Fern Seed (Saturday Evening Post)/Part 3

by Henry Milner Rideout

 

"Here We are!" Thought Leonard. "Trouble Ahead!"

 

XII

THIS uneasy quiet endured for some time. A sudden click of metal, breaking it, made Leonard start but also relieved him. He turned to welcome something definite. A key turned in a lock. The front door opened quickly, just wide enough to let a man slip through. The man who did so, and who closed it in the same movement, was George. He had come without a sound of footsteps.

"No news?"

He spoke hardly above a whisper and stood there dripping but cheerful.

"None," said Leonard.

"Will you draw those curtains, please?" Grayland pointed with his thumb toward the garden windows. "Like the blockhead which I ought not to be at my time o' life I forgot 'em."

When his friend had pulled the curtains across and overlapped them carefully, he advanced, peeled off his wet clothes, hung them up, and in his underwear squatted like a tailor, back to the blaze.

"Rotten bit of work, that," he growled, scolding himself. "They could have looked right in on you. I did. Enough like Mr. Laurence you were, sitting here, to fool me for a moment. So nothing's happened?"

Corsant shook his head. The other in sign language begged a cigarette, lighted it from a glowing brand, and smoked and steamed with great relish.

"To-night's their weather for it, unless they're fools," he declared. "So wet and black, with plenty of noises to cover your own. If 'twas my job, I'd tackle her before midnight. Outside there, a man can't even tell what's near him. The old girl going home passed within touch of me; nor you nor she nor the pony-cart boy guessed I was there, right by your elbows." George nodded at the candlestick. "You stood holding that in an open doorway. Better not any more, my son." He gave this advice with a hard look, said no more for a time, and fell to brooding. "To-night's their weather. Mind, if they do come, bags I the big man. He's my meat."

Leonard glanced quickly at the speaker.

"You sound bloodthirsty, George."

"I only want to come to my hands with that jockey." Grayland threw his cigarette into the flame behind him, and thoughtfully examined his fists. "You leave it to me."

Both men had kept their voices lowered. George spoke in a casual undertone; but the words had a meaning so cold and deadly that his companion watched him closer than before.

"Why now, George, we——"

"I know the beast better than what you do. Go ask the natives whose women and babies he contrived to have slaughtered." Grayland rose. "Time to make your bed. Whole thing may go smooth anyway. No good beating the air. What I mean to say is, if it did come to a fight, I'd kill him as quick as any other snake, without a smatch of pity. That's all."

He stalked away into the darkness, bare-armed, bare-legged, his flimsy white clothing still wet, like a shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe or a drowned ghost out of place in that quiet old room. Bending his head under the pointed arch he vanished up the stairs, to return soon with an armful of sticks and brown canvas. These he laid on the floor below a tall portrait and rapidly built into a cot, which he shoved against the wall. Once more vanishing upstairs, he brought down a second armful—this time of bedding. With a few practiced movements he made all ready, the pillow smooth, sheets folded down, pajamas laid out.

"There you are," said George, and took the burning bush of candles to survey his work by. "Hop in! I'll carry this light upstairs and put Mr. Laurence's astral body to bed there, as we agreed."

He was turning away, when Leonard called him back.

"Who's this gentleman watching o'er my pillow?"

The candles flooded with streaming brightness the portrait, its tarnished gilt frame and a pair of swords, one naked, one in a chafed brown-leathern scabbard, that hung on either side. From the canvas a black-eyed young man, with long black curls under his plumed hat, gave them an odd, impatient smile, as though bidding them do their staring and pass on. Dark-skinned, high-colored, humorous, restless, the cavalier stood whip in hand beside the head of a bay horse. Leonard could see how instantly he would turn to mount.

"That sportsman? Some namesake of yours," replied Grayland. "Whoever painted him had to slap it in lively, eh? 'Come on,' says he. 'Come on, Old Dabstick, get it over.' He was great with the sword, I've heard tell."

The bit of hearsay made Leonard prick up his ears.

"No! Was he?"

"A famous master of the arm, they do say," replied George. "Killed in an ambush outside Tangier. This naked one, here, was his pet little pinking iron. I oiled her up last week."

Leonard promptly set one knee on his cot and leaning toward the sword, eyed it with care from hilt to point.

"Good plain Toledo," he murmured. "About 1600. Pretty balance, I should think."

"Hobby of yours?" said Grayland.

"Used to be." Leonard drew slowly back from the weapon, and stood gazing up once more at its owner. "Why," he exclaimed, "there are the lovelocks! I missed 'em to-day when you were handling your ax by the window. George, this man looks like you—and somebody else!"

His candle bearer grunted, and swung away to the stairs.

"Humph! You've got likenesses on the brain. Let's go to bed. Talking a bit too loud, we were."

Alone with the firelight Corsant undressed, groped his way between sheets and lay comfortably watching the shadows jig across the floor. Above him the swords and their master faded into the common darkness of the wall. He woke to see Grayland pass, blanket-wrapped like a tall Indian, and lie down on the hearth.

"Oh, look here," protested Leonard, "I feel like a pig in this bed, when you——"

George rolled over, presenting the shadow of a broad back and narrow waist.

"Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber! Tune, Greenville. This is your old man's watch."

They fell into that companionable silence which is the forerunner of sleep, and which a man breaks only to enjoy it longer, because his fellow across the way appears to be sharing his mood if not his thought.

"George, do you ever hear any noises in this room?"

"Plenty of 'em," replied a smothered voice from the blanket. "Any old house."

"Yes, but I mean——"

"You mean, like somebody waiting to be spoke to," said George, with a yawn. "Or something waiting to be found. I know."

"What do you make of it?"

"Nothing. I'm no great believer in ghosts." The voice burrowed deeper into the blanket. "But, o' course, there are old ancient things that don't die and can't rest."

The friendly silence intervened again. Half awake, Leonard watched the fire and the jogging shadows. It amused him to see what litter they two men had already strewn about, like vagabonds camping in a lady's parlor—their clothes and boots, the loo table still half cleared, George's umbrella against the wall, as fat, shapeless and traditional as any apple woman's in the Chatterbox of childhood.

"George!"

"Oh, what now?"

"Any womankind in this family?"

"Only one, thank God!" said the smothered voice. "One sister."

"What's she like?"

Grayland's shadow stirred by the fire, rolled and lay on its back. His answer, withheld for a moment, sounded both unwilling and vindictive.

"Old maid, standard type," he grumbled. "Flat front, long neck, coiled round with pearls, like seized riggin'. Smokes and plays cards all night, and snaps your head off." He paused, then as if trying to be just added: "'But though she wears another's hair, she is an interestin' person.'"

"Well for us that she's not here now," said Leonard.

George chuckled.

"I believe you, my boy. Time we quit talking. Good night."

Rain was the last thing heard. Rain, steady though diminished, woke Leonard next morning at daylight with muffled drums about the house. Having breakfasted and set their room in order, the two men parted company—George to bundle the cot upstairs and take his turn of sleep, Leonard to stand watch through the forenoon. A quiet night had left them both disgruntled, cheating their hopes; and now a long dark day persevered in gloom, hour after crawling hour, without incident or change, without a stir but for the hopping of rain in puddles along the driveway and the wriggling of bright drops down window panes. George came from his nap surly, and when twilight drew near at last, went outdoors growling.

"'Tis neither fit for man nor beast," he quoted. "What's more, I don't believe they're coming—either kind."

He left behind the contagion of his doubt. Alone once more, Corsant paced the room up and down a mile or two, wished the time away, ruined his taste for tobacco, fidgeted, poked the fire, and grew convinced that he and George were a couple of idiots.

Long before dinnertime he lighted the candles in their silver bush. After sitting with them disconsolate he walked the floor again, stared portraits out of countenance, hauled books down and put them up unread. Caleb Trenchfield's Christian Chymestree, Hooker's Sermons, Calamy's, Frewen's, Bishop Bull's and Stillingfleet's, Burnet's History, Clarendon's, The Saint's Rest, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Lockyear's England Watched, Johnson's Dictionary, all these he thumbed and frowned into, till for the sake of gambling he shut his eyes and drew a volume. The lot fell on worthy Bishop Bull.

"Almost a modern—1827. Gorry! Some rocks for the mind to break on."

Sinking defeated in his armchair, Leonard began The State of Man Before the Fall. It promised, to his ignorance, a few gleams of bliss from the earthly paradise. But no sunshine leaked out here. Lost in a black sand storm where Pelagians and Socinians whirled round the protoplast like dead leaves, he plodded on, sometimes buffeted by quatenus or quomodo, sometimes cheered by sight of Crelllus or Smalcius nibbling at an argument among other doleful night creatures of the desert. His courage drooped.

"... how absurd soever that interpretation may at first appearance seem to be." Thus Bishop Bull strode manfully ahead. "For upon a diligent search you will find, that aliquid latet, quod non patet, 'there is a mystery in the bottom.'"

Here the reader stopped. Indeed, he was never to finish the book, for behind him, as it had come last night, there came that vague unrest, a flutter and a sigh. It was nothing. Yet from the corner at his back empty air called to him without words and a motion ceased. That which was not alive, but which as Grayland had said could neither die nor rest, was waiting. The expectancy made no appeal to his five senses, evaded them, glided through or under and touched at their root the same forgotten impulses he had known yesterday.

Leonard stood up, and turned. There was nobody, of course; nothing but candle shine on dark-brown oak, and shadows, and in the little pointed carving two holes like a pair of blind sockets. It waited, viewless, before his face. He heard again the flutter and the passing breath. For a minute afterward he remained there, intent, alone with what he did not understand. He was quite cool. The thing had in it no quality of alarm, only a baffling insistence that, if comparable at all, was like the demand and refusal of a known face to appear before the mind's eye.

Leonard gave up the riddle, crossed to the shelves again, and slid the good bishop home for perhaps another century of calm, where the Pelagians cease from troubling. As he did so the handle of the front door turned.

"Hello, George," he said quietly, over his shoulder. "Glad to see you. Been entertaining more spooks."

The door closed, the bolt was shot.

"Home early, aren't you?"

George did not answer. There was a flapping sound of wet raincoats.

Leonard turned from the books. Two men stood near the door, watching him.

XIII

AT FIRST glance he took them for strangers. The candlelight falling short of where they stood, left their features in doubt. Their quiet appearance had surprised him, while his thoughts ran elsewhere; and as for a time they neither spoke nor moved, nothing told him who they were. Then by the difference in height and bearing he knew. This was the pair who had talked bad French in the Bottle of Hay.

"Here we are!" thought Leonard. "Trouble ahead!"

If they meant danger, he welcomed it after so much idleness. The two seemed to be waiting keenly for his next movement. He therefore remained still, outwardly at ease. Their silence and wooden immobility conveyed a threat, but also tickled his sense of melodrama. The taller man, cloaked in dark waterproof, had struck a bit of attitude which recalled the fatal warbler Edgardo at Lucia di Lammermoor's wedding. Next moment, acting together with military precision, they peeled off their raincoats, dropped them clashing on the floor and flung down their hats. It was done quickly, in prefect time, and showed rehearsal if not drill. They had stripped at once for business. Leonard perceived that much, and held himself ready; but meanwhile he could think only of a pair of comedians opening some trick on the stage. He smiled, and when the taller man came abruptly forward, received him smiling.

"I didn't hear you knock, gentlemen," said he. "There is a very fine old knocker on my door."

From the corner of his eye Leonard took note that his other enemy, the swart little man, stood by the door as if posted there on guard. He liked this arrangement. It was a mistake.

"Bar shooting," he thought, "I can handle 'em one after one."

The fellow near by, George's professional traitor and Amalekite, confronted him with a smirk of triumph. He was neatly but stiffly dressed, as when they had met in Gino's café.

"Pardon me, Mr. Corsant," he replied in his throaty bass, and bowed with mock politeness. "On soch a dark night we could not find your knocker. You must excus-se. Yes, soch a dark, lonesome night!"

Meeting the look in his pale eyes, Leonard understood. Here was a bad egg, a dirty fighter, cold-blooded, yet pompous as a Prussian, touchy in the headpiece, swollen, and quick to explode; moreover, a chap who smirked because two to one against a sick man would be easy. This last consideration hardened our friend's heart. He retreated a few steps, limping badly.

"Now you are here," said he, "won't you sit down?"

"Thank you, no." The pale-eyed fellow overdid his irony. "Our business is quite short; it can be done standing."

Leonard sighed, and leaned against the wall as though faint. He had hoped to draw these two yet farther apart; but though one remained still on guard by his door, the other, instead of following, began to pace up and down across the room near the portrait of the swordsman.

"It is a very dark night," he repeated, with relish.

"So dark as all that?" drawled his victim. "Please don't say it again. Really, you freeze the marrow in me bones."

Any kind of talk would serve to waste time; the more time wasted, the better chance of George's return. But whether George came or not, somebody about this room was to have a surprise, whenever poor Mr. Laurence Corsant, leaning here so feeble and nursing his bad leg so plaintively, should get his health back all of a sudden and jump in.

"Don't you try laughing at me, Corsant. I advise you not." The walker by the portrait halted. His face grew red. All the bully in him blustered. "Your ape's pranks at the inn, they were very fonny, hey?—but they did not buy you anything."

Leonard made round eyes of alarm.

"Oh, no, of course, not a red!" he answered meekly. "Pure amateur sport."

"Ah, sport, sport! That kind of stoff makes me sick!" The other glared at him. "I advise you not to be fonny. Now come, we have talked enough nonzense! You are trying to waste our time, but it's no use, for that man of yours, the damn gypsy, is down in the village some miles away. There is only one deaf old woman here. You had better give us quick what we are after."

Leonard feigned surprise and ignorance. He was in fact beating his brains. How could he entice this chap to draw nearer, to come across the room within fair striking distance? By showing him any old bit of paper——

"Yes? You want something?" he asked. "What can it be?"

His adversary blustered again.

"Oh, come! You know well enough, Corsant. "Two little sheets of writing. We have called them Gamma and Delta in our game. One you stole from me in that pigsty place day before yesterday. The other you stole from old Jacob the Beardless, at the Wolfs Well, out there." He swept his arm angrily toward some unknown region of the East. "We want them both. You can keep all the others."

Leonard began groping lazily in his pockets.

"May I? Thank you."

Illustration: He Was With Her Constantly, Under One Roof or Outdoors

Both men watched him more sharply than ever. He could read in their eyes the certainty that if he had a weapon, he would never draw it but halfway. Being unarmed he took his time, enjoyed their suspense, and very languidly searched pocket after pocket. There was nothing to serve his trick, not so much as an old letter, a card, a scrap. Among crumbs of tobacco his fingers encountered a wilted leaf—the fern tip which that girl in the bluebell grove had given him for luck. He brought it out and kept it in his left hand, as though the crumpled fragment had really been a talisman. At the moment he needed all such friendly reminders. George's umbrella, the grandmotherly gamp, stood by him against the wall. He remembered how Gino had leaned in the same dejected fashion. From these thoughts he looked up calmly.

"It's no go," said he. "Sorry, gentlemen, but I've not the faintest idea where your documents are gone to. I haven't them."

The man by the portrait stamped his foot, and suddenly raged.

"Come! No more!" he cried, with a stream of foul language. "Where are they?"

Leonard waited until he had done roaring.

"I don't know. Wouldn't tell you if I did, but I don't."

This was perfectly true. He laughed. The words, or the laugh, or both together, had an amazing effect. Truth prevailed. There came a dead lull of astonishment and belief.

"What's this?" The fellow's harsh voice dropped to a whisper. He cleared his throat, and stared, crouching forward. "What's this? Watch the door, Kamsa! Look sharp. This man—it's not Corsant at all!"

Silence followed. The pair looked from him to each other and back again quickly, moved, stood fast, then hearkened with sidelong glances. Doubt had them wavering, suspicious of a trap, an ambuscade in some corner of the room. It was Kamsa the underling who first took heart again.

"Oh, he's Corsant all raight," affirmed the swarthy Locust. "No fear! See 'is laig! We had that given 'im at——"

His master turned on him in fury.

"Shut up, you chee-chee! Keep your ears open. There's something wrong here."

Leonard agreed with them both.

"Yes, you're seeing things. There are spooks in the room," he said, blandly, and went on wasting time. "I can tell you better in Latin. 'Aliquid latet, quod non patet.' Spooks would naturally prefer a dead language, wouldn't they? It's good bull Latin—'There is a mystery at the bottom.' Or you might say

"Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream.

In short, I have the receipt of fern seed."

The leader of his enemies remained bending forward, glaring at him with no less perplexity than hatred.

"I believe you are. Same silly way of talking. Brainless puppy. Him or his brother. But the front of your head's different."

Leonard smiled in apology.

"You're right. No brains. 'The shallow part is always the forehead, at least in Oxford, sir.'" He suddenly cast off his pretended weakness, drew clear of the wall, stood up, and spoke out. These brutes would never come close enough, so let them begin. "Put your mind at rest. I'm Corsant. We've fooled long enough. You, I believe, are a secret agent, and a bad one who can't pull off the simplest job. What any Chinese Coast comprador would call a Number Nine man on sight. That's you—a professional turncoat, selling out both ends, and even so a failure. You walk in here threatening me about some of your trumpery blackmail papers not worth the smutty thumb prints on 'em, and then stand round talking phrenology. Pretty feeble! Now get out, the pair of you! I don't know where your Hittite garbage is, and don't care. It's in safe keeping, for good. You have one minute to pick that wet mess off my floor, and clear yourself and your chee-chee sweeper out of my house. That's all. You needn't stop to beg my pardon. Start, and start now!"

The man by the picture, who also had drawn himself upright, took this abuse at first like a wooden image. Then his body began to writhe, his features to swell, and the breath to sputter and quaver between his teeth.

"Ah! You think we are bloffing!" He raised both fists aloft, brandished them, clapped them to his head like a madman, choked, and suddenly reeling, struck with his elbow the naked sword so that it clattered on the wall. "I show you who is failure!"

He wrenched the sword down, and came leaping across the room. It is probable that even in his frenzy he may have been taken aback when Leonard met him halfway, low-set and springy, on guard with George's bag of an umbrella.

As for Leonard, he saw only the furious pale eyes—that was his affair—but he heard Grayland charging from somewhere with a shout, and returned it:

"No, no! Get that little greaser by the door, George!"

Meanwhile there had been three or four passes of the sword. Leonard laughed. "Crude work, old man! Poor schooling! Stiff! Come again!"

It came again, the good Toledo in bad hands. Next moment it went whirling through the air, and fell with a clang. As it did so Corsant dropped his umbrella and struck out right-handed for the jaw.

"There's your Amaleklte," he called.

But the man had hardly come down before George was sitting on him, grinning like a black wildcat.

"Hand me that sword," said George. He was barefoot.

The front door stood half open. From behind it, among the raincoats, a pair of short legs kicked feebly.

"That's nothing. Only sent the black and tan to by-low."

Leonard could not yet understand the scene.

"The door was bolted," he said. "How'd you get in?"

George, sitting as on a fallen horse, grew impatient.

Leonard Met Him Halfway, Low-Set and Springy, on Guard With George's Bag of an Umbrella

"Crawled underneath their mimosa, o' course, and upstairs. 'Twas Kamsa the Locust drew the bolt. I caught him flitting. Here"—Grayland shook out one hand, fretfully—"this fellow's coming to! Give me the sword!"

Leonard recovered that weapon, but kept it.

"No, you don't." He shook his head. "None of that!"

"But you've never known this beast!" cried George, angrily. "I do! He's one trail of slime from here to hell-fire. Hand over!"

"No, sir. He's the captive of my trusty gamp," said Leonard. "I don't want any of his low gore in my nice clean house."

Another voice behind them joined the argument.

"My own feelings to a T," it said, crisp and cheerful. "You're outvoted, George."

They turned. On the threshold, removing a jaunty brown oilskin, stood young Mr. Laurence.

"Come right in with your men, sergeant, will you?" He looked back toward the rain. "Housebreaking, I take it, and assault with a deadly weapon? Good evening, namesake. How are you?"

XIV

"YOU were like the last scene in Hamlet," said Mr. Laurence Corsant, when he and Leonard were dining an hour afterward. "Prostrate forms all over the stage. Rather extraordinary to walk in upon, by one's own hearthstone, wasn't it?" He laughed. "Yet in a way I expected something uncommon. Whenever George grows mysterious, you may be sure he's cooking a little surprise for you."

They sat at a corner of the great table, where two silver trees filled with candles now burned brightly and made the surroundings less forlorn; but even so their excess of elbow room, the board reaching empty away to its foot, gave them a deserted air as if they remained lingering after company had gone. While his kinsman spoke, this fancy ran strong in Leonard's mind. It was more than fancy. It was truth; for at this lighted table many had sat who were now vanished, and they two alone survived.

"I knew George would be stirring up some jagra," continued Laurence. "His devilish wiles for getting me out of this house were rather lame. So I didn't go far or stay long. This afternoon from Mrs. Merle's window—by the way, you've quite cut me out with her—I saw those two rascals go by. Hence all the constabulary with me this evening. I must admit you and George don't require much help."

He smiled and turned their conversation to the East, both near and far. Had a stranger been at table, seeing them together, he would have found more traits of difference than of likeness in the two men. Both were fair-haired, rather hook-nosed, and in frame slender though well knit; but there resemblance ended between Leonard the sunburned, hearty eater, quick of tongue, and Laurence with his pale thin face, his leisurely dry speech, his resignation to a narrow diet, and about his eyes the look of one who had lately come through suffering unbeaten.

"Yes. That girl in Alexandria," declared the ascetic. "No wonder she thought she knew you. I often chucked her under the chin—metaphorically, of course. Pert little baggage. Half Greek, half French—from one of the islands."

"But she was mighty pretty, anyhow," urged Leonard. "Wasn't she?"

His host could not remember that part.

"I dare say. Her father worked for us a long while out there. Useful man, most useful, after you learned to know him and could sift the lies out. A chin-chucking policy helped one learn, you know." Laurence's eyes twinkled at some memory. "But to come back. Our friend whom the police led babbling away just now—he gave you a friendly warning in Gino's café, did he? That's interesting. Can't tell you how interesting. He would have wanted me to clear out then—for reasons. The dickens of it is, I never can tell you just what or how very, very much you've done for me, old chap."

He said this lightly. His hearer took it so. But each man for an instant looked the other in the eyes and appeared content with what he saw there.

"Right! Understood!" said Laurence. "Some things I can tell you, and shall."

A quiet step sounded in the hall. Grayland, wet and somber, came to report.

"How now, G. G.?" said his young chief. "What? Your prisoners didn't escape?"

George stood and glowered at the table.

"No fear," he answered, doggedly. "They're in tight enough. But Lord, what's a couple of years for housebreaking?"

Mr. Laurence Corsant gave a little time and study to his retainer.

"My dear George," said he, "do you sulk because you're not in for manslaughter yourself? If so, let not your heart be troubled. That pair will have reason to wish they had never seen us. Their woes are only beginning to-night."

The mourner glanced up quickly.

"If it's a fair question, sir—you mean they'll be taken higher?"

"Much higher." Laurence nodded. "So high as to make Gilderoy's kite seem a titlark, my boy, and Ossa like a wart." He sighed. "Have you that paper you spoke of, the one my namesake—er—obtained at the Bottle of Hay? Not the love letter."

Without a word, Grayland left the room and presently returned. He laid before them the sheet of paper covered with black curves and hooks like shorthand, signed in vermilion with a man's thumb. Laurence read it through rapidly, then dragged a candlestick toward him, and read again with care. His eyes appeared to darken, as if the old pain which they had conquered once were giving him another twinge.

"All the words and music of the play." He spoke bitterly, and shook his head. "With the charming facts we already had, it completes a very nasty mess. Finish!" He lighted a cigarette among the candles and smoked pensively. "Thanks to your agile doings at the Bottle of Hay, all this rottenness has fallen into the right hands. In the wrong, your paper here and one I held, would have been used to bring on—well, massacre, followed by another hole-and-corner war that might spread. Certainly a few hundred men, women, and children, perhaps a few thousand, who never heard of you or me, will go on leading so-called innocent lives out there."

The morose cloud swept from George's face. Glowing with admiration, he turned to Leonard.

"See him! Hear him!" he cried. "Don't let him deceive you. It's a pukka victory, that's what, after hard work. And he makes as if he'd lost his last friend."

Leonard rose, and took one of the candlesticks.

"Your raw material of victory, dear old chap," said he, limping off toward the door, "is never so pretty as the manufactured article. The dyer's hand. Let's go in by the fire."

Later, upstairs at bedtime, the two Corsants were leaning on the sill of an open window, admiring the night. In dark trees below them pattered a few last drops, but the air smelled fresh, and over the black cloudlike hills and whispering river hung a multitude of stars. Laurence, in pajamas, had come to see if the guest chamber were comfortable, and then lingered to talk a while.

"Glad you and G. G. hit it off so well throughout," said he. "A great old George. Curious thing, you know. George and I have been in tight corners together, and here's a game leg to remind me how he saved the rest of my carcass; and yet—that seems the least part of it, somehow. We met by chance at Aden, of all places. We've always been more like brothers, if you understand me." The young man became silent, and looked out as though reading the stars. "Peaceful here, isn't it? As for George, there's something I want to show you. It can wait till morning. By the way, he declares that we must keep your umbrella in the family archives; that our forerunner in the picture, the Johnny with the sword, below stairs, would have been proud of you. Wonderful work, George says. Never saw anything half so good."

The speaker turned and, waiting, seemed to expect a reply.

"I did use to fence a bit," said Leonard, with embarrassment. "Dad always believed in getting the best master who'ld take you, for learning anything. Forgotten most of it now."

Laurence nodded, smiling like one who approved the words but saw behind them. All he said was: "Wise man, your governor. Mine, too, had his—well, it's late." He drew in his head, and rose from the window sill. "Good night."

After his host had gone, Leonard remained watching the stars. There were indeed certain championships, meetings between masters of broadsword and foil, which his answer had ignored. The late combat, rapier and gamp, had been no boy's play, but what he concealed most carefully, and what his thoughts now dwelt on, was even a less important fact. All through that engagement he had kept, in his left hand, a dog's-eared corner of fern leaf.

"By gum, you may say it was lucky!" He nursed with one finger a raw line that smarted under his ear. "The beggar's blade missed my throat by an inch."

The stars were many and bright, all things under them a blackness varied only with hints of form. Leonard could hear the river like a faint breeze passing down the valley. Somewhere below the night hid a grove of beeches, round which the Rose had gone, and toward which he continued looking. Outwardly he saw nothing, inwardly he saw red oar blades flash between sun and water, and a girl whose dark eyes befriended him as she rowed away.

"A pity." He turned from the window to bed. "A pity she won't ever know her charm worked."

Bright sunlight next morning shone upon a world refreshed and wonderfully green, clear overhead, with vernal haze melting in the distance roundabout. It was lazy weather, and as two lazy young men with golf clubs passed through the garden they halted to enjoy it all, from the sleepy noise of rooks half a mile away to a pleasant click of shears close by, and a smell of box that mingled with their own first tobacco after breakfast.

"Enough to make one poetical. 'The earliest pipe of half-awakened bards,' eh?" Laurence mused, and snuffed the air. "A general Pukwana of the peace pipe."

The clipping ceased. From behind an overgrown tangle rose George. His wet shears were spattered with crumbs of green, which he wiped off as he said good morning.

"The man's got his mare again." He viewed these idlers with radiant satisfaction. "Each back in his own coat, and all's well. Good Lord, it's a treat to see a couple of you round!"

"Come along with us, George."

The bedraggled gardener shook his head.

"Not I! Nobody's trimmed this mess proper for twenty years." He bent down, out of sight. "'Tis a ruin."

"By the way, coats—you remind me." Laurence turned to his companion. "I've an apology for some bad temper, when we met under the bridge. Too long a story now. I'll tell it to you some day."

George suddenly rose again from the leaves. His black eyes were sparkling oddly.

"Could I be there to hear it?" he begged. "I've a reason for asking."

"Of course. To-night, say."

Nodding to himself, Grayland once more disappeared.

"Thank you." By his voice, he seemed content. "Some tales need more than one man to tell 'em."

They left him clipping peacefully behind his tangle, and wandered off to their game. It was a silent but a cheerful round that they played, over miles of clean-washed turf and daisies newly opened, with greens heavy and cups brimful of water. Though lame, slow, and unpracticed, Laurence won hole after hole. His adversary took a thorough beating, administered happily in sunshine to the tune of skylarks. At noon they went down the beach and swam in surf; then lying on the yellow sand ate bread and butter, dozed and grew sunburned, watched the gulls hover about the peak of the Devil's Nose; or, with thoughts drawn past the horizon by smoke from an unseen ship, bartered yarns of outlandish adventure. By sunset they returned home, now through long-shadowed fields, now along some back-yard wall over which came grunting and the hot, sour smell of pigs, now in green lanes dazzled with gold.

It was after dinner, by candlelight, that Laurence repeated his words of yesterday evening.

"About George, now. Here's the thing I had to show you. Found it stuck away in a dust hole."

He handed to Leonard a miniature, rimmed with gilt, and set in a square green velvet frame or plaque. The face was that of a young Victorian dandy, high colored, handsome, but with his curly black hair somewhat too romantic and his look too dashing.

"Why, it's George!" cried the visitor. "No, can't be! George playing the fool in fancy dress?"

Laurence wore a quizzical smile.

"George without the brains. Just so," he agreed. "Curious, don't you think?—for that was my father's brother, really; his elder brother. The family runs fair and black by starts. He was black, you see; died young, cut off in the flower of his wild oats; fell from a horse. They say 'between the stirrup and the ground,' but one has uncharitable doubts. Not quick enough to seek pardon, that head."

"Strange," said Leonard. "The swordsman's portrait, too. Both so like George masquerading."

He gave back the miniature. Laurence placed it on the mantel.

"This poor relic's been long enough in disgrace. I left home too young to know. But our fine gentleman threw himself about a bit, I fancy. Yes, George——"

Their conference ended abruptly.

"Did you call?"

They turned with a guilty air. George had been coming downstairs, and paused, with his head in the shadows of the pointed arch.

XV

"JUST wondering where you'd gone," said Laurence promptly. "Don't be so damned active. Come dawdle with us, G. G."

For a time after George had obeyed, and sunk his long body into a chair between them, silence followed. The night was warm as summer. Through open windows drifted air fragrant with the balm of all the country, its passage unfelt, unknown but for tremors in the candle shine and weaving departure of smoke from three tobacco pipes. There was no fire; but the men sat ranged, as by habit, facing the andirons and the black chimney mouth.

"Well, brethren," Laurence broke out of a sudden, "the spirit moves me. I promised you should hear an apology."

He sank back, crossed his lame leg carefully over the other, and again became silent.

"By Jove," he said at last, in a wondering tone, "no one else ever heard it before! Not all. I'd forgotten that. The story of a bad boy. Poor little devil, off in the past, he seems another person. This be none of I, but once upon a time he was.

"My governor sent me to our usual school, a good enough one, not so very far from here, as you know. I was a very shy, bookish lad, the last you'd expect to find making trouble. Never can tell. One fine spring day, much like the present weather, behold this child mooning along out of bounds—not willfully, mark you, just dreaming with his head full of King Arthur, or Leatherstocking, or Grettir the Strong. All at once I came upon an old woman sitting by a little fire under some thorns. I see her now as a dirty and rather silly old creature; but at the moment she seemed all that a child pictures of what a witch ought to be—elf locks and wild eyes and skinny fingers. You know! She had a stone jug on the grass beside her, with a tin cup tied to its ear. The blackthorn, or May tree—I forget which, but it was covered with the dead bodies of young birds, field mice, beetles, bumblebees, and such, all impaled on thorns, and every mouse pecked on the head, bloody. It must have been the shambles of a butcher bird, a shrike. But to me it seemed the devil's Christmas tree. The old woman sat under it mumbling, with smoke in her crazy eyes, and these murdered things withering round her like a—like a bad halo. As if she were wasting her enemies away with magic. She had a dead beetle hanging in her hair. I knew she was a witch. Jove, she was! The boy guessed right! So far as one or two men's lives went afterward, she was a Norn."

George removed his pipe from his mouth.

"When you caught her," he said, "she'd begun stuffing hen's feathers into a paper bag with a hole in it."

"How did you know that?" Laurence came bolt upright, bringing his feet to the floor with a thump. "Good heavens, man! Do I talk in my sleep? Or have you second-sight? How did you know?"

He leaned forward, staring.

"It was revealed to me in a dream," George answered bitterly. "Go on."

But the narrative had met a check. Laurence eyed his neighbor with astonishment and doubt. When he spoke again, his manner seemed less free.

"Why, there's not much more," he declared. "The old woman blandished a good deal, told some long rigmaroles, uncorked her jug, and filled the tin cup for me most lovingly. Don't know how you guessed those feathers, George, but you're right. She was cooking a hen in a ball of clay. We talked, and watched the process, and I emptied her cup as often as you please. She told me it was ginger pop."

George nodded mournfully.

"Ay," said he. "A hot day and a thirsty schoolboy."

"Right again. It was very hot," declared Laurence. "The boy turned up at school blear-eyed and staggering, drunk as a hatter. The rule was public flogging and expulsion. I couldn't explain. I took it."

He paused and looked slowly about the room.

"My poor old governor had things out with me right where we're sitting," he continued. "You may imagine, a strict father with what was to have been our fine young Oxford scholar, parson, and so on. I couldn't explain to him, either; too young, and—and bewildered. His face was like the dead. Most of that boy died here too. The rest of him ran away and took more whippings from the world—twenty-odd years of them. Ever since I came home last week, I've seen his ghost haunting those books."

The speaker got on foot, lighted his pipe and stood glancing down at Leonard.

"Now you understand," he added, "why I went off at score when we first ran across each other, and you mentioned old women with mead by the wayside."

George, polishing brier with the ball of his thumb, spoke as though to himself.

"She always laced that mead something chronic. Three parts brandy. Mr. Leonard knows, or ought to. It was the same old woman and the same old mead." He looked up at Laurence, his eyes burning with a somber fire. "You need more than one man for some stories. Too young and bewildered, rot! Your boy took disgrace, let his life be spoiled, to keep his word with a foolish old body who'd been stealing hens and trespassing. You promised not to tell you'd seen her. You never did. The boy's heart may have broke in this room, but not his word."

Again Laurence remained staring in wonder.

"How on earth!" he exclaimed.

"She's my grandmother," said George. "Yes, old Becky, at the Ring of Bells now. 'Twas grandson's earnings put her there."

A moth was fluttering among the candles. George rose, caught it with one sweep of his brown hand, and passing to the river windows, threw it out into starlight. He returned and sat down.

"When I spoke of her," began Laurence—he paused—"If anything was said to hurt you, I—well, I'm sorry."

"You said no more than plain truth," George growled. With elbows on knees he studied the floor. "She was what God made her, and some help from mankind. What's past is done with, and can't be recalled, except onions, they say. At any rate speak you did, so I'd better keep on. Amongst the wreckage of her old brain"—Grayland reached out to place his pipe on the table, then hung his head over his clasped hands—"well, she had secrets. Back in my childhood she used to prophesy, when a man should come from abroad and pass through the Devil's Nose against the sun—why, enemies will be overthrown, and things made clear, and good fortune, and so on. Moonshine. But the first part's come true. So here goes!"

George struck fist into palm lightly between his knees, blow after blow, as if hammering at a thought. His bowed figure seemed overcome by sadness.

"I was lying under the shrike's thorn," he said, "behind it, that day of your undoing. No farther than from here to the andirons. Had I known what your name was, likely I'd have tried to kill you. When I did know it, years afterward, I'd learned what your word was worth; what it cost you. Never been able to pay that back, but I've tried faithful.

"This is all in the family." He looked up with a grave smile, which had gone as he bent his head once more. "It may hurt you. It hurts me now.

"That other boy behind the thorn was older than you. His troubles begun earlier. He'd run the hedges a long time, a whole life of it, begging, cheating, after selling colored whirligigs or paper flowers as a babe. People would ask you where you lived, meaning kind no doubt. I'd look up at 'em like a wild beast, and say nothing, or else run. I was a little wild beast, afraid all day, awake half the night, hunger pains clawing in my belly. The only thing I had to be fond of was my mother."

George stopped. He took his head in his hands.

"Maybe those feelings come stronger when you're a little wild beast. Maybe not. I don't know. But she was my shadow of a rock in a weary land. It ended one night before dark, one misty night. We were to lie in a barn, not a decent barn like Dr. Wolcot's that he let Dick Stanley sleep in, as they tell, but an old roost where trampers had made all filthy, a habitation for Zim and Jim and every unclean thing. I was five or six years old. She'd spoken strange to me that evening—so fond and terrible deep and changeable, I cried in her arms; then sent me off on a long errand that came to naught, foolishlike.

"I got back through the roke, and went indoors tired and hungry. It was dark in there. My mother was standing in the midst alone, her back toward me. I spoke to her about the errand being no good. She never answered or moved, so I went closer and spoke again. She seemed not to hear me. That wasn't like her, and she stood unusual tall in the dark, with her head as if listening. I touched her. Last of all I put up my hand and pulled at her skirt, like a child's way of doing. Then my mother turned. There was light enough to see her face looking down at me, and I wish there hadn't been."

George moved his hands from his temples to his forehead.

"She turned, and she kept on turning right past me. And then I saw that her feet didn't touch the floor."

He remained still for a moment; suddenly uncovered his face by dropping his hands and clasping them before him; but regarded neither of his companions.

"That," said he, "is what came of our fine gentleman who threw himself about a bit. I couldn't help overhearing you—penalty for quick ears."

With another sudden movement George left his chair and drew himself erect. Still caring to see nobody, he turned, stepped to the window from which he had thrown the moth, and leaned there. Past his head smoke drifted into the warm, sweet-smelling darkness. Across their empty fireplace the two younger men exchanged looks, without a word, but asking each other what was to be said or done.

It was Laurence who found an answer. He went limping to the table, and with unnecessary pains, very slowly, mixed three great nightcap drinks. He made them strong and dark, holding up each tumbler for prolonged inspection, contriving a good deal of clink and rattle. Afterward he stood quite still and let more time go by.

"We're waiting for you, George," he called at last in a matter-of-fact tone. "Here you are!"

Grayland came back to them, quiet and composed.

"I always knew it must be something more than friendship." Laurence held out a tumbler in each hand, and when these two were taken, raised the third before him. "Cousin Leonard and Cousin George, I wish we were to be longer under this roof. Here, let's all stand on the hearthstone—that's better. How many years, do you suppose, have gone by since three of us did this together?"

With his glass, he beckoned for them to touch brims. His air was at once offhand and ceremonial.

"Come, all the family! Here's luck!"

XVI

DURING the next few days, the three men went about together as if inseparable. The fine weather continued. They shared their enjoyment of it, meeting early by tacit consent, taking long rambles, bathing in the river, rowing the Daisy down for a plunge in the surf, or up for a picnic on some tranquil reach where nest-guarding swans with fiery eyes pursued their wake and hissed at them, and coming home by sunset to talks that ended only with late bedtime.

"Well," sighed Leonard one evening, "to-morrow I must go. Really must this time."

His friends both turned gloomy.

"Why, man, you've just come," retorted Laurence. "Is it growing so dull for you?"

"No. I should think not," declared the visitor. "But Scripture says an ending to all fine things must be."

"I don't care a button what Scripture says." The master of the house grew peevish. "You're not treating George and me in a high-class way at all. You're only being polite. Now you drop it. In Deportment for Dukes it is clearly stated: 'At a hint from the hostess, the departure occurs.' Then and not till then. So you wait; and you'll wait a devilish long time, my boy. That reminds me. To-morrow my sister's coming back. You can't run away."

From behind him, George, towering in the background, shot a volley of most fiendish leers. They gave all warnings that a human face could convey, against vinegar ladles who bit heads off.

"If I should let you go now," continued Laurence, "why, Rose would make the rest of my life perfectly unbearable! You can stay, can't you? Good! I've hardly seen her twice in years myself, till the other day. Brought up by some of her father's old friends, 'of the tribe of Dan and noli me tangere.' Time to see what frills they have put into her head."

Thus it happened that on the following afternoon, upstairs, Leonard heard a crunch of wheels that stopped by the front door, and women's voices below. He felt little or no curiosity toward this Miss Corsant who set her cousin George's teeth so on edge. No doubt she had come to spoil their harmony in bachelors' hall; but perhaps for the advantage of seeing the enemy first he went to a window and looked out.

The impulse had come too late. George was bobbing away down the sunlit drive in a basket phaeton drawn by an old white pony, the same that he had taken to Peacock for shoeing and led into the surf. Whatever passengers Grayland had brought were now indoors.

"A11 right," thought the young man. "Let her snap!"

From the stairhead came a rustle of skirts. He turned. A very neat lady's maid, with gray hair and a sensible, cheerful face, passed by into a corridor as if she had always been passing, knew her way, and liked it.

"That woman's head never was bitten off," he considered, as he went down. "George's bugbear can't be so frightful."

Coming through the arch, round a corner, he suddenly had his advantage after all, and saw the enemy first. Under the portrait of the young horseman and the blades a girl sat leaning backward, her hands folded in her lap, resting, as if alone with some thought which was good but rather grave company. Her face, clear brown tinged with delicate red, might have been that of a sister to the horseman, but lacked his impatience. Her dark eyes were George's without the guile. So much Leonard saw before discovering to his great surprise and even greater delight, that she was the girl of the bluebell grove who had sat with him in the rain.

The sound of his footsteps roused her. She turned, saw him, and leaving her chair, came forward.

"How do you do? I am Laurence's sister Rose." As they met she added, in a very pretty confusion: "Thank you for your oilskin. I have brought it, but should have sent it before."

"And thank you for the receipt of fern seed," he broke in. "Your charm worked. If you remember it—under your namesake the boat?"

Her confusion deepened, and with it her color.

"Have you forgiven me for teasing you?" she asked. "I'm still ashamed. But it was fun."

That downward laughter not quite controlled came and went in her eyes. He liked it better than ever; still better when it got the mastery and looked up at him direct.

"I shall kill George," said he.

"Why?"

"Oh—for things he said, and things he didn't say."

"What things? Tell me both kinds." She read his face. "About me? Dear old George. He's like a father and a brother and a naughty boy to take care of, all by turns and at once."

Somehow they fell not only into talk but into step together, walking up and down the long room as if they had met for that purpose, or it had been their custom. They went slowly, but found much to say in haste. While they did so, Leonard became haunted with a sense that the old house had come to life. This girl Rose Corsant wore plain, quiet gray, yet while she turned and returned beside him, he could have thought her passage made a shining along the time-blackened oak, and cast light rather than shadow. Far from being spoiled, the place had got what it always wanted.

Once or twice Rose came to a halt and looked about her, gravely, as she had looked when sitting under the picture.

"I can't bear to think," she said, "that Laurence will have to sell this. Poor boy, it makes rather a sad home-coming." She started on again. "What a pity! But we must enjoy it all we can while we may."

Leonard often recalled this saying of hers; for afterward, as days passed and household acquaintance grew, he was with her constantly under one roof or outdoors, and never again saw her dispirited. Rose followed her own precept admirably.

"Hanged if I know how we got on without her," grumbled George one evening. "Worth a dozen of us. Hear her."

The men surrounded their hearth as usual by candlelight. She was moving somewhere above, humming, with little outbreaks of clear melody:

"Oh, there were three gypsies a-come to my door,
And downstairs ran this a-lady oh!
One sang high, and the other sang low,
And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!"

George hearkened, his brown face lifted somewhat toward the sound. It was no secret that he worshiped her. He had tried at first to hold aloof, but her brother would have none of that, and had kept him in the circle.

"Then she pulled off her robe of silk——"

The singer, in white, came running down through the arch, floating like a feather on air and gay as the lady of her ballad.

"To this day You've not told me how the fight went." Her eyes were black stars. In her hand was George's bloated umbrella, which gave an effect of Beauty and the Beast. "You are all too lazy to show me."

A moment later she had them dispersed about the room, three grown men playing like children. George shrank into himself by the door, enacted Kamsa the Locust hideously—a long-legged gargoyle trying to be fat—and croaked their stage directions. Laurence caught down the naked sword. Leonard received her umbrella with a bow, performed the grand salute, and bounced on guard like a rubber ball. They turned the story of that combat into a romp that left all four of them laughing. As they came to order, Leonard suddenly raised his hand.

"Wait!" He warned them. "It's here again."

They listened. From the corner behind him came a sigh and a flutter, a movement of something without body or name.

"The family specter," said Laurence. "I've heard it two or three times. Dust falling behind the wainscot, probably. I'm afraid it means dry rot in these old timbers."

Rose disagreed.

"No, a real ghost," she said. "Not yet laid. Hark!"

The stir had passed, however, and did not come again. They presently forgot it. Rose had other questions in mind. She stood on tiptoe, examining the carven lump of the Devil's Nostrils.

"How elvish this old block of wood can look at night!" She appealed to Leonard. "Doesn't it creep and crawl? By the way, how did you come to think of swimming through the rock—that morning you met George?"

"My father," explained the young man, "always said we must do it, one day—an old story between us. He couldn't just remember what, and I never knew—something. We were to go through the rock a certain fashion."

George, watching them paternally, growled the single word: "Withershins."

"What does that mean?" asked Rose. "You read it in witchcraft."

Leonard turned toward the carving and reached up.

"I swam out like this, you see." He put his forefinger into the left nostril. "Why! They're real holes. Deep! Clear through! Thought it was only scooped. I swam out here." He crooked his finger round behind toward the other nostril. "And swam in again here, this second hole. Can't quite poke it."

George corrected him.

"Wrong way. That's how you pass a bottle."

Leonard blew dust from his finger and nodded.

"This way, then." He tried the right nostril. "Hallo!" said he in dismay, and withdrew his hand. "I've broken something."

They all heard a rusty creak, then saw the oaken septum between the nostrils drop forward and stand out from the wall like a peg. There followed a groan or long-drawn shuddering gulp as from old bellows.

Leonard stood like a truant caught in mischief. Rose and her brother came to him quickly; but it was George who first acted upon the fact, and brought one of the candlesticks. His face remained impassive, but his eyes glittered.

"Let her," he said, pointing. "The youngest, for luck—and the lady."

They saw what he meant. The panel under the carving had sprung back, sunken half an inch or so between its neighbors. George, with the flat of his hand, pressed it farther inward.

"Now try."

A crack had appeared. Rose, rather timidly, put her slender brown finger tips into this, and gave a sidelong push. The smooth oak glided away to the right, disappeared. A thin cloud of dust flew out in her face; before them stood a shallow recess backed with greenish tatters of mildewed leather and tails of curled hair.

"Padded so as not to give hollow," said George. "Here's your ghost. Any draft would set those rags chafing." He spoke eagerly. "Try the gob of verdigris. Below, to your hand. Must be a brass door catch. Try it."

Rose, her black eyes sparkling like his own, obeyed him. The padded leather swung inward on squealing hinges and left open into darkness a narrow doorway from which two or three stone steps led downward.

"Bowels of the earth," declared George. "Let me test the air. Some rumor of this crept into grandmother's feeble old brain, I dare say."

He slipped through the opening shoulder first, crouched and went down, holding the branched candles knee high before him.

"They burn sweet." His voice rang in some empty confinement. "All right. Come along, but mind your heads."

They trooped down after him, into a room nine or ten feet square, a cell with roof, walls, and floor of solid stone. Dust lay thick on the floor, in the center of which, by a table also covered with dust, were two narrow high-backed old chairs, one upright, one overthrown.

"Under the garden rock that a piece of the house juts into, we are." George's head brushed the ceiling as he moved about, explored all corners, and came back to set his candles on the dusty board. "Clever conniving. Naught but the one door, though must be tirlie-whirlie holes to keep the air so fresh."

The strangeness of this hidden room no more touched him than if he had walked into a shop or a kitchen. But Rose, her brother, and Leonard saw one another somewhat daunted, and required time to be themselves again. On the table stood a platter with clots and crumbling bones in it under the powder of years, two plates, two goblets, all these black as lead; a pair of pistols and a sword gone to rust; a brown feather which, as Rose lifted it, shed its color and became a goose-quill pen; a small inkhorn, and the rags of what had been a man's hat. Laurence took up one of the black goblets, mechanically, with a dreaming air, and set it down. By chance it struck a black plate, and the intruders were surprised when they heard these dead utensils give out a living chink of silver.

"What do you make of it, George?" asked Laurence.

"Two men never eat their breakfast," replied Grayland promptly. "Wartime, it's like. They cleared out so quick, one of them upset his chair. I'll bet you"—he turned to Leonard—"your great-something dad galloped off without hat or weapons down to his ship. Westward ho for your life! O' course, that's only my guess. Maybe he went back to war."

Leonard gave a nod.

"Maybe so," he agreed. "It would bear out a yarn father used to tell."

Laurence, dreaming still or thinking, did not seem to hear. He raised the black platter which bygone men had left full of bones and powder.

"Why," said he, "here's what they were writing with your quill, Rose."

Where the dish left its mark, an oval of polished wood drawn with exact edge amid the dust, lay a folded sheet of manuscript fresh and white as though tucked underneath yesterday. Laurence took this and carefully opened it.

"Wait a minute," called George.

He skipped upstairs into the house, dropped down again with hearth broom, put the fallen chair on its legs, and brushed both seats clean.

"There you are!"

Brother and sister took their places at table.

"Seventeenth century hand, I think," said Laurence, and began to read aloud:

"'I, Leonard Corsant, being in the twenty-eighth year of my age, and but newly returned from this damnable slaughter of our kindred and friends upon both sides whom I saw fallen, as chiefly amongst them at Chalgrove field John Hampden receiving his death by the shattering his hand by the burst of his new pistol——'"

The reader looked up.

"That's of interest," he remarked, "for Clarendon says he got hit by a brace of slugs in the shoulder. George is right. It was wartime, and your great—something—grandfather telling his troubles. He flounders a little with the pen.

"'——and being myself wounded, in my concealment do intend this memorial——'"

Again Laurence paused.

"And that's all," he said. "Far as the old chap ever carried with his participial history. Rough sketch, perhaps. A deal scratched out, and then lines ruled across the page. Eh? What comes here below?"

He read no more aloud, but scanned the bottom of the sheet.

"Here's an agreement, drawn up on this table, I fancy, between the same writer and his younger brother Laurence. The wheel of time?"

Rose pushed back her chair and stood up, beckoning Leonard with a smile.

"You sit with him," she said. "It's more fitting, you and he, after those two. Don't you think?"

She obliged him to take her place, where dust had fallen, moth corrupted, and steel decayed, since two men of their name had faced each other so.

Laurence read on to himself.

"I'm no lawyer," he proclaimed suddenly. "But this would seem to promise fair material for a pretty suit. Worth looking into. It's a plain contract. Your forefather who went back to war without his hat or breakfast, owned this house and land. Mine, the younger, stayed at home to hold it, 'by policy and such devices as he may in honor'—those are their words—till the storm blew past. May be valueless now. All the same, by right you should keep this." He handed it across. "They drew their terms up in a rush, on waste paper from a memoir that never got written. But it's clear, signed by Leonard and Laurence Corsant, witnessed by one Rich. Hooper and one Gabriel Grayland—always one of you handy round the house, George."

The paper, though spotted by damp, felt almost new in Leonard's hands. He looked upon it not without emotion.

"Which is the part," he asked, "that you think—er—pertains to me?"

Laurence leaned over the black dishes and pointed.

"There—at the foot, beginning—'For the guidance of our children, to preserve'—and so on."

Leonard, taking his turn, read to the bottom of the page with care.

"They were long-headed, but fond of each other." He glanced from his table companion to George and Rose. "This reminds me of what Mr. Tony Weller said about his wife's will. As it's all right and satisfactory, and we're the only parties interested, we may as well put this bit comfortably——"

He thrust the end of it into the candles. It flared.

"You madman!" cried Laurence, and snatched the blazing sheet from him. "What right had you?"

Half the paper was burnt away—the offending lower half.

"You saved enough for a relic," said Leonard calmly—"to keep with George's umbrella in the archives. My name's not Tichborne, you know. I'm just the American cousin. It was nothing but an old scribble, outlawed years ago."

XVII

ONE evening a week later, George was busy outside the front door. An upstart young elm, pushing its own affair in the absence of mankind, had spoiled a flower bed and darkened a dining-room window. George had felled it, dragged it bodily by main strength into the driveway, and now bent down to lop the branches. He was working at great speed, finishing his job before the dusk thickened into darkness. Barn swallows darted over the garden leaves, and slued off in frightened zigzags at every blow of his ax.

Leonard stood near him, talking with lowered voice. It seemed natural for the pair of them to be conspirators again.

"He mustn't sell this." The younger man's gaze roved from house to garden. "It's a crime."

George nodded and kicked away a bough.

"Can't be helped." He spoke sadly. "I'd hate to see her go—his sister. But Laurence—oh, well, let's cheat ourselves by thinking he'd never stand the climate. In winter there's only two places in England fit for a man to be—in bed, or on the back of a good horse. Leave it at that, for comfort. Pretend he was ordered south."

Leonard remained thoughtful and silent.

"Laurence would never accept it from me," he blurted. "But if you bought the place and gave it back to him, George——"

Grayland looked up swiftly.

"Where'd I get the money?" he retorted. "Like a shot I would. But he and I are a pair of rolling stones. Where would it come from?"

He went on lopping. The muscles in his hard brown forearms played like rods. His ax, the same that once had a purple stain on its edge, weighed some four pounds; but he swung it in one hand like a hatchet, and cut off a limb clean at each blow.

In two words Leonard unfolded a project that had kept him awake nights.

"From me."

George pierced him with a straight glance to ask if he were trying some bad joke.

"No, I mean it." Leonard's face grew red, his tongue slipped and stammered. "You know, George—the truth is—you know, I'm richer than sin. Rich as a Parsee. Rich as a Bagdad Jew. I'll be gone, you see. Not a soul would know."

Grayland, poising his ax, accepted this truth at once, calmly.

"You never acted purse-proud."

"Don't know about that. Dad always told me not to spend much on myself," said Leonard. "Wish you'd known my father, George. You make me think of him so often. You couldn't help wanting to try to do whatever father told you."

The workman straightened himself, knee deep among leaves. He smiled, and answered with a kind of envy.

"The boy's not dead in you by a long chalk. You're young in the world." Suddenly he raised his voice. "No, don't agree with you. The ax is a pretty tool in good hands, but the broadax beats it for cleverness, and the adz calls out genius. Now, I remember an old shipwright——"

Leonard, staring at this vagary, heard next moment what George's ears had caught a long way off. It was the footsteps of Rose Corsant. She came out at the front door.

"What are you two plotting now?" she called, and passed on toward the corner rock. "Mischief?"

They watched her moving away lightly through the green dusk, humming:

"O, what care I for my wedded lord,
What care I for my money, oh?"

When she disappeared behind shrubbery, Grayland laughed.

"Hear that? A reckless tribe you are. My kind do come handy about this house. Could you trust my proxy with such a pot? I stole before you was born, dear lad. I might shoot the moon, or hold fast to what I collared."

Leonard smiled in his turn.

"We'll risk that."

"Right-ho! We'll risk it." Grayland bent once more, and chopped. "Now run play. Your Uncle George is busy, and the daylight's nigh gone." For an instant he rose, fondling his ax and grinning in the dusk. "Only, there's a condition. No mortal hand but mine shall ring those bells at your wedding. I'm the boy to make old Gabriel sing tenor."

Leonard, who had begun moving away, stopped and regarded him with keen horror.

"What! What's this, man alive?"

The man alive shot him, crosswise, one of those black arrows of wickedness. "Don't forget, when time comes," said George. "It was revealed to me in a dream."

(THE END)