking it up in this way," she
pursued, in a spirit of aggravation. "And, indeed, it _was_ partly
your fault that they got their last cargo in."

"Explain yourself," said Cyril to his sister, pushing his arm before
Richard's mouth.

"It was a night when we had a dinner party here," she pursued. "Mr.
Kyne was here; the only night he had been off the watch for a
fortnight, he says. But he left orders with his men to look out, and
Richard got treating them to drink at the Mermaid, and they never
looked. So the coast was clear, and the smugglers got their goods in."

Cyril burst into a pleasant laugh. "Ah, ha!" said he, "new brooms
sweep clean. Mr. Superintendent Kyne is a fresh hand down here, so he
thinks he must trumpet forth his fame as a keen officer--that he may
be all the more negligent by-and-bye, you know. None but a stranger,
as you are, Mr. Hunter, could have given ear to it."

"I have given both ear and belief," replied Robert Hunter, firmly;
"and I have offered Mr. Kyne the benefit of my engineering experience
to help him discover whether there is or is not a secret opening in
the rocks."

"You have!" exclaimed Justice Thornycroft. He glared on Robert Hunter
as he asked the question. From quite the first until now he had been
bending over his note, leaving the discussion to them.

"To be sure I have, sir. I have been with him now, on the Half-moon,
sounding them; but I had only an umbrella, and that was of little use.
We are going to-morrow better prepared. It strikes me the mystery lies
right in the middle. It sounds hollow there. I will do all I can to
help him, that the fellows may be brought to punishment."

"Sir!" cried the old justice, in a voice of thunder, rising and
sternly confronting Robert Hunter, "I forbid it. Do you understand? _I
forbid it_. None under my roof shall take act or part in this."

"But justice demands it," replied Mr. Hunter, after a pause. "It
behoves all loyal subjects of her Majesty to aid in discovering the
offenders: especially you, sir, a sworn magistrate."

"It behoves me to protect the poor fishermen, who look to me for
protection, who have looked to me for it for years; ay, and received
it," was the warm reply, "better than it behoves you, sir, to presume
to teach me my duty! Richard, leave me to speak. I tell you, sir, I do
not believe this concocted story. I am the chief of the place, sir,
and I will not believe it. The coast-guard and the fishermen are at
variance; always have been; and I will not allow the poor fellows to
be traduced and put upon, treated as if they were thieves and rogues.
Neither I nor mine shall take part in it; no, nor any man who is under
my roof eating the bread of friendliness. I hope you hear me, sir."

Robert Hunter stood confounded. All his golden visions of discoveries,
that should make his name famous and put feathers in his cap, were
vanishing into air. But the curious part was the justice's behaviour;
that struck him as being very strange, not to say unreasonable.

"It is not the first time, sir, that the coast-guard have tried it
on," pursued Mr. Thornycroft. "When the last superintendent was
appointed, Dangerfield, he took something of the sort in his head, and
came to me to assist him in an investigation. 'Investigate for
yourself,' I said to him. '_I_ shall not aid you to tarnish the
characters of the fishermen.' It may be presumed that his
investigation did not come to much," was the ironical conclusion;
"since I heard no more about the smugglers from him all the years he
was stationed here."

"And you think, sir, that Mr. Kyne is also mistaken?" cried Robert
Hunter, veering round.

"What I think, and what I do not think, you may gather from my words,"
was the haughty reply. "I tell you that no man living under my roof
shall encourage by so much as a word, let alone an act, anything of
the sort. Mr. Kyne can pursue his own business without us."

"If it were one of my own brothers who did so, I would shoot him
dead," said Richard, with a meaning touch at his gun. "So I warn him."

"And commit murder?" echoed Robert Hunter, who did not admire this
semi-threat of Richard's.

"It would not be murder, sir; it would be justifiable homicide,"
interposed the justice, rather to Robert Hunter's surprise. "When I
was a young man, a guest abused my father's hospitality. My brother
challenged him. They went out with their seconds, and my brother shot
him. That was not murder."

"But, papa, that must have been a different thing altogether," said
Mary Anne, who had stood transfixed at the turn the conversation was
taking. "It----"

"To your room, Miss Thornycroft! To your room, I say!" cried the
passionate justice, pushing her from him. "Would _you_ beard my
authority? Things are coming to a pretty pass."

It was a stormy ending to a stormy interview. Confused and terrified,
Mary Anne Thornycroft hastened up  and burst into tears in her
chamber. Richard strode away with his gun; Cyril followed him; and the
justice bent over his writing again quietly, as though nothing had
happened.

As for Robert Hunter he felt entirely amazed. Of course, putting it as
the justice had put it, he felt bound in honour not to interfere
further, and would casually tell Mr. Kyne so on the first opportunity,
giving no reason why. Pondering over the matter as he strolled out of
doors uncomfortably, he came to the conclusion that Mr. Thornycroft
must be self-arrogant, both as a magistrate and a man: one of the
old-world sort, who jog on from year's end to year's end, seeing no
abuses, and utterly refusing to reform them when seen.




CHAPTER VII.
My Lady at the Red Court.


At the end window of the corridor, looking towards the church and
village, stood Mary Anne Thornycroft. Not yet had she recovered the
recent stormy interview, and a resentful feeling in regard to it was
rife within her. The conduct of her father and eldest brother appeared
to have been so devoid of all reason in itself, and so gratuitously
insulting to Robert Hunter, that Mary Anne, in the prejudice of her
love for _him_, was wishing she could pay them off. It is the province
of violent and unjust opposition to turn aside its own aim, just as it
is the province of exaggeration to defeat itself; and Miss
Thornycroft, conning over and over again in her mind the events of the
day, wilfully persuaded herself that Mr. Kyne was right, her father
wrong, and that smuggling of lace, or anything else that was valuable,
_was_ carried on under (as may be said) the very face and front of
their supine house.

Cyril came up the stairs--his book in his hand--saw her standing
there, and came to her side. The short winter's day was already
verging towards twilight, and the house seemed intensely still.

"Is it not a shame?" exclaimed Mary Anne, as Cyril put his arm about
her.

"Is what not a shame? That the brightness of the day is gone?"

"_You know!_" she passionately exclaimed. "Where's the use of
attempting subterfuge with me, Cyril? Cyril, on my word I thought for
the moment that papa and Richard must have gone suddenly mad."

In Cyril Thornycroft's soft brown eyes, thrown out to the far
distance, there was a strange look of apprehension, as if they saw an
unwelcome thing approaching. Something was approaching in fact, but
not quite in sight yet. He had a mild, gentle face; his temper was of
the calmest, his voice sweet and low. And yet Cyril seemed to have a
great care ever upon him;--his mother, whom he so greatly resembled,
used to have the same. He was the only one of her children who, as
yet, had profited much by her counsel and monition. In the last few
years of her life her earnest daily efforts had been directed to draw
her children to God, and on Cyril they had borne fruit.

In the German schools, to which he had been sent, in the Oxford
University life that succeeded, Cyril Thornycroft had walked unscathed
amidst the surging sea of surrounding sins and perils. Whatever
temptation might assail him, he seemed, in the language of one
who watched his career, only to come out of them more fit for God.
Self-denying, walking not to do his own will, remembering always that
he had been bought with a price and had a Master to serve, Cyril
Thornycroft's daily life was one of patient endurance of a great
inward suffering, and of active kindness. Where he could do good he
did it; when others were tempted to say a harsh word he said a kind
one. He had been brought up to no profession; his inclination led him
to go into the Church; but some motive, of which he never spoke,
seemed to hold him back. Meanwhile Mr. Thornycroft appeared quite
content to let him stay on at the Red Court in idleness--idleness as
the world called it. Save that he read a great deal, Cyril did no
absolute work; but many in Coastdown blessed him. In sickness of body,
in suffering of mind, there by the bed-side might be found Cyril
Thornycroft, reading from the Book of Life--talking of good things
in his low, earnest voice; and sometimes--if we may dare to write
it--praying. Dare! For it is the fashion of the world to deride such
things when spoken of--possibly to deride them also in reality.

And now that is all that will be said. It was well to say it for the
satisfaction of the readers, as will be found presently, even though
but one of those readers may be walking in a similar earnest path, the
world lying on one hand, heaven on the other.

"Courtesy is certainly due to Mr. Hunter, and I am sorry that my
father and Richard forgot it," resumed Cyril. "When does he leave?"

"On Saturday," she answered, sullenly.

"Then--endeavour to let things go on peaceably until that time. Do not
excite him by any helping word on your part to oppose home prejudices.
Believe me, Mary Anne, my advice is good. Another such scene as there
was to-day, and I should be afraid of the ending."

"What ending?"

"That Richard might turn him out of the house."

Miss Thornycroft tossed her head. "Richard would be capable of it."

"Let us have peace for the rest of his sojourn here, forgetting this
morning's episode. And--Mary Anne--do not ask him to prolong his visit
beyond Saturday."

He looked with kindly earnestness into her eyes for a moment as if
wishing to give impression to the concluding words, and then left
her to digest them: which Miss Thornycroft was by no means inclined
to do pleasantly. She was picking up the notion that she would be
required to give way to her brothers on all occasions; here was even
Cyril issuing his orders now! Not ask Robert Hunter to stay over
Saturday!--when her whole heart had been set upon his doing it!

Playing with her neck-chain, tossing it hither and thither, she at
length saw Robert Hunter come strolling home from the village, his air
listless, his steps slow; just like a man who is finding time heavy on
his hands.

"And not one of them to be with him!" came her passionate thought. "It
_is_ a shame. Bears! Why! who's _this?_"

The exclamation--cutting short the complimentary epithet on her
brothers, though it could not apply with any sort of justice to
Cyril, who had been prevented by his father from following Robert
Hunter--related to a Jutpoint fly and pair. Driving in at the gates,
it directly faced Mary Anne Thornycroft; she bent her eyes to peer
into it, and started with surprise.

"Good gracious! What can bring _her_ here?"

For she recognised Lady Ellis; with a maid beside her. And yet, in
that pale, haggard, worn woman, who seemed scarcely able to sit
upright, there was not much trace of the imperious face of her
who had made for so brief a period the Red Court her home.
Illness--long-continued illness, its termination of necessity
fatal--changes both the looks and the spirit.

The chaise had passed Robert Hunter at right angles: had my lady
recognised him?

But a moment must be given to Cyril. On descending the stairs, he saw
Richard striding out at the front door, and hastened after him.

"Where are you going, Richard?"

"Where am I going?" retorted Richard. "To Tomlett's, if you must know.
Something must be done."

Cyril laid his calm hand on his brother's restless one, and led him
off towards the plateau.

"Do nothing, Richard. You are hasty and incautious. They cannot make
any discovery."

"And that fellow talking of going to sound the rocks, with his boasted
engineering experience?"

"Let him go. If the square sounds as hollow as his head, what then?
They can make nothing else of it. No discovery can be made from the
outside; you know it _can not_; and care must be taken that they don't
get in."

"Perhaps you would not care if they did," spoke Richard in his unjust
passion.

"You know better," said Cyril, sadly. "However I may have wished that
certain circumstances did not exist, I would so far act with you now
as to ward off discovery. I would give my life, Richard, to avert pain
from you all, and disgrace from the Red Court's good name. Believe me,
nothing bad will come of this, if you are only cautious. But your
temper is enough to ruin all--to set Hunter's suspicions on you. You
should have treated it derisively, jokingly, as I did."

Richard, never brooking interference, despising all advice, flung
Cyril's arm aside, and turned off swearing, meeting Isaac, who was
coming round by the plateau.

"Isaac, we are dropped upon."

"What?"

"We are dropped upon, I say."

"How? Who has done it?"

"That cursed fellow Mary Anne brought here--Hunter. He and Kyne have
been putting their heads together; and, by all that's true, they have
hit it hard. They had got up a suspicion of the rocks; been sounding
the square rock, and found it hollow. Kyne has scented the cargo
that's lying off now."

The corners of Isaac Thornycroft's mouth fell considerably. "We must
get _that_ in," he exclaimed. "It is double the usual value."

"I wish Hunter and the gauger were both hanging from the cliffs
together!" was Richard's charitable conclusion, as he strode onwards.
"It was a bad day's work for us when they moved Dangerfield. I'm on my
way now to consult with Tomlett; will you come?"

Isaac turned with him. Bearing towards the plateau, but leaving it to
the right--a road to the village rarely taken by any but the
Thornycroft family, as indeed nobody else had a right to take it, the
waste land belonging to Mr. Thornycroft--they went on to Tomlett's,
meeting Mr. Kyne en route, with whom Isaac, sunny-mannered ever,
exchanged a few gay words.

Cyril meanwhile strolled across the lawn as far as the railings, and
watched them away. He was deep in thought; his eyes were sadder than
usual, his high, square brow was troubled.

"If this incident could but turn out a blessing!" he half murmured.
"Acted upon by the fear of discovery through Kyne's suspicions, if my
father would but make it a plea for bringing things to a close, while
quiet opportunity remains to him! But for Richard he would have done
so, as I believe, long ago."

Turning round at the sound of wheels, Cyril saw the fly drive in.
Reaching it as it drew up to the door, he recognised his stepmother.
Mary Anne came out, and they helped her to alight. Hyde, every atom of
surprise he possessed showing itself in his countenance, flung wide
the great door. She leaned on Cyril's arm, and walked slowly. Her
cheeks were hollow, her black eyes were no longer fierce, but dim; her
gown sat about her thin form in folds.

"My dears, I thought your father would have had the carriage waiting
for me at Jutpoint."

"My dears!" from the once cold and haughty Lady Ellis! It was spoken
in a meek, loving tone, too. Mary Anne glanced at Cyril.

"I am sure my father knew nothing of your intended arrival," spoke
Cyril; "otherwise some of us would certainly have been at Jutpoint."

"I wrote to tell him; he ought to have had the letter this morning. I
have been a little better lately, Cyril; not really better, I know
that, but more capable of exertion; and I thought I should like to
have a look at you all once again. I stayed two days in London for
rest, and wrote yesterday."

She passed the large drawing-rooms, and turned of her own accord into
the small comfortable apartment that was formerly the school-room, and
now the sitting-room of Mary Anne. Cyril drew an easy-chair to the
fire, and she sat down in it, letting her travelling wraps fall from
her. Sinnett, who had come in not less amazed than Hyde, picked them
up.

"You are surprised to see me, Sinnett."

"Well--yes, I am, my lady," returned Sinnett, who did not add that she
was shocked also. "I am sorry to see you looking so poorly."

"I have come for a few days to say good-bye to you all. You can take
my bonnet as well."

Sinnett went out with the things. It was found afterwards that the
letter, which ought to have announced her arrival, was delayed by some
error on the part of the local carrier. It was delivered in the
evening.

As she sat there facing the light, the ravages disease was making
showed themselves all too plainly in her wasted countenance. In
frame she was a very skeleton, her hands were painfully thin, her
black silk gown hung in folds on her shrunken bosom. Mary Anne put a
warm foot-stool under her feet, and wrapped a shawl about her
shoulders; Cyril brought a glass of wine, which she drank.

"I have to take a great deal of it now, five or six glasses a day, and
all kinds of strengthening nourishment," she said. "Thank you, Cyril.
Sometimes I lie and think of those poor people whose case is similar
to mine, and who cannot get it."

How strange the words sounded from her! Thinking for others! Miss
Thornycroft, remembering her in the past, listened in a sort of amused
incredulity, but a light as of some great gladness shone in the eyes
of Cyril.

As he left the room to search for his father, who had gone out, Robert
Hunter entered it. Seeing a stranger there, an apparent invalid, he
was quitting it again hastily when Mary Anne arrested him.

"You need not go, Robert; it is my stepmother, Lady Ellis. Mr.
Hunter."

At the first moment not a trace could he find of the handsome,
haughty-faced woman who had beguiled him with her charms in the days
gone by. Not a charm was left. She had left off using adjuncts, and
her face was almost yellow; its roundness of contour had gone; the
cheeks were hollow and wrinkled, the jaws angular. Only by the eyes,
as they flashed for a moment into his with a sort of dismayed light,
did he recognise her. Bowing coldly, he would have retreated, but she,
recovering herself instantly, held out her hand.

"No wonder you have forgotten me; I am greatly changed."

Mary Anne Thornycroft looked on with astonishment. Had they ever met
before?

"Yes," said Lady Ellis; "but he was mostly called Mr. Lake then."

A flush dyed Robert Hunter's brow. "I threw off the name years ago,
when I threw off other things," he said.

"What other things did you throw off?" quickly asked Mary Anne.

"Oh, many," was the careless answer; "frivolity and idleness, amidst
them."

Perhaps he remembered that his manner and words, in the view of that
wasted face and form, were needlessly ungracious, for his tone
changed; he sat down, and said he was sorry to see her looking ill.

"I have been ill now for a long while; I must have been ill when I
knew you," she said; "that is, the disease was within me, but I did
not suspect it. Had I taken heed of the symptoms, slight though they
were and for that cause entirely unheeded, perhaps something might
have been done for me; I don't know. As it is, I am slowly dying."

"I hope not," he said, in his humanity.

"You cannot hope it, Mr. Hunter. Look at me!"

Very true. Had she been all the world to him--had his whole happiness
depended on his keeping her in life, he could not have hoped it. With
her wan face, and eyes glistening with that peculiar glaze that tells
of coming death; with her thin frame and deep, quick breath, that
seemed to heave the body of her gown as though a furnace-bellows were
underneath, there could be no thought of escape from the portals that
were opening for her. As she sat before him leaning in the chair, the
shawl thrown back from her chest, Robert Hunter looked at her and knew
it.

There ensued a silence. He did not answer, and Mary Anne was much
wondering at this suddenly-discovered past intimacy, never spoken of
by either to her, and resenting it after the manner of women. The fire
flickered its blaze aloft; the twilight deepened; but it was not yet
so dark but that the plateau was distinct, and also the figure of the
preventive man at the edge, pacing it. Lady Ellis suddenly broke the
stillness.

"Do the people believe in the ghost still, Mary Anne?"

"I suppose so. There has been no change that I know of."

"I meant--has anything been discovered?"

Mary Anne Thornycroft lifted her eyes. "How do you mean, discovered?
What is there to discover?"

"Not anything, I dare say," she said. "But it used to strike me
as very singular--this superstitious belief in these enlightened
times--and a feeling was always on my mind that something would occur
to explain it away. Have you heard of it?" she asked, directing her
eyes to Robert Hunter.

"Somewhat. There is a difficulty, I hear, in keeping the preventive
men on the plateau after dusk. What it is they precisely fear, I do
not know."

"Neither did I ever know," she observed, dreamily. "The curious part
of it to me always was, that Mr. Thornycroft and his sons appeared to
fear it."

Before Miss Thornycroft, who sat in silence, the subject was not
pursued. Lady Ellis started a more open one, and inquired after Mrs.
Chester.

"She is living in Paris," said Robert Hunter. "At least--she has been
living there; but I am not sure that she is still. A few days ago I
had a letter from her, in which she said she was about to change her
residence to Brussels."

He did not add that the letter was one of Mrs. Chester's usual
ones--complaining grievously of hard times, and the impossibility of
"getting along." Somehow she seemed not to be able to do that
anywhere. She had two hundred a year, and was always plunging into
schemes to increase her income. They would turn out well at first,
according to her report, promising nothing less than a speedy fortune;
and then would come a downfall. In this recent letter, she had
implored of Robert Hunter to "lend" her fifty pounds to set her going
in Brussels, to which capital she was on the wing, with an excellent
opportunity of establishing a first-class school. He sent the money,
never expecting to see it again.

"Are her children with her?" questioned Lady Ellis.

"Only Fanny. The boys are at school in England. And Anna--you remember
Anna?"

"I should think I do, poor girl. The slave of the whole house."

"Anna is here on a visit."

"_Here!_"

"I mean at Coastdown. She is staying with a Captain and Mrs. Copp, who
are some slight relatives of hers."

"I have thought of Anna as teacher in a school. Mrs. Chester said she
should place her in one."

"She is a teacher. This visit is only a temporary one, prolonged on
account of Anna's health. She was with Miss Jupp."

With the last word, all the reminiscences, as connected with that
lady's name and the past, rose up in the mind of Robert Hunter--of a
certain Christmas-day, when Mary Jupp had brought some shame home to
him: perhaps also to her of the faded face sitting opposite. It
brought shame to him still; but, seeing that faded face, he was vexed
to have inadvertently mentioned it.

"Mary Anne, I think I will go to my room. The fire must have burnt up
now. No, don't come with me; I would be quiet for a little while."

As she got up from the chair, she staggered. Robert Hunter, who was
crossing the room to open the door for her, stopped and offered his
arm. He could do no less in common pity: but the time had been when he
registered a mental vow that never again should the arm of that woman
rest within his.

"Thank you: just to the foot of the stairs. I have but little strength
left, and the journey to-day has temporarily taken away that. Are you
getting on well in your profession, Mr. Hunter?"

"Oh, yes. My prospects are very fair."

Sinnett happened to be in the hall; her mistress called to her, took
her arm, and quitted that of Robert Hunter. He returned to Mary Anne,
who was rather sulky still. What with the scene in the afternoon, with
the unexpected and not over-welcome appearance of her stepmother, and
with this mysterious acquaintanceship, about which nothing had been
said to her, the young lady was not in so amiable a mood as usual.

"When did you know Lady Ellis?" she abruptly began after an interval
of silence. "And where?"

"Some years ago; she was staying, for a few months with my half-sister,
Mrs. Chester, at Guild."

"At Guild; yes, I know; I saw her there when I went over with papa.
But I was not aware that you were intimate there."

Robert Hunter had never spoken of that past time in any way to Mary
Anne. It happened that Anna Chester had not.

"I went over to Guild sometimes. I was living at Katterley, seven
miles off."

"Was that in your wife's time?"

"Yes."

"It is strange you never told me you knew my stepmother."

"It never occurred to me to tell you. Business matters have so
entirely occupied my thoughts since, that those old days seem
well-nigh blotted out of them."

"Were she and your wife great friends?"

"No. My wife did not like her."

Robert Hunter was standing at the window, looking out in the nearly
faded twilight. He could not fail to perceive by the tone of her voice
that Mary Anne was feeling displeased at something. But her better
nature was returning to her, and she went and stood by him. He held
out his arm, as he had done once or twice before when they were thus
standing together: and she slipped her hand within it. The fire had
burnt down to dulness, emitting scarcely any light: the preventive man
could no longer be seen on the plateau.

"How dark it is getting, Robert!"

"Yes; but I think it will be a fine night. There's a star or two
twinkling out."

Very, very conscious was each, as they stood there. In these silent
moments, with the semi-darkness around, love, if it exists, must make
itself felt. Love within, love around, love everywhere; the atmosphere
teeming with it, the soul sick to trembling with its own bliss. It
seemed to them that the beating of their own hearts was alone heard,
and that too audibly. Thus they stood; how long it was hard to say.
The room grew darker, the stars came out clearer. The softness of the
hour was casting its spell on them both; never had love been so
present and so powerful. In very desperation Mary Anne broke the
silence, her tone sweet and low, her voice sunk to a half-whisper.

"Robert, how is it you have never spoken to me of your wife?"

"I did not know you would like it. And besides----"

"Besides what?"

"I have not cared to speak of her since her death. A feeling has been
upon me that I never should speak of her again, except perhaps to one
person."

"And that person?"

"My second wife. Should I be fortunate enough ever to marry one."

He turned involuntarily and looked at her. And then looked away again
hastily. It might be dangerous just now. But that look, brief as it
was, had shown him her glowing, downcast countenance.

"What was her name?"

"Clara. She was little more than a child--a gentle, loving child,
unfit to encounter the blasts of the world. One, ruder than ordinary,
struck her and carried her away."

"Did you love her very much?"

He paused, hesitated, and then turned to her again. "Am I to tell you,
Mary Anne?"

"As you like," she whispered, the blushes deepening. "Of course not,
if it be painful to you."

"I did not love her; taking the word in its truest extent. I thought I
did, and it is only within a few months--yes, I may as well tell you
all--that I have learnt my mistake."

Mary Anne Thornycroft glanced at him in surprise. "Only within a few
months! How is that?"

"Because I have learnt to love another. To love--do you understand,
Mary Anne?--to _love_. With my very heart and soul; with my best and
entire being. Such love cannot come twice to any man, and it teaches
him much. It has taught me, amidst other knowledge, that I liked my
wife as one likes a dear child, but not otherwise."

Mary Anne Thornycroft's hand trembled as it lay upon his arm. In her
bewilderment of feelings, in the tumultuous sensation born of this
great love that was filling all her mind, she nearly lost command of
her words, and spoke at random.

"But why should this be told only to your second wife?"

"Because I should wish to show her that my true love is hers; hers
only in spite of my early marriage. The rest of the world it concerns
not, and will never be spoken of to them."

"You assume confidently that you will feel this love for your second
wife?"

"I shall if I marry her. _That_ is by no means sure. Unless I marry
_her_, the one to whom my love is given, I shall never marry at all."

Ah, where was the use of keeping up this farce? It was like children
playing at bo-peep with the handkerchief over the face. The other is
there, but we pretend to know it not. With their hearts wildly beating
in unison--with her hand shaking visibly in its emotion--with the
consciousness that concealment was no longer concealment but full and
perfect knowledge, stood they. Mary Anne rejoined, her words more and
more at random, her wits utterly gone a-woolgathering.

"And why should you not marry her?"

"I am not in a position to ask for her of her father."

It was all over in a moment. Save that he turned suddenly to look at
her, and laid his hand on hers as if to still its trembling, Mary Anne
Thornycroft doubted ever after if she had not made the first movement.
Only a moment, and her head was lying on his breast, his clasped arms
were holding her there, their pulses were tingling with rapture, their
lips clinging together in a long and ardent kiss.

"Dare I speak to you, Mary Anne?" he asked, hoarsely.

"You know you may."

"Oh, my love--my love! It is you I would, if possible, make my wife.
None other. But I may not ask for you of Mr. Thornycroft. He would not
deem my position justified it."

"I will wait for you, Robert."

Only by bending his head could he catch the low words. His cheek lay
on hers; he strained her closer, if that were possible, to his beating
heart.

"It may be for years!"

"Let it be years and years. I ask no better than to wait for you."

The stars shone out brighter in the sky; the fire in the room went
quite down; and nothing more could be heard from those living in their
new and pure dream, but snatches of the sweet refrain--

"My love, my love!"




CHAPTER VIII.
A Last Interview.


The week went on to its close. Mary Anne Thornycroft, following out
her own will and pleasure, despising her brother Cyril's warning,
asked Robert Hunter to prolong his visit. He yielded so far as to
defer his departure to the Sunday evening. Originally it had been
fixed for the Saturday morning: business required his presence in
London. Swayed by her, and by his own inclination--by his own love, he
yielded to the tempting seduction of staying two further days. Alas,
alas!

Peace had been established at the Red Court Farm; or, rather, the
unpleasantness had been allowed to die away. Nothing further had come
of the outbreak; it was not alluded to again in any way. Robert
Hunter, meeting the superintendent, mentioned in a casual manner that
he could not help him again in sounding the rocks, adding something
about "want of time." It is probable that the surprise caused by the
very unexpected arrival of Mr. Thornycroft's wife tended more than
aught else to smooth matters. A stranger in our household keeps down
angry tempers. Isaac and Cyril were courteous as ever; the justice was
courteous also, though a little stiff; Richard sternly civil. Robert
Hunter responded cordially, as if willing to do away with the
impression left by his interference, and took things as he found them.

Not a word was said of the newly-avowed love. Any sort of concealment
or dishonour was entirely against the nature of Mary Anne Thornycroft;
but love was all-powerful. That Robert Hunter was not in a condition
to propose for her yet, he knew; but if this project of going abroad
were carried out, he thought he might speak before starting. And so
they mutually decided to wait--at least, for a few weeks, or until
that should be decided. But, though Mr. Thornycroft had not a
suspicion of any attachment, the brothers were sharper sighted. They
saw it clearly, and showed disapproval in accordance with their
several dispositions. Richard resented it; Isaac told his sister she
might do much better; Cyril said a word to her of concealment never
bringing any good. It was rather singular that a dislike of Robert
Hunter should exist in the breast of all three. Not one, save Richard,
acknowledged it even to himself; not one could say whence or wherefore
it arose, except perhaps that they had not taken cordially to him at
first. And of course the outbreak did not tend to improve the feeling.

The arrival of Lady Ellis at the Red Court made no difference whatever
to the routine of its daily life, since she was not well enough to
come down and mix in it. The artificial excitement imparted by the
journey was telling upon her now, and her available strength seemed to
have gone. Not tracing this fact--the increased weakness--to its true
source, she laid the blame on the atmosphere of Coastdown. It never
had agreed with her, she said; she supposed it never would; and she
already began to speak of getting back to Cheltenham. Not rising until
nearly mid-day, she went afterwards into the dressing-room, or
boudoir, adjoining her chamber--we saw her in it once in the old
days--and there sat or lay for the rest of the day, watching the
mysterious plateau and the sea beyond it, or reading between whiles.
They went up and sat with her by turns--Mr. Thornycroft, Cyril, and
Mary Anne; Isaac rarely, Richard never, except for a brief moment of
civil inquiry. None of them remained with her long. It wearied her to
converse, and she thought she was best with her maid, who was in part
companion. Robert Hunter she neither saw nor asked after. And so the
week came to an end.

Sunday--and the day of Mr. Hunter's departure. They attended church at
St. Peter's in the morning, all except Mr. Thornycroft and Richard.
The justice remained with his wife, and Richard was lax at the best of
times in attendance on public worship. Mr. Richard spent the morning
in a desultory manner at home, a short pipe in his mouth, and lounging
about the stables with Hyde.

What Richard did with himself in the afternoon nobody knew; it was not
usual to inquire into his movements; but the rest went over to
Jutpoint to attend the church of St. Andrew's, where there was a
famous afternoon preacher, whom they liked to hear. Anna Chester was
with them. Captain Copp, confined to the house by a temporary
indisposition, was indoors that day, and his wife remained in
attendance on him; so that Anna appeared at church in the morning
alone. The Red Court people took her home and kept her to luncheon;
and she accompanied them afterwards to Jutpoint.

The omnibus conveyed them, and was to bring them home again. Never,
when he could avoid it, did Mr. Thornycroft take out his own horses
on Sunday: he chose that they and his servants should, so far, have
rest. They had a large circle of acquaintances at Jutpoint, and on
coming out of church the justice and Isaac laid hands on two and
conveyed them back to dinner. The strangers liked these impromptu
invitations--possibly laid themselves out to get them, and the omnibus
had a merry freight back to Coastdown.

"If they are going to have one of their dinner-gatherings to-night,
you must come home and sit down to it with me, Anna," spoke Miss
Thornycroft, as they quitted the omnibus at the Mermaid.

Anna was nothing loth. She had sat in the omnibus by Isaac's side, her
hand in his, under cover of the closely-packed company and the
approaching darkness, happy for the time. Hastily answering that she
would be glad to come, but must run on first of all to the heath and
tell Mrs. Copp, she sped away fast. Isaac, having waited until the
others should disperse before he followed, overtook her just as she
was entering.

Captain Copp, up now, sat by the fire, groaning, and drinking some
strong tea. The captain was occasionally afflicted with an intense
sick-headache, never a worse than that he had to-day. He always laid
the blame on the weather; it was the heat, or it was the cold; or it
was the frost, or the rain. Mrs. Copp agreed with him, but Sarah in
the kitchen thought the cause lay in rum-and-water. The groans were
suspended when they went in, and Mrs. Copp, dutifully waiting on him,
put down the cup and saucer.

"Aunt, may I dine at the Red Court?"

Mrs. Copp made no answer. Whenever she saw Isaac and Anna together,
she was taken with a fit of inward shivering. Captain Copp spoke up:
his opinion was that Anna had better not. Isaac laughed.

"She must," he said; "I am come to run away with her. Otherwise Mary
Anne will not sit down to table with us."

"Is it a party?" cried the captain.

"Just two or three. My father has brought them over from Jutpoint; and
I think Kyne is coming in. I was in hopes you could have come,
captain."

Several dismal groans from Captain Copp. He said it was the pain in
his head; in reality they sprung from pain at his heart. One of those
glorious dinners at the Red Court, and he unable to be at it!

"Are you ready, Anna?" whispered Isaac.

She ran upstairs to get something she wanted in the shape of dress,
and was down again in a minute, wishing them good evening. Captain
Copp, who did not altogether approve of the proceeding, called out
that he should send Sarah for her at eight o'clock.

Taking her arm within his, Isaac walked on in silence. At the close of
the heath, instead of continuing his way down by the side of the
churchyard, he turned into it by the small side gate.

"Just a minute, Anna," he said, sitting down on the narrow bench. "I
want to say a word to you."

But before he began to say the word he enclosed her face in his loving
arms, and took the kisses from it he had been longing for all the way
from Jutpoint.

"What I want to say is this, Anna, that I do not think I can let the
present state of things go on."

"No!"

"It is so unsatisfactory. My wife, and not my wife. I living at the
Red Court, you secluded at Captain Copp's. Meeting once in a way in a
formal manner, shaking hands and parting again, nothing more. Why, I
have only twice I think had you for a moment to myself since we
parted, now and that evening at the Red Court. And what was
_that?_--what is _this?_ I can't stand it, Anna."

"But what would you do?"

"I don't know," answered Isaac, looking straight forward at the
gravestones, as if they could tell him what. "I would brave my
father's anger in a minute if it were not for--for--if I were sure
nothing would come of it. But it might."

"In what way?"

"I may tell you some time; not now. If Captain Copp would but be
reasonable, so that I might entrust him with the secret, and--"

"He would go straight off with it to Mr. Thornycroft, Isaac."

"Precisely," said Isaac, answering her interruption; "and the time has
hardly arrived for that. Besides, the information must come from
myself. Do you think--"

"Hush, Isaac!"

The softly-breathed warning silenced him. On the other side the hedge
was a sound of footsteps--slow steps passing towards the heath. Isaac
held her to him in perfect silence until they were lost in the
distance.

"Let us go, Isaac."

It certainly would not be expedient to be seen there, and Isaac rose,
snatching as he did so his farewell kisses from her lips. Passing down
the side path of the churchyard, they went out at its front entrance,
and popped upon Mr. Kyne.

He was evidently coming from the heath. It might have been his
footsteps they had heard going towards it. Mr. Kyne looked full at
them, and Anna coloured in the night's darkness to the very roots of
her hair. To be caught at that hour stealing out of the churchyard
with Isaac Thornycroft!

"Is it you, Mr. Supervisor?" cried Isaac, gaily. "A fine evening! Take
care, Miss Chester: you had better take my arm."

"It's very fine," answered the supervisor; "the weather seems to have
cleared up. I've been taking a stroll before my tea. We shall have a
frost to-night, Miss Chester."

"Safe to," rejoined Isaac, looking up at the clear sky.

"How is my lady?" asked Mr. Kyne; "I heard she had come."

"She has only come to go again. Coastdown never seems to suit her. She
is very unwell indeed, and keeps her room."

The churchyard past, Mr. Kyne, without any warning whatever, turned
off on the cross path towards his home, saying good-night. Isaac
looked after him in a sort of surprise.

"Then Richard _has_ left it to me," he said, half aloud.

"Isaac! Isaac! what will Mr. Kyne think of me?" murmured Anna.

Isaac laughed. "The most he can think is that we are sweethearts," he
answered in his light manner.

"Oh, Isaac, have you considered? If scandal should arise!"

"My darling, I have told you why that cannot be. At the first breath
of it I should avow the truth. Scandal! how is it possible, when we
are living here but as common acquaintances?"

At the gate of the Red Court he let her enter alone, and ran back in
search of Mr. Kyne. That functionary lodged at a cottage just beyond
the village, and Isaac found him poking up his small fire to make the
little tin kettle boil, preparatory to making his tea.

"I have come to carry you off to dinner," said Isaac. "We have got a
friend or two dropped in from Jutpoint, and the parson's coming.
There's a brave codfish and turkey."

Weak tea and bread-and-butter at home in his poor small room; and the
handsome dinner table, the light, the warmth, the social friends at
Justice Thornycroft's. It was a wide contrast, making Mr. Kyne's mouth
water. He had dined at one o'clock off a mutton chop, and was hungry
again. Codfish and turkey!

"I'll come with pleasure, Mr. Isaac. I must just say a word to Puffer
first, if there's time."

"All right; I'll go with you," said Isaac.

Mr. Puffer, the coastguard-man for the night, was on the plateau,
speculating upon how long it would be before daylight was quite gone,
for a streak or two of yellow lingered yet in the west, when he was
surprised by the sight of his superior, and began to pace the edge
zealously, his eyes critically peering out to sea. The supervisor
approached alone.

"Any news, Puffer?"

"None, sir," answered Mr. Puffer, saluting his master. "All's quiet."

"Very good. Keep a sharp look-out. I shall be up here again at seven
or eight o'clock."

He had taken to say this to his men of late, by way of keeping them to
their duty; he had also taken to pop upon them at all kinds of
unpromised times: and, between the cold and the superstition, his men
wished him at Hanover.

The party sat down to dinner at six. Richard came in with Mr. Hopley,
from Dartfield, who was wont to come over to buy oats; the parson of
the parish, Mr. Southall, was there; the gentlemen from Jutpoint, and
Mr. Kyne. A jolly parson, Mr. Southall, who enjoyed the good cheer of
the Red Court Farm on Sunday just as much as he did on week days, and
made no scruple over it.

The only two in strict evening dress were Robert Hunter and Cyril
Thornycroft; but they wore black neckties. The rest were dressed well,
as befitted the day, even Richard, but they did not wear dress coats.
Anna was in a gleaming blue silk. It had been bought for her by Isaac,
as had a great many other things during their brief period of married
life; and poor Mrs. Copp had to invent no end of stories to the
captain on their return to Coastdown, saying they were presents from
her sick sister. Altogether there were twelve at table.

The housekeeping at the Red Court proved itself just as well
prepared for these impromptu guests as it ever had been, save in the
one memorable instance marked by the interference of Lady Ellis.
After-circumstances caused the items of the bill of fare to be
discussed out of doors, and, indeed, every other detail, great and
small, of the eventful night. Mock-turtle soup, a fine codfish, a
round of beef boiled, a large roast turkey and tongue, side dishes, a
plum pudding, sweets, and macaroni. All these were cooked and served
in the best manner, with various vegetables, rich and plentiful
sauces, strong ale, and the best of wines. Mr. Kyne thought of his
solitary tea at home, and licked his lips.

On the withdrawal of the cloth, for Justice Thornycroft preserved that
old-fashioned custom, and Mr. Southall had said grace, the young
ladies retired. The gentlemen closed round the table to enjoy their
wine. A merry party. By-and-by, spirits, cigars, and pipes were
introduced--the usual practice on these occasions at the Red Court.
The only one who did not touch them was Cyril Thornycroft.

It had been Mr. Kyne's intention to retire at eight o'clock precisely
(he emphasised the word to himself), and go on the watch; or, at any
rate, see that his subordinate was there. But the best of officers are
but mortal; Mr. Kyne felt very jolly where he was; and, as common
sense whispered him, the smuggling lads were safe not to attempt any
bother on a Sunday night; they would be jollifying for themselves. So
the officer sat on, paying his respects to the brandy-and-water, and
getting rather dizzy about the eyes.

Another who stayed longer than he ought; at least, longer than he had
intended; was Robert Hunter. Seduced into taking a cigar--and never
were such cigars smoked as Justice Thornycroft's--he sat on, and let
the time slip by unheeded. On ordinary evenings the omnibus left
Coastdown at half-past nine o'clock to convey passengers to the last
train, that passed through Jutpoint at midnight. On Sunday nights the
omnibus left at half-past eight, some dim notion swaying the minds of
the authorities that the earlier hour implied a sort of respect to the
day. The convenience of the passengers went for nothing; they had to
wait at Jutpoint where and how they could. It had been Robert Hunter's
intention to go by this omnibus, and it was only by seeing Isaac
Thornycroft look at his watch that he remembered time was flying. He
pulled out his own.

"By Jove, I've missed the omnibus," he whispered to Cyril, who sat
next him. "It is half-past eight now."

"What shall you do?"

"Walk it. I must be in London for to-morrow morning."

Rising as he spoke, he quietly said farewell to Mr. Thornycroft,
Richard, Isaac and Mr. Kyne, and stole from the room, not to disturb
the other guests, who were seated round the fire now in a cloud of
tobacco smoke. Cyril went out with him. Miss Thornycroft and Anna were
in the drawing-room drinking coffee. A cup was passed to Robert
Hunter.

"What a sad thing--to have to walk to Jutpoint!" exclaimed Mary Anne.

He laughed at the words. "I shall enjoy it far more than I should the
omnibus."

"Ah, I think you must have stayed on purpose, then. But what of the
portmanteau?"

"It can come by train to-morrow, if one of your servants will take it
to the Mermaid," was his answer. "My address is on it."

As he was speaking, Lady Ellis's maid came into the room and delivered
him a small bit of twisted paper. Holding it to the light, he read the
faintly-pencilled words:--


"I hear you are leaving. Will you come up for a minute, that I may
wish you well?"


"What is it?" asked Mary Anne.

"Lady Ellis wishes to say farewell to me," he answered. "I will go to
her now."

The maid led the way, and showed him up to the small sitting-room.
Lady Ellis was leaning back in her easy-chair, but she sat upright
when he entered. Even more than before was he struck with the white,
hollow, skeleton look of the face, on which death had so unmistakably
set his seal; but the disorder had arrived at that stage now when each
day made a perceptible change. The black eyes, once glistening so
fiercely with their vain passions, lighted up with a faint pleasure.

"I am glad you came up: so glad! I thought you did not intend to see
me at all."

He answered that he did not know she was well enough to be seen,
speaking cordially. With that dying face and form before him,
three-parts of his cherished enmity to the woman died out. Not his
dislike of her.

"I would bid you farewell, Mr. Hunter. I would wish you--an' you will
permit me--God-speed. The next time we meet, both of us will have
entered on a different world from this."

"Thank you," he said, in allusion to the wish, "but are you sure
nothing can be done for your recovery?"

"Nothing whatever. And the end cannot be very far off now. Mr.
Thornycroft is going back with me to Cheltenham, and I am glad of it.
I should like him to see the last of me."

She was looking at the fire as she spoke. He, standing at the opposite
side of the mantelpiece, looked at her. What a change from the vain,
worldly, selfish woman of the past! Raising her eyes suddenly, she
caught his gaze, perhaps divined somewhat of his thoughts.

"You cannot think me to be the same, can you?"

"Scarcely." He glanced at the timepiece. At best the interview was not
pleasant to him, neither did he care to prolong it.

"You fear to lose the omnibus?"

"I have lost it. Your clock is slow. I am now about to start on foot
to Jutpoint."

"Could they not send you in the dog-cart?"

"Thank you; I prefer to walk. The night is fine, and the road good.
And I suppose I must be going."

She stood up as he moved, and held out her hand, her silk gown falling
in folds from her shrunken form. He shook hands.

"God bless you; God prosper you here and hereafter!" she said with
some emotion.

He hardly knew what to answer. To express a wish for her continued
life was so palpable a fallacy, with those signs of decay before him:
so he murmured a word of thanks, and gave the thin hand a friendly
pressure as he released it.

But she did not release his. "It was not quite all I wished to say,"
she whispered, looking up to him with her sad eyes, in which stood a
world of repentance. "I want to ask your forgiveness."

"My forgiveness?"

"For the past. For your lost wife. But for me she might not have died.
My long illness has brought reflection home to me, and--and
repentance: as I suppose hopeless illness does to most people: showing
me things in their true light; showing me the awful mistakes and sins
the best and the worst of us alike commit. Say that you forgive me."

"Lady Ellis," he said, his countenance assuming a solemn aspect as he
looked straight at her, "I have far more need of forgiveness myself
than any other can have: I saw that at the time; I see it always. My
wife was mine; it was my duty to cherish her, and I failed; no one
else owed obligation to her. The chief blame lay with me."

"Say you forgive me! I know _she_ has, looking down from heaven."

"I do indeed. I forgive you with my whole heart, and I pray that we
may, as you say, meet hereafter--all our mistakes and sins blotted
out."

"I pray it always. Cyril knows I do. He was the first to lead me--ah,
so kindly and imperceptibly!--to the remembrance that our sins needed
blotting out. It was during a six weeks' visit he paid me with his
sister. Few in this world are so good and pure and loving as Cyril
Thornycroft. Fare you well, Robert Hunter! fare you well for ever."

"For ever on earth," he added. Another pressure of the poor weak hand,
a warm, earnest look, a faint thought of the Heaven that might be
attained to yet, and Robert Hunter turned away, and woke up to the
world again.

His cold coffee stood in the drawing-room when he got back. He sat a
short while with the two young ladies, very quiet and absorbed. Cyril
was not there. Mary Anne inquired what was the matter with him.

"That poor woman upstairs," he briefly answered; "she seems so near to
death, but I think she is prepared for it."

Mary Anne Thornycroft simply looked at him in reply; the manner and
look were alike strange. Robert Hunter sipped the cold coffee by
spoonfuls, evidently unconscious what it was he was doing.

"But I must be going!" he suddenly cried, starting up. "It would not
do to miss the train as I have the omnibus. Good bye, Anna; you will
be coming back to Miss Jupps's, I suppose, when school begins?"

The vivid blush went for nothing. She, Mrs. Isaac Thornycroft, a
schoolteacher again! "Good-bye, Robert," she softly said. "I wish
you safe to Jutpoint, but I should not like your walk. Give my love to
the Miss Jupps if you see them, and to Mrs. Macpherson."

Mary Anne went out with him to the door. As they crossed the hall,
sounds of talking came from the dining-room, and there was a sudden
burst of laughter. Evidently the party were enjoying themselves. He
took his remarkable coat from a peg and flung it over his arm.

"You must say good-bye to Cyril for me, Mary Anne."

"I will. But perhaps you will see him outside. Why don't you put your
coat on?"

"Not yet; I am hot. By-and-by, when the air shall strike cool to me."

They stood just outside the door, in the shade of the walls, and he
wound his arms round her for a last embrace. _A last?_ "God bless you,
Mary Anne!" he whispered; "the time will come, I trust, when we need
not part."

She stood looking after him, the outline of his retreating form being
very distinct in the bright night.

The stars were clear and the air was frosty. Mary Anne Thornycroft
watched him pass through the gate, and then saw that instead of going
straight on, he turned short off to the waste land skirting the side
of the plateau.

She wondered. It was the farthest way to the village, and moreover the
private way of Mr. Thornycroft. Another moment and she saw him running
up the plateau, having crossed the railings.

"Why, what in the world!--he must be dreaming," she mentally
concluded. "Perhaps he wants to take a farewell view of the sea. He
would see enough of it between here and Jutpoint."

However, Miss Thornycroft found it cold standing there, and went
indoors, meeting Sinnett in the hall.

"Sinnett, Mr. Hunter's portmanteau must go by the early omnibus. See
that it is sent to the Mermaid in time."

"Very well, miss," replied Sinnett. And it may be here mentioned that
she obeyed the order by sending it that night.

Very shortly after Robert Hunter had left the dining-room, Richard and
Isaac Thornycroft also withdrew from it, one by one, and unperceived.
That is, the guests and the justice were too agreeably engaged with
their pipes and drink, their talk and laughter, to pay heed to it. One
of the gentlemen from Jutpoint--a magistrate--was relating a story
that convulsed the parson with laughter and sent the rest almost into
fits. Altogether they were uncommonly jolly, and the lapse of one or
two of the party counted for nothing. Mr. Kyne had nearly ceased to
care whether his subordinate was on the watch, or off it.

As it happened, he was _on_ it. With the promised visit of his
superior before his eyes, Mr. Puffer had not dared to leave his post.
He stood close to the bleak edge of the cold plateau, wishing himself
anywhere else, and bemoaning the hard fate that had made him a
coastguard-man. Unpleasant thoughts of ghosts, and such like
visitants, intruded into his thoughts now and then: he entirely
disbelieved Mr. Kyne's theory that there were smugglers; and the only
cheering ray in his solitude, was the sight of the cheery lights in
the Red Court Farm. Tomlett, the fishing-boat master, who had
recovered his accident, suddenly hailed him.

"Cold work, my man," said he, sauntering up the plateau.

"It just is that!" was Mr. Puffer's surly answer.

"But it's a bright night: never saw a brighter when there was no moon:
so you run no danger of making a false step in the dark and pitching
over. There's consolation in that."

"Ugh!" grunted the shivering officer, as if the fact afforded little
consolation to him.

"What on earth's the use of your airing yourself here?" went on
Tomlett. "You coastguard fellows have got the biggest swallows! As
if any smugglers would attempt the coast to-night! My belief is--and I
am pretty well used to the place, and have got eyes on all sides of
me--that this suspicion of Master Kyne's is all moonshine and empty
herring-barrels. I could nearly take my oath of it."

"So could I," said the man.

"Let us go on to the Mermaid, and have a glass," continued Mr.
Tomlett, persuasively. "I'll stand it. Johnson and Simms, and a lot
more, are there."

"I wish I dare," cried the aggravated Puffer. "But Kyne will be up
presently."

"No he won't. He is round old Thornycroft's fire, in a cloud of smoke
and drink. There's a dinner-party at the Red Court, and Kyne and the
rest are half-seas over."

"Are you sure of this?"

"I'll swear it if you wish me; I have just come from there. I went
down to try and get speech of the justice about that boat loss: it
comes on at Jutpoint to-morrow, and he is to be on the bench. But it
was no go: they are all fixed in that dining-room; and will be there
till twelve o'clock to-night, and then they'll reel off to bed with
their boots on."

Tomlett was not in the habit of deceiving the men; he showed himself
their friend on all occasions; and Mr. Puffer yielded to the
seduction. Seeing him comfortably settled at the Mermaid, with what he
liked best steaming before him, and some good fellows around, Tomlett
withdrew, leaving him to enjoy himself.

From the Mermaid, Tomlett steered his course to the Red Court Farm,
tearing over the intervening ground as if he had been flying from a
mad bull. He took the liberty of crossing the lawn before the front
windows (the shortest way), and went round by the unused path at the
far end of the house, which led to the stables and to the young men's
apartments. Carefully pushing open the small door in the dead wall, he
encountered Richard Thornycroft.

"It is all right, sir," he panted, out of breath with running; "I have
got the fellow in. We must lose no time."

"Very well," whispered Richard. "Find Hyde, and come down."

"I suppose _he's_ safe, sir?" said Mr. Tomlett, jerking his head in
the supposed direction of the dining-room.

"Couldn't be safer," responded Richard. "He had enough wine before he
began at the brandy."

Isaac Thornycroft came up, a lighted lantern under his coat. Scarcely
could either of the brothers be recognised for those who had so
recently quitted the dining-room; they wore small caps; gaiters were
buttoned over their legs; their dinner coats were replaced by coarse
ones of fustian.




CHAPTER IX.
The Crowd in the Early Morning.

When Richard and Isaac Thornycroft left the dining-room, so
unobtrusively as not to draw attention to the fact, they passed
through the small door at the further end of the hall. Isaac, the
last, silently locked it, thereby cutting off all communication with
the busy part of the house. Swiftly ascending to Richard's chamber,
they changed their clothes for others which were laid out in
readiness. Hyde, his clothes also changed, was in waiting at the foot
of the stairs when they came down, and he crossed with Isaac to the
coach-house opposite, built, as must be remembered, on a portion of
the old ruins. Richard undid the door in the wall looking to the
front, and stayed there until joined by the breathless Tomlett--as
above seen.

The dog-cart was in its place in the coach-house; the broken old cart
and the bundles of straw were in the corner; all just as usual.
Tomlett and Hyde removed the cart and the straw from their resting
place (whence, by all appearance, they never were removed), and the
brothers Thornycroft lifted a trap-door, invisible to the casual
observer, that the straw had served to conceal. A flight of steps
stood disclosed to view, which Isaac and Richard descended. The steps
led to a subterranean passage; a long, long passage running straight
under the plateau and terminating in a vault or cavern, its damp sides
glistening as the light of the lantern flashed upon it. Traversing
this passage to the end, Isaac put the lantern down: then they unwound
a chain from its pulley, and a square portion of the rock, loose from
the rest, was _pulled in_ and turned aside by means of a pivot: thus
affording an ingress for goods, smuggled or otherwise, to come in. No
wonder Robert Hunter had thought the rock sounded hollow just there!

Ah, Mr. Kyne had scented the fox pretty keenly. But not the huntsmen
who rode him to earth.

It took longer to do all this than it has to relate it. When Richard
had helped Isaac to remove the rock, he returned along the passage on
his way to the plateau. It was customary for one of the two brothers
to stand on the plateau on the watch during these dangerous feats,
with his descending signal of warning in case of alarm. Richard took
that post to-night. Oh, that it had been Isaac! But it was marvellous
how lucky they had hitherto been. Years had gone on, and years, and
never a check had come. One great reason for this was that the late
supervisor, Mr. Dangerfield--let us only whisper it!--had allowed
himself to be bribed. What with that, and what with the horror the
preventive men had of the plateau, the daring and profitable game had
been carried on with impunity. Richard Thornycroft went on his way,
little knowing the awful phantom that was pursuing him.

Midway in the passage he met Hyde and Tomlett, tried and true men, on
their way to join Isaac. Mr. Tomlett's accident had occurred during
one of these night exploits--hence his wife's terrified consternation
at being questioned by Miss Thornycroft. A strange chance had led,
some years ago, to Mrs. Tomlett's discovery of what her husband was
engaged in at intervals: the woman kept the secret, but never was free
from fear.

Isaac Thornycroft, left alone, proceeded with his necessary movements.
By help of a long pole, thrust through the hole, he held forth a
blazing flambeau, which for two minutes would light up the half-moon
beach and the rocks behind it. It was the signal for the boats to put
off from that especial vessel that was the object of the worthy
supervisor's abhorrence. And so the night's secret work was fairly
inaugurated. Isaac Thornycroft held his signal for the approach of the
boats, laden with their heavy spoil; Richard was speeding back to
assume his watch overhead; and it was just about this time that Mr.
Hunter had taken his departure from the Red Court Farm.

It is quite useless to speculate, now, _why_ Robert Hunter went on the
plateau. Some power must have impelled him. These things, bearing
great events in their train, do not occur by chance. Had he been
questioned why, he probably could not have told. The most likely
conjecture is, speaking according to human reason, that he intended to
stand a few moments on its brow, and sniff the fresh breeze from the
sea, so grateful to his heated senses. He had taken more wine than
usual; certainly not to anything like intoxication, for he was by
habit and principle a sober man. He had dined more freely; the hot
room, the talking, all had contributed to heat him; and, following on
it, came the interview with Lady Ellis. Whatever the cause, certain it
is that, instead of pursuing the straight course of his road, like a
sensible man, he turned off it and went on the plateau.

It was a remarkably light night--as already said--clear, still,
frosty, very bright. The clouds, passing occasionally over the face of
the clear sky, seemed to be moved by an upper current that did not
stir the air below. The sea was like silver; no craft to be seen on it
save one vessel that was hove-to close in-shore--a dark vessel, lying
still and silent. Robert Hunter, at the very edge of the plateau,
stood looking on all this: a peaceful scene; the broad expanse of sea
stretching out, the half-moon beach lying cold and solitary below.

Suddenly a bright sheet of light shot out from underneath, illumining
the half-moon, the rocks, and his own face, as he bent over to look.
Was he dreaming?--was his brain treacherous, causing him to see things
that were not? There, half-way down the rocks, shone a great flame, a
flickering, flaring, blazing flame, as of a torch; and Robert Hunter
rubbed his eyes, and slapped his chest, and pinched his arms, to make
sure he was _not_ in a dream of wine.

He stood staring at it, his eyes and mouth open; stared at it until,
by some mysterious process, it steadily lowered itself, and
disappeared inside the rocks. Light--not of the torch--flashed upon
him.

"The smugglers!" he burst forth: and the clear night air carried the
words over the sea. "The smugglers are abroad to-night! That must be
their signal for the booty to approach. Then there _is_ an opening in
the rocks! I'll hasten and give word to Kyne."

Flying back straight towards the Red Court, he had leaped the railings
when he encountered Richard Thornycroft, who seemed to be flying along
with equal speed towards the plateau. Hunter seized his arm.

"Richard Thornycroft! Mr. Richard! the smugglers are at work! I have
dropped upon them. Their signal has been hoisted beyond the rocks
underneath."

"What?" roared Richard.

"It is true as that we are breathing here," continued Hunter. "I went
on the plateau, and I saw their light--a flaming torch as big as your
head. They are preparing to run the goods. It struck me there must be
an opening there. I am going to fetch Kyne. Mr. Thornycroft, if he
will come out, may be convinced now."

He would have resumed his way with the last words, but Richard caught
him. The slight form of Robert Hunter was whirled round in his
powerful grasp.

"Do you see this?" he hoarsely raved, his face wearing an awfully
livid expression, born of anger, in the starlight. "It is well
loaded."

Robert Hunter did see it. It was the bright end of a pistol barrel,
pointed close to his head. He recoiled, as far as he could, but the
grasp was tight upon him.

"What, in Heaven's name, do you mean?"

"_You_ talk of Heaven, you treacherous cur!" panted Richard. "Down
upon your knees--down, I say! You shall talk of it to some purpose."

By his superior strength, he forced the younger and slighter man to
his knees on the waste ground as he would a child. The fur coat fell
from Robert Hunter's arm, and lay beside him, a white heap streaked
with black, in the starlight.

"Now, then! Swear, by all your hopes of Heaven, that what you have
detected shall never pass your lips; shall be as if you had not seen
it."

"I swear," answered Robert Hunter. "I believe I guess how it is. I
will be silent; I swear it."

"Now and hereafter?"

"Now and hereafter."

"Get up, then, and go your way. But, another word, first of all,"
interrupted Richard, as if a thought struck him. "This must be kept
secret from my sister."

"I swear that it shall be, for me."

Holding Robert Hunter still in his fierce grasp, he dictated to him
yet another oath, as if not satisfied with the last one. In cooler
moments neither of them might have acted as they were doing: Richard
had been less imperative, the other less blindly yielding. Robert
Hunter was no coward, but circumstances and Richard's fury momentarily
over-mastered him.

He swore a solemn oath--Richard dictating it--not to hold further
communication with Mary Anne at present, either by word or letter; not
to do it until Richard should of his own will voluntarily give
permission for it. He swore not again to put foot within the Red Court
Farm; he swore not to write to any one of its inmates, failing this
permission. The determination not to be pestered with letters perhaps
caused Richard to insist on this. Any way, the oaths were taken, and
were to hold force for six months.

"Now, then, go your way," said Richard. "Your path for departure lies
_there_," and he pointed to the open highway leading from the entrance
gates of the Red Court. "But first hear _me_ swear an oath that I
shall surely keep: If you do not go straight away; if you linger on
this spot unnecessarily by so much as a few minutes; if you, having
once started, return to it again I will put this bullet through your
body. Cyril! See him off; he was turning traitor."

Cyril Thornycroft had come strolling towards them, somewhat at a
distance yet; he did not catch the sense of his brother's concluding
words, but he saw that some explosion of anger had occurred. Picking
up the coat, Hunter put it on as he walked to join Cyril; while
Richard, as if under the pressure of some urgent errand, flew off
across the lawn and flower-beds towards the coach-house ruins and the
secret passage leading from it.

"What is all this? What does Richard mean?" inquired Cyril as they
commenced their walk along the high road. "He said something about a
traitor."

"I was not a traitor; your brother lies. Would I turn traitor to a
house whose hospitality I have been accepting? I saw, accidentally, a
light exhibited from the Half-moon rocks, and I guessed what it meant.
I guess more now than I will repeat, but the secret shall be safe with
me."

"Safe now, and after your departure?"

"Safe always. I have sworn it."

"I am sorry this should have happened," said Cyril, after a pause.

"And so am I," returned Robert Hunter. "Circumstances, not my own
will, led to it. It is a pity I missed the omnibus."

"Yes," said Cyril, speaking abstractedly, as if his thoughts were far
away. "But if you step out well you may be at Jutpoint by half-past
ten."

"Scarcely so," thought Robert Hunter. Cyril, perhaps, did not know the
hour now.

"What! Have you missed the omnibus, sir?"

The question came from a woman who met them, Captain Copp's servant
Sarah. She was coming along without her bonnet in the frosty night.

"Yes, I have; and must walk it for my pains," answered Mr. Hunter.

"Are you going to the Red Court, Sarah?" asked Cyril.

"I am, sir; I'm going there to fetch Miss Chester," returned Sarah in
her hardest tone. "And a fine tantrum master's in over it, roaring out
that I ought to have come a good hour ago. Why didn't they tell me,
then?"

Saying good night to the woman, who wished Mr. Hunter a pleasant
journey, they continued their way, striking into the village; a silent
village to-night. In the windows of the Mermaid above, lights were no
doubt gleaming, but they were not near enough to that hospitable
hostelry to see. Everybody else seemed abed and asleep, as was
generally the case at Coastdown by nine o'clock on a Sunday night.

Cyril had fallen into thought. Should he offer Hunter any apology or
excuse for these practices of his house, so inopportunely discovered,
and which had always been so distasteful to him? Better not, perhaps.
What excusing plea could he justly offer? And besides, he knew not how
far the discovery went, or what Richard had said. A feeling of
resentment against Robert Hunter rose up in his heart, in his anxiety
to ward off ill from his father and brothers, in his jealous care for
the fair fame of the Red Court Farm. Good though he was, striving ever
to follow in his Master's footsteps of love and peace, Cyril
Thornycroft was but human, with a human heart disposed by its original
nature to passion and sin.

"Let me advise you, at any rate for the present, not to hold
communication with our house or its inmates," he said, gently breaking
the silence. "In this I include my sister."

"I have promised all that. Your brother was not satisfied with
exacting a simple promise; he made me swear it. I was to have written
to Mary Anne on my arrival in town. Will you explain to her the reason
why I do not?"

"I thought you and my sister did not correspond," interrupted Cyril.

"Neither do we. It was only to notify my safe arrival."

"I will explain sufficient to satisfy her. I suppose I must not ask
you to give her up?"

"My intention is to win her if I can," avowed Robert Hunter. "She
would share my fortunes tomorrow, but for the fear that my position
would not be acceptable to Mr. Thornycroft."

"I see; it is decided. Well, in your own interest, I would advise you
to break off all present relations with our house. What has occurred
to-night will not tend to increase Richard's favour to you, and his
opinion very greatly sways my father. Your visit here, taking it on
the whole, has not been pleasant, or productive of pleasant results.
Give us time to forget it and you _for the present_. Give Richard time
to forget the name and sojourn of Robert Hunter."

"You say you suggest this in my own interest?"

"I do indeed," answered Cyril, his good, calm face turning on the
speaker with a kindly light. "In yours and my sister's jointly. She
will be true to you, I make no doubt; and things may come about after
a short while. If you have decided to take each other, if your best
affections are involved, why should I seek to part you? But I know
what Richard is; you must give him time to get over this."

"True," answered Robert Hunter, his heart responding to the evident
kindness. "At any rate, there can be no question of my holding
communication with the Red Court Farm for six months, even by letter.
It was a rash oath, no doubt; I was not quite myself when I took it;
but I have undertaken not to write to any one of you until Richard
shall give me leave. At the end of the six months I suppose I shall
hear from him; if not, I shall consider myself at liberty to write--or
to come."

"You will surely hear from him if he has implied that you shall.
Richard never breaks a promise. And now that I have seen you thus far
on your way, I'll wish you well, and turn back again."

"They had reached the end of the village, and he grasped Robert
Hunter's hand with a warm and friendly pressure. The other was loth to
part with him so soon.

"You may as well go with me as far as the Wherry."

Robert Hunter spoke not of a boat or of any landing for one, but of a
lone and dismantled public-house, standing about a couple of hundred
yards farther. Its sign swung on it still, and rattled in the wind.
Cyril acquiesced, and they went down into the bit of lonely road
leading to it.

We must go back for a moment to Richard Thornycroft. He gained the
ruins, and lifted the trap-door with, as it seemed, almost superhuman
strength, for it took of right two to do it. Completely upset by what
had occurred, Richard was like a man half mad. He went thundering down
the steps to the subterranean passage, his errand being to give'
warning to Isaac, and assist in hoisting _two_ lights, which those on
board the vessel would understand as the signal _not_ to advance. He
had reached the cavern at the end, when his alarm began to subside, to
give place to reason; and his steps came to a sudden standstill.

"Why stop the boats?" he demanded of himself. "If Hunter has cleared
himself off--of which there can be no doubt--where is the danger?"

Where, indeed? He thought--Richard Thornycroft did think--that Hunter
was not one to play false after undertaking to be true. So, after a
little more deliberation, somewhat further of counsel with himself, he
resolved to let things go on, and turned back again without warning
Isaac.


          *          *          *          *          *          *


What mattered it that the contraband cargo was safely run? What reeked
the guilty parties concerned in it of the miserable deed of evil it
involved, while the valuable and double valuable booty got stowed away
in silence and safety? One was lying outside the Half-moon, while they
housed it, with his battered face turned up to the sky--one whose
departed soul had been worth all the cargoes in the world. The body
was bruised, and crushed, and murdered--the body of Robert Hunter!

How did it come there?

Coastdown woke lazily up from its slumbers with the dawn--not very
early in January--and only got roused into life and activity by the
startling piece of news that a shocking murder had been committed in
the night. Hastening down to its alleged scene, the Half-moon beach,
as many as heard it, shopkeepers, fishermen, and inhabitants
generally, they found it to be too true. The poor man lay in the
extreme corner of the strip of beach, right against the rocks, and was
recognised for the late guest at the Red Court Farm, Robert Hunter.

Not by his face; for that was disfigured beyond possibility of
recognition; but by the clothes, hair, and appearance generally. He
had been shot in the face, and, in falling from the heights above, the
jagged edges of the rocks had also disfigured that poor face until not
a trace of its humanity remained.

The tide was low; it present the passage to the beach was passable,
and stragglers were flocking up. The frosty air was crisp, the sea
sparkled in the early morning sun. Amidst others came Justice
Thornycroft, upright, portly, a smile on his handsome face. He did not
believe the report; as was evident by his greeting words.

"What's all this hullabaloo about a murder?" began he, as he shelved
round the narrow ledge and put his foot upon the beach. "How d'ye do,
Kyne?--How d'ye do, Copp--How d'ye do, all? When Martha brought up my
shaving-water just now, she burst into my room, her hair and mouth all
awry with a story of a man having been murdered in the night at the
Half-moon. Some poor drowned fellow, I suppose, cast on the banks by
the tide. What brings him so high up?"

"I wish it was drowning, and nothing worse, for that's not such an
uncivilized death, if it's your fate to meet it," returned Captain
Copp, who was brisk this morning after his headache, and had stumped
down on the first alarm. "It's a horrible land murder; nothing less;
and upon a friend of yours, justice."

"A friend of mine!" was the somewhat incredulous remark of Mr.
Thornycroft. "Why, good Heaven!" he added, in an accent of horror, as
the crowd parted and he caught sight of the body, "it is my late
guest, Robert Hunter!"

"It is indeed," murmured the crowd; and the justice stood gazing at it
with horror as he took in the different points of recognition. The
face was gone--that is the best term for one so utterly
unrecognisable--but the appearance and dress were not to be mistaken.

"He's buttoned close up in his fur coat, sir," one of the crowd
remarked.

Just so. He was buttoned up in his remarkable fur coat--as the village
wrongly called it, for the coat was of white cloth, as we know, and
its facings only of fur. It had stains on it now, neither white nor
black, and one of its sleeves was torn, no doubt by the rocks. The hat
was nowhere to be found: it never was found: but the natural
supposition was, that in the fall it had rolled down to the lower
beach, and been carried away by the tide.

Mr. Thornycroft stooped, and touched one of the cold hands, stooped to
hide the tears which filled his eyes, very unusual visitors to the
eyes of the justice.

"Poor, poor fellow! how could it have happened? How could he have come
here?"

"He must have been shot on the heights, and the shot hurled him over,
there's no doubt of that," said Captain Copp. "Must have been standing
at the edge of the plateau."

"But what should bring him on the plateau at night?" cried Tomlett,
who made one of the spectators.

"What indeed!" returned the captain. "_I_ don't know. A bare, bleak
place even in daylight, with as good as no expanse of sea-view."

"I cannot understand this," said Justice Thornycroft, lifting his face
with a puzzled expression on it. "Young Hunter took leave of us last
night, and left for London. He missed the omnibus to Jutpoint and set
off to walk. One of my sons saw him part of the way. What brought him
back on the plateau?"

"Yes, he contrived to lose the omnibus," interrupted Supervisor Kyne;
who, however, what with the wine and the brandy he had consumed, had a
very confused and imperfect recollection of the events of the previous
evening, but did not choose to let people know that, and chose to put
in his testimony. "Mr. Hunter shook hands with me in the dining-room
at the Red Court, and I wished him a pleasant journey. That must have
been--what time, Mr. Justice?"

"Getting on for nine. And one of my boys saw him go."

"It's odd what could have spirited him back again," exclaimed Captain
Copp. "Which of them steered him off?"

"I forget which," returned the justice. "I heard Isaac say that
one of them did. To tell you the truth, captain, I sat late in the
dining-room last night, and my head's none of the clearest this
morning. How do you find yours, Kyne?"

"Oh, mine's all right, sir," answered the supervisor hastily. "A man
in office is obliged to be cautious in what he takes."

"Ah, there's no coming over you," cried the justice, with a side wink
to Captain Copp.

"There's Mr. Isaac hisself, a coming round the point now," exclaimed
one of the fishermen.

The crowd turned and saw him. Isaac Thornycroft was approaching with a
rapid step.

"They say Hunter is murdered!" he called out. "It cannot be."

"He is lying here, stiff and cold, Isaac, with a bullet in his head,"
was the sad reply of the justice. "Shot down from the heights above."

Isaac stooped in silence. His fair complexion and fine colour,
heightened by the morning air, were something bright to look upon.
But, as he gazed at that sadly disfigured form, yesterday so animate
with life and health, a paleness as of the grave overspread his face;
a shudder, which shook him from head to foot, passed through his
frame.

"What brought him here--or on the plateau?" he asked. Almost the same
words his father had used.

"What indeed!" repeated Mr. Thornycroft. "Did you tell me you saw him
off, Isaac? Or was it Richard?"

"It was Cyril. I did not see him at all after he wished us good-bye on
leaving the dining-room. But Richard, when he joined me later in the
evening, said he had been--had been," repeated Isaac, having rather
hesitated at these words, "saying a parting word to Hunter, and that
Cyril was walking part of the way with him."

Throwing a pocket handkerchief lightly over the disfigured face, Isaac
Thornycroft turned from it towards the sea. The justice spoke.

"I wonder where Cyril left him?"

To wonder it was only natural, but Mr. Thornycroft's remembrances of
the matter, as to what he had heard, were altogether hazy. Shut up so
long in the dining-room with his guests--for they had not parted until
past midnight--doing his part as host at the pipes and grog, though
not very extensively, for it was rare indeed that Mr. Thornycroft took
too much, he was in a tired, sleepy state when Isaac had come to him
after their departure to say that the work was done, the cargo safely
in. Isaac had added that he understood from Richard there had been
some trouble with Hunter; who had seen the torch-light exhibited on
the Half-moon beach, and Richard had been obliged to swear him to
secrecy, and had sent Cyril to see him safe away. Of all this, the
justice retained an indistinct remembrance.

"Yes," he said slowly, "I recollect now; it was Cyril that you said,
Isaac. We must go and find Cyril, and ascertain where he parted with
Hunter."

"Why!" suddenly exclaimed a young fisherman of the name of East, "I
saw them both together last night; the gentleman and Mr. Cyril. I'd
been down at my old mother's and was coming out to go home, when they
passed, a walking in the middle of the road. I'd never have noticed
'em, may be, but for the fur coat, for they'd got some way ahead. I
see them stop and stand together like, and shake hands as if they was
about to part; and then they went on again."

"Both of them went on again?" questioned Isaac. "Yes, sir, both. They
went on into the hollow, and I came away."

This young man's mother lived in a solitary hut at the end of the
village: in fact, just where Cyril had proposed to leave Hunter, and
East must have come out at the same moment.

"We'll go at once and see what Cyril says," resumed the justice,
moving away. "Hunter must have come back with him."

"What is to be done with Mr. Hunter, sir?" questioned Tomlett, who had
some sort of authority in the place. It did seem like a mockery to
call that poor mass of death lying there "Mr. Hunter."

He must be taken to the Mermaid, was the reply of Justice Thornycroft,
as he left the beach with his son and three or four friends. "You had
better come up and see Pettipher: he'll know what's right to be done.
Don't be all the morning about it, Tomlett, or you will have the tide
over the path."

Anything for more excitement in a moment like the present! Tomlett,
following closely on the steps of Justice Thornycroft, went away with
a fleet foot on his errand to the Mermaid, and the whole lot of
hearers went racing after him: leaving Captain Copp, who could not
race, and Mr. Supervisor Kyne to keep guard over the dead. Her
Majesty's officer might have gone with the rest, but that he was in a
brown study.

"There's more in this than meets the eye, captain," he began, rousing
himself "If this has not been the work of smugglers, my name's not
John Kyne."

"Smugglers be shivered!" returned Captain Copp, who it was pretty well
suspected in the village obtained his spirits and tobacco without any
trouble to her majesty's revenue: as did others. "There are no
smugglers here, Mr. Officer. And if there were, what should they want
with murdering Robert Hunter?"

"I have been on the work and watch for weeks, captain, and I know
there _is_ smuggling carried on; and to a deuced pretty extent."

"We are rich enough to buy our own brandy and pay duty on it, Mr.
Supervisor," wrathfully retorted the offended captain.

"Oh, psha! I am not looking after the paltry dabs of brandy they bring
ashore," returned the customs' officer. "One may as well try to wash a
blackamoor white as to stop that. I look after booty of more
consequence. There are cargoes of dry goods run here; foreign lace at
a guinea a yard."

"My eye!" ejaculated Captain Copp in amazement, who was willing enough
to hear the suspicions, now he found they did not point to anything
likely to affect his comfort. "Where do they run them to?"

"They run them here, as I believe; here on the Half-moon; and I
suspect they must have a hiding-place somewhere in these rocks."

To describe the intense wonder depicted on the face of the ex-merchant
captain would be impossible. It ended in a laugh of incredulity,
anything but flattering to his hearer.

"I could swear it," persisted the supervisor. "There! Only a few days
ago, I was telling my suspicions to this poor fellow"--glancing over
his shoulder--"and he offered to help me ferret out the matter. He
came down with me here, examined the rocks, sounded them (he was an
engineer, as perhaps you know), and appointed a further hunt for the
next day. I never saw a man more interested, or more eager to pounce
on the offenders. But before the next day arrived I happened to meet
him, and he said he must apologize for not keeping his promise, but he
preferred not to interfere further. When I pressed him for his reason
he only hemmed and ha-ed, and said that, being a stranger, the
neighbourhood might deem his doing so an impertinence. Which of course
was sheer rubbish."

Captain Copp, rather slow at taking in ideas, began considering what
his own opinion was. The supervisor went on, his tone impressive.

"Now, captain, it is my firm belief that this sudden change and Mr.
Hunter's constrained manner, were caused by his having received some
private hint from the smugglers themselves not to aid me in my search;
and that it is nobody but they who have put it out of his power to do
so."

"Whew!" whistled the staggered captain. "I could make more of a
sinking ship than of what you say. Who are the smugglers? How did they
find out he was going to interfere--unless he or you sent 'em word?"

"I don't know how they found it out. The affair is a mystery from
beginning to end. Nobody was present at the conversation except Miss
Thornycroft. And she cannot be suspected of holding communication with
smugglers."

"This young fellow was a sweetheart of hers--eh?" cried the shrewd
captain.

"I don't know anything about that. They seemed intimate. I could
almost swear Old Nick has to do with this smuggling business," added
the supervisor, earnestly. "A fortnight ago there was a dinner at the
Red Court--you were there, by-the-way."

"A jolly spread the old justice gave us! Prime drink and cigars,"
chimed in the salt tar.

"Well--I was there: and one can't be in two places at once. That very
evening they managed to run their cargo; ran it on, as I suspect, to
this identical spot, sir," cried the disconcerted officer, warming
with his grievance. "Vexed enough I was, and never once have I been
off the watch since. Every night have I took up my station on that
cursed damp plateau overhead, my stomach stretched on the ground, to
keep myself dark, and just half an eye cocked out over the cliff--and
all to no purpose. Last night, Sunday, I went in again to dine with
the hospitable justice, and I'll be--I'll be shivered, sir, as you
sometimes say, if they did not take advantage of it, and run another
cargo!"

Never, since the memorable time of his encounter with the pirates
which resulted in the disabling him for life, had Captain Copp been so
struck--dumb, as it were. Nothing was left of him but amazement.

"Bless and save my wooden leg!" he exclaimed, when his tongue was
found--"it is unbelievable. How do you know it?"

"I know it, and that's enough," replied Mr. Kyne, too much annoyed to
stand upon politeness, or to explain that his boasted knowledge was
assumed; not proved. "But, here's the devil of the thing," he
continued--"how did the smugglers know I was off the watch those two
particular nights? If it got wind the first night that I should be
engaged at the Red Court--though I don't believe it did, for I can
keep my own counsel, and did then--it could not have got wind the
second. Five minutes before I went there last night, I had no notion
whatever of going. Mr. Isaac looked into my rooms just before six, and
_would_ walk me off with him. I had had my chop at one o'clock, and
was going to think about tea. Now how could the wretches have known
last night that I was not on duty?"

"It's no good appealing to me, how," returned the captain. "I never
was 'cute at breaking up marvels. Once, in the Pacific, there was a
great big thing haunted the ship, bigger than the biggest sea-serpent,
and--"

"Depend upon it we have traitors in the camp," unceremoniously
interrupted the supervisor; for he knew by experience that when once
Captain Copp was fairly launched upon that old marvel of the Pacific
ocean, there was no stopping him. "Traitors round about us, at our
very elbows and hearths, if we only knew in which direction to look
for them."

"Well, I am not one," said the captain, "so you need not look after
me. A pretty figure my wooden standard would cut, running smuggled
goods! Why didn't you tell all this to Justice Thornycroft? He's the
proper person. He's a magistrate."

"I know he is. But if I introduce a word about smugglers he throws
cold water on it directly, and ridicules all I say. Once he quite rose
up against me, all his bristles on end, in defence of the poor
fishermen. Upon that, I hinted that I was not alluding to poor
fishermen, but to people and transactions of far greater importance.
It stirred up his anger beyond everything; he was barely civil, and
turned away telling me to find the people and catch 'em, if I could
find 'em; but not to apply to him."

"Well, that's reasonable," said Captain Copp. "Why _don't_ you find
'em?"

"Because I _can't_ find 'em," deplored the miserable officer. "There's
the aggravation. I don't know in what quarter to look for them. The
thing is like magic; it's altogether shrouded in mystery. I don't
choose to speak of it publicly, or I might defeat the chance of
discovery; the only time I did speak of it, was to Mr. Hunter, and got
sympathy and aid offered and returned to me. You see what has come of
that."

It was only too evident what _he_ thought had come of it. And perhaps
he was not far wrong. But for that recent morning's unlucky
conversation between him and Robert Hunter, no dead man might have
been lying on the Half-moon beach, with Isaac Thornycroft's
handkerchief covering his face.

"Yes, that's the difficulty--where to look for them," resumed the
mortified supervisor. "I cannot suspect any of the superior people in
the neighbourhood. It's true I do not know much of those Connaughts.
But they don't seem like smugglers either."

"The Connaughts!" roared out the captain, taking up their cause as a
personal offence. "Why don't you say it's me? Why don't you say it's
yourself? The Connaughts! Who next, Mr. Supervisor? Why, old Connaught
is bedridden half his time, and the son has got his eyes strained on
books all day, learning to be a parson."

"That's true," grumbled the officer, in his miserable incertitude.
"All I know is, I can't fathom the affair, worry over it as I will."

"Here comes the plank," interrupted the captain. "I shan't stop to see
_that_ moved: so good morning to you, sir."

He stumped off, mortally offended; and met Tomlett and the landlord of
the Mermaid inn, with the long queue of curious idlers behind them.




CHAPTER X.
Shot down from the Heights.


In the breakfast-room at the Red Court Farm, seated at its well-laid
morning-table, was Richard Thornycroft. Seated at it only: not eating:
his plate was unsupplied, his coffee stood cold before him. He seemed
to be in some unpleasant meditation, every line of his dark face
speaking of perplexity.

To be broken in upon by the irruption of numerous visitors, evidently
astonished him not a little. The attendants on Mr. Thornycroft had
gathered on the way from the Half-moon beach, just as some balls
gather in rolling, and six or seven friends followed in on the tail of
the master of the Red Court Farm. Isaac, on the contrary, seemed to
have fallen away from it, for he did not enter with the rest. Richard
rose to welcome them, with scant courtesy.

"Where's Cyril?" began the justice. "Is he down yet?"

"I don't know," answered Richard, taking out his watch and glancing at
it. "I have not seen him. It is early yet."

"And Cyril never is very early," added the justice, quickly assuming
that his youngest son was in his bed still. "Have you heard the news,
Richard?"

"Yes," was Richard's laconic answer.

"What do you think of it? How do you suppose it could have happened?"

"I don't think about it," returned Richard. "I conclude that if he did
not shoot himself, he must have got into some quarrelling fray. He
drank enough wine last evening to heat his brain, and we had proof
that he was fond of meddling in what did not concern him. The
extraordinary part of the business is, what brought him back on the
plateau, after he had once started on his journey."

"I'll go up and arouse Cyril, and know where he left Hunter.
Gentlemen, if you will sit down and take some breakfast, we shall be
glad of your company. There's a capital round of beef. Hallo you
girls!" called out the justice, striding away in the direction of the
kitchen, "some of you come in here and attend. Sinnett, let some more
ham and eggs be sent in."

Nothing loath, the gentlemen responded at once to the invitation: most
of them had not breakfasted. The Rev. Mr. Southall made one. The round
of beef was capital, as its master said; the game pies looked
tempting, the cold ham, the hot rolls, the fresh eggs, the toasted
bacon, all were excellent. Apparently, the Red Court Farm kept itself
prepared for an impromptu public breakfast, just as well as it did for
an impromptu dinner.

Mr. Thornycroft ascended the stairs, and presently his voice was heard
on the landing, calling to Cyril. But it died away in the echoes of
the large house, and there was no answer; unless the opening of the
door of his wife's room by her maid could be called such.

"Did you want anything, sir?" she asked, looking out.

"Nothing particular. How is your lady this morning?"

"Much the same, sir, thank you."

The maid shut the door again, and Mr. Thornycroft went on to Cyril's
chamber. He found it empty. It was so unusual for Cyril to be up and
out early, that he felt a sort of surprise. That he had not gone far,
however, was evident, as his watch and purse lay on the chest of
drawers. The justice crossed the corridor and knocked at his
daughter's room.

"Are you up, Mary Anne?"

"Yes," responded a faint and hurried voice within. "What do you want,
papa?"

"I want you. Open the door."

But Miss Thornycroft did not obey. The justice, never remarkable for
patience, when his behests were disregarded, laid hold of the handle
and shook it with his strong hand.

"Open the door, I say, Mary Anne. What, girl! are you afraid of me?"

Miss Thornycroft slowly opened the door, and presented herself. She
was in a handsome grey silk dress, but it looked tumbled, as if she
had lain down in it, and her hair was rough and disarranged. It was
the gown she had worn the previous evening, and it would almost seem
as if she had done nothing to herself since going upstairs to bed. The
signs caught her father's eye, and he spoke in astonishment.

"Why--what in the world, girl? You have never undressed yourself!
Surely, you did not pay too much respect to the wine, as some of the
men did!"

"You know better than that, sir. I was very tired, and threw myself on
the bed when I came up: I suppose sleep overtook me. Do not allude to
it, papa, downstairs. I will soon change my dress."

"Sleeping in your clothes does not seem to agree with you, Mary Anne:
you look as white as if you had swallowed a doctor's shop. Do you know
anything of Cyril?--that's what I wanted to ask you."

"No," she replied, "I have neither seen nor heard him."

Mr. Thornycroft came to the conclusion that Cyril had heard of the
calamity, and gone out to see about it in his curiosity. He returned
to the breakfast-room and said this. Sinnett, who was there, turned
round and spoke.

"Mr. Cyril did not sleep at home last night, sir."

"Nonsense," responded the justice.

"He did _not_, sir," persisted Sinnett, in as positive a tone as she
dared to use.

"Not sleep at home!" cried Mr. Thornycroft, ironically. "You must be
mistaken, Sinnett. Cyril is not a night-bird," he continued, turning
his fine and rather free blue eyes on the company: "he leaves late
hours to his brothers."

"When Martha took up his hot water just now, and knocked, there was no
reply," returned Sinnett, quietly. "So she went in, fearing he might
be ill, and found the bed had not been slept in."

For Cyril, who had never willingly been guilty of loose conduct in his
whole life, to sleep out from home secretly, was as remarkable a fact
as the going regularly to bed at ten o'clock would have been for his
brothers. Mr. Thornycroft not only felt amazement, but showed it.

"I cannot understand this at all. Richard, do you know where he can
be?"

"Not in the least. I was waiting for him to come down that I might
question him where he parted with Hunter."

"When did you see him last?"

"When he was going off last night with Hunter. I have not seen him
since. He will turn up by-and-by," continued Richard, carelessly. "If
a fellow never has stopped out to make a night of it, that's no reason
why he never may. Perhaps he came to an anchor at the Mermaid."

Clearly there was reason in this. Cyril Thornycroft might have
remained out from some cause or other, though he never had before, and
the gentlemen fell to their breakfast again. But for the strange and
unhappy fact of Hunter's having come back to Coastdown, Mr.
Thornycroft had concluded that Cyril must have walked with him to
Jutpoint, and taken a bed there.

"Go up to Miss Thornycroft, Sinnett," said the justice. "She does not
seem well. Perhaps she would like some tea."

Giving a look round the table first to see that nothing more was
wanted (for the housekeeper liked to execute orders at her own time
and will), she proceeded to Miss Thornycroft's room. The young lady
then had her hair down and her dress off, apparently in the legitimate
process of dressing.

"My goodness me, Miss Mary Anne, how white you look!" was the
involuntary exclamation of the servant. "It is a dreadful thing, miss,
but you must not take it too much to heart. It is worse for poor Mr.
Hunter himself than it is for you."

Mary Anne Thornycroft, who had made a vain effort to hide her emotion
and her ghastly face from the servant, opened her lips to speak, and
closed them again, unable to utter a syllable.

"What a _gaby_ the justice must have been to make such haste to tell
her!" thought the woman. For it never occurred to Sinnett that Miss
Thornycroft could have gained the information from any other source;
or, rather, it may be more correct to say that she knew it could not
have been gained from any other. Sinnett, standing in the hall
underneath at the moment, had heard her master's knock for admission
at his daughter's door, and the colloquy that ensued--not the words,
only the sound of the voices.

"The whole village is up in arms," continued Sinnett. "It is an awful
murder. Hyde--"

"Don't talk of it," came the interrupting wail; "I cannot bear it yet.
Is he found?"

"Poor wretch, yes! with no look of a human face about him, they say,"
was Sinnett's answer.

"Shot down on to the Half-moon?" shuddered Miss Thornycroft, evidently
speaking more to herself than to Sinnett.

"In the fur corner of it. I'll go and bring you a cup of tea, miss.
You are shaking all over."

Mary Anne put out her hand to arrest her, but she was weak, feeble,
suffering, and Sinnett went on, totally regardless. In the woman's
opinion there was no panacea for ills, whether mental or bodily, like
a cup of strong tea, and she hastened to bring one for her young lady.
The shortest way of doing this was to get it from the breakfast-room,
and in went Sinnett. She was not disposed to stand on too much
ceremony at the best of times, especially when put out. Occupying her
position for many years as mistress of the internal economy of the Red
Court Farm, she felt her sway in it, and she was warmly condemning her
master for having spoken. For Sinnett was one who liked on occasion to
set those about her to rights. The large silver teapot was before the
justice. Sinnett, a breakfast cup in her hand, went up and asked him
to fill it.

"What a pity it is, sir, that you told Miss Thornycroft so soon;
before she was well out of her bed!" began Sinnett in an undertone, as
she stood waiting. "Time enough for her to have heard such a horrid
thing, sir, when she had taken a bit of breakfast. There she is,
shaking like a child, not able to dress herself."

"I did not tell her," returned. Mr. Thornycroft aloud. "What are you
talking of?"

"Yes, you did, sir."

"I did _not_, I tell you."

"You must have told her, sir," persisted Sinnett. "The first thing she
asked me was, whether the body was found on the Half-moon, and said it
was shot down on to it. Nobody else has been to the room but
yourself."

"Take up the tea to your mistress, and don't stand cavilling here,"
interposed Richard, in a tone of stern command.

Justice Thornycroft brooked not contradiction from a servant.
Moreover, he began to think that his daughter must have got her
information from Cyril. He rose from table and strode upstairs after
Sinnett, following her into his daughter's room.

"Mary Anne"--in a sharp tone--"did you tell that woman I disclosed to
you what had happened to Hunter?"

"No," was the reply.

"Did I tell you that anything had happened to him?"

"No, papa, you did not."

"Do you hear what Miss Thornycroft says?" continued the magistrate,
turning to the servant. "I advise you not to presume to contradict me
again. If the house were in less excitement, you should come in before
them all, and beg my pardon."

A ghastly look of fear had started to the features of Miss
Thornycroft. "I--I heard them talking of it outside," she murmured,
looking at Sinnett.

"Outside!" exclaimed Sinnett.

"Underneath, in the herb-garden," faintly added Miss Thornycroft,
whose very lips were white as ashes.

"Then you did not hear of it from Cyril, Mary Anne?"

"No, papa, I have not seen Cyril at all."

Justice Thornycroft strode downstairs again. Sinnett, who did not like
to be rebuked--and, in truth, rarely gave occasion for it--looked
rather sullen as she put down the cup and saucer.

"Nobody has been in the side garden since I got up," cried Sinnett.

"Oh, it was before that," too hastily affirmed Miss Thornycroft. "They
were strange voices," she hurriedly added, as if afraid of more
questions.

Sinnett shut the door on Miss Thornycroft, and went away ruminating.
Something like fear had arisen to the woman's own face.

"What does it all mean?" she asked herself, unconsciously resting the
small silver waiter on the window-seat, as she stood looking out. "She
_could not_ have heard anything outside in the herb-garden, for nobody
has had the key of it this morning; and as to people having been up
here talking of it before I was up, the poor man had not then been
found."

That some dreadful mystery existed, something that would not bear the
light of day, and in which Miss Thornycroft was in some way mixed up,
Sinnett felt certain. And, woman-like, she spoke out her thoughts too
freely: not in ill-nature; not to do harm to Miss Thornycroft or
anyone else; but in the love of talking, in the wish to get her own
curiosity satisfied. How _had_ she learnt the news? Sinnett wondered
again and again. What was it that had put her into this unnatural
state of alarm and fear? Regret she might feel for Robert Hunter;
horror at his dreadful fate--but whence arose the _fear?_ Shrewd
Sinnett finally descended, her brain in full work.

When the party in the breakfast-room had concluded their meal, which
they did not spare, in spite of the sight their eyes had that morning
looked on, they departed in a body, each one privately hoping he
should be the first to alight on Mr. Cyril. In the present stage of
the affair, Cyril Thornycroft was regarded as the one only person who
could throw light upon it. It did not clearly appear where he could
be. Richard's suggestion of the Mermaid was an exceedingly improbable
one. He was not there; he seemed not to be anywhere else; nobody
appeared to have seen him since the previous night, when he was
starting to walk a little way with Robert Hunter.

Mr. Thornycroft sat down in the justice room to write to the coroner,
and was interrupted by his eldest son. He looked up in expectation.

"Has Cyril turned up, Richard?"

"No, sir. Cyril's not gone far. His porte-monnaie and watch are in his
room."

"Yes, I caught a sight of them myself. It is strange where he can be.
I am rather uneasy."

"There's no occasion for that," returned Richard. "He must have gone
on to Jutpoint. There's not a doubt of it."

"Well, I suppose it is so. The curious part is, what brought Hunter
back again when he was once fairly on the road? They have been
suggesting at the breakfast-table that he might have forgotten
something; and I suppose it was so. But what took him to the plateau?"

Richard had his theory on that point. "Curiosity, unjustifiable
curiosity; possibly a wicked, dishonourable resolution to betray us,
after all," were the words rising so persistently in his mind that he
had some difficulty not to speak them. He did not, however; he wished
to spare unpleasantness to his father so far as might be. The only one
to whom he gave the history of what took place on the previous night
before parting with Hunter, was Isaac; and Isaac, as we know, had
repeated just a word to his father. Mr. Thornycroft recurred to it
now.

"What was it Isaac said about you and Hunter, Richard? I almost
forget. That Hunter went on the plateau and saw the signal-light?"

"Hunter saw it. When he first quitted the house some devil's instinct
took him to the plateau. I met him as he was running down, made him
promise to hold his tongue, and sent him off with Cyril. I could have
staked my life--yes, my life," added Richard, firmly--"that he would
not have come back again."

"Was that all that passed?"

"Oh yes, that was all," carelessly returned Richard, who thought it
well not to give the details of the unpleasant interview. "He and
Cyril walked away together, and I fully assumed we had seen the colour
of his ugly face for the last time."

"And East saw them down at the Hollow, so they must have gone that
far. Well, it's very odd; but I suppose Cyril will clear it up."

Mr. Thornycroft drew down his spectacles before his eyes--they had
been lifted while he talked--and went on with his note to the coroner.
Again Richard broke in, speaking abruptly.

"Sir, this affair of Hunter's must be kept dark."

"Kept dark!" echoed the justice. "When a man's found murdered, one
can't keep it dark. What do you mean, Dick?"

"I mean, kept as dark as the legal proceedings will allow. Don't make
more stir in it, sir, than is absolutely necessary. It would have been
well to keep secret his having gone on the plateau at all; but it's
known already, and can't be helped now. Hush it up as much as you
can."

"But why?"

"_Hush it up_," impressively repeated Richard, his dark face working
with some inward agitation. "_I_ shall know what to say in regard to
his having gone on the plateau before departure; you and Isaac had
better be silent. Hush it up--hush it up! You will be at the coroner's
right hand, and can sway him imperceptibly. It is essential advice,
father."

"What the deuce!" burst forth the magistrate, staring at his son; "you
do not fear Cyril was the murderer of Hunter?"

"No, thank God!" fervently answered Richard. "Cyril would be the last
in the world to speak an unkind word, let alone shoot a man. But,
don't you see, sir--too minute enquiries may set them on the track of
something else that was done on the Half-moon last night, and it would
not do. That confounded Kyne has got his eyes and ears open enough, as
it is."

"By George! there's something in that," deliberated the justice. "My
sympathy for Hunter put that out of my mind. All right, Dicky, now I
have the cue."

Mr. Thornycroft sealed his note to the coroner, despatched it, and
went upstairs to Lady Ellis's room. She was up, and sitting on the
sofa. He shook hands and enquired how she had rested. For a long
while, in fact since the beginning of her illness, their relations
with each other had been but those of common acquaintance. He was
wondering whether it would be well to tell her of the catastrophe; but
she had already heard of it, and sat, paler than usual, gazing at the
idlers who were crowding the edge of the plateau, leaning over it in
their curiosity. That unusual sight would alone have told her
something was the matter.

"Is it _possible_ that this can be true?" she asked, in a low tone of
distress. "Is Robert Hunter really murdered?"

"It is too true, unfortunately," he answered; "at least, that he is
dead. Whether murdered--as everybody has been in haste to say and
assume or whether accidentally shot, remains to be proved."

"And what are the particulars? What is known?"

But here Mr. Thornycroft would not satisfy her, or could not stay to
do it. His carriage was at the door to take him to Jutpoint, where he
had magisterial business that could not be postponed. Mentioning just
a fact or two, he quitted the room, and found Isaac talking rather
sharply to Sinnett in the hall below.

Sinnett had not allowed her doubts or her tongue to slumber. First of
all she had talked to Hyde--of Miss Thornycroft's curious demeanour,
of her incautious avowal, of her remarkable state of alarm and of
fear; and Hyde replied by telling her to "hold her peace if she
couldn't talk sense." She next, as it chanced, mentioned it to
Tomlett, and he retorted that Sinnett was a fool. Sinnett felt
wrathful; and in some way or other the matter penetrated to the ears
of Isaac. He did not believe it; he felt sure that his sister knew
nothing, and was taking Sinnett to task when Mr. Thornycroft
descended.

A few hasty words from the three, and Mr. Thornycroft opened the door
of his daughter's parlour, where he understood she now was. Rather to
his surprise, Richard was shut in with her. It was an unusual thing
for him to be indoors in the day-time. She wore a morning dress now,
and looked much as usual, except that her face was pale and her hands
trembled. Richard went out as they entered.

"Now, then," said the justice, "we will have this cleared up. Where
and from whom did you hear of this matter, Mary Anne?"

She answered briefly, leaning her forehead on her hand, that she had
heard people talking of it early in the morning below her window.
Sinnett, anxious to justify herself, and very vexed that this should
have come to the ears of her masters, said this could not be; the key
of the herb-garden was in her pocket, and nobody could have got into
it.

The plot of ground on the side of the house, under Miss Thornycroft's
window, where the herbs were grown, was enclosed. A small glass shed
(it was not half large enough to be called a green-house) was at one
corner of it, in which Sinnett had some plants. Three or four of these
had been stolen one night, and since then Sinnett had kept the gate
locked.

Miss Thornycroft, her hand held up still as if to hide her face,
persisted. She had heard voices underneath in the early morning,
strange voices; it was so unusual that she quietly opened her window
to listen. They spoke of Mr. Hunter, and she caught distinctly the
words "murder," and "shot down from the heights to the Half-moon." "It
was as if one man was telling another," faintly concluded Miss
Thornycroft. "I could only hope it was not true; it frightened me
terribly. As to how they could have been in the herb-garden, I suppose
they must have got over the palisades."

"Nothing more likely, that they might talk at leisure without
interruption," cried the justice, turning angrily on his housekeeper.
"Let the subject be dropped: do you hear, Sinnett? How dare you
attempt to raise a cabal! What's the matter with you to-day? One would
think _you_ shot him down."

Striding across the hall, the justice went out to his restive horses,
prancing and pawing the ground in their impatience. Isaac followed
him.

"If you will allow me, sir, I should like to accompany you."

"All right, Isaac; get up."

The justice drove away, his son by his side his groom sitting behind,
as he had once, years ago, driven away from the gate of Mrs. Chester;
but his daughter was with him then. Isaac's errand to Jutpoint,
unavowed, was to look after Cyril. Why it should have been so he could
not have told, then or later, but an uneasy prevision lay on his mind
that something or other was wrong, more than met the eye.

Sinnett, nettled beyond everything at her master's concluding
reproach, spoken though it was in irony, and at the turn of affairs
altogether, flounced off to her kitchen, leaving Miss Thornycroft
alone. She--Mary Anne Thornycroft--had made her explanation almost
glibly, after the manner of one who has learnt a part by heart, and
recites it. That some most awful dread was upon her--apart from
the natural grief and horror arising from the murder, if it was
murder--was indisputable, and Sinnett felt sure of it still.

Her face buried in her hands; her body swaying backwards and forwards
in her chair; her whole aspect evincing dire agony now she was alone,
sat Mary Anne Thornycroft. In that one past night she seemed to have
aged years. The knock of a visitor aroused her; some curious gossip
come to inquire and chatter and comment; and she escaped upstairs,
crossing Hyde in the hall.

"I cannot see anyone, Hyde; my head aches too much."

The door of her step-mother's room was open, and Lady Ellis called to
her. One single moment of rebellion, of wish to escape, and then she
remembered that she had not been in at all that morning, and also that
it was well to avoid observation just now. Lady Ellis sat as Mr.
Thornycroft had left her; her dark hair drawn simply from her wasted
face, her purple morning-gown tied at the waist with a cord and
tassel, its lace ruffles falling over her thin white hand.

"I was just going to ring and ask you to come up, Mary Anne. I _must_
hear the particulars of this dreadful mystery; I cannot rest until
they are told. Look at them!"

She pointed to the heights. Dotting the plateau, peeping in at the
round tower, holding hands and waists for security as they bent
forward over the edge to look at the scene of the tragedy below, were
the idlers. Mary Anne sat down near the table, her elbow on it, her
head leaning on her hand, her eyes bent on the carpet, and told the
particulars that the world knew. Lady Ellis heard them to the end
without comment.

"But why should he have gone on the plateau at all?" she questioned.

"I don't know. He did go. As I stood at the door watching him off, he
turned from the road to the plateau. I saw him. I saw him cross the
railings."

"And your brother Richard saw him?"

"Yes, as he was coming off. They stood talking for a minute or two,
Richard says. Cyril came up then, and he started to walk a little way
with Robert Hunter."

"But what does Cyril say? Where is he?"

"He has not been home since. They suppose he went on to Jutpoint and
slept there. Nothing more except this is known."

"But Mr. Hunter must have come back again?"

"Of course he must. It is his coining back that is so unaccountable."

"And why--why should Cyril walk to Jutpoint, unless he walked with Mr.
Hunter?" resumed Lady Ellis after a pause.

Miss Thornycroft shook her head. It was in truth so much involved in
doubt and mystery from beginning to end, that she felt unable to cope
with it, even by conjecture, she said faintly. "The terrible point in
it all seems to be in his having come back again."

"Nay, the terrible point is the attack upon him," dissented her
step-mother. "It might have been an accidental shot, after all. At
what hour was it supposed to take place?"

Miss Thornycroft could not say. "Of course--yes--it might have been
only accidental," she assented with whitening lips.

"Mary Ann, how ill you look!"

"Do I? It frightened me, you see. And I have a dreadful headache," she
added, rising to escape those eyes bent on her with so much curiosity.
"I must go and lie down on the bed, if you will spare me."

"Lie on my sofa," said Lady Ellis.

"No, thank you. Shut in by myself, I may get to sleep."

"Tell me one thing," and Lady Ellis laid her hand on her
step-daughter's arm. "Is any one suspected?"

"No; oh no."

"I suppose, Mary Ann, it is quite sure that he is _dead?_"

A faint cry at the mockery of the almost suggested hope escaped Mary
Anne's lips. When the surgeon saw him at eight o'clock that morning,
he thought he must have been dead about ten hours.

Lady Ellis leaned back in her chair when she was left alone, her eyes
closed, her wan hands clasped meekly on her bosom.

"Ah! was he fit to go? was he fit to go?" she murmured, the thought
having lain on her as a great dream of agony. "Had it been Cyril
Thornycroft, there could be no doubt. But _he_--? Perhaps he was
changed, as I am," she resumed after a long pause. "Oh! yes, yes, it
might have been so; Robert Hunter might have been READY. Thank God
that he gave me his forgiveness last night!"




CHAPTER XI.
The Coroner's Inquest.


The coroner's inquest was held on the Wednesday. Nothing could exceed
the state of ferment that Coastdown was in: not altogether from the
fact of the murder itself--for murder it was universally assumed to
be, and _was_--but also from one or two strange adjuncts that
surrounded it. The first of these was the prolonged and unaccountable
absence of Cyril Thornycroft; the second arose from sundry rumours
rife in the town. It was whispered on the Tuesday that two or three
witnesses had been present when the deed was committed; that they had
seen it done; and the names of these, scarcely breathed at first, but
gathering strength as the day wore on, were at length spoken freely:
Miss Thornycroft, Miss Chester, and Captain Copp's maidservant, Sarah
Ford.

Whether the reports arose, in the first place, in consequence of
Sinnett's talking; whether Sarah Ford had spoken a hasty word on the
Monday morning, in her surprise and shock at what she heard; or
whether the facts had gone about through those strange instincts of
suspicion that do sometimes arise in the most extraordinary manner,
nobody can tell how or whence, was not yet known. But the rumours
reached the ear of the summoning officer, and at ten o'clock on the
Tuesday night that functionary delivered his mandates--one at the Red
Court Farm, two at Captain Copp's, for these witnesses to attend the
inquest. Speaking afterwards at the Mermaid of what he had done, the
excitement knew no bounds.

Speculation was rife in regard to the most strange absence of Cyril
Thornycroft. But not quite at first--not, in fact, until the Wednesday
morning--was any unpleasant feeling connected with it. It might have
been in men's minds--who could say it had not?--but on the Wednesday
it began to be spoken. Was Cyril the guilty man? Had _he_, in a
scuffle or else, fired the shot that killed Hunter?

The taint was carried in a whisper to the Red Court Farm. It staggered
Mr. Thornycroft; it drove Isaac speechless; but Richard, in his usual
fashion, went into a white heat of indignation. Cyril, who was one of
the best men on the face of the earth!--who lived, as everybody knew,
a gentle and blameless life, striving to follow, so far as might be,
the example his Master set when He came on earth!--who would not hurt
a fly, who was ever seeking to soothe others battling with the world's
troubles, and help them on the road to Heaven!--_he_ kill Robert
Hunter! Richard's emotion overwhelmed him, and his lips turned white
as he spoke it.

All very true: if ever a man strove to walk near to God, it was
certainly Cyril Thornycroft; and Richard's hearers acknowledged it.
But--and this they did not say--good men had been overtaken by
temptation, by crime, before now; and, after all, this might have been
a pure accident. If Cyril Thornycroft were innocent, argued Coastdown,
why did he run away? Of course, his prolonged absence, if voluntary,
was the great proof against him: even unprejudiced people admitted
that. Mr. Thornycroft and his sons had another theory, and were not
uneasy. It was not convenient to speak of it to the world; but they
fully believed Cyril would return home in a week or two, safe and
sound; and they also, one and all, implicitly believed that he was not
only guiltless of the death of Robert Hunter, but ignorant of its
having taken place. The fact of his having no money with him went
for nothing--it has been mentioned that his purse was left in his
room,--if Cyril had gone where they suspected, he could have what
money he pleased for the asking.

In this state of excitement and uncertainty, Wednesday morning dawned.
As the hour for the coroner's inquest drew near, all the world
assembled round the Mermaid: to see the coroner and jury go in
would be something. Captain Copp stumped about in a condition of wrath
that promised momentary explosion, arising from the fact that his
"women-kind" should be subp[oe]naed to give evidence on a land murder.
What they might have to say about it, or what they had not to say, the
captain was unable to get at; his questioning had been in vain: Sarah
was silent and sullen; Anna Chester white and shivering, as if some
great blow had fallen on her: and this unsatisfactory state of things
did not tend to increase the captain's equanimity. He had been
originally summoned to serve on the inquest, but when the officer came
to the house at ten on the Tuesday night, he told him he had perhaps
better not serve. All this was as bitter aloes to the merchant
captain.

The inquest took place in the club-room of the Mermaid, the coroner
taking his seat at the head of its long table covered with green
baize, while the jury ranged themselves round it. Justice Thornycroft
was seated at the right hand of the coroner. They had viewed the body,
which lay in an adjoining room, just as it had been brought up.

The first witness called was Mr. Supervisor Kyne, he having been the
first to discover the calamity. With break of day on the Monday
morning he went on the plateau. Happening to look over as far as he
could stretch, he saw what he thought to be Mr. Hunter asleep: the
face was hidden from him as he stood above, but he knew him by his
coat. Going round to the Half-moon beach, having been joined on his
way by one or two fishermen, they discovered that the poor gentleman
was not asleep, but dead: in fact that he had been killed, and in a
most frightful manner.

The surgeon who had been called to examine the body spoke next. The
cause of death was a shot, he said. The bullet had entered the face,
gone through the brain, and passed out at the crown of the head. Death
must have been instantaneous, he thought: and the face had also been
very much defaced by the jagged points of the rock in falling. In
answer to the coroner, the surgeon said he should think it had been
many hours dead when he was called to see it at half-past seven in the
morning: nine or ten at least.

The next witness was Mr. Thornycroft, who stood up to give his
evidence. He spoke to the fact of the young man's having been his
guest for a short while at the Red Court: that he had intended to
leave on the Sunday night by the half-past eight omnibus for Jutpoint,
to catch the train; but had missed it. He then said he would walk it,
wished them good-bye, and left with that intention. He knew no more.

Mr. Thornycroft sat down again, and Richard was called. He confirmed
his father's evidence, and gave some in addition. On the Sunday night
he quitted the dining-room soon after the deceased, and went outside
for a stroll. There he saw Hunter, who appeared to have been on the
plateau. They stood together a few moments talking, and just as they
were parting Cyril came up. He, Cyril, said he would walk a little way
with Hunter, and they turned away together.

"To walk to Jutpoint?" interposed the coroner.

"Yes: speaking of Hunter. Of course I supposed my brother would turn
back almost immediately."

"Were they upon angry terms one with the other?"

"Certainly not."

"And you never saw either of them afterwards?"

"No," replied Richard, in a low tone--which the room set down to
uneasiness on the score of Cyril's absence. "I went indoors then."

"You are sure that the deceased was then starting, positively
starting, on his walk to Jutpoint?"

"I am quite certain. There is no doubt of it whatever."

"What, then, caused him to come back again?"

"I am quite unable to conjecture. It is to me one of the strangest
points connected with this strange business."

Cause, indeed, had Richard Thornycroft to say so! He, of all others,
he alone, knew of the oath taken by Hunter _not_ to come back; of the
danger Hunter knew he would run in attempting it. To the very end of
Richard's life--as it seemed, to him now--would the thing be a mystery
to his mind: unless Cyril should be able to throw light upon it.

Richard Thornycroft had no further testimony to offer, and Isaac was
next examined. He could say no more than his father had said; not
having seen Hunter at all since the latter quitted the dining-room. Of
the subsequent events of the night, he said he knew personally
nothing: he was not out of doors. The fisherman, East, next appeared,
and testified to having seen Cyril Thornycroft and Mr. Hunter
together, as before stated.

"Were you looking out for them?" asked a sapient juryman.

"Looking out for 'em?" repeated East. "Lawk love ye, I warn't
a-looking out for nobody. I'd not have noticed 'em, maybe, but for Mr.
Hunter's white coat that he'd got buttoned on him. One couldn't be off
seeing _that_."

"Call Cyril Thornycroft," said the coroner.

The calling of Cyril Thornycroft was a mere form, as the coroner was
aware. He had learnt all the unpleasant rumours and suspicions
attaching to Cyril's absence; had no doubt formed his own opinion on
the point. But he was careful not to avow that opinion; perhaps also
not to press for any evidence that might tend to confirm it, out of
regard to his old friend, Justice Thornycroft.

"Have you any suggestion to offer as to your son's absence?" he asked
in a considerate tone of the magistrate.

Mr. Thornycroft stood up to answer. His countenance was clear and
open, his fine upright form raised to its full height: evidently _he_
attached no suspicion to his son's non-return.

"I think it will be found that he has only gone to see some friends
who live at a distance, and that a few days will bring him home again.
My reasons for this belief are good, though I would rather not state
them publicly; they are conclusive to my own mind, and to the minds of
my two elder sons. And I beg to say that I affirm this in all honour,
as a magistrate and a gentleman."

Again the coroner paused. "Do you consider, Mr. Thornycroft, that your
son premeditated this visit?"

"No; or he would have spoken of it. I think that circumstances must
have caused him to depart on it suddenly."

Mr. Thornycroft was thinking of one class of "circumstances," the
coroner and jury of another. _They_ could only connect any
circumstances, causing sudden departure, with the tragedy of the
night, with a sense of guilt. Mr. Thornycroft knew of another outlet.

"Is it usual for him to leave his watch and purse on the drawers,
sir?" asked a juror.

"It is not unusual. He does so sometimes when changing his coat and
waistcoat for dinner: not intentionally, but from forgetfulness. He is
absentminded at the best of times: not at all practical as his
brothers are."

"But what would he do without money on a journey?" persisted the
gentleman.

Mr. Thornycroft paused for a moment, considering his answer. It was
exceedingly unfortunate that he could not speak out freely: Cyril's
reputation had suffered less.

"The fact of his having left his purse at home does not prove he has
no money with him," said the justice. "In fact, I believe he keeps his
porte-monnaie in his pocket from habit more than anything else, and
carries his money loose. Most men, so far as I know, like to do so. I
examined the porte-monnaie this morning, and found it empty."

There was a slight laugh at this, hushed immediately. Mr. Thornycroft,
finding nothing farther was asked him, sat down again.

"Call Sarah Ford," said the coroner.

Sarah Ford came in, and Captain Copp, who made one of the few
spectators, struck his wooden leg irascibly on the floor of the room:
a respectable, intelligent-looking woman, quietly attired in a straw
bonnet, a brown shawl with flowered border, with a white handkerchief
in her gloved hands. She did not appear to be in the least put out at
having to appear before the coroner and jury, and gave her evidence
with the most perfect independence.

The coroner looked at his notes; not of the evidence already given,
which his clerk was taking down, but of some he had brought to refresh
his memory.

"Do you recollect last Sunday evening, witness?" he asked, when a few
preliminary questions had been gone through.

"What should hinder me?" returned the witness, ever ready with her
tongue. "It's not so long ago."

"Where did you go to that evening?"

"I went nowhere but to Justice Thornycroft's."

"For what purpose did you go there?"

"To fetch Miss Chester. She was to have been sent for at eight
o'clock, but master and mistress forgot it. When it was on the stroke
of nine they told me to go for her."

"Which you did?"

"Which I did, and without stopping to put anything on."

"Did you meet anybody as you went?"

"Yes; nearly close to the Red Court gates I met Mr. Hunter and young
Cyril Thornycroft."

"Walking together towards the village?" interposed the coroner.

"Walking on that way. Mr. Hunter was buttoning himself up tight in
that blessed fine coat of his."

"Did they seem angry with each other?"

"No, sir; they were talking pleasantly. Mr. Cyril was saying to the
other that if he stepped out he would be at Jutpoint by half-past ten.
That was before they came close, but the air was clear and brought out
the sound of their voices."

"Did they speak to you?"

"I spoke to them. I asked Mr. Hunter if he had lost the omnibus, for,
you must understand, Miss Chester had said in the afternoon that he
was going by it, and he said 'Yes, he had, and had got to walk it.' So
I wished him a good journey."

"Was that all?"

"All that he said. Mr. Cyril asked me was I going to the Court, and I
said 'Yes, I was, to fetch Miss Chester,' and that 'master was in a
tantrum at its being so late.' (An irascible word from Captain Copp.)
With that they went their way and I went mine."

"After that, you reached the Red Court?"

"Of course I reached it."

"Well, what happened there? Relate it in full."

"Nothing particular happened that I know of, except that the servants
gave me some mulled wine."

"While you were waiting?"

"Yes, while I was waiting; and a fine time Miss Chester kept me,
although I told her about the anger at home. She--"

"Stay a moment, witness. How long do you think it was?"

"A quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. Quite that."

"And now go on. We know the details, witness," added the coroner,
significantly. "I tell you this, that you may relate them without
being questioned at every sentence; it will save time."

Sarah looked at him. That he was speaking the truth was self-evident;
and she prepared to tell her story consecutively, without any
suppression. The coroner was impatient.

"Speak up, witness. Miss Thornycroft went out with you. What induced
her to go?"

"I suppose it was a freak she took," replied the witness. "When they
said Miss Chester was ready I went into the hall, and Miss
Thornycroft, in a sort of joke (I didn't think she meant it) said she
would come out with her. Miss Chester asked her how she would get back
again, and she answered, laughing, that she'd run back, to be sure,
nobody was about to see her. Well, she put on her garden-bonnet, which
hung there, and a shawl, and we came away, all three of us. In going
out at the gates they both turned on the waste land, towards the
plateau. I saw 'em stop and stare up on it, as if they saw something;
and I wished they'd just stare at our way home instead, for I was not
over warm, lagging there. Presently one of them said to me--for I had
followed--'Sarah, do look, is not that Robert Hunter walking about
there?' 'My eyes is to chilled to see so far, young ladies,' says I;
'what should bring Robert Hunter there, when I met him as I came
along, speeding on his journey to Jutpoint?' 'I can see that it _is_
Robert Hunter,' returned Miss Thornycroft; 'I can see him quite
distinct on that high ground against the sky.' And with that they told
me to wait there, and they'd just run up and frighten him. Precious
cross I was, and I took off my black stuff apron and threw it over my
head, shawl fashion, thinking what a fool I was to come out on a cold
frosty night without----"

"Confine yourself to the evidence," sternly interrupted the coroner.

"Well," proceeded Sarah, who remained as cool and equable before the
coroner and jury as she would have been in her own kitchen, "I doubled
my apron over my head, and down I sat on that red stone which rises
out of the ground there like a low milestone. In a minute or two
somebody comes running on to the plateau, as if following the young
ladies----"

"From what direction, witness?"

"I think from that of the Red Court Farm. It might have been from that
of the village, but I think it was the other; I am not sure either
way. You see, I had got my apron right over me, and my head bent down
on my knees, afeard of catching the face-ache, and I never heard
anything till he was on the plateau. When I saw him he was near the
Round Tower, going straight up to it, as it were; so he might have
come from either way."

"Did you recognise him?"

"No; I didn't try to. I saw it was a man, through the slit I had left
in my apron. He was going fast, but stealthily, hardly letting his
shoes touch the ground, as if he was up to no good. And I was not
sorry to see him go there, for thinks I, he'll hurry back my young
ladies."

"Witness--pay attention--were there no signs by which you could
recognise that man? How was he dressed? As a gentleman?--as a
sailor?--as a----"

"As a gentleman, for all I saw to the contrary," replied the witness,
unceremoniously interrupting the coroner's question. "If I had known
he was going on to the plateau to murder Mr. Hunter, you may be sure
I'd have looked at him sharp enough."

"For all you saw to the contrary," repeated the coroner, taking up the
words; "what do you mean by that?"

"Well, what I mean is, I suppose, that he might have been a gentleman
or he might not. The fact is, I never noticed his dress at all. I
think the clothes were dark, and I think he had leggings on--which are
worn by common people and gentlemen alike down here. The stars was
rather under a cloud at the time, and so was my temper."

"Honestly acknowledged," said the coroner. "What sized man was
he?--tall or short?"

"Very tall."

"Taller than--Mr. Cyril Thornycroft, for instance?"

"A great deal taller."

"You are sure of this?"

"I am sure and certain. Why else should I say so?"

"Go on with your evidence."

"A minute or so afterwards, as I sat with my back to the plateau and
my head in my lap, I heard a gun go off behind me."

"Did that startle you?" asked an interrupting juryman.

"No, I am not nervous. If I had known it was let off on the plateau it
might have startled me, on account of the young ladies being there;
but I thought it was only from some passing vessel."

"It is singular you should have thought so lightly of it. It is not
common to hear a gun fired on a Sunday night."

"You'd find it common enough if you lived here, sir. What with rabbit
and other game shooters, and signals from boats, it is nothing in this
neighbourhood to hear a gun go off, and it's what nobody pays any
attention to."

"Therefore you did not?"

"Therefore I did not. And the apron I had got muffled over my ears
made the sound appear further off than it really was. But close upon
the noise came an awful cry; and that was followed by a shrill scream,
as if from a woman. That startled me, if you like, and I jumped up,
and threw off my apron, and looked on to the plateau. I could not see
anything; neither the man nor the young ladies; so I thought it time
to go and search after them. I had got nearly up to the Round Tower,
that ruined wall, breast high, which is on the plateau----"

"You need not explain," said the coroner, "we know the place."

"When a man darted out from the shade of it," continued the witness.
"He cut across to the side of the plateau next the village, and
disappeared down that dangerous steep path in the cliffs, which nobody
afore, I guess, ever ventured down but in broad daylight."

"Was it the same man you saw just before running on to the plateau?"

"Of course it was."

"By what marks did you know him again?"

"By no marks at all. I should not know the man from Adam. My own
senses told me it was the same, because there was no other man on the
plateau."

"Your own senses will not do to speak from. Remember, witness, you are
on your oath."

"Whether I am on my oath or off it, I should speak the truth," was the
response of the imperturbable witness.

"What next?"

"I stood looking at the man; that is, at where he had disappeared;
expecting he was pitching down head foremost and getting half killed,
at the pace he was going, when Miss Thornycroft laid hold of me,
shaking and crying, almost beside herself with terror. Then I found
that Miss Chester had fainted away, and was lying like one dead on the
frosty grass inside the Round Tower."

"What account did they give of this?"

"They gave none to me. Miss Chester, when she came to herself, was too
much shook to do it, and Miss Thornycroft was no better. I thought
they had been startled by the man; I never thought worse; and I did
not hear of the murder till the next morning. They told me not to say
anything about it at home, or it would be known they had been on the
plateau. So Miss Thornycroft ran back to the Red Court, and I went
home with Miss Chester."

"What else do you know about the matter?"

"I don't know any more myself. I have heard plenty."

The witness's "hearing" was dispensed with, and Captain Copp was
requested to stand up and answer a question. The captain's face, as he
listened to the foregoing evidence, was something ludicrous to look
upon.

"What account did Miss Chester and your servant give you of this
transaction?" demanded the coroner.

"What account did they give me?" spluttered Captain Copp, to whom the
question sounded as the most intense aggravation. "They gave me none.
This is the first time my ears have heard it. I only wish I had been
behind them with a cat-o'-nine-tails"--shaking his stick in a menacing
manner--"I'd have taught them to go gampusing on to the plateau at
night, after sweethearts! I'll send my niece back to whence she came;
her father was a clergyman, Mr. Coroner, a rector of a parish. And
that vile bumboat-woman, Sarah, with her apron over her head, shall
file out of my quarters this day; a she-pirate, a----"

The coroner interposed. But what with Captain Copp's irascibility and
his real ignorance of the whole transaction, nothing satisfactory
could be obtained from him, and the next witness called was Miss
Chester. A lady-like, interesting girl, thought those of the
spectators who had not previously seen her. She gave her evidence in a
sad, low tone, trembling the whole of the time with inward terror. To
a sensitive mind, as hers was, the very fact of having to give her
name as Anna Chester when it was Anna Thornycroft, would have been
enough alarm. But there was worse than that.

Her account of their going on to the plateau was the same as Sarah's.
It was "done in the impulse of the moment," to "frighten," or "speak
to," Robert Hunter, who was at its edge. (A groan from Captain Copp.)
That they halted for a moment at the Round Tower, and then found that
a man was following them on to the plateau, so they ran inside to hide
themselves.

"Who was that man?" asked the coroner.

"I don't know," was the faint reply. "I am nearsighted."

"Did you look at him?"

"We peeped out, round the wall. At least, Miss Thornycroft did. I only
looked for a moment."

"Proceed, witness, if you please."

"He had come quite close when I looked, and--then----"

"Then what?" said the coroner, looking searchingly at the witness, who
seemed unable to continue. "You must speak up, young lady."

"Then I saw him with a pistol--and he fired it off--and I was so
terrified that I fainted, and remembered no more. It all passed in a
moment."

"A good thing if he had shot off your two figureheads!" burst forth
Captain Copp, who was immediately silenced.

"Was he tall or short, this man?"

"Tall."

"Did you know him?" proceeded the coroner.

"Oh no, no," was Anna's answer, putting up her hands, as if to ward
off the approach of some terror, and she burst into a fit of
hysterical crying.

She was conducted from the room. Isaac Thornycroft advanced to give
her his arm, but she turned from him and took that of the doctor, who
was standing by. An impression was left on the mind of one or two of
the listeners that Miss Chester could have told more.

With the subsiding of the hubbub, the coroner resumed his business.

"Call Mary Anne Thornycroft."

Miss Thornycroft appeared, led in by her brother Richard. She wore a
rich black silk dress, a velvet mantle, and small bonnet with blue
flowers. Her face was of a deadly white, her lips were compressed; but
she delivered her evidence with composure (unlike Miss Chester), in a
low, deliberate, thoughtful tone. Her account of their going on to the
plateau, and running inside the Round Tower at the approach of some
man, who appeared to be following them, was the same as that given by
the last witness. The coroner inquired if she had recognised Robert
Hunter.

"Yes," was the reply. "I saw the outline of his face and figure
distinctly, and knew him. I recognised him first by the coat he had
on; it was quite conspicuous in the star-light. He was standing on the
brink, apparently looking out over the sea.

"That was before you saw the man who came running on to the plateau?"

"Yes."

"Who was that man?"

Mary Anne Thornycroft laid her hand upon her heart, as if pressing
down its emotion, before she answered.

"I cannot tell."

"Did you not know him?"

"No."

"Upon your oath?"

Miss Thornycroft again pressed her hands, both hands, upon her bosom,
and a convulsive twitching was perceptible in her throat; but she
replied, in a low tone, "Upon my oath."

"Then, he was a stranger?"

She bowed her rigid face in reply, for the white strained lips refused
to answer. Motions are no answers for coroners, and this one spoke
again.

"I ask you whether he was a stranger?"

"Yes."

"From what direction did he come?"

"I do not know. He was near the Round Tower before I saw him."

"You saw him draw the pistol and fire?"

"Yes."

"Now, young lady, I am going to ask you a painful question, but the
ends of justice demand that you should answer it. Was that man your
brother, Cyril Thornycroft?"

"No," she answered, in the sharp tone of earnest truth, "I swear it
was not--I swear it before Heaven. The man bore no resemblance
whatever to my brother Cyril; he was at least a head taller."

"Did he aim at Robert Hunter?"

"I cannot say. Robert Hunter was standing with his face towards us
then, and I saw him fall back, over the precipice."

"With a yell, did he not?"

"Yes, with a yell."

"What then?"

"I cannot tell what, I believe I shrieked--I cannot remember. I next
saw the man running away across the plateau."

"The witness Sarah Ford's evidence would seem to say that he lingered
a few moments after firing the pistol--before escaping," interposed
the coroner.

"It is possible. I was too terrified to retain a clear recollection of
what passed. I remember seeing him run away, and then Sarah Ford came
up."

"Should you recognise that man again?"

Miss Thornycroft hesitated. The room waited in breathless silence for
her answer. "I believe not," she said; "it was only starlight. I am
sure not."

At this moment, an inquisitive juryman spoke up. He wished to know how
it was that Miss Thornycroft and the other young lady had never
mentioned these facts until to-day, when they had been drawn from
them, as it were, by their oath.

"Because," Miss Thornycroft replied, with, if possible, a deeper shade
of paleness arising to her face--"because they did not care that their
foolish freak of going on to the plateau should come to the knowledge
of their friends."

"Glad they have some sense of shame left in them," cried Captain Copp.

The inquisitive juryman was not quite satisfied. He asked to have the
maid-servant recalled; and, when she appeared, put the same question
to her. "Why had _she_ not told of it?"

Why didn't she tell! was the independent retort. Did the gentlemen
think she was going to bleat out to the world what the young ladies
had seen, when they did not choose to tell of it themselves, and so
bring 'em here to be browbeat and questioned, as they had all been
this day? Not she. She was only sorry other folks had ferreted it out,
and told.

Very little evidence was forthcoming, none of consequence to the
general reader. Supervisor Kyne volunteered a statement about
smuggling, which nobody understood, and Justice Thornycroft at once
threw ridicule upon. The coroner cut it short, and proceeded to charge
the jury. Primarily remarking that, if the evidence was to be
believed, Cyril Thornycroft must be held exempt from the suspicion
whispered against him, he went on: If they thought a wicked,
deliberate act of murder had been committed, they were to bring in a
verdict to that effect; and if they thought it had not, they were not
to bring it in so. Grateful for this luminous advice, the jury
proceeded to deliberate--that is, they put their heads together, and
spoke for some minutes in an undertone; and then intimated that they
had agreed upon their verdict.

"Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown."




CHAPTER XII.
Robert Hunter's Funeral.


Filing out of the room in groups, came the crowd who had filled it.
The day had changed. The brightness of the morning was replaced by a
wintry afternoon of grey sky; the air blew keen; snow began to fall.
The eager spectators put up their umbrellas, if they happened to
possess any, and stood to talk in excited whispers.

Crossing to the waste land, the roundabout road she chose to take on
her way home, was Anna Chester. Sarah had gone striding up the nearest
way; Captain Copp had been laid hold of by Supervisor Kyne, whose
grievance on the score of the smugglers was sore; and Anna was alone.
Her veil drawn over her white face, her eyes wearing a depth of
trouble never yet seen in their sweetness, went she, looking neither
to the right nor left, until she was overtaken by Miss Thornycroft.

"Anna!"

"Mary Anne!"

For a full minute they stood, looking into each other's faces of fear
and pain. And then the latter spoke, a rising sob of emotion catching
her breath.

"Thank you for what you have done this day, Anna! I was in doubt
before; I did not know how much you had seen that night; whether you
had not mercifully been spared all by the fainting fit. But now that
you have given your evidence, I see how much I have to thank you for.
Thank you truly. We have both forsworn ourselves: you less than I; but
surely Heaven will forgive us in such a cause."

"Let us never speak of it again," murmured Anna. "I don't think I can
bear it."

"Just a word first--to set my mind at rest," returned Miss
Thornycroft, as she stood grasping Anna's hand in hers. "How much did
you see? Did you see the pistol fired?"

"I saw only that. It was at the moment I looked out round the wall.
The flash drove me back again. That and the cry that broke from Robert
Hunter: upon which I fainted for the first time in my life."

"And you--recognised him--him who fired the pistol?" whispered Miss
Thornycroft, glancing cautiously round as the words issued from her
bloodless lips.

"Yes, I fear so."

It was quite enough. Qualified though the avowal was, Mary Anne saw
that she could have spoken decisively. The two unhappy girls, burdened
with their miserable secret, looked into each other's faces that
sickness and terror had rendered white. Anna, as if in desperation to
have her fears confirmed where no confirmation was needed, broke the
silence.

"It--was--your--brother."

"Yes."

"Isaac."

Miss Thornycroft opened her lips to speak, and closed them again. She
turned her head away.

"You will not betray him--and us, Anna? You will ever be
cautious--silent?"

"I will be cautious and silent always; I will guard the secret
jealously."

A sharp pressure of the hand in ratification of the bargain, and they
parted, Anna going on her solitary way.

"Will I guard the secret! Heaven alone knows how much heavier lies the
obligation on me to do so than on others," wailed Anna. "May God help
me to bear it!"

Quick steps behind her, and she turned, for they had a ring that she
knew too well. Pressing onwards through the flakes of snow came Isaac
Thornycroft. Anna set off to run; it was in the lonely spot by the
churchyard.

"Anna! Anna! Don't you know me?"

Not a word of answer. She only ran the faster--as if she could hope to
outstep him! Isaac, with his long, fleet strides, overtook her with
ease, and laid his hand upon her shoulder.

Like a stag brought to bay, she turned upon him, with her
terror-stricken face, more ghastly, more trembling than it had yet
been; and by a dexterous movement freed herself.

"Why, Anna, what is the matter? Why do you run from me?"

"There's my uncle," she panted. "Don't speak to me--don't come after
me."

And sure enough, as Isaac turned, he distinguished Captain Copp at a
distance. Anna had set off to run again like a wild hare, and was
half-way across the heath. Isaac turned slowly back, passed the
captain with a nod, and went on, wondering. What had come to Anna? Why
did she fly from him?

He might have wondered still more had he been near her in her flight.
Groans of pain were breaking from her; soft low moans of anguish;
sighs, and horribly perplexing thoughts; driving her to a state of
utter despair.

For, according to the testimony of her own eyes that ill-fated night,
Anna, you see, believed the murderer to be her husband Miss
Thornycroft had now confirmed it. And, not to keep you in more
suspense than can be helped, we must return to that night for a few
brief moments.

When Richard Thornycroft darted into the subterranean passage with the
intention of warning his brother Isaac, before he reached its end the
question naturally occurred to him, _Why_ stop the boats, now Hunter
is off? and he turned back again. So much has been already said. But
half-way down the passage he again vacillated--a most uncommon thing
in Richard Thornycroft, but the episode with Hunter had well-nigh
scared his senses away. Turning about again, he retraced his steps and
called to Isaac.

A private conference ensued. Richard told all without reserve, down to
the point where he had watched Hunter away, under the surveillance of
Cyril. "Will it be better to stop the boats or not?" he asked.

"There is not the slightest cause for stopping them, that I see,"
returned Isaac, who had listened attentively. "Certainly not. Hunter
is gone; and if he were not, I do not think, by what you say, that he
would attempt to interfere further; he'd rather turn his back a mile
the other way."

"Let them come on then," decided Richard.

"They are already, I expect, putting off from the ship."

Isaac Thornycroft remained at his work; Richard went back again up the
passage. Not quickly; some latent doubt, whence arising he could not
see or trace, lingered on his mind still--his better angel perhaps
urging him from the road he was going. Certain it was: he remembered
it afterwards even more vividly than he felt it then: that a strong
inclination lay upon him to stop the work for that night. But it
appeared not to hold reason, and was disregarded.

He emerged from the subterranean passage, lightly shut the
trap-door--which could be opened from the inside at will, when not
fastened down--and took his way to the plateau to watch against
intruders. This would bring it to about the time that the two young
ladies had gone there, and Sarah, her apron over her head, had taken
her place on the low red stone. In her evidence the woman had said it
might be a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes since she met Robert
Hunter starting on his journey; it had taken Richard about that time
to do since what he had done; and it might have taken Robert Hunter
about the same space (or rather less) to walk quickly to the wherry,
_and come back again_. And come back again! Richard Thornycroft could
have staked his life, had the question occurred to him, that Hunter
would not come back: he never supposed any living man, calling himself
a gentleman, could be guilty of so great treachery. But the doubt
never presented itself to him for a moment.

What then was his astonishment, as he ran swiftly and stealthily
(escaping the sight of Sarah Ford, owing, no doubt, to her crouching
posture on the stone, and the black apron on her head) up the plateau,
to see Robert Hunter? He was at its edge, at the corner farthest from
the village; was looking out steadily over the sea, as if watching for
the boats and their prey. Richard verily thought he must be in a
dream: he stood still and strained his eyes, wondering if they
deceived him; and then as ugly a word broke from him as ever escaped
the lips of man.

Thunderstruck with indignation, with dismay, half mad at the fellow's
despicable conduct, believing that if any in the world ever merited
shooting, he did; nay, believing that the fool must court death to be
there after his, Richard's, warning promise; overpowered with fury,
with passion, Richard Thornycroft stood in the shade of the Round
Tower, his eyes glaring, his white teeth showing themselves from
between the drawn lips. At that same moment Robert Hunter, after
stooping to look over the precipice, turned round; the ugly fur on the
breast of his coat very conspicuous. May Richard Thornycroft be
forgiven! With a second hissing oath, he drew the pistol from his
breast-pocket, pointed it with his unerring hand, and fired; and the
ill-fated man fell over the cliff with a yelling cry. Another shriek,
more shrill, arose at Richard's elbow from the shade of the Round
Tower.

"So ye cursed sea-bird," he muttered. "_He_ has got his deserts. I
would be served so myself, if I could thus have turned traitor!"

But what was it seized Richard's arm? Not a seabird. It was his sister
Mary Anne. "_You_ here!" he cried, with increased passion. "What the
fury!--have you all turned mad to-night?"

"You have murdered him!" she cried, in a dread whisper--for how could
she know that Anna Chester had fallen senseless and could not hear
her?--"you have murdered Robert Hunter!"

"I have," he answered. "He is dead, and more than dead. If the shot
did not take effect, the fall would kill him."

"Oh, Richard, say it was an accident!" she moaned, very nearly bereft
of reason in her shock of horror. "What madness came over you?"

"He earned it of his own accord; earned it deliberately. I held my
pistol to his head before, this night, and I spared him. I had him on
his knees to me, and he took an oath to be away from this place
instantly, and to be silent. I told him if he broke it, if he lingered
here but for a moment, I would put the bullet into him. I saw him off;
I send Cyril with him to speed him on his road; and--see!--the fool
came back again. I was right to do it."

"I will denounce you!" she fiercely uttered, anger getting the better
of other feelings. "Ay, though you are my brother, Richard
Thornycroft! I will raise the hue and cry upon you."

"You had better think twice of that," he answered, shaking her arm in
his passion. "If you do, you must raise it against your father and
your father's house!"

"What do you mean?" she asked, quailing, for there was a savage
earnestness in his words which told of startling truth.

"Girl! see you no mystery? can't you fathom it? You would have aided
Hunter in discovering the smugglers: see you not that _we_ are the
smugglers? We are running a cargo now--now"--and his voice rose to a
hoarse shriek as he pointed to the Half-moon, "and he would have
turned Judas to us! He was on the watch there, on the plateau's edge,
doing traitor's work for Kyne."

"He did not know it was you he would have denounced," she faintly
urged, gathering in the sense of his revelation to her sinking heart.

"He did know it. The knowledge came to him tonight. He was abject
enough before me, the coward, and swore he would be silent, and be
gone from hence there and then. But his traitor's nature prevailed,
and he has got his deserts. Now go and raise the hue and cry upon us!
Bring your father to a felon's bar."

Mary Anne Thornycroft, with a despairing cry, sank down on the grass
at her brother's feet. He was about to raise her, rudely enough it
must be confessed, rather than tenderly, when his eye caught the form
of some one advancing; he darted off at right angles across the
plateau, and descended recklessly the dangerous path.

The intruder was Sarah. Miss Thornycroft, passing off her own emotion
as the effect of fear at the shot, though scarcely knowing how she
contrived not to betray herself, remembered Anna. She lay within the
walls in a fainting-fit. Only as they went in was consciousness
beginning to return to her. It must be mentioned that at this stage
Sarah did not know any one had been killed.

"Who was the man?" asked Sarah of Miss Thornycroft.

"Did you see him?" was the only answer.

"Not to know him, miss; only at a distance. A regular fool he must be
to fire off guns at night, to frighten folks! Was it a stranger?"

"Yes." Mary Anne wiped the dew from her cold brow as she told the lie.

They took their departure, Sarah promising not to say they had been on
the plateau--to hold her tongue, in short, as to the events of the
night, shot and all. But a chance passer-by who had heard the report,
saw them descend. It might have been through him the news got wind.

Mary Anne Thornycroft went in. Sounds of laughter and glee proceeded
from the dining-room as she passed it, and she dragged her shaking
limbs upstairs to her chamber, and shut herself in with her dreadful
secret. Anna Chester with _her_ secret turned to the heath, even one
more dreadful; for in the momentary glimpse she caught of the man who
drew the pistol, as he stood partly with his back to her, she had
recognised, as she fully believed, her husband Isaac. Had the
impression wanted confirmation in her mind--which it did not--the
tacit admission of his sister, now alluded to, supplied it. Miss
Thornycroft had opened her lips to correct her, "not Isaac, but
Richard;" and closed them again without saying it. Thought is quick;
and a dim idea flew through her brain, that to divert suspicion from
Richard might add to his safety. It was not _her_ place to denounce
him; nay, her duty lay in screening him. Terribly though she detested
and deplored the crime, she was still his sister.

And the poor dead body had lain unseen where it fell, in the remote
corner of the plateau. The smugglers ran their cargo, passing within a
few yards of the dark angle where it lay, and never saw it.

The funeral took place on the Friday, and Robert Hunter was buried
within sight of the place from whence he had been shot down. Any one
standing on that ill-fated spot could see the grave in the churchyard
corner, close by the tomb of the late Mrs. Thornycroft.

None of his friends had arrived to claim him. It would have been
remarkable, perhaps, if they had, since they had not been written to.
Of male relatives he had none living, so far as was believed. His
sister Susan was in a remote district of Yorkshire, and it was a
positive fact that her address was unknown to both Anna Chester and
Miss Thornycroft. Of course, the Miss Jupps could have supplied it on
application, but nobody did apply. His half-sister, Mrs. Chester, was
also uncertain in her domicile, here to-day, there to-morrow, and Anna
had not heard from her for some months. The old saying that "Where
there's a will there's a way," might have been exemplified, no doubt,
in this case; but here there was no _will_. To all at Coastdown
interested in the unfortunate matter, it had been a blessed relief
could they have heard that Robert Hunter would lie in his quiet grave
unclaimed for ever, his miserable end not inquired into. Richard
Thornycroft had only too good personal cause to hope this, his sister
also for his sake; and Mr. Thornycroft, acting on the caution Richard
gave him as to the desirability of keeping other things quiet that
were done on that eventful night, tacitly acquiesced in the silence.
And Anna Chester--the only one besides who could be supposed to hold
interest in the deceased--shuddered at the bare idea of writing to
make it known; rather would she have cut off her right hand.

"They will be coming down fast enough with their inquiries from his
office in London, when they find he does not return," spoke Richard
gloomily the evening previous to the funeral. "No need to send them
word before that time."

It was a snowy day. Mary Anne Thornycroft stood at the corridor
window, from which a view of the path crossing from the village to the
churchyard, could be obtained. Only for a few yards of it; but she
watched carefully, and saw the funeral go winding past. The sky was
clear at the moment; the snow had ceased; but the whole landscape, far
and near, presented a sheet of white, contrasting strangely with the
sombre black of the procession. Such a thing as a hearse was not known
in Coastdown, and the body was carried by eight bearers. The
clergyman, Mr. Southall, walked first, in his surplice--it was the
custom of the place--having gone down to the Mermaid with the rest.
Following it were Justice Thornycroft and his son Isaac, Captain Copp
and Mr. Kyne, who acted as mourners; and a number of spectators
brought up the rear. Richard had gone out to a distance that day; he
had business, he said. Cyril had not been heard of. Mr. Thornycroft
bore the expenses of the funeral. Some money had been found in the
pockets of the deceased, a sovereign in gold and some silver; nothing
else except a white handkerchief.

Mary Anne strained her eyes, blinded by their tears, upon the short
line, as its features came into view one by one, more distinctly than
could have happened at any time but this of snow. All she had cared
for in life was being carried past there; henceforth the world would
be a miserable blank. Dead! Killed! Murdered!--murdered by her
brother, Richard Thornycroft! Had it been done by anybody not
connected with her by blood, some satisfaction might have been derived
by bringing the crime home to its perpetrator. Had it been brought
home to Richard--and of course she could not move to bring it--he
would have battled it out, persisting he was justified. He called it
justifiable homicide; she called it murder.

The distant line of black has passed now, and colours follow: men and
women, boys and girls; displaying, if not all the tints of the
rainbow, the shades and hues, dirt included, that prevail in the
every-day attire of the great unwashed. Mary Anne glided into her
room, and sank down on her knees in the darkest corner.

Some time after, when she thought they might be coming home, for the
mourners would return to the Red Court, not the Mermaid, she came out
again, her eyes swollen, and entered her step-mother's room. My lady,
looking worse and worse, every day bringing her _palpably_ nearer the
grave, sat with her prayer-book in her hand She had been reading the
burial service. Ah, how changed she was; how changed in spirit!

"I suppose it is over," she said, in a subdued tone, as she laid the
book down.

"Yes; by this time."

"May God rest his soul!" she breathed, to herself rather than to her
companion.

Mary Anne covered her face with her hand, and for some moments there
was perfect silence.

"I shall be going hence to-morrow, as you know," resumed Lady Ellis,
"never to return, never perhaps to hold further communication with the
Red Court Farm. I would ask you one thing first, Mary Anne, or the
doubt and trouble will follow me: perhaps mix itself up with my
thoughts in dying. What of Cyril?"

"Of Cyril?" returned Miss Thornycroft, lifting her face, rather in
surprise. "We have not heard from him."

"Of course I know that. What I wish to ask is--what are the
apprehensions?"

"There are none. Papa and my brothers seem perfectly at their ease in
regard to him."

"Then whence arises this great weight of care, of tribulation, that
lies on you?--that I can see lies on you, Mary Anne?"

"It is not on Cyril's account. The events of the last few days have
frightened me," she hastened to add. "They have startled others as
well as me."

"Ah, yes; true. And it seems to me so sad that you did not know the
man who fired the pistol," continued Lady Ellis, who had no suspicion
that Miss Thornycroft had not told the whole truth. "But to return to
Cyril. If it be as you say, that they are easy about him, why, they
must know something that I and others do not. I have asked your papa,
but he only puts me off. Mary Anne, you might tell _me_."

Mary Anne made no immediate reply. She was considering what to do.

"The thought of Cyril is troubling me," resumed Lady Ellis. "As I lay
awake last night, I thought _how much_ I owed him. Were he my own son,
his welfare could not be dearer to me than it is. Surely, Mary Anne,
whatever you may know of him, I may share it. The secret--if it be a
secret--will be sacred with me."

"Yes, I am sure it will," spoke Mary Anne impulsively. "Not that it is
any particular secret," she added, with hesitation, framing the
communication cautiously; "but still, papa has reasons for not wishing
it to be known. He thinks Cyril has gone to Holland."

"To Holland?"

"Yes; we have friends there. And a ship was off lying o here on
Sunday night with other friends on board. Some of them, subsequent
to the--the accident--came on shore in a little boat, and papa and
Richard feel quite certain that Cyril went on board with them when
they returned. But there are reasons why this must not be told to the
public."

"What a relief!" cried the invalid. "My dear, it is safe with me. Dear
Cyril! he will live to fulfil God's mission yet in the world. I shall
not see him for a last farewell here, but we shall say it in heaven.
Not a _farewell_ there--a happy greeting."

A sort of muffled sound downstairs, and Mary Anne quitted the room to
look. Yes, they were coming in in their black cloaks and hatbands,
having left Robert Hunter in the grave in St. Peter's churchyard.

For all that could be seen at present he seemed likely to lie there at
rest, undisturbed, uninquired after. And the name of his slayer with
him.




CHAPTER XIII.
Curious Rumours.


April. And a fine spring evening.

The weeks have gone on since that miserable January time, bringing but
little change to Coastdown or to those in it. Robert Hunter rested in
his grave, uninquired for--though as to the word "rested" more
hereafter--and Cyril Thornycroft had never returned. Lady Ellis had
died in Cheltenham only a week after she went back to it.

That Cyril's remaining away so long and his not writing was singular
in the extreme, no one doubted. Mr. Thornycroft grew uneasy, saying
over and over again that some accident must have happened to him.
Richard, however, had his private theory on the point, which he did
not tell to the world. He believed now that Cyril and Hunter had
returned that night together; that Cyril had witnessed the deliberate
shot, had put off to the ship, and in his condemnation of the act
would not come home to the Red Court so long as he, Richard, was in
it.

But Richard could not tell this to his father, and Mr. Thornycroft one
morning suddenly ordered his son Isaac abroad--to France, to Holland,
to Flanders--to every place and town, in fact, where there was the
least probability of Cyril's being found. The illicit business they
had been engaged in caused them to have relations with several places
on the Continent, and Cyril might be at any one of them. Isaac had but
now returned--returned as he went, neither seeing nor hearing aught of
Cyril. It was beginning to be more than singular. Surely if Cyril were
within postal bounds of communication with England, he would write!

The supposition, held from the first that he had gone off in the
smuggling boats to the ship that night, and sailed with her on her
homeward voyage, was far more probable than it might seem to
strangers. Richard and Isaac had each done the same more than once;
as, in his younger days had Mr. Thornycroft, thereby causing no end of
alarm; to his wife. Cyril, it is true, was quite different in
disposition, not at all given to wild rovings; but they had assumed
the fact, and been easy. Richard, unwillingly, but with a view to ease
her suspense, imparted the theory he had recently adopted to his
sister; and she thought he might be right. As Mary Anne observed to
her own heart, it was a miserable business altogether, looked at from
any point.

No direct confidence had been reposed in Isaac. Richard shrank from
it. Isaac had many estimable qualities, although he helped to cheat
Her Majesty's revenue, and thought it glorious fun. But he could not
avoid entertaining suspicions of his brother, and one day he asked a
question. "Never mind," shortly replied Richard; "Hunter got his
deserts." It was no direct avowal, but Isaac drew his own conclusions,
and was awfully shocked. He was as different from Richard in mind, in
disposition, in the view he took of things in general, as light is
from dark. The blow to Isaac was dreadful. He could not, so to say,
lift up his head from it; it lay on him like an incubus. _Now_, the
coldness with which Anna had ever since treated him was explained,
satisfactorily enough to his own mind. As a murderer's brother, her
avoidance of him was only natural. No doubt she was overwhelmed with
horror at being tied to him. If he could but have divined that she
suspected _him!_ But they were all going in for mistakes; Isaac
amongst the rest.

As if the real sorrow, the never-ceasing apprehension under which some
of them lived, were not enough to bear, rumours were about to arise of
an unreal one.

On this evening, in early April, Miss Thornycroft was alone. As she
paced her parlour, in the stately mourning robes of black silk and
crape, ostensibly worn for her stepmother, the blight that had fallen
on her spirit and her heart might be traced in her countenance. The
untimely and dreadful fate of Robert Hunter, to whom she had been so
passionately attached, was ever present to her; the false part she had
played at the inquest reddened her brow with shame; the guilt of her
brother Richard haunted her dreams. She would start up in fright from
sleep, seeing the officers of justice coming to apprehend him; she
would fancy sometimes she saw her _father_ taken, preparatory to the
illicit practices he had carried on being investigated before a
criminal tribunal. Mingling with this--worse, if possible, than the
rest--was the keenest weight of self-reproach. She could not hide from
herself, and no longer tried to do it, that her own deliberate
disobedience had brought it all about--all, all! But for flying in the
face of her father's express commands, in not stopping the visit of
Robert Hunter, he had been living now, and Richard's hand guiltless.

All this was telling upon Mary Anne Thornycroft. You would scarcely
know her, pacing the lonely drawing-room, pale and sad, for the
blooming, high-spirited, haughty girl of two months before. Her father
and Richard had gone to London on business, Isaac was out, she knew
not where, and she was alone. Her thoughts were dwelling on that fatal
night--when were they ever absent from it?--and were becoming, as they
sometimes did, unbearable. A nervous feeling came creeping over her;
it had done so at times of late, fearless though she was by nature: a
horror of being alone; a dread of her own lonely self; of the lonely
room and its two candles; an imperative demand for companionship. She
opened the door, and glided across the hall and lighted passages to
the kitchen, framing an excuse as she went.

"Sinnett, will you--where's Sinnett?"

The maids, three of whom were present, stood up at her entrance. They
had been seated at the table making household linen.

"Sinnett is upstairs, miss. Shall I call her?"

"No; she will be down directly, I dare say. I'll wait."

At that moment a sort of wild noise, half shriek, half howl,
long-continued and ever-recurring, arose from without--at a distance
as yet. Mary Anne Thornycroft turned her ear to listen, her face
blanching with dread fear; the least thing was sufficient to excite
fear now.

The sounds approached nearer: they seemed to come from one in the very
extremity of terror, and, just then Sinnett entered the kitchen.
Perhaps it has not been forgotten that the windows, of modern date,
looked on the side walk, and thence towards the church and village.
The shutters were not yet closed, the blinds not drawn down. In
another instant, as the frightened women stood together in a group,
one window was flung up, and a form propelled itself in, smashing a
pane of glass. It proved to be Joe, the carter's boy; a sensitive,
delicate lad, who had recently lost his mother, and was a favourite at
the Red Court Farm. He lay for a moment amidst the shivers of glass,
then rose up and clasped tight hold of Sinnett, his white face and
shivering frame betokening some extraordinary cause of terror.

They put him in a chair, and held him there, he clinging to them. Miss
Thornycroft authoritatively stopped all questions until he should be
calmer. Sinnett brought him some wine, and the boy tried to sip it;
but he could not keep his teeth still, and _he bit a piece out of the
glass_. He looked over his shoulder at the window perpetually in
ghastly fear, so one of the servants closed and barred the shutters.
By degrees, he brought out that he had "seen a ghost."

Ghosts were rather favourite appendages to Coastdown, as we have read.
They were not less implicitly believed in by the lower classes (not to
bring in others) than they used to be, so the maids screamed and drew
nearer Joe. This ghost, however, was not the old ghost of the plateau;
as the boy is explaining, sobbing between whiles; but--Robert
Hunter's.

"Nonsense!" reproved Sinnett. "Don't you be a coward, Joe, but just
speak up and tell your tale sensibly. Come!"

"I went for the newspaper to Captain Copp's, as sent," answered the
boy, doing his best to obey. "Mrs. Copp couldn't find it, and thought
the captain had took it in his pocket to the Mermaid. Coming back here
to say so, I see a figure in the churchyard hiding, like, behind a
tombstone. I thought it were old Parkes, a-taking the short cut over
the graves to his home, and I stood and looked at him. Then, as he
rose himself a bit higher, I see him out and out. It were Mr. Hunter,
with his own face and his own coat on--that black and white thing."

"His own coat!"

"It were," groaned the lad. "I never were thinking of anybody but
Parkes, but when I once saw the coat and the face, I see it were Mr.
Hunter."

Joe's hearers did not know what to make of this. Miss Thornycroft
privately thought she must fall in a fit, too, she felt so sick and
ill.

"Was the face--" began one of the maids, and stopped. Remembering Miss
Thornycroft's presence, she substituted another word for the one she
had been about to speak. "Was the face _red?_"

"No. White. It--"

At this juncture there came a sharp knock at the window, as if the
ghost were knocking to come in. The boy howled, the women shrieked;
and the ghost knocked again.

"Who's there?" called out Sinnett through the shutters.

"It's me," answered a voice, which they recognised for that of Sarah
Ford. "Is the kitchen a-fire?"

Sinnett went to the entrance-door and called to her to come in. On
occasions, when pressed for time, Sarah would give her messages at the
kitchen-window, to save going round. She had brought the newspaper,
one lent by the Red Court to Captain Copp: Mrs. Copp had found it
after Joe's departure.

"He have seen a ghost," lucidly explained one of the maids, pointing
to Joe.

"Oh," said Sarah, who had a supreme contempt for such things,
regarding them as vanities, akin to hysterics and smelling salts.

"I see it in the churchyard, close again his own grave," said the boy,
looking helplessly at Sarah.

"See a old cow," responded she, emphatically. "That's more likely.
They strays in sometimes."

"It were Mr. Hunter's ghost," persisted Joe. "He wore that there fur
coat, and he stared at me like anything. I see his eyes a-glaring."

"The boy has been dreaming," cried Sarah, pityingly, as she turned to
Sinnett. "I should give him a good dose of Epsom salts."

Which prescription Joe by no means approved of. However, Sarah could
not stay to see it enforced; and we must go out with her.

Her master had come in when she reached home. It was supper time, and
she began to lay the cloth. Old Mrs. Copp was there: she had arrived
the previous day (after spending the winter in London) on another long
visit. Peering through her tortoiseshell spectacles at Sarah, she told
her in her decisive way that she had been twice as long taking home
the newspaper as she need have been.

"I know that," answered Sarah, with composure. "A fine commotion I
found the Red Court in: the maids screeching fit to deafen you, and
young Joe in convulsions. I thought the kitchen-chimbly must be
a-fire, and they were trying whether noise would put it out."

The captain looked up at this. He was in an easy-chair at the corner
of the hearth-rug, a glass of rum-and-water on a small stand at his
elbow: old Mrs. Copp sat in front of the fire, her feet on the fender;
Amy was putting things to rights on a side-table near the sofa, and
Anna Chester sat back on a low stool in the shade on the other side of
the fire-place, a book on her knee, which she was making believe to
read.

"Was the chimney on fire?" snapped Mrs. Copp.

"Just as much as this is," answered Sarah, making a rattle with the
knives and forks. "Joe was telling them he had just seen Robert
Hunter's ghost. They screeched at that."

The captain burst into a laugh: he had no more faith in ghosts than
Sarah had. Sea-serpents and mermaids were enough marvel for him. Anna
glanced up with a perceptible shudder.

"By the way," said Mrs. Copp, taking her feet off the fender and
turning round to speak, "I should like to come to the bottom of that
extraordinary business. You slipped out of my questioning this
morning, Anna; I hardly knew how. Who _was_ the man that fired the
pistol on the plateau? As to saying you did not see him properly, you
may as well tell it to the moon. My belief is you are screening him,"
concluded shrewd Mrs. Copp, watching the poor girl's gradually
whitening face.

"If I thought that; if I thought she could screen him, I'd--I'd--send
her back to Miss Jupp's," roared Captain Copp, who was still very sore
in regard to the part his women-kind had played in the transaction.
"Screen a land murderer!"

Anna burst out crying.

"My impression is, that it was Cyril Thornycroft," resumed Mrs. Copp.
"If he had not got something bad on his conscience why should he run
away, and keep away."

Sarah took up the word, putting a tray of tumblers down to do it. "He
may have his reasons for staying away, and nobody but himself know
anything about them. But truth's truth, all the world over, and I'll
stand to it. I don't care whether it was the King of England, or
whether it was old Nick--it was not Cyril Thornycroft."

"She is right," nodded the captain. "He'd be the least likely in all
Coastdown to rush on to the plateau at night, armed like a pirate, and
shoot a man. It was no more Cyril Thornycroft did that than it was me,
mother."

"But, Sarah, what about poor Joe and the ghost?" interposed her
mistress gently, upon whom the tale had made an unpleasant impression.

"Some delusion of his, ma'am: as stands to reason. I don't believe the
boy has been right since his mother died; he has had nothing but a
down, scared look about him. He is just the one to see a ghost, he
is."

"Where did he see it?"

"In the churchyard, _he_ says, with its fur coat on."

"Fur coat!" broke in Captain Copp, his face aglow with merriment. "He
meant a white sheet."

"Ah, he made a mistake there," said Sarah. And it was really something
laughable to see how she as well as her master (mocking sceptics!)
enjoyed the ghost in their grim way. In the midst of it, who should
come in but Isaac Thornycroft.

He had not been a frequent visitor of late, rather to the regret of
the hospitable captain. Set at rest on the score of any surreptitious
liking for him on Anna's part--for it was impossible not to note her
continual avoidance of him now--the captain would have welcomed him
always in his pride and pleasure. Isaac Thornycroft was a vast
favourite of his, and this was only the second visit he had paid since
his return from abroad. Isaac looked as if he would like to join in
the merriment, utterly unconscious what the cause might be.

"It's the best joke I've heard this many a day," explained the
captain. "Your boy up at the Red Court--that Joe."

"Yes," said Isaac, the corners of his mouth relaxing in sympathy with
the sailor's. "Well?"

"He went flying through the air, bellowing enough to arouse the
neighbourhood, and tumbled in at your kitchen window in a fit, saying
he had seen Robert Hunter's ghost."

"Breaking the glass and setting the maids a-screeching like mad," put
in Sarah. "He saw it in the churchyard, he says, in its fur coat."

A troubled expression passed across Isaac's countenance. Captain Copp,
attempting to drink some rum-and-water while he laughed, began to
choke.

"What absurd story can they be getting up?" cried Isaac, sternly.
"Some rumour of this sort--that Hunter had been seen in the
churchyard--was abroad yesterday."

"You never saw a boy in such a state of fright, sir," observed Sarah.
"Whether he saw anything or nothing, he'll not get over it this many a
week."

"Saw anything or nothing! What d'ye mean?" fiercely demanded Captain
Copp, suspending his laughter for the moment. "What d'ye suppose he
saw?"

"Not a ghost," independently retorted Sarah. "I'm not such a
simpleton. But some ill-disposed fellow may have dressed himself up to
frighten people."

"If so, he shall get his punishment," spoke Isaac Thornycroft, with
the imperative authority of a magistrate's son.

Captain Copp broke into laughter still. He could not forget the joke;
but somehow all inclination for merriment seemed to have gone out of
Isaac. He sat silent and abstracted for a few minutes longer, and then
took his leave, declining to partake of supper.

"Where's Miss Anna gone?" cried the Captain to Sarah, suddenly missing
her. "Tell her we are waiting."

Isaac lingered unseen in the little hall until she appeared, and took
her hand in silence.

"Anna, this--"

But she contrived to twist it from him and turned to the parlour. He
drew her forcibly to him, speaking in a whisper.

"Are you going to visit upon me for ever the work of that miserable
night?"

"Hush! they will hear you."

But there was no other answer. Her face grew white, her lips dry and
trembling.

"Don't you know that you are my wife?"

"Oh, heaven, yes! I would rather have died. I would die now to undo
that night's work."

She seemed bewildered, as if unconscious of her words; but there was
always the struggle to get from him. Had he been an ogre who might eat
her, she could not have evinced more terror. Sarah opened the kitchen
door, and Anna took the opportunity to escape. Isaac looked after her.
If ever misery, horror, despair, were depicted on a human countenance,
they were on Anna's.

"I did not think she was one to take it up like this," he said, as he
let himself out. And in the tone of his voice, despairing as her face,
there was a perfectly hopeless sound, as if he felt that he could not
combat fate.

By the next day the story of the ghost, singular to say, had spread
all over Coastdown; singular, because the report did not come from
Joe, or from any of Joe's hearers. It appeared that a young fellow of
the name of Bartlet, a carpenter's apprentice, in passing the
churchyard soon after poor Joe must have passed it, saw the same
figure, which he protested--and went straight to the Mermaid and
protested--was that of Mr. Hunter. He was a daring lad of sixteen, as
hardy as Joe was timid. The company at the Mermaid accused him of
having got frightened and fancied it; he answered that he feared
"neither ghost nor devil," and persisted in his story with so much
cool equanimity, that his adversaries were staggered.

"It is well known that the ghosts of murdered people have been seen to
walk," decided Mrs. Pettipher, the landlady, "and that of poor Mr.
Hunter may be there. But as to the fur-coat, that can't be. It must
have been a optical delusion of yours, Tom Bartlet. The coat's here;
we have held possession of it since the inquest; for the ghost to have
it on in the churchyard is a moral impossibility."

"I'll never speak again if it hadn't got the coat upon it," loudly
persisted young Bartlet. "But for that white coat, staring out in the
moonlight, I might never have turned my head to the churchyard."

"Had it got that there black fur down it, Tom?" demanded a gentleman,
taking his long pipe from his mouth to speak.

"In course it had. I tell ye it was _the coat_, talk as you will."

This was the tale that spread in Coastdown. When the additional
testimony of Joe and the maids at the Red Court Farm came to be added
to it, something like fear took possession of three-parts of the
community. The ghost of the plateau, so long believed in, was more a
tradition than a ghost, after all; latterly, at any rate, nobody had
been frightened by it; but this spirit haunting the churchyard was
real--at least in one sense of the word. An uncomfortable feeling set
in. And when in the course of a day or two other witnesses saw it, or
professed to see it, people began to object to go abroad after
nightfall in the direction of the churchyard. A young man in the
telegraph office at Jutpoint brought over a message for Isaac
Thornycroft. He was a stranger to Coastdown, and had to inquire his
way to the Red Court Farm: misunderstanding the direction, he took at
first the wrong turning, which brought him to the churchyard.
Afterwards, the despatch at length delivered, he turned into the
Mermaid for a glass of ale, saying incidentally, not in any fear, he
had seen "sum'at" in the churchyard, a queer fellow that seemed to be
dodging about behind the upright gravestones. He had never seen or
heard of Robert Hunter; he knew nothing of the report of the ghost;
but his description of the "sum'at" tallied so exactly with the
appearance expected, and especially with the remarkable coat, that
no doubt remained. Upon which some ten spirits, well warmed with
brandy-and-water, started off arm-in-arm to the churchyard, there and
then--and saw nothing for their pains but the tombstones. Captain Copp
heard of the expedition, and went into a storm of indignation at grown
men showing themselves to be so credulous.

"Go out to a churchyard to look for a ghost! Serve 'em right to put
'em into irons till their senses come to 'em!"

Thus another day or two passed on, Mr. Thornycroft and Richard being
still absent from home. Fears were magnified; fermentation increased;
for, according to popular report, the spirit of Robert Hunter appeared
nightly in St Peter's churchyard.




CHAPTER XIV.
Robert Hunter's Ghost.


It was a gusty night; the wind violently high even for the seaside;
and Miss Thornycroft sat over the fire in her own sitting-room,
listening to it as it whirled round the house and went booming away
over the waste of waters.

Anna Chester was with her. Anna had shunned the Red Court of late; but
she could not always refuse Miss Thornycroft's invitations without
attracting notice; and she had heard that Isaac was to be away from
home that day.

They had spent the hours unhappily. Heavy at heart, pale in
countenance, subdued in spirit, it seemed to each that nothing in the
world could bring pleasure again. Anna was altered just as much as
Miss Thornycroft; worn, thin, haggard-eyed. Captain Copp's wife,
seeing the change in Anna, and knowing nothing of the real cause, set
it down to one that must inevitably bring discovery of the marriage in
its train, and was fretting herself into fiddle-strings. Dinner was
over; tea was taken; the evening went on. Quite unexpectedly Mr.
Thornycroft and his eldest son arrived; Anna saw also, to her dismay,
that Isaac was in; but none of them approached the sitting-room. Hyde,
coming in later to replenish the fire, said the justice was not very
well, and had retired to rest; Mr. Richard and Mr. Isaac had gone out.
And the two girls sat on together, almost hearing the beating of each
other's hearts.

"I wonder if the ghost is abroad this windy night!" exclaimed Anna, as
a wild gust dashed against the windows and shook the frames.

"Don't joke about that, Anna," said Miss Thornycroft, sharply.

Anna looked round in surprise: nothing had been further from her
thoughts than to joke; and indeed she did not know why she said it.
"Of course the report is a very foolish one," she resumed "I cannot
think how any people can profess to believe it."

"Isaac saw it last night," said Mary Anne, quietly.

"Nonsense!" cried Anna.

"Ah! so I have answered when others said they saw it. But Isaac is
cool and practical; entirely without superstition; the very last man I
know, save perhaps Richard, to be led away by fear or fancy. He was
passing the churchyard when he saw--if not Robert Hunter, some one
dressed up to personate him; but the features were Robert Hunter's
features, Isaac says; they were for a moment as distinct as ever he
had seen them in life."

"Did he tell you this?"

"Yes."

"Could he have been deceived by his imagination?"

"I think not. When a cool, collected man, like my brother Isaac,
dispassionately asserts such a thing, in addition to the terrified
assertions of others, I at least believe that there must be some
dreadful mystery abroad, supernatural or otherwise."

"A mystery?"

"Yes, a mystery. Putting aside all questions of the figure, how is it
that the _coat_ can appear in the churchyard, when it remains all the
while in safe custody at the Mermaid?"

Anna sat down, overwhelmed with the confusion of ideas that presented
themselves. The chief one that struggled upwards was--how should she
ever have courage to pass the churchyard that night?

"Mary Anne! why did he not speak to it?"

"Because some people came up at the time, and prevented it. When he
looked again the figure was gone."

Precisely so. All this, just as Mary Anne described it, had happened
to Isaac Thornycroft on the previous night. Robert Hunter, the hat
drawn low on his pale face, the unmistakeable coat buttoned round him,
had stood there in the churchyard, looking just as he had looked in
life. To say that Isaac was not staggered would be wrong--he was--but
he recovered himself almost instantly, and was about to call out to
the figure, when Mr. Kyne came past with young Connaught, and stopped
him. Isaac and his family had to guard against certain discoveries
yet; and in the presence of the superintendent of the coastguard,
whose suspicions were already too rife, he did not choose to proceed
to investigation.

Silence supervened. The young ladies sat on over the fire, each
occupied with her sad and secret thoughts. The time-piece struck
half-past eight.

"What can have become of Sarah?" exclaimed Anna. "Mrs. Copp was not
well, and my Aunt Amy said she should send for me early."

Scarcely had the words left her lips, when that respectable personage
entered head foremost. Giving the door a bang, she sank into an
arm-chair. Anna stood up in wonder; Miss Thornycroft looked round.

"You may well stare, young ladies, but I can't stand upon no forms nor
ceremonies just now. I don't know whether my senses is here or yonder,
and I made bold to come in at the hall door, as being the nearest, and
make straight for here. There's the ghost at this blessed moment in
the churchyard."

Anna, with a faint cry, drew near to Miss Thornycroft, and touched her
for company. The latter spoke.

"Your fancy must have deceived you, Sarah."

"If anything has deceived me, it's my eyes," returned Sarah, really
too much put out to stand on any sort of ceremony whether in speech or
action--"which is what they never did yet, Miss Thornycroft. When it
struck eight my mistress told me to go for Miss Chester. I thought I'd
finish my ironing first, which took me another quarter of an hour; and
then I put my blanket and things away to come. Just as I was opening
the house door I heard the master's voice singing out for me, and went
into the parlour. 'Is it coals, sir?' I asked. 'No, it's not coals,'
says he; and I saw by his mouth he was after some nonsense. 'It's to
tell you to take care of the ghost.' 'Oh, bran the ghost,' says I; 'I
should give it a knock if it come anigh me.' And so I should, young
ladies."

"Go on, go on," cried Mary Anne Thornycroft.

"I come right on to the churchyard, and what we had been saying made
me turn my eyes to it as I passed. Young ladies," she continued,
drawing the chair closer, and dropping her voice to a low, mysterious
key, "if you'll believe me, there stood Robert Hunter. He was close by
that big tombstone of old Marley's, not three yards from his own
grave!"

Mary Anne Thornycroft seemed unwilling to admit belief in this, in
spite of what she had herself been relating to Miss Chester. "Rely
upon it, Sarah, your fears deceived you."

"Miss, I hadn't got any fears; at any rate, not before I saw him.
There he was: his features as plain as ever they'd need be, and that
uncommon coat on, which I'm sure was never made for anybody but a Guy
Fawkes."

"Were you frightened then?"

"I was not frightened, so to say, but I won't deny that I felt a
creepishness in my skin; and I'd have given half-a-crown out of my
pocket to see any human creature come up to bear me company. I might
have spoke to it if it had give me time: I don't know: but the moment
it saw me it glided amid the gravestones, making for the back of the
church. I made off too as fast as my legs would carry me, and come
straight in here. I knew my tongue must let it out, and I thought it
better for you to hear it than them timorous servants in the kitchen."

"Quite right," murmured Miss Thornycroft.

"I never did believe in ghosts," resumed Sarah; "never thought to do
it, and I'm not going to begin now. But after to-night, I won't mock
at the poor wretches that have been frightened by Robert Hunter's."

What now was to be done? Anna Chester would not attempt to go home and
pass the churchyard with no protector but Sarah. Hyde was not to be
found; and there seemed nothing for it but to wait until Richard or
Isaac came in.

But neither came. Between nine and ten Captain Copp made his
appearance in hot anger, shaking his stick and stamping his wooden leg
at Sarah.

Had the vile hussey taken up her gossiping quarters at the Red Court
Farm for the night? Did she think--

"I could not get Miss Chester away," interposed Sarah, drowning the
words. "The ghost is in the churchyard. I saw it as I came past."

The sailor-captain was struck dumb. One of _his_ women-kind avow
belief in a ghost? He had seen a mermaid himself; which creatures were
known to exist; but ghosts were fabulous things, fit for nothing but
the fancies of marines. Any sailor in his fo'castle that had confessed
to seeing ghosts, would have got a taste of the yardarm. "Get your
things on this minute," concluded the captain, angrily, to Anna. "I'll
teach you to be afraid of rubbishing ghosts! And that vile bumboat
woman! coming here with such a tale!"

"It's my opinion ghosts _is_ rubbish, and nothing better; for I don't
see the good of 'em; but this was Robert Hunter's for all that," spoke
the undaunted "bumboat-woman." "I saw his face and his eyes as plain
as ever I see my own in the glass, and that precious white coat of his
with the ugly fur upon it. Master, you can't say that I gave as much
as half an ear to this talk before to-night."

"You credulous sea-serpent!" was the captain's retort. "And that same
coat lying yet in the tallet at the Mermaid with the blood upon it,
just as it was taken off the body! Ugh! fie upon you!"

"If there's apparitions of bodies, there may be apparitions of coats,"
reasoned Sarah, between whom and her choleric but good-hearted master
there was always a fight for the last word. "If it hadn't been for
knowing his face, I should say some ill-conditioned jester had
borrowed the coat from the Mermaid and put it on."

Away pegged the captain in his rage, scarcely allowing himself to say
good-night to Miss Thornycroft; and away went Sarah and Miss Chester
after him, as close as circumstances permitted.

As they neared the churchyard Anna ventured to lay hold of the
captain's arm, and bent her head upon it, in spite of his mocking
assurances that a parson's daughter ought to be on visiting terms with
a churchyard ghost; trusting to him to guide her steps. The captain
was deliberating, as he avowed afterwards, whether to guide her into
the opposite ditch, believing that a ducking would be the best panacea
for all ghostly fears; when Sarah, who was a step in the rear, leaped
forward and clung violently to his blue coat-tails.

"There!" she cried in a shrill whisper, before the astonished
gentleman could free his tails or give vent to proper indignation,
"there it is again, behind old Marley's tomb! Now then, master, is
that the coat, or is it not?"

The captain was surprised into turning his eyes to the churchyard;
Anna also, as if impelled by some irresistible fascination. It was too
true. Within a few yards of them, in the dim moonlight--for the cloudy
moon gave but a feeble light--appeared the well-known form of the
ill-fated Robert Hunter, the very man whose dead body Captain Copp had
helped to lay in the grave, so far as having assisted as a mourner at
his funeral.

The captain was taken considerably aback; had never been half so much
so before an unexpected iceberg; his wooden leg dropped submissively
down and his mouth flew open. He had the keen eye of a seaman, and he
saw beyond doubt that the spirit before him was indeed that of Robert
Hunter. Report ran in the village afterwards that the gallant captain
would have made off, but could not rid himself from the grasp of his
companions.

"Hallo! you sir!" he called out presently, remembering that in that
vile Sarah's presence his reputation for courage was at stake, but
there was considerable deference, not to say timidity, in his tone,
"what is it you want, appearing there like a figure-head?"

The ghost, however, did not wait to answer; it had already
disappeared, vanishing into air, or behind the tombstones. Captain
Copp lost not a moment, but tore away faster than he had ever done
since the acquisition of his wooden leg, Anna sobbing convulsively on
his arm, and Sarah hanging on to his coat-tails. A minute afterwards
they were joined by Isaac Thornycroft, coming at a sharp pace from the
direction of the village.

"Take these screeching sea-gulls home for me," cried the sailor to
Isaac. "I'll go down to the Mermaid, and with my own eyes see if the
coat is there. Some land-lubber's playing a trick, and has borrowed
Hunter's face and stole the coat to act it in."

"Spare yourself the trouble," rejoined Isaac. "I have come straight
now from the Mermaid, and the coat is there. We have been looking at
it but this instant. It is under the hay in the room over the stable,
doubled up and stiff, having dried in the folds."

"I should like to keelhaul that ghost," cried the discomfited captain.
"I'd rather have seen ten mermaids."

Isaac Thornycroft, with an imperative gesture, took Anna on his own
arm, leaving the captain to peg on alone, with Sarah still in close
proximity to the coattails. He did not say what he had been doing all
the evening, or why he should have come up at that particular
juncture.

Upon the return of Richard to the Red Court an hour or two earlier,
Isaac drew him at once out of the house to impart to him this curious
fact of Hunter's ghost--as Coastdown phrased it--making its appearance
nightly in the churchyard. Truth to say, the affair was altogether
puzzling Isaac, bringing him trouble also. He had seen it himself the
previous evening. Who was it? what did it want? whence did it come?
That it wore Hunter's face and form was indisputable. What then was
it? His ghost?--a kind of marvel which Isaac had never yet believed
in,--or a man got up to personate him? Of course what Isaac feared
was, that it might lead to discovery of various matters connected with
the past.

He imparted all this to Richard. Richard scorned the information at
first, ridiculed the affair, would not believe in the fear. Isaac
proposed that they should go together to the churchyard, conceal
themselves behind a convenient tombstone, watch for the appearance,
and pounce upon it. Richard mockingly refused; if he went at all to
the place he'd go by himself and deal with the "ghost" at leisure. At
present he had business with Tomlett.

They went together to Tomlett's cottage, and sat there talking. The
baker's boy came up on an errand; and as Mrs. Tomlett answered the
door they heard him tell her that "the ghost was then--then--in the
churchyard, his face and his coat awful white."

"The coat has been stolen from the Mermaid," spoke Richard in his
decisive tones.

"That fact was easy to be ascertained," Isaac answered. And, rising at
once from his seat, he went to the Mermaid there and then. Calling
Pettipher, they went up the ladder to the tallet, and Isaac convinced
himself that there the coat lay, untouched, and in fact unusable. From
thence he went his way to the churchyard, intending to see what he
could do with the ghost himself, and thus overtook Captain Copp and
his party.

Nothing of this did he say to Anna. Leaving the ghost for the time
being, he went on to Captain Copp's. She held his arm, not daring to
let it go; her mind in a state of extreme distress. Trembling from
head to foot went she; a sob breaking from her now and again.

"What can it be looking for?" burst from her in her grief and
perplexity. "For you?"

For the thought, the fear that had been beating its terrible refrain
in her brain was, that Robert Hunter's spirit, unable to rest, had
come to denounce his destroyer. Such tales had over and over again
been told in the world's history: why should not this be but another
to add to them?

"Anna!" answered Isaac in a tone of surprise and remonstrance, "you
cannot seriously believe that it is Hunter's spirit. Why talk
nonsense?"

Which reply she looked upon as an evasive one. "Can you solve the
mystery then?" she asked. "That thing in the churchyard wears as
surely Hunter's face and form as you wear yours or I mine. It is not
himself: he is dead and buried; what then is it?"

"Not his ghost," spoke Isaac. Whether he, the cool-headed, practical,
worldly man, who believed hitherto in ghosts just as much as he did in
fairies, felt perfectly sure himself upon the point now, at least he
deemed it right to insist upon it to his wife.

No more was said. But for Captain Copp's turning back to converse with
Isaac (having in a degree recovered his equanimity) he might have
striven to get an explanation with his wife there and then.

"Come in, come in, and take a sup of brandy," cried the hospitable
captain when they arrived at his house. "That beast of a ghost!"

"Oh, Sarah, what can have kept you!" exclaimed the captain's wife, in
as complaining a tone as so gentle a woman could use. "I have had
everything to do myself; the gruel to make for Mrs. Copp, the hot
water to take upstairs; the--"

"It is not my fault, ma'am," interrupted the subdued Sarah, as she
rubbed her shoes on the mat. "Miss Chester was afraid to come home
with me alone. There's Robert Hunter in the churchyard."

Amy Copp glanced at her husband, expecting an explosion of wrath at
the words. To her surprise, the captain heard them in patient silence,
his face as meek as any lamb's.

"Bring some hot water, Sarah, and get out the brandy," said he.

Mixing a stiff glass for himself, Isaac declining to take any, he
passed another in silence to Sarah. Anna had escaped upstairs: her
usual custom when Isaac was there.

"Much obliged, sir, but I don't care for brandy," was Sarah's answer.
"My courage is coming back to me, master."

Amy looked from one to the other, not knowing what to make of either.
"Have you really seen anything?" she asked.

"Seen Hunter, coat and all," gravely replied the captain. "Shiver my
wooden leg, if we've not! I say, mother," he called out, stumping to
the foot of the stairs. "Mother!"

"What is it, Sam?" called back Mrs. Copp, who was beginning to
undress, and had not yet taken her remedies for the cold.

"Mother, you know that mermaid in the Atlantic--the last voyage you
went with us? You wouldn't believe that I saw it; you've only laughed
at me ever since: well, I've seen the ghost to-night; so don't you
disbelieve me any more."

Captain Copp returned to the parlour, and in a minute his mother
walked in after him. She wore black stockings, fur slippers, a
petticoat that came down to the calves of her legs; a woollen shawl,
and an enormous night-cap. Isaac Thornycroft smothered an inclination
to laugh, but Mrs. Copp stood with calm equanimity, regardless of the
defects of her costume.

"What's that about the ghost, Sam?"

"I saw it to-night, mother. It stood near its own grave in the
churchyard. And I hope you won't go on at me about that mermaid, after
this. It had got long bright green hair, as I've always said, and was
combing it out."

"The ghost had?"

"No, the mermaid. The ghost was Hunter's. It looked just as he'd used
to look."

Mrs. Copp stood rubbing her nose, and thinking the captain's
conversion a very sudden one.

"Is this a joke, Sam?"

"A joke! Why, mother, I tell ye I saw it. Ask Sarah. I called out to
know what it wanted, and why it came; but it wouldn't answer me."

"Well, it's strange," observed Mrs. Copp. "Sam's a simpleton about
mermaids, but I'd have backed him as to ghosts. But now: you may have
observed perhaps, all of you, that I've not said a syllable to
ridicule this ghost of poor dead Mr. Hunter, and I'll tell you why.
Last June, in Liverpool, a friend of mine was sitting up with her
father, who was ill, when her sister's spirit appeared to her. It was
between twelve and one at night--twenty minutes to one, in fact, for
there was a clock in the room, and she had looked at it only a minute
before; the candle--"

"Oh, mother, don't; pray don't!" implored poor Amy Copp, going into a
cold perspiration, for she held a firm belief in things supernatural.
"This one ghost is enough for us without any more. I shall never like
to go up to bed alone again."

"The candle gave as good as no light, for the snuff was a yard long
a'most, with a cauliflower on the top," continued Mrs. Copp, who
persisted in telling her tale, supremely indifferent to her
daughter-in-law's fears and her own robes. "Emma Jenkins, that was her
name, heard a rustle in the room; it seemed to come in at the door,
which was put open for air, flutter across, and stir the bed-curtains.
(Don't you be foolish, Amy!) Naturally, Emma Jenkins looked up, and
there she saw her sister, who had died a year before. The figure
seemed to give just a sigh and vanish. Now," said Mrs. Copp, applying
the moral, "if that was a ghost, this may be."

"You always said, you know, mother, that you didn't believe in
ghosts."

"Neither did I, Sam But Emma Jenkins is not one to be taken in by
fancy; as stands to reason, considering that she has gone thirteen
voyages with her husband, short and long. Sea-going people are not
liable to see ghosts where there's no ghosts to see; they have
got their wits about them, and keep their eyes open. What are you
smiling at, Mr. Thornycroft? Mrs. Jenkins had taken a glass of
brandy-and-water, perhaps? Well, I don't know; sitting up with the
sick is cold work, especially when they are too far gone to have
anything done for 'em. But she always liked rum best."

The story over, Captain Copp plunged into a full account of the
night's adventures, enlarging on the questions he asked with the view
of bringing the ghost to book, and what he would have done had it only
stayed. Sarah gave her version of the sight, both in going and coming.
Mrs. Copp, forgetting her cold, plunged into another story of a man
who died at sea the first time she sailed with her husband, and the
belief of the sailors that he haunted the ship all the while it lay in
Calcutta harbour; all to the shivering horror of poor Amy Copp; and
Isaac Thornycroft, waking up from his reverie by fits and starts, sat
on until midnight, like a man in a miserable dream.




CHAPTER XV.
In the Churchyard Porch.

Mary Anne Thornycroft had remained at home in a state of mind
bordering on distraction. Look where she would, there was no comfort.
Surely the death of Robert Hunter had been enough, with all its
attendant dreadful circumstances, without this fresh rumour of his
"coming again!" Like Mrs. Copp, until impressed with her friend Emma
Jenkins's experiences, Miss Thornycroft had never put faith in ghosts.
She was accustomed to ridicule those who believed in the one said to
haunt the plateau; but her scepticism was shaken now.

She had paid little attention to the first reports, for she knew how
prone the ignorant are in general, and Coastdown in particular, to
spread supernatural tales. But these reports grew and magnified.
Robert Hunter was dead and buried: how then reconcile that fact with
this mysterious appearance said to haunt the churchyard? Her mind
became shaken; and when, on the previous night, her brother Isaac
imparted to her the fact that he had seen it with his own sensible,
dispassionate eyes, a sickening conviction flashed over her that it
was indeed Robert Hunter's spirit. And now, to confirm it, came the
testimony of the matter-of-fact Sarah. Possibly, but for the sad
manner in which her nerves had been shaken, this new view might not
have been taken up.

"What does it want?" she asked herself, sitting there alone in the
gloomy parlour: and certain words just spoken by Sarah recurred to
her, as if in answer. "It may want to denounce its murderer." Stronger
even than the grief and regret she felt at his untimely fate, at the
abrupt termination of her unhappy love, was the lively dread of
discovery, for Richard's sake. That must be guarded against, if
it were possible; for what might it not bring in its train? The
betrayal of the illicit practices the Red Court Farm had lived
by; the dishonour of her father and his house; perhaps the
trial--condemnation--execution of Richard.

Sick, trembling, half mad with these reflections, pacing the room in
agony, was she, when Richard entered. Had he seen the ghost? He looked
as if he had. His damp hair hung about in a black mass, and his face
and lips were as ghastly as Hunter's. His sister gazed at him with
surprise: the always self-possessed Richard!

"Have you come from the village?" she asked.

"From that way."

"Did you happen to turn to the churchyard?"

"Yes," was the laconic reply.

"You know what they say: that _his_ spirit appears there."

"I have seen it," was Richard's unexpected answer.

Miss Thornycroft started. "Oh, Richard! When?"

"Now. I went to look, and I saw it. There's no mistake about its being
Hunter, or some fool made up to personate him."

"It has taken away your colour, Richard."

Richard Thornycroft did not reply. He sat with his elbow on his knee,
and his chin resting on his hand, looking into the fire. The once
brave man, brave to recklessness, had been scared for the first time
in his mortal life. The crime lying heavily on his soul had made a
coward of him.

He said nothing of the details, but they must be supplied. Shortly
after Isaac had quitted Tomlett's, Richard also left, intending to go
straight home. As he struck across to the direct road--not the one by
the plateau--a thought came to him to take a look at the churchyard;
and he turned to it.

There was Robert Hunter. As Richard's footsteps sounded on the night
air, nearing the churchyard, the head and shoulders of the haunting
spirit appeared, raising themselves behind old Marley's high
tombstone. Richard stood still. "There was no mistake," as he observed
to his sister, "that it was Hunter." And the eyes of the two were
strained, the one on the other. Suddenly the ghost came into full view
and advanced, and Richard Thornycroft turned and fled. An arrant
coward he at that moment, alone with the ghost and his own awful
conscience.

Whether the apparition would have pursued him; whether Richard would
have gathered bravery enough to turn and face it, could never be
known. The doctor's boy, having been to the heath with old Connaught's
physic, ran past shouting and singing; "the whistling aloud to keep
his courage up," as Bloomfield (is it not?) so subtly says, was not
enough now for those who had to pass the churchyard at Coastdown. The
ghost vanished, and Richard strode on to the Red Court Farm.

But he did not tell of all this. Mary Anne, who had been bending her
head on the arm of the sofa, suddenly rose, resolution in her face and
in her low, firm tone.

"Richard, if you accompany me for protection, I will go and see this
spirit. I will ask what it wants. Let us go."

"You!" he somewhat contemptuously exclaimed.

"I will steel my nerves and heart to it. I have been striving to do so
for the last half hour. Better for me to hold communion with it than
any one else, save you. You know why, Richard."

"Tush!" he exclaimed. "Do nothing. You'd faint by the way."

"It is necessary for the honour and safety of--of--this house," she
urged, not caring to speak more pointedly, "that no stranger should
hear what it wants. I will go now. If I wait until to-morrow my
courage may fail. I _go_, Richard, whether with you or alone. You are
not afraid?"

For answer, Richard rose, and they left the room. In passing through
the hall, Mary Anne threw on her woollen shawl and garden-bonnet, just
as she had thrown them on the night of Hunter's murder; and they
started.

Not a word was spoken by either until they reached the corner of the
churchyard. The high, thickset hedge, facing them as they advanced,
prevented their seeing into it, but they would soon come in front,
where the shrubs grew low behind the iron railings. Miss Thornycroft
stopped.

"You stay here, Richard. I will go on alone."

"No," he began, but she peremptorily interrupted him.

"I will have it so. If I am to go on with this, I will be alone. You
can keep me within sight." And Richard acquiesced, despising himself
for his cowardice, but unable to overcome it. He could not--no, he
_could_ not face the man whose life he had taken.

Mary Anne Thornycroft opened the gate and went in. In his place (he
seemed to have specially appropriated to himself) behind old Marley's
tomb, stood Robert Hunter. _How_ she contrived to advance--contrived
to face him and keep her senses, Mary Anne Thornycroft could never
afterwards understand.

Is it of any use to go on mystifying you, my reader? Perhaps from the
first you have suspected the truth. Any way, it may be better to solve
the secret, for time is growing limited, as it was solved that night
to Mary Anne and Richard Thornycroft. The ghost, prowling about still,
was looking out for Richard, its sole object all along; but it was
Robert Hunter himself and not his ghost. For Robert Hunter was not
dead.

He had been in London all the while they mourned him so, as much alive
as any of his mourners, quite unconscious that he was looked upon as
murdered, and that the county coroner had held an inquest on his body.
A week since, he had come down from London to Coastdown, had come in
secret, not caring to show himself in the neighbourhood, and not
daring to show himself openly to the Thornycrofts. He wanted to obtain
an interview with Mary Anne; but to want it was a great deal easier
than to get it, in consequence of that extravagant and hasty oath
imposed upon him by Richard. According to its terms, he must not write
to any one of the inmates of the Red Court Farm; he must not enter it;
he must not show himself at Coastdown; and he could only hit upon the
plan of coming down en cachette, keeping himself close by day, and
watching for Richard at night. Not a very brilliant scheme, but he
could think of no better; and, singular perhaps to say, there was no
bar to his speaking to Richard if he met him; if the spirit of the
oath provided against that, the letter did not; and Robert Hunter's
business was urgent. So he came down to Jutpoint, walked over at
night, and took up his quarters in a lonely hut that he knew of behind
the churchyard, inhabited by a superannuated fisherman, old Parkes.
The aged fisherman, of dim sight and failing memory, did not know his
guest; he was easily bribed not to tell of his sojourn; and the
rumours of the ghost had not penetrated to him. In that hut Hunter lay
by day, and watched from the churchyard by night, as being a likely
spot to see Richard, who used often to pass and repass it on his way
to and from the heath, and an _un_likely one to be seen and recognised
by the public. With that convenient tomb of old Marley's to shelter
behind whenever footsteps approached, he did not fear. Unfortunately,
it was necessary that he should look out to see whether the footsteps
were not Richard's; and this looking out had brought about all the
terror. His retreating place, when people had intruded into the
churchyard, Isaac for one, was under a shelving gravestone at the back
of the church, where none would think of looking. And there he had
been on the watch, never dreaming that he was being mistaken for his
own ghost, for he knew nothing of his supposed murder.

In little more than half-a-dozen sentences this was revealed to Mary
Anne Thornycroft. It was the last night that he could stay: and he had
resolved, in the fear of having to go back to London with his errand
unexecuted, to accost any one of the Thornycroft family that might
approach him, although by so doing the oath was infringed. As their
voices were borne on the night air to the ear of Richard, sufficient
evidence that Hunter was a living man, a load fell from his heart. In
the first blissful throb of the discovery, the thought that surged
through him, turning darkness into light, was, "If he is alive, I am
no murderer." He ran forward, gained the spot where they stood,
grasped Hunter's hand and well-nigh embraced him. He, the cold, stern,
undemonstrative Richard Thornycroft! he, with all his dislike of
Hunter!

Do you consider well what that joy must be--relief from the supposed
committed crime of murder? The awful nightmare that has been weighing
us down: the sin that has been eating away our heartstrings! Some of
us may have faintly experienced this in a vision during sleep.

"I do not understand it, Hunter," whispered Richard, his words taking
a sobbing sound as they burst from his heaving breast in the intensity
of his emotion. "It is like awaking from some hideous dream. If I shot
you down, how is it that you are here?"

"You never shot me down. Old Parkes has been driving at some obscure
tale about young Hunter being shot from the heights; but I treated it
as a childish old man's fancies. Mary Anne, too, is wearing mourning
for me, she says, though ostensibly put on for Lady Ellis, and came
here to have speech of my ghost. I thought ghosts had gone out with
the eighteenth century."

All three felt bewildered; idea after idea crowding on their minds:
not one of them as yet clear or tangible. Mary Anne could not so soon
overcome the shivering sensation that, had been upon her, and caught
hold of her brother's arm for support. There was much of explanation
to be had yet.

"Let us go and sit down in the church porch," she said; "we shall be
quiet there."

They walked round the narrow path towards it. It was on the side of
the church facing the Red Court. The brother and sister placed
themselves on one bench: Hunter opposite. The moonlight streamed upon
them, but they were in no danger there of being observed by any chance
passer-by; for the hedge skirting the ground on that side was high and
thick.

"That night," began Richard, "after you had gone away, what brought
you back again?"

"Back where?" asked Hunter.

"Back on the plateau. Watching the fellows from the boats."

"I was not there. I did not come back."

The assertion sounded like a false one in the teeth of recollection.
Mary Anne broke the silence, her low tone rather an impatient one.

"I _saw_ you there, Robert--I and Anna Chester. We were coming up to
speak to you, and got as far as the Round Tower--"

"What was worse, _I_ saw you," hoarsely broke in Richard. "After what
had passed between us, and your solemn oath to me, I felt shocked at
your want of faith. I was maddened by your bad feeling, your obstinate
determination to spy upon and betray us; and I stood by that same
Round Tower and shot you down."

"I do not know what you are talking of," returned. Robert Hunter. "I
tell you I never came back; never for one moment I got to Jutpoint by
half-past ten or a quarter to eleven, so you may judge that I stepped
out well."

"Did Cyril go there with you?"

"Cyril! Of course not. He left me soon after we passed the village. He
only came as far as the wherry. I have been looking for Cyril while
dodging about in this churchyard. I'd rather have seen him than you.
He would not have been violent, you know, and would have carried you
my message."

"We have never seen Cyril since that night," said Miss Thornycroft.

"Not seen Cyril!" echoed Hunter. "Where is he?"

"But we are not uneasy about him," said Richard, dropping his voice.
"At least, I am not. We expect he went off in the boats with the
smugglers when they rowed back to the ship that night after the cargo
was run. Indeed, we feel positive of it. My father once did the same,
to the terror of my mother. I believe she had him advertised. Cyril is
taking a tolerably long spell on the French coast; but I think I can
account for that. He will come home now."

"Still you have not explained," resumed Hunter. "What gave rise to
this report that I was shot down?"

"Report!" cried Richard, vehemently, his new-found satisfaction
beginning to fade, as sober recollection returned to him. "Somebody
was shot, if you were not. We had the coroner's inquest on him, and he
lies buried in this churchyard as Robert Hunter."

"But the features could not have been mine," debated Hunter.

"The face was not recognisable; but the head and hair were yours, and
the dress was yours--a black dinner suit; and---- By the way," broke
off Richard, "what is this mystery? This coat, which you appear now to
have on, is at this moment in the stables at the Mermaid, and has been
ever since the inquest."

Does the reader notice that one word of Richard
Thornycroft's--"Appear?" _Appear_ to have on! Was he still doubting
whether the man before him could be real?

"Oh, this is Dr. Macpherson's," said Hunter, with a brief laugh. "They
were fellow coats, you know, Mary Anne. You did not send me my own--at
least, I never received it; and one cold day, when I happened to be
there, the professor surreptitiously handed me his out of a lumber
closet, glad to get rid of it, hoping madame would think it was
stolen. She could not forget the grievance of his having bought them.
Why did not mine come with the portmanteau?"

More amazement, more puzzle, and Richard further at sea than ever.

"When you left that night, you had your coat with you, Hunter. I saw
you put it on."

"But I found it an encumbrance. I had taken more wine than usual. I
had had other things to make me hot, and I did not relish the prospect
of carrying it, whether on or off, for five or six miles. So I took it
off when we got to the wherry, and begged Cyril to carry it back with
him, and send it with the portmanteau the following morning."

A pause of thought; it seemed they were trying to realize the sense of
the words. Suddenly Mary Anne started, gasped, and laid her face down
on her brother's shoulder, with a sharp, low moan of pain. _He_ leaned
forward and, stared at Hunter, a pitiable expression of dread on
his countenance, as the moonlight fell on his ghastly face and
strained-back lips.

"Cyril said, he was glad of it, and put it on, for he had come out
without one, and felt cold," continued Hunter, carelessly. "He has not
been exposed to all weathers, as I have. It fitted him capitally."

A cry, shrill and, wild as that which had broken from the dying man in
his fall, now broke from Richard Thornycroft.

"Stop!" he shouted, in the desperation of anguish; "don't you see?"

"See what?" demanded the astonished Hunter.

"_That I have murdered my brother!_"

Alas! alas! As they sat gazing at each other with terror-stricken
faces, you might have heard their hearts beat. Poor Richard
Thornycroft! Had any awakening to horror been like unto his!

"Murdered your brother?" slowly repeated Hunter.

It was too true. The unfortunate Cyril Thornycroft, arrayed in
Hunter's coat; had been mistaken by them for him in the starlight, and
Richard had shot him dead. In returning home after parting with Hunter
at the wherry, there could be no doubt that he had gone straight to
the heights to see whether the work which had been planned for that
night with the smugglers was being carried on, or whether the
discovery made by Hunter had checked it. It was the coat, the
miserable coat, that had deceived them. And there was the general
resemblance they bore to each other, as previously mentioned. In
height, in figure, in hair, they might have been taken for one
another, and had been, even in the daylight, during Hunter's stay
at Coastdown. But it was not all this that had led to the dreadful
error--it was the fatal and conspicuous coat.

Everything had contributed to the delusion, before life and after
death. The face might have been anybody's for all the signs of
recognition left in it. They wore, and only they, each a black dress
dinner-suit, and Cyril, in his forgetfulness had put away his purse
and watch. His money--he generally carried it so--was loose in his
pockets: how were they to know that the same custom was not followed
by Hunter? The white pocket-handkerchief happened to bear no mark, and
his linen was not disturbed. Nothing was taken off him but his upper
clothes, the coat and the above-said dinner-suit. It was an
exceptional death, you see, not a pleasant one to handle, and they
just put a shroud over the under clothes, and so buried him. But for
that would have been seen on the shirt the full mark--"Cyril
Thornycroft."

Who shall attempt to describe the silence of horror that fell on the
church porch after the revelation? Richard quitted his seat and stood
upright, looking out, as it seemed; and his sister's head then sought
a leaning-place against the cold trellis-work.

"How was it you never wrote to me?" at length asked Robert Hunter, in
a low voice. "Had you done so, this mystery would have been cleared
up."

"Wrote to _you?_" wailed Richard. "Do you forget we thought you were
here?" stamping his foot on the sod of the churchyard.

"I can hardly understand it yet," mused Robert Hunter.

Richard Thornycroft turned and touched his sister. "Let us go home,
Mary Anne. We have heard enough."

Without a word of dissent or approval, she rose and put her arm within
Richard's; her face white and rigid as it had been at the coroner's
inquest. Hunter spoke then.

"But, Mary Anne--what I wanted to say to you--I have not yet said a
word of it."

"I cannot talk to-night," she shuddered. "I cannot--I cannot."

"Then--I suppose--I must stay another day," he rejoined, wondering
privately what would be said and thought of him in London. "May I come
to the Red Court to-morrow?"

"If you will," answered Richard. "No necessity for concealment now. I
absolve you from your oath."

But Mary Anne saw further than either of them; saw that it would not
do. Richard walked forward, but she remained, and touched Mr. Hunter
on the arm.

"No, Robert, it must not be. You must still be in this neighbourhood--
for a time at any rate--as dead and buried."

"Why? Far better to let them know I have not been murdered: and set
their suspicions at rest."

"That you have not, but that another has," she returned, resentfully.
"Would you have them rake up the matter, and hold a second inquest,
and so set them upon my unfortunate brother Richard? His punishment,
as it is, will be sufficiently dreadful and lasting."

"Do not speak to me in that tone of reproach," was the pained
rejoinder. "You may be sure that I deeply sympathize and grieve with
you all. I will continue to conceal myself: but how shall I see you?
One more day, and business will enforce my return to London."

"I will see you here, in this place, to-morrow night."

"At what hour?"

"As soon as dusk comes on. Say seven."

"You will not fail, Mary Anne?"

"Fail!" she repeated, vehemently. Then, in a quieter tone, as she
would have walked away, "No; I will be sure to come."

Robert Hunter grasped her hand, as if to draw her towards him for a
fond embrace, but Miss Thornycroft wrenched her hand away with a half
cry, and went on to join her brother. "Good night, dear Robert," she
presently called out, in a gentle voice, as if to atone for her abrupt
movement: but oh! what a mine of anguish that voice betrayed!

In the midst of the same silence that they had come, they went back
again, walking side by side in the road, but not touching each other.
Ah! what anguish it was that lay on both of them! We never know; in
great affliction we are so apt to think that we can bear nothing
worse, and live. It had seemed to Richard Thornycroft and his sister,
when they went down to the churchyard, that no heavier weight of
misery could be theirs than that lying on them; it seemed now in going
back, as if that had been light, compared with this.

"Richard," she whispered, in her great pity, as they passed through
the entrance gates of the Red Court Farm, "he is better off; he was
fit to go. You know it must be so. Cyril is in heaven with God; it
seems now as if he had been living on for it."

Richard hardly heard the words. He was thinking his own thoughts. "The
death must have been a painless one."


She was true to her promise. The following evening, when dark fell and
before the moon was up, Robert Hunter and Miss Thornycroft sat once
more in the church porch. The night was very cold, sharp, raw; but
from a feeling of considerate delicacy, which she understood and
mentally thanked him for, he was without a great-coat. He rightly
judged that the only one he had with him could in her eyes be nothing
but an object of horror.

What a day that had been at the Red Court! Mr. Thornycroft had sat on
the magisterial bench at Jutpoint, trying petty offenders, unconscious
that there was a greater offender at his own house demanding
punishment. Richard Thornycroft felt inclined to proclaim the truth
and deliver himself up to justice. The remorse which had taken
possession of him was greater than he knew how to bear; and it seemed
that to expiate his offence at the criminal bar of his country, would
be more tolerable than to let it thus prey upon him in silence, eating
away his heart and his life. Consideration for his father and sister,
for their honourable reputation, alone withheld him. He and Cyril had
been fond brothers. Cyril, of delicate health and gentle manners, had
been, as it were, the pet of the robust justice and his robust elder
sons. The home, so far as Richard was concerned, must be broken up: he
would go abroad, the farther distant the better. But for his sister,
he had started that day. Something of this she told Mr. Hunter, in an
outburst of her great suffering.

"Oh, Robert! even allowing that he shall escape, what a secret it will
be for me and my brother Isaac to carry through life!"

"Time will soften it to you. You are both innocent."

"Time will never soften it to me. My dear brother Cyril!--so loving to
us all, so _good!_"

Her hands were before her face as if she would conceal its tribulation
from the dark night. Robert Hunter, who had been standing, drew her
hands within his, sat down beside her on the narrow bench, and kept
them there.

"Time is wearing on, Mary Anne, and I must be at Jutpoint to-night.
May I say what I came down from town to say? Though it pains me to
enter upon it now you are in this grief."

"What is it, Robert?"

"You have not forgotten that there was a probability of my going
abroad? Well, the arrangements are now concluded, and I start in the
course of a few days. I did not think of being off before the summer,
but it has been settled differently."

"Yes. Well?"

"This alters my position altogether in a pecuniary point of view, and
I shall now rest at ease, the future assured. The climate is
excellent; the residence out all that can be wished for. In a week
from this I ought to take my departure."

"Yes," she repeated, in the same tone of apathy as before. "What else?
Make haste, Robert--I must begone; I am beginning to shiver. I have
these shivering fits often now."

"I want you to go with me, my love," he whispered, in an accent of
deep tenderness. "I came down to urge it; but now that this
unfortunate affair has been made known to me, I would doubly urge it.
As my wife, you will forget----"

"Be quiet, Robert!" she impetuously interrupted, "you cannot know what
you are saying."

"Yes, I do; I wish you to understand I may be away for five years."

"So much the better. You and I, of all people in the world, must live
apart. Was this what you had to say?"

"I thought you loved me," he rejoined, quite petrified at her words.

"I did love you; I do love you; if to avow it will do any good now.
But this dreadful sorrow has placed a barrier between us."

There ensued a bitter pause. Robert Hunter was smarting with a sense
of injustice.

"Mary Anne! Surely you are not laying on _me_ the blame of that
terrible calamity!"

"Listen, Robert," she returned. "I am not so unjust as to blame you
for the actual calamity, but I cannot forget that you and I have been
the cause of it."

"You!"

"Yes, I. When my father heard that I had invited you down, he came to
me, and forbid me to let you come. I see now why. They did not want
strangers in his house, who might see more than was expedient. He
commanded me to write and stop you. I disobeyed; I thought papa spoke
but in compliance with a whim of Richard's; and I would not write. Had
I obeyed him, all this would have been spared. Again, when you and I
told what the supervisor said, that there were smugglers abroad, my
father ordered us, you especially, not to interfere. Had you observed
his wishes to the letter, Cyril would have been alive now. These
reflections haunt me continually; they will be mine for ever. No,
Robert, you and I must live apart. If I were to marry you, I should
expect Cyril to rise reproachfully before me on our wedding-day."

"Oh, Mary Anne! Believe me you see matters in a false light. If----"

"I will not discuss it," she peremptorily interrupted, "it would be of
no avail, and I shudder while I speak. Spare me argument."

"I think you are forgetting that I have a stake in the matter as well
as yourself," he quietly said, his tone proving how great the pain
was. "Do you not know what, deprived of you, my future life will be?
At least, I have a right to say a few words."

"Well--yes, that's true. I suppose I did forget, Robert."

"Forgive me then for reminding you that the sole and immediate cause
of Cyril's death, is _Richard_. I did nothing whatever to help it on;
my conscience is clear; the most prejudiced man could not charge me
with it. And you? It is certainly a pity--I am speaking plainly--that
you disobeyed Mr. Thornycroft in allowing me to come to the Red Court;
it was very wrong; but still you did it not with any ill intention,
and certainly do not merit the punishment of being condemned to live a
lonely life."

"But Richard is my brother. See what it has brought on _him_."

"What he has brought upon himself," corrected Mr. Hunter. "I do not
see that his being your brother throws, or should be allowed to throw
any bar upon your marriage with me. You would not say so had he been a
stranger."

"Where is the use of arguing?" she broke in. "I cannot bear it; I will
not hear it. All is at an end between us. Do you forgive me, Robert,
if I cause you pain? Nothing in the world, or out of it, shall ever
induce me to become your wife."

"Is this your fixed determination?"

"Fixed and unalterable. Fixed as those stars above us. Fixed as
Cyril's grave."

"Then it only remains for me to return the way I came," he gloomily
said. "And the sooner I start the better."

They stood up; looking for a moment each into the other's face. There
was no relenting in hers. "Fare you well, Mary Anne."

She put her hand into his, and, overcome by the dead anguish at her
heart, burst into tears. He drew her to his breast. None can know what
that anguish was to her, even of the parting. He held her to him and
soothed her sobs, now with a loving look, now with a gentle action;
and then he broke into words of passionate entreaty, that she would
retract her cruel determination, and suffer him to speak to her
father. But he little knew Mary Anne Thornycroft if he thought that
she would yield.

"Say no more; it is quite useless. Oh, Robert, don't you see it is as
bitter for me as for you?"

"No; or you would not inflict it."

"Strive to forget me, Robert," she murmured. "We have been very dear
to each other, but you must find some one else now. Perhaps we may
meet in after life--when you are a happy man with wife and children!"

He went with her to the churchyard gates, and watched her as she
turned to her home. And so they parted. Robert Hunter retraced his
steps up the churchyard, and from behind a gravestone, where he had
laid them out of sight, took up his little black travelling-bag, and
the rolled-up coat, the counterpart of which had proved so unlucky a
coat for the Red Court Farm. He never intended to put it on again--at
least in the neighbourhood of Coastdown. Then he set off to walk to
Jutpoint, avoiding the road by means of a bypath, as he had set off to
walk that guilty night some weeks before.

The night had clouded over, the stars disappeared, the moon was not
seen. Drops of rain began to fall, threatening a heavy shower. On it
came, thicker and faster; wetter and wetter got he; but it may be
questioned whether he gave to it one single thought.

His reflections were buried quite as much in the past as in the
present. He murmured to himself the word "RETRIBUTION." He asked how
_he_ could ever have dreamt of indulging a prospect of happiness; he
almost laughed at the utter mockery of the hope. As he had blighted
his wife's life, so had Mary Anne Thornycroft, his late and only love,
now blighted his. She--poor Clara--had died of the pain; he, of
sterner stuff, must carry it along with him. Amid his days of labour,
through his nights of perhaps broken rest, it would, lie upon him--a
well-earned recompense! No murmur came forth from his heart or lips;
he simply bowed his head in acknowledgment of the justice. God was
ever true. And Robert Hunter lifted his hat in the pouring rain, and
raised his eyes to heaven in sad thankfulness that the pain his sin
had caused was at length made clear to him.




CHAPTER XVI.
In the Dog-cart to Jutpoint.


But there's something yet to tell of the evening. It was getting
towards dusk when Isaac Thornycroft went his way to Captain Copp's
intending boldly to ask Miss Chester to take a walk with him, should
there be no chance of getting a minute with her alone at home.

The state in which he was living, touching his wife's estrangement
(not their separation, that was a present necessity), was getting
unbearable; and Isaac, who had hitherto shunned an explanation, came
to the rather sudden resolution of seeking it. Although his brother
had shot Robert Hunter, it could not be said to be a just reason for
Anna's resenting it upon _him_. Not a syllable did Isaac yet know of
the discovery that had taken place, or that Cyril was the one lying in
the churchyard.

In the free and simple community of Coastdown, doors were not kept
closed, and people entered at will. Rather, then, to Isaac's surprise,
as he turned the handle of Captain Copp's, he found it was fastened,
so that he could not enter. At the same moment his eyes met his
wife's, who had come to the window to reconnoitre. There was no help
for it, and she had to go and let him in.

"At home alone, Anna! Where are they all? Where's Sarah?"

Anna explained: bare facts only, however, not motives. It appeared
that the gallant captain, considerably lowered in his own estimation
by the events of the past night, and especially that he should be so
in the sight of his "womenkind," proposed a little jaunt that day to
Jutpoint by way of diverting their thoughts, and perhaps his own, from
the ghost and its reminiscences. His mother--recovered from her
incipient cold--she was too strong-minded a woman for diseases to
seize upon heartily--agreed readily, as did his wife. Not so Anna. She
pleaded illness, and begged to be left at home. It was indeed no false
plea, for her miserable state of mind was beginning to tell upon her.
They had been expected home in time for tea, and had not come. Anna
supposed they had contrived to miss the omnibus, which was in fact the
case, and could not now return until late. How Mrs. Sam Copp would be
brought by the churchyard was a thing easier wondered at than told. As
to Sarah, she had but now stepped out on some necessary errands to the
village.

In the satisfaction of finding the field undisturbed for the
explanation he wished entered on, Isaac said nothing about his wife
being left in the house alone, which he by no means approved of. It
was not dark yet, only dusk: but Anna said something about getting
lights.

"Not yet," said Isaac. "I want to talk to you; there's plenty of light
for that."

She sat down on the sofa; trembling, frightened, sick. If her husband
was the slayer of Robert Hunter--as she believed him to be--it was not
agreeable to be in the solitary house with him; it was equally
disagreeable to have to tell him to go out of it. Ah, but for that
terrible belief, what a happy moment this snatch of intercourse might
have been to them! this sole first chance for weeks and weeks of
being alone, when they might speak together of future plans with a
half-hour's freedom.

She took her seat on the sofa, scarcely conscious what she did in her
sick perplexity. Isaac sat down by her, put his arm round her waist,
and would have kissed her. But she drew to the other end of the large
sofa with a gesture of evident avoidance, and burst into tears. So he
got up and stood before her.

"Anna, this must end, one way or the other; it is what I came here
to-night to say. The separated condition in which we first lived after
our return was bad enough, but that was pleasant compared to what it
afterwards became. It is some weeks now since you have allowed me
barely to shake you by the hand; never if you could avoid it. Things
cannot go on so."

She made no reply. Only sat there trembling and crying, her hands
before her face.

"What have I done to you? Come, Anna, I must have an answer. What have
I done to you?"

She spoke at last, looking up. In her habit of implicit obedience,
there was no help for it; there could be none when the order came from
_him_.

"Nothing----to me."

"To whom, then? What is it?"

"Nothing," was all she repeated.

"Nothing! Do you repent having married me?"

"I don't know."

The answer seemed to pain him. He bent his handsome face a little
towards her, pushing back impatiently his golden hair, as if the fair
bright brow needed coolness.

"I thought you loved me, Anna?"

"And you know I did. Oh, that is it! The misery would be greater if I
loved you less."

"Then why do you shun me?"

"Is there not a cause why I should?" she asked in a low tone, after a
long pause.

"_I_ think not. Will you tell me what the cause may be?"

She glanced up at him, she looked down, she smoothed unconsciously the
silk apron on which her nervous hands rested, but she could not
answer. Isaac saw it, and, bending nearer to her, he spoke in a
whisper.

"Is it connected with that unhappy night--with what took place on the
plateau?"

"I think you must have known all along that it is."

"And you consider it a sufficient reason for shunning me?"

"Yes, do not _you?_"

"Certainly not."

Great though her misery was, passionately though she loved him still,
the cool assertion angered her. It gave her a courage to speak that
nothing else could have given.

"It was a dark crime; the worst crime that the world can know. Does it
not lie on your conscience?"

"No; I could not hinder it."

"Oh, Isaac! Had it been anything else; anything but _murder_, I could
have borne it. How you can bear it, and live, I cannot understand."

"Why should I make another's sin mine? No one can deplore it as I do;
but it is not my place to answer for it. I do not understand you,
Anna."

_She_ did not understand. What did his words mean?

"Did you not kill Robert Hunter?"

"_I_ kill him! You are dreaming, Anna! I was not near the spot."

"Isaac! ISAAC?"

"Child! have you been fearing _that?_"

"For nothing else, for nothing else could I have shunned you. Oh,
Isaac! my dear husband, how could the mistake arise?"

"I know not. A mistake it was; I affirm it to you before God. I was
not on the plateau at all that night."

He opened his arms, gravely smiling, and she passed into them with a
great cry. Trembling, moaning, sobbing; Isaac thought she would have
fainted. Placing her by his side on the sofa, he kept still, listening
to what she had to say.

"As I looked out of the Round Tower in the starlight, I caught a
momentary glimpse of--as I thought--you, and I saw the hand that held
the pistol take aim and fire. I thought it _was_ you, and I fainted. I
have thought it ever since. Mary Anne, in a word or two that we spoke
together, seemed to confirm it."

"Mary Anne knew it was not I. It is not in my nature to draw a pistol
on any man. Surely, Anna, you might have trusted me better!"

"Oh, what a relief!" she murmured, "what a relief!" then, as a sudden
thought seemed to strike her, she turned her face to his and spoke,
her voice hushed.

"It must have been Richard. You are alike in figure."

"Upon that point we had better be silent," he answered, in quite a
solemn tone. "It is a thing that we are not called upon to inquire
into; let us avoid it. I am innocent: will not that suffice?"

"It will more than suffice for me," she answered. "Since that night I
have been most wretched."

"You need not have feared me in any way, Anna," was the reply of Isaac
Thornycroft. "Were it possible that my hand could become stained with
the blood of a fellow-creature, I should hasten to separate from you
quicker than you could from me. Whatever else such an unhappy man may
covet, let him keep clear of wife and children."

"Forgive me, Isaac! Forgive me!"

"I have not been exempt from the follies of young men, and I related
to you the greater portion of my share of them, after we married," he
whispered. "But of dark crime I am innocent--as innocent as you are."

"Oh, Isaac! my husband, Isaac!"

He bent his face on hers, and she lay there quietly, her head nestling
in his bosom. It seemed to her like a dream of heaven after the past;
a very paradise.

"You will forgive me, won't you?" she softly breathed.

"My darling!"

But paradise cannot last for ever, as you all know; and one of them at
any rate found himself very far on this side it ere the night was much
older. As Sarah let herself into the house with her back-door key,
Isaac quitted it by the front, and bent his steps across the heath.

In passing the churchyard, he stood and looked well into it. But there
was no sign of the ghost, and Isaac went on again. How little did he
suspect that at that very selfsame moment the ghost was seated round
in the church porch, in deep conversation with his sister! Having an
errand in the village, he struck across to it; and on his final return
home a little later, he was astonished to overtake his sister at the
entrance gates of the Red Court Farm, her forehead pressed upon the
ironwork, and she sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Mary Anne! what is the matter? What brings you here?"

"Come with me," she briefly said. "If I do not tell some one, I shall
die."

Walking swiftly to one of the benches on the lawn, she sat down on it,
utterly indifferent to the rain that was beginning to fall. Isaac
followed her wonderingly. Poor thing! the whole of the previous day
and night she had really almost felt as if she should die--die from
the weight of the fearful secret, and the want of some one to confide
in. Richard was the only one who shared it, and she was debarred by
pity from talking to him.

There, with the fatal plateau in front of him, and the rain
coming down on their devoted heads, Isaac Thornycroft learnt the
whole--learnt to his dismay, his grief, his horror, that the victim
had been his much-loved brother Cyril; and that Robert Hunter was
still in life.

He took his hat off, and wiped his brow; and then held his hat before
his face, after the fashion of men going into church--held it for some
minutes. Mary Anne in her own deep emotion did not notice his.

"Isaac, don't you pity me?"

"I pity us all."

"And there will be the making it known to papa. He must be told."

"Richard will leave Coastdown for ever. He could not remain in it, he
says. I am not competent to advise him, Isaac. You must."

"Richard has never yet taken any advice but his own."

"Ah! but he is changed to-day. He has been changed a little since that
dreadful night. I suppose you have known all along that it was Richard
who--who did it?"

"Not from information: I saw that you knew; that you were in his
confidence. Of course I could not help being sure in my own mind that
it must have been Richard. I fancy"--he turned and looked full at his
sister--"that Miss Chester thought it was I."

"Yes, I know she did," was the assured answer. "It was better to let
her think so. Safer for Richard, better for you."

"Why better for me?"

"Because--it is not a moment to be reticent, Isaac--Anna Chester once
appeared too much inclined to like you. That would never do, you
know."

He turned his head away; a soft remembrance parting his lips, a look
of passionate love, meant for his absent wife, lighting his eyes.

"You will get wet sitting here, Mary Anne."

She arose, and they went indoors. Isaac was passing straight through
to the less-used rooms when his sister stopped him.

Rooms that would never have been closed to the rest of the house, but
for the smuggling practices so long carried on by the Thornycroft
family. In the rooms themselves there was absolutely nothing that
could have led to betrayal, or any reason why they might not have been
open to all the household: but it was necessary to keep that part of
the house closed always, except to Mr. Thornycroft and his sons, lest
it should have been penetrated to at the few exceptional times when
the cargo was being run, or the dog-cart laden subsequently with the
spoil. When once the cargo was safely lodged in the cavern within the
rocks, it might remain there in security to some convenient time for
removing it. This was always done at night. Richard and Isaac
Thornycroft, Tomlett and Hyde, brought up sufficient of the parcels to
fill the dog-cart, which one of the sons, sometimes both, would then
drive away with and deposit with Hopley, their agent at Dartfield,
whose business it was to convey the booty to its final destination.
The next night more would be taken away, and so on. Sometimes so large
was the trade done, so swift were the operations, that one cargo would
not be all sent away before another was landed. At another period
perhaps three months elapsed and no boat came in. With this frequent
going out by night with the dog-cart, no wonder the young Thornycrofts
got the credit of being loose in their habits, and that the justice
encouraged the notion.

The sumptuous dinners at the Red Court Farm (or suppers, according to
the convenience and time of year) were kept up as a sort of covering
to the illicit doings. When the gentlemen of the neighbourhood,
including the superintendent of the coastguard, had their legs under
the hospitable board, or the servants subsequently under theirs in the
kitchen, they could not be wandering about out of doors, seeing
inexpedient things. It was not often of late years Mr. Thornycroft
aided in the run; he left it to Richard and Isaac, and stayed with his
guests. On the night Lady Ellis saw him he had gone out, found there
was a sea fog, and came in again; denying it afterwards to her (as
faithful Hyde had done) lest she should next question why he changed
his coat and put on leggings.

The late superintendent, Mr. Dangerfield, had allowed rule to get lax
altogether, but he had, of course, a certain amount of watching kept
up. On the occasion of a dinner or supper at the Red Court (always
given when a cargo was waiting to be run), Mr. Dangerfield would
contrive to let his men know that he was going to it; as a matter of
fact, not a man troubled himself to go near the plateau that night;
the Mermaid had them instead; and all too often it happened that one
of the young Mr. Thornycrofts would go in and stand treat. No fear of
the men's stirring any more than their master. But from the fact of
the Half-moon beach being visible only from the plateau, and for the
supernatural tales connected with the latter, they had never escaped
being seen so long as they did.

The ghostly stories--not of Robert Hunter--had done more than all to
prevent discovery. It could not be said that the Thornycrofts raised
them in the first place; they did not; but when they perceived how
valuable an adjunct they were likely to prove, they took care to keep
them up. Report went that the late Mrs. Thornycroft had died from the
fears induced by superstition. It was as well to keep up that belief
also; but she had died from nothing of the sort. What she had really
died of--so to say--was the smuggling. When the discovery came to her
at first, through an accident, of the practices carried on by her
husband and sons--as they had been by her husband's brother and his
father before him--it brought a great shock. A timid, right-minded,
refined woman, the dread of discovery was perpetually upon her
afterwards; she lived in a state of inward fear night and day; and
this most probably induced the disorder of which she died--a weakness
that got gradually worse and worse, and ended in death. When she was
dying, not before, she told them it had killed her. Had Mr.
Thornycroft known of it earlier, he might have given it up for her
sake, for he was a fond husband. But he had not known of it; and her
death and its unhappy cause left upon them a great sorrow: one that
could not be put away. The same grief at the practices, and dread of
what a persistence in them might bring forth, had likewise lain on
Cyril, and been the secret of his declining to take Orders so long as
they should be carried on. Mr. Thornycroft himself was getting
somewhat tired of it, as he told Cyril; he had made plenty of money,
but Richard would not hear of their being given up.

Perhaps from habit more than anything else, Isaac was passing on to
the back rooms, but Mary Anne arrested him. "Stay with me a little
while, Isaac; you do not know how lonely it is for me now."

He acquiesced at once. He was ever good-natured and kind, and they
turned into the sitting-room, she calling a servant to take her shawl
and bonnet. Not empty, as she had anticipated, was the parlour, for
Richard was there.

"I have told Isaac all," said Mary Anne, briefly. And Isaac, in his
great compassion, went up to his brother and laid his hand on him
kindly.

Poor Richard Thornycroft! His eyes hollow, his brow fevered, his hands
burning, he paced there still in his terrible remorse. A consuming
fire had set in, to prey upon him for all time. He spoke a few
disjointed words to Isaac, as if in extenuation.

"I felt half maddened at Hunter's duplicity of conduct that night. I
had warned him that I would shoot him if he went again on the plateau,
and I thought I was justified in doing so. _Why_ did Cyril put the
coat on?"

"Let this be a consolation to you, Richard--that you did not intend,
to harm your brother," was all the comfort Isaac could give.

"Had it been any one but my brother! had it been any but my brother!"
was the wailing answer. "The curse of Cain rests upon me."

Walking about still in his restlessness as he said it! He had never
sat, or lain, or rested since leaving the churchyard the previous
night, but paced about as one in the very depths of despair. Mary Anne
slipped the bolt of the door, and they began to consult as to the
future. At this dread consultation, every word of which will linger in
the remembrance of the three during life, Richard decided upon his
plans. To remain in the neighbourhood of the fatal scene, ever again
to look upon the Half-moon beach where the dead had lain, he felt
would drive him mad. In Australia he might in time find something like
rest.

"I shall leave to-night," said he.

"To-night!" echoed Isaac, in great surprise. Richard nodded. "You will
drive me to Jutpoint, won't you, Isaac?"

"If you must really go."

"And when shall we see you again?" inquired Mary Anne.

"Never again."

"Never again! never again!" she repeated, with a moan. "Oh Richard,
never again!"

It was a shock to Mr. Thornycroft, when he drove home an hour later
from Jutpoint, to find his eldest and (as people had looked upon it)
his favourite son waiting to bid him farewell for ever. They did not
disclose to him the fearful secret--either that it was Cyril who had
died, or that it was Richard who had shot him--leaving that to be
revealed later. They said Richard had fallen into a serious scrape,
which could only be kept quiet by his quitting the place for a few
years, and begged him not to inquire particulars; that the less said
about it the better. Justice Thornycroft obeyed in his surprise, for
the communication had half stunned him.

And so they parted. Once more in the middle of the night--in the
little hours intervening between dark and dawn--the dog-cart was
driven out from the Red Court Farm: not bearing this time a quantity
of valuable lace or other booty, but simply a portmanteau of
Richard's, with a few articles of clothing flung hastily into it. He
sat low down in the seat, his hat over his brows, his arms folded, his
silence stern. And thus Isaac, on the high cushion by his side, drove
him to Jutpoint to catch the early morning train.




CHAPTER XVII.
Ladies Disputing.


The next matter to be disclosed was the marriage of Isaac. It was not
done immediately. As the reader may have surmised, the sole cause for
his keeping it secret at all had its rise in the smuggling. So long as
they ran cargoes into the vaults of the Red Court Farm, so long did
Mr. Thornycroft lay an embargo, or wish to lay it, on his sons
marrying. The secret might be no longer safe, he said, if one of them
took a wife.

With the departure of Richard the smuggling would end. Without him,
Mr. Thornycroft would not care to carry it on: and Isaac felt that
_he_ could never join in it again, after what it had done for Cyril.
There was no need: Mr. Thornycroft's wealth was ample. But some weeks
went on before Isaac considered himself at liberty to speak.

For the fact was this: Richard Thornycroft on his departure had
extracted a promise from Isaac _not_ to disclose particulars until
they should hear from him. Isaac gave it readily, supposing he would
write before embarking. But the days and the weeks went on, and no
letter came: Isaac was at a nonplus, and felt half convinced, in his
own mind, that Richard had repented of his determination to absent
himself, and would be coming back to Coastdown. With the disclosure
of his marriage to the justice, Isaac wished to add another
disclosure--that _he_ had done with the smuggling for ever; but a fear
was upon him that this might lead to a full revelation of the past;
and, for Richard's sake, until news should come that he was safe away,
Isaac delayed and delayed. His inclination would have been less
willing to do this, but for one thing, and that was, that he could not
have his wife with him just yet. Mrs. Sam Copp, poor meek Amy, had
been seized with a long and dangerous illness. Anna was in close
attendance upon her; Mrs. Copp stayed to domineer and superintend; and
until she should be better Anna could not leave. Thus the time had
gone on, and accident brought about what intention had not.

May was in, and quickly passing. Pretty nearly two months had elapsed
since Richard's exit. One bright afternoon when Amy was well enough to
sit up at her bed-room window, open to the balmy heath and the sweet
breeze from the sparkling sea, Sarah came up and said Mr. Isaac
Thornycroft was below. Anna sat with her; the captain and his mother
were out.

"May I go down?" asked Anna, with a bright blush.

"I suppose you must, dear," answered Mrs. Sam Copp, with a sigh, given
to the long-continued concealment that ever haunted her.

Away went Anna, flying first of all up to her own room to smooth her
hair, to see that her pretty muslin dress with its lilac ribbons
looked nice. Isaac, under present circumstances, was far more like a
lover than a husband: scarcely ever did they see each other alone for
an instant. This took her about two minutes, and she went softly
downstairs and opened the parlour door.

Isaac was seated with his back to it, on this side the window. Anna,
her face in a glow with the freedom of what she was about to do,
stepped up, put her hands round his neck from the back, and kissed his
hair--kissed it again and again.

"Halloa!" roared out a stern voice.

Away she shrunk, with a startled scream. At the back of the room,
having thrown himself on the sofa, tired with his walk, was Captain
Copp, his mother beside him. The two minutes had been sufficient time
for them to enter. The captain had not felt so confounded since the
night of the apparition, and Mrs. Copp's eyes were perfectly round
with a broad stare.

"You shameless hussey!" cried the gallant captain, finding his tongue
as he advanced. "What on earth--"

But Isaac had risen. Risen, and was taking Anna to his side, holding
her up, standing still with calm composure.

"It is all right, Captain Copp. Pardon me. Anna is my wife."

"Your--what?" roared the captain, really not hearing in his flurry.

"Anna has been my wife since last November. And I hope," Isaac added,
with a quiet laugh, partly of vexation, partly of amusement, "that you
will give me credit for self-sacrifice and infinite patience in
letting her remain here."

Anna, crying silently in her distress and shame, had turned to him,
and was hiding her face on his arm, A minute or two sufficed for the
explanation Isaac gave. Its truth could not be doubted, and he
finished by calling her a little goose, and bidding her look up.
Captain Copp felt uncertain whether to storm or to take it quietly.
Meanwhile, he sat down rather humbly, and joined Mrs. Copp in staring.

"A ghost one week; a private marriage the next! I say, mother, I wish
I was among the pirates again!"

This discovery decided the question in Isaac's mind, and he went
straight to the Red Court to seek a private interview with his father.
But he told only of the marriage: leaving other matters to the future.
Rather to his surprise, it was well received: Mr. Thornycroft did not
say a harsh word.

"Be it so, Isaac. Of business I am thinking we shall do no more. And
if I am to be deprived of two of my sons--as appears only too
probable--it is well that the third should marry. As to Anna, she is a
sweet girl, and I've nothing to say against her, except her want of
money. I suppose you considered that you will possess enough for
both."

"We shall have enough for comfort, sir."

"And for something else. Go and bring her home here at once, Isaac."

But to this, upon consideration, was raised a decided objection at
Captain Copp's. What would the gossips say? Isaac thought of a better
plan. He wanted to run up to London for a few days, and would take his
wife with him. After their departure, Sarah might be told, who would
be safe to go abroad at once and spread the news everywhere: that Miss
Chester, under the sanction of her mistress, the captain's wife, had
been married in the winter to Isaac Thornycroft.

Mrs. Copp, whose visit had grown to unconscionable length, announced.
her intention of proceeding with them to London. The captain's wife
was quite sufficiently recovered to be left: to use her own glad
words, she should "get well all one way," now that the secret was
told. So it was arranged, and the captain himself escorted them to
Jutpoint.

A gathering at Mrs. Macpherson's. On the day after the arrival in
London, that lady had met the three in the crowd at the Royal Academy,
and invited them at once to her house in the evening. Isaac, who had
seen her once or twice before introduced Mrs. Copp, and whispered the
fact that Anna was no longer Miss Chester, but Mrs. Isaac Thornycroft.

"You'll come early, mind," cried, the hospitable wife of the
professor. "It's just an ordinary tea-drinking, which is one of the
few good things that if the world means to let die out, _I_ don't; but
there'll be some cold meat with it, if anybody happens to be hungry.
The Miss Jupps are coming, and they dine early. Tell your wife, Mr.
Thornycroft--bless her sweet face! there's not one to match it in all
them frames--that I'll get in some wedding cake."

Isaac laughed. The jostling masses had left him behind with Mrs.
Macpherson, who was dressed so intensely high in the fashion, that he
rather winced at the glasses directed to them. However, they accepted
the invitation, and went to Mrs. Macpherson's in the evening.

Miss Jupp had arrived before them; her sisters were unable to come.
She was looking a little more worn than usual, until aroused by the
news relating to Anna. Married! and Miss Jupp had been counting the
days, as it were, until she should return to them, for they could not
get another teacher like her for patience and work.

Ah, yes: Anna's teaching days were over; her star had brightened. As
she sat there in her gleaming silk of pearl-grey, in the golden
bracelets, Isaac's gift, with the rose-blush on her cheeks, the light
of love in her sweet eyes, Mary Jupp saw that she had found her true
sphere.

"But, my dear child, why should it have been done in secret?" she
whispered.

"There were family reasons," answered Anna, "I cannot tell you now."

"Since last November! Dear me! And was the marriage really not known
to any one? was it quite secret?"

"Not quite. One of Isaac's brothers was present in the church to give
me away, and Captain Copp's wife knew of it."

"Ah, then you are not to be blamed; I am glad to hear that," sighed
Mary Jupp.

"And now tell me, how is my dear Miss Thornycroft?" cried Mrs.
Macpherson, as the good professor, in his threadbare coat (rather
worse than usual) beguiled Isaac away to his laboratory. "I declare I
have not yet asked after her."

"Had Mrs. Macpherson been strictly candid, she might have acknowledged
to having purposely abstained from asking before Isaac. The fact of
the young lady's having got intimate with Robert Hunter at _her_
house, and of its being an acquaintance not likely, as she judged, to
be acceptable to the Thornycrofts, had rather lain on her mind.

"She looks wretched," answered Mrs. Copp.

"Wretched?"

"She has fretted all the flesh off her bones. You might draw her
through the eye of a needle."

"My patience!" ejaculated Mrs. Macpherson. "The prefessor 'ill be
sorry to hear this. What on earth has she fretted over?"

"That horrible business about Robert Hunter," explained Mrs. Copp.
"The justice has not looked like himself since; and never will again."

"Oh," returned the professor's lady in a subdued tone, feeling
suddenly crestfallen. Conscience whispered that this could only apply
to the matter she was thinking of, and that the attachment had arisen
through her own imprudence in allowing them to meet. She supposed (to
use the expressive words passing through her thoughts) that there had
been a blow-up.

"It wasn't no fault of mine," she said, after a pause. "Who was to
suspect they were going to fall in love with each other in that
foolish fashion? She a schoolgirl, and he an old widower! A couple of
spoonies! Other folks as well as me might have been throwed off their
guard."

Since Mrs. Macpherson had mixed in refined society she had learnt to
speak tolerably well at collected times and seasons. But when flurried
her new ideas and associations forsook her, and she was sure to lapse
back to the speech of old days.

"Then there _was_ an attachment between him and Mary Anne
Thornycroft!" exclaimed Mrs. Copp, in a tone of triumph. "Didn't I
tell you so, Anna? You need not have been so close about it."

"I do not know that there was," replied Anna "Mary Anne never spoke of
it to me."

"Rubbish to speaking of it," said Mrs. Copp. "You didn't speak about
you and Mr. Isaac." Anna bent her head in silence.

"And was there a blow-up with her folks?" inquired Mrs. Macpherson,
not quite courageously yet. "Miss Jupp! _you_ remember--I come right
off to you with my suspicions at the first moment I had 'em--which was
only a day or so before she went home."

"I don't know about that; there might have been or there might not,"
replied Mrs. Copp, alluding to the question of the "blow-up." "But I
have got my eyes about me, and I can see how she grieved after him.
Why, if there had been nothing between them, why did she put on
mourning?" demanded the captain's mother, looking at the assembled
company one by one.

"She put it on for Lady Ellis," said Anna.

"Oh, did she, though! Sarah told me that that mourning was on her back
before ever Lady Ellis died. I tell you, I tell you also, ladies, she
put on the black for Robert Hunter."

"Who put on black for him?" questioned Mrs. Macpherson, in a puzzle.

"Mary Anne Thornycroft."

"I never heard of such a thing! What did she do that for?"

"Why _do_ girls do foolish things?" returned Mrs. Copp. "To show her
respect for him, I suppose."

"A funny way of showing it!" cried Mrs. Macpherson. "Robert Hunter is
doing very well where he's gone."

Mrs. Copp turned her eyes on the professor's wife with a prolonged
stare.

"It is to be hoped he _is_, ma'am," she retorted, emphatically.

"He is doing so well that his coming back and marrying her wouldn't
surprise me in the least. The Thornycrofts won't have no need to set
up their backs again him if he can show he is in the way of making his
fortune."

"Why, who are you talking of?" asked Mrs. Copp, after a pause and
another gaze.

"Of Robert Hunter. He has gone and left us. Perhaps you did not know
it, ma'am?"

"Yes, I _did_," said Mrs. Copp, with increased emphasis. "Coastdown
has too good cause to know it, unfortunately."

This remark caused Mrs. Macpherson to become meek again. "I had a note
from him this week," she observed. "It come in a letter to the
prefessor: he sent it me up from his laborory."

The corners of Anna's mouth were gradually lengthening, almost--she
could not help the feeling--in a sort of fear. It must be remembered
that she knew nothing of the fact that it was not Robert Hunter who
had died.

"Perhaps you'll repeat that again, ma'am," said Mrs. Copp, eyeing Mrs.
Macpherson in her sternest manner. "You had a note from _him_, Robert
Hunter?"

"Yes, I had, ma'am. Writ by himself."

"Where was it written from?"

Mrs. Macpherson hesitated, conscious of her defects in the science of
locality. "The prefessor would know," said she; "I'm not much of a
geographer myself. Anyway it come from where he is, somewhere over in
t'other hemisphere."

To a lady of Mrs. Copp's extensive travels, round the world a dozen
times and back again, the words "over in t'other hemisphere," taken in
conjunction with Robert Hunter's known death and burial, conveyed the
idea that the celestial hemisphere, and not the terrestrial, was
alluded to. She became convinced of one of two things: that the
speaker before her was awfully profane, or else mad.

"I know the letters were six weeks reaching us," continued Mrs.
Macpherson. "I suppose it would take about that time to get here from
the place."

Mrs. Copp pushed her chair back in a heat. "This is the first time I
ever came out to drink tea with the insane, and I hope it will be the
last," she cried, speaking without reserve, according to her custom.
"Ma'am, if you are not a model of profanity, you ought to be in
Bedlam."

Mrs. Macpherson wiped her hot face and took out her fan. But she could
give as well as take. "It's what I have been thinking of you, ma'am.
Do you think _you_ are quite right?"

"I right!" screamed Mrs. Copp in a fury. "What do you mean?"

"What do _you_ mean?--come!--about me?"

"_That's_  plain. I never yet heard of a man who is dead and gone
writing back letters to his friends. Who brings them? How do they
come? Do they drop from the skies or come up through the graves?"

"Lawk a mercy!" cried Mrs. Macpherson, not catching the full import of
the puzzling questions. "They come through the post."

Mrs. Copp was momentarily silenced. The answer was entirely practical:
it was not given in anger; nor, as she confessed to herself, with any
indication of insanity. Light dawned upon her mind.

"It's the spirits!" she exclaimed, coming to a sudden conviction.
"Well! Before I'd go in for that fashionable rubbish! A woman of any
pretension to sense believe in _them!_"

"Hang the spirits!" returned Mrs. Macpherson with offended emphasis.
"I'm not quite such a fool as that. You should hear what the prefessor
says of them. Leastways, not of the spirits, poor innocent things,
which is all delusion, but of them there rapping mediums that make
believe to call 'em up."

"Then, ma'am, if it's not the spirits you allude to as bringing the
letters, perhaps you'll explain to me what does bring them."

"What _should_ bring them but the post?"

Mrs. Copp was getting angry. "The post does not bring letters from
dead men."

"I never said it did. Robert Hunter's not dead."

"Robert Hunter _is_."

"Well, I'm sure!" cried Mrs. Macpherson, fanning herself.

"Robert Hunter died last January," persisted Mrs. Copp, in excitement.
"His unfortunate body lies under the sod in Coastdown churchyard, and
his poor restless spirit hovers above it, frightening the people into
fits. My son Sam saw it. Isaac Thornycroft saw it."

"Robert Hunter is not dead," fired Mrs. Macpherson, who came to the
conclusion that she was being purposely deceived; "he is gone to the
East to make a railroad. Not that I quite know where the East is,"
acknowledged she, "or how it stands from this. I tell you all, I got
a letter from him, and it was writ about six weeks ago."

"If that lady is not mad, I never was so insulted before," cried Mrs.
Copp. "I----"

"There must be some mistake," interposed Mary Jupp, who had listened
in great surprise. Of herself she could not solve the question, and
knew nothing of the movements of Mr. Hunter. But she thought if he
were dead that she should have heard of it from his sister Susan.
"Perhaps it only requires a word of explanation."

"I don't know what explanation it can require," retorted Mrs. Copp.
"The man is dead and buried."

"The man is not," contended Mrs. Macpherson; "he is alive and kicking,
and laying down a railroad."

"My son, Captain Copp, was a mourner at his funeral."

"He wrote me a letter six weeks ago, and he wrote one to the
prefessor; and he said he was getting on like a house on fire,"
doggedly asserted the professor's wife.

"Stay, stay, I pray you," interposed Miss Jupp. "There must be some
misunderstanding. You cannot be speaking of the same man."

"We are!" raved both the ladies, losing temper. "It is Robert Hunter,
the engineer, who met Mary Anne Thornycroft at my house; and the
two--as I suspected--fell in love with each other, which made me very
mad."

"And came down to see her at Coastdown, and Susan Hunter was to have
come with him, and didn't. Of course we are speaking of the same."

"And I say that he come back from that visit safe and sound, and was
in London till April, when he went abroad," screamed Mrs. Macpherson.
"He dined here with us the Sunday afore he was off; we had a lovely
piece o' the belly o salmon, and a quarter o' lamb and spring cabbage,
and rhubub tart and custards, and a bottle of champagne, that we might
drink success to his journey. Very down-hearted he seemed, I suppose
at the thoughts of going away; and the next day he started. There! Ask
the professor, ma'am, and contradict it if you can."

"I won't contradict it," said Mrs. Copp; "I might set on and swear if
I did, like my son Sam. You'll persuade me next there's nothing real
in the world. Anna Chester--that is, Anna Thornycroft--do you tell
what you know. Perhaps they'll hear you."

"Oh, I'll hear the young lady," said Mrs. Macpherson fanning herself
violently; "but nobody can't persuade me that black's white."

Anna quietly related facts, so far as her knowledge extended: Robert
Hunter had come to Coastdown, had paid his visit to the Red Court
Farm, and on the very night he was to have left for London he was shot
as he stood at the edge of the cliffs, fell over, and was not found
until the morning--dead!

Her calm manner, impressive in its truth, her minute relation of
particulars, her unqualified assertion that it was Robert Hunter, and
could have been no one else, staggered Mrs. Macpherson.

"And he was shot down dead, you say?" cried that lady, dropping the
fan, and opening her mouth very wide.

"He must have died at the moment he was shot. It was not
discovered"--here her voice faltered a little--"who shot him, and the
jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or
persons unknown."

"Was there a inquest?" demanded the astonished Mrs. Macpherson, "on
Robert Hunter?"

"Certainly there was. He was buried subsequently in Coastdown
churchyard. His grave lies in the east corner of it, near Mrs.
Thornycroft's."

"Now you have not told all the truth, Anna," burst forth Mrs. Copp,
who had been restraining herself with difficulty. "You are always
shuffling out of that part of the story when you can. Why don't you
say that you and Miss Thornycroft saw him murdered? Tell it as you had
to tell it before the coroner."

"It is true," acknowledged Anna.

"And Miss Thornycroft put on mourning for him, making believe it was
for Lady Ellis, who died close upon it," cried Mrs. Copp, too
impatient to allow Anna to continue. "And the worst is, that he can't
rest in his grave, poor fellow, but hovers atop of it night after
night, so that Coastdown dare not go by the churchyard, and the
folks have made a way right across the heath to avoid it, breaking
through two hedges and a stone fence that belongs to Lord
What's-his-name--who's safe, it's said, to indict the parish for
trespass. Scores of folks saw the ghost. Anna saw it. My son Sam saw
it, and he's not one to be taken in by a ghost; though he did think
once he saw a mermaid, and will die, poor fellow, in the belief.
Robert Hunter not dead, indeed! He was barbarously murdered, ma'am."

"It is the most astounding tale I ever heard," cried the bewildered
Mrs. Macpherson. "What was the ghost like?"

"Like himself, ma'am. Perhaps you knew a coat he had? An ugly white
thing garnished with black fur?"

"I had only too good cause to know it!" shrieked out Mrs. Macpherson,
aroused at the mention. "That blessed prefessor of mine bought it and
gave it him; was _took in_ to buy it. He's the greatest duffer in
everyday life that ever stood upright."

"Then it always appeared in that coat. For that was what he had on
when he was murdered."

"Well, I never! I shall think we are in the world of departed spirits
next. This beats table-rapping. Why, he brought that very coat on his
arm when he came on the Sunday to dine with us! The nights were cold
again."

"And the real veritable coat has been lying ever since at the
public-house where he was carried to. It's there now, stiff in its
folds," eagerly avowed Mrs. Copp. "Ma'am, what you saw at your house
here must have been a vision--himself and the coat too."

Mrs. Macpherson began to doubt her own identity. The second coat never
crossed her mind. It happened that she had not looked into the lumber
closet after it, and could have been upon her oath, if asked, that it
was there still. Her hot face assumed a strange look of dubious
bewilderment.

"It never surely could have been his ghost that came here and dined
with us!" debated she. "Ghosts don't eat salmon and drink champagne."

"I don't know what they might do if put to it," cried Mrs. Copp,
sharply. "One thing you may rely upon, ma'am--that it was not
himself."

"The prefessor doesn't believe in ghosts. He says there is no such
things. I'm free to confess that I've never seen any."

"Neither did I believe before this," said Mrs. Copp. "But one has to
bend to the evidence of one's senses."

How the argument would have ended, and what they might have brought it
to, cannot be divined. Miss Jupp had sat in simple astonishment. That
Robert Hunter had died and been buried at Coastdown in January, and
that Robert Hunter had dined in that very house in April, appeared
absolutely indisputable. It was certainly far more marvellous than any
feat yet accomplished by the "spirits." But Isaac Thornycroft solved
it.

He came in alone, saying the professor was staying behind to finish
some experiment. Upon which the professor's wife went to see, for she
did not approve of experiments when there was company to entertain.
Mrs. Copp immediately began to recount what had passed, making
comments of her own.

"I have come across many a bumboat woman in my day, Mr. Isaac, and I
thought they capped the world for impudent obstinacy, for they'll call
black white to the face of a whole crew. But Mrs. Mac beats 'em.
Perhaps you will add your testimony to mine--that Robert Hunter is
dead and buried. Miss Jupp here is not knowing what to think or
believe."

Isaac Thornycroft hesitated. He went and stood on the hearth-rug in
his black clothes. His face was grave; his manner betrayed some
agitation.

"Mrs. Copp, will you pardon me if I ask you generously to dismiss that
topic; at least for to-night?"

"What on earth for?" was the answer of Mrs. Copp.

"The subject was, and is, and always will be productive of the utmost
pain to my family. We should be thankful to let all remembrance of it
die out of men's minds."

"Now I tell you what it is, Mr. Isaac; you are thinking of your
brother Cyril. Of course as long as he stays away, he'll be suspected
of the murder, but I've not said so----"

"Be silent, I pray you," interrupted Isaac, in a tone of sharp pain.
"Hear me, while I clear your mind from any suspicion of that kind. By
all my hope of heaven--by all _our_ hope," he added, lifting solemnly
his right hand, "my brother Cyril was innocent."

"Well, we'll let that pass," said Mrs. Copp, with a sniff. "Many a
pistol has gone off by accident before now, and small blame to the
owners of it. Perhaps you'll be good enough to bear me out to Miss
Jupp that Robert Hunter was shot dead."

Isaac paced the room. Mrs. Macpherson had come in and was listening;
the professor halted at the door. Better satisfy them once for all, or
there would be no end to it.

"It came to our knowledge afterwards--long afterwards--that it was not
Robert Hunter," said Isaac, with slow distinctness. "The mistake arose
from the face not having been recognisable. Hunter is alive and well."

"The saints preserve us!" cried Mrs. Copp in her discomfiture. "Then
why did his ghost appear?"

A momentary smile flitted across the face of Isaac. "I suppose--in
point of fact--it was not his ghost, Mrs. Copp."

Mrs. Copp's senses were three-parts lost in wonder at the turn affairs
were taking. "Who, then, was shot down? A stranger?"

Isaac raised his handkerchief to his face. "I dare-say it will be
known some time. At present it is enough for us that it was not Robert
Hunter."

"I knew a ghost could never eat salmon!" said Mrs. Macpherson, in a
glow of triumph.

"But what about the coat?" burst forth Mrs. Copp, as that portion of
the mystery loomed into her recollection. "If that is lying unusable
in the stables at the Mermaid, Robert Hunter could not have brought it
with him when he came here to dinner."

Clearly. And the ladies looked one at another, half inclined to plunge
into war again. The meek professor, possibly afraid of it, spoke up in
his mild way from behind, where he had stood and listened in silence.

"Mr. Hunter's coat was to have been sent after him from Coastdown; but
it did not come, and I gave him mine. He supposed it must have been
lost on the road."

It was the professor's wife's turn now. She could not believe her
ears. Give away the other coat--when visions had crossed her mind of
having that disreputable fur taken off and decent buttons put on, for
his wear the following winter when he went off to the country on his
ologies!

"Professor! do you mean to tell me to my face that that coat is not in
the lumber-closet upstairs where I put it?"

"Well, my dear, I fear you'd not find it there."

Away went Mrs. Macpherson to the closet, and away went the rest in her
wake, anxious to see the drama played out. Isaac Thornycroft alone did
not stir; and his wife came back to him. Her face was white and cold,
as though she had received a shock.

"Isaac! Isaac! this is frightening me. May I say what I fear?"

He put his hands upon her shoulders and gazed into her eyes as she
stood before him, his own full of kindness but of mourning.

"Say as little as you can, my darling. I can't bear much to-night."

"Cyril! It--was----"

"Oh, Cyril! Cyril! could he not be saved?"

His faint cry of anguish echoed hers, as he bent his aching brow
momentarily upon her shoulder.

"I would have given my own life to save his, Anna. I would give it
still to save another the remorse and pain that lie upon him. He put
on Hunter's coat that night, the other not wanting it, and was
mistaken for him."

"I understand," she murmured. "Oh, what a remorse it must be!"

"Now you know all; but it is for your ear alone," he said, standing
before her again and speaking impressively. "From henceforth let it be
to us a barred subject, the only one that my dear wife may not mention
to me."

She looked an assent from her loving eyes, and sat down again as the
company came trooping in, Mrs. Macpherson openly demanding of her
husband how long it would be before he learnt common sense, and why he
did not cut off his head and give _that_ away.




CHAPTER XVIII.
Disclosing it to Justice Thornycroft.


Back at Coastdown. Isaac and his wife were staying at the Red Court.
Mr. Thornycroft wished them to remain at it altogether; but Isaac
doubted. If his sister were to marry, why then he would heartily
accede; and Anna could take up her position as its mistress--in
anticipation of the period when she would legally be entitled to it.
At present he thought it would be better for them to rent a small
house near.

Mary Anne had received the news of the marriage with equanimity--not
to say apathy. In the dreadful calamities that had overwhelmed her,
petty troubles were lost. Cordially indeed did she welcome her brother
and his wife home, and hoped they would remain. To be alone there was,
as she truly told them, miserable.

A ship letter had been received from Richard, written when he was
nearly half way on his voyage. It appeared that he had written on
embarking, just a word to tell the name of his ship, and whither it
was bound, and had sent it on shore by the pilot. Isaac could only
suppose that the man had forgotten to post it.

His destination was New Zealand. Some people whom he knew had settled
there, he said, and he intended to join them. He should purchase some
land and farm it; but he would never again set foot on European soil.
He supposed he should get on; and he hoped in time some sort of peace
would return to him.

"I would advise your telling my father the whole, if you have not
already done so," the letter concluded. "It is right that he should
know the truth about Cyril, and that I shall never come home again.
Tell him that the remorse lies very heavily upon me; that I would have
given my own life ten times over--given it cheerfully--to save my
brother's. Had it been any one but a brother, I should not feel it so
deeply. I think of myself always as a second Cain. I will write you
again when we arrive. Meanwhile, address to me at the post-office,
Canterbury. I suppose you will not object to correspond with me.
Perhaps my father will write. Tell him I should like it."

Before the arrival of this letter to Isaac, he had been consulting
with his sister about the expediency of enlightening their father. His
own opinion entirely coincided with Richard's--that it ought to be
done. Mr. Thornycroft was in a state of doubt about Cyril; and also as
to the duration of Richard's exile, and restlessly curious always in
regard to what had led to it.

One balmy June day, when the crop of hay was being got in, Isaac told
his father. They were leaning upon a gate in the four-acre mead,
watching the haymakers, who were piling the hay into cocks at the
farther end of the field.

Mr. Thornycroft was like a man stunned.

"Hunter not dead! Cyril lying there, and not Hunter! It can't _be_,
Isaac!"

Isaac repeated the facts again, and then went into details. He
concluded by showing Richard's last letter. "Poor Dicky! Poor Dicky!"
cried the justice, melted to compassion. "Yes, as you say, Isaac,
Cyril is in a happier place than this--gone to his rest. And
Dick--Dick sent him there in cruelty. I think I'll go in if you'll
give me your arm."

Wonderingly Isaac obeyed. Never had the strong, upright Justice
Thornycroft sought or needed support from any one. The news must have
shaken him terribly. Isaac went with him across the fields, and saw
him shut himself in his room.

"Have you been telling him?" whispered Mary Anne.

"Yes."

"And how has he borne it? Why did he lean upon you in coming in?"

"He seemed to bear it exceedingly well. But it must have had a far
deeper effect upon him than I thought, or he would not have asked for
my arm."

Mary Anne Thornycroft sighed. A little pain, more or less, seemed to
her as nothing.

On the following morning Mr. Thornycroft sent for his son. Isaac found
him seated before his portable desk; some papers upon it. The crisis
of affairs had prompted the justice to disclose certain facts to his
children, that otherwise never might have been disclosed. Richard
Thornycroft was not his own son, though he had been treated as such.
Isaac listened in utter amazement. Of all the strange things that had
lately fallen upon them, this appeared to him to be the strangest.

"I have been writing to Richard," said Mr. Thornycroft, taking up some
closely-written pages. "You can read it; it will save me going over
the details to you."

Isaac took the letter, and read it through. But his senses were
confused, and it was not very clear to him.

"It seems that I cannot understand it now, sir."

"Not understand it?" repeated the justice, with a touch of his old
heat. "It is plain enough to be understood. When my father died, he
left this place, the Red Court Farm, to my elder brother, your uncle
Richard--whom you never knew. A short while afterwards, Richard met
with an accident in France, and I went over with my wife, to whom I
was just married. We found him also with a wife, which surprised me,
for he had never said anything of it; she was a pretty little
Frenchwoman; and their child, a boy, was a year old. Richard, poor
fellow, was dying, and of course I thought my chance of inheriting the
Red Court was gone--that he would naturally leave it to his little
son. But he took an opportunity of telling me that he had left it to
me; the only proviso attached to it being that I should bring up the
boy, as my son. He talked with me further: things that I cannot go
into now: and I promised. That is how the Red Court came to me."

"But why should he have done this, sir?" interrupted Isaac, who liked
justice better than wrong. "The little boy had a right to it."

"No," said Mr. Thornycroft, quietly. "Richard had not married his
mother."

Isaac saw now. There was a pause.

"He said if time could come over again he would have married her, or
else not have taken her. He was dying, you see, Isaac, and right and
wrong array themselves in very distinct colours then. Anyway, it was
too late now, whatever his repentance; and he prayed me and my wife to
take the boy and not let it be known for the child's own sake that he
was not ours. We both promised; at a moment like that one could not
foresee inconveniences that might arise later, and it almost seemed as
if we owed the compliance, in gratitude for the bequeathal of the Red
Court Farm. He died, and we brought the boy with us to London--he who
has been looked upon as your brother Richard. When people here used to
say that he was more like his uncle Richard than his father Harry, my
wife would glance at me with a smile."

"And his mother?"

"She died in France shortly afterwards. She had parted with the boy
readily, glad to find he would have so good a home. Had she lived, the
probabilities are that the secret could not have been kept."

"Did you intend to keep it always, father?"

"Until my death. Every year as they went on, gave less chance of our
disclosing it. When you were all little, my wife and I had many a
serious consultation; for the future seemed to be open so some
difficulty; but we loved the boy, and neither of us had courage to
say, He is not ours; he has no legitimate inheritance. Besides, as
your mother would say to me, there was always our promise. It must
have been disclosed at my death, at least to Richard, to explain why
you, and not he, came into the Red Court."

"Perhaps his father, my uncle Richard, expected it would be left to
him?"

"No, Isaac. We talked of that. Only in the event of my having no
children of my own would the property have become his. Richard will
take his share as one of my younger children. _You_ are the eldest.
I shall at once settle this money upon him; you have read to that
effect in the letter; so that he will have enough for comfort whatever
part of the world he may choose to remain in."

Isaac mechanically cast his eyes on the letter, still in his hand.

"I have disclosed these facts to him now for his own comfort," resumed
Mr. Thornycroft. "It may bring him a ray of it to find Cyril was not
his brother."

Isaac thought it would. He folded the letter and returned it to his
father.

"There is one thing I wished to ask you, sir, and I may as well ask it
now. You do not, I presume, think of running more cargoes."

"Never again," said Mr. Thornycroft. "Richard was the right hand of
it, and he is gone. That's over for ever. But for him it would have
been given up before. And there's Kyne besides."

Isaac nodded, glad to have the matter set at rest. "May I tell Mary
Anne what you have disclosed to me?"

"Yes, but no one else. She may be glad to hear Richard is not her
brother."

How glad, the justice little thought. It seemed to Mary Anne as if
this news removed the embargo she had self-imposed upon her marriage
with Robert Hunter. Perhaps she had already begun to question the
necessity of it--to think it a very utopian, severe decision. In the
revulsion of feeling that came over her, she laid her head down on
Isaac's shoulder with a burst of tears, and told him all. Isaac
smiled.

"You must tell him that you have relented, Mary Anne."

"He will not be back for five years."

"He will be back in less than five months; perhaps in five weeks."

She sat upright, staring at him.

"Isaac!"

"He will, indeed. Anna had a letter from him yesterday. It came to
Miss Jupp's, addressed to 'Miss Chester.' Business matters are
bringing him home for a short while; personal things, he says, that
only himself can do. I wonder if he wrote to her in the hope that the
information would penetrate to Coastdown?"

She sat in silence, her colour going and coming, rather shrinking from
the merriment in Isaac's eye. Oh, would it be so?--would it be so?

"In that case--I mean, should circumstances bring him again to the Red
Court Farm--we shall have to disclose publicly the truth about Cyril,
Mary Anne. As well that it should be so, and then a tombstone can be
put. But it can wait yet."

As she sat there, looking out on the sparkling sea, a prevision came
over her that this happiness might really come to her at last, and a
sobbing sigh of thankfulness went up to heaven.

Coastdown went on in its ordinary quiet routine. The mysteries of the
Red Court Farm were at an end, never again to be enacted. Long and
perseveringly did Mr. Superintendent Kyne look out for the smugglers;
many and many a night did he exercise his eyes and his patience on the
edge of that bleak plateau; but they came no more. Old Mr.
Thornycroft, deprived, he hardly knew how, of his sons, lived on at
the Red Court, feeling at times a vacancy of pursuit: he had loved
adventure, and his occupation was gone. But the land got a better
chance of being tilled to perfection now than it ever had been.

Meanwhile the whole neighbourhood remained under a clear and immutable
persuasion that the ghost still "walked" in the churchyard. The new
right of road had come to a hot dispute; but Coastdown persisted in
using it after nightfall, to avoid the graves and their ominous
visitor. While Captain Copp, taking his glass in the parlour at
the Mermaid, did not fail to descant upon the marvels of that night,
when he and that woman-servant of his, who (he would add in a
parenthesis) was undaunted enough for a she-pirate, saw with their
own eyes the spirit of Robert Hunter. And then the parlour would fall
into a discussion of the love of roving inherent in the young
Thornycrofts--Cyril lingering away still; Richard also perhaps gone to
look after him; and speculate upon how long it would be before they
returned, and the glorious dinners were resumed at the Red Court Farm.




THE END.








End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Court Farm (Vol. 2 of 2), by
Mrs. Henry Wood

*** 