Sea mew abbey

By Florence Warden

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Title: Sea mew abbey


Author: Florence Warden

Release date: November 10, 2023 [eBook #72089]

Language: English

Original publication: NEW YORK: UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 1891

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEA MEW ABBEY ***




 SEA MEW ABBEY

 BY
 FLORENCE WARDEN
 AUTHOR OF
 “THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “NURSE REVEL’S MISTAKE,” “MISSING--A
 YOUNG GIRL,” ETC., ETC.




 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY,
 SUCCESSORS TO
 JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY,
 142 TO 150 WORTH STREET, NEW YORK.




 [IMPRINT]

 Copyright, 1891,
 BY
 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY




 CONTENTS.

 Chapter I.
 Chapter II.
 Chapter III.
 Chapter IV.
 Chapter V.
 Chapter VI.
 Chapter VII.
 Chapter VIII.
 Chapter IX.
 Chapter X.
 Chapter XI.
 Chapter XII.
 Chapter XIII.
 Chapter XIV.
 Chapter XV.
 Chapter XVI.
 Chapter XVII.
 Chapter XVIII.
 Chapter XIX.
 Chapter XX.
 Chapter XXI.
 Chapter XXII.
 Chapter XXIII.
 Chapter XXIV.
 Chapter XXV.
 Chapter XXVI.
 Chapter XXVII.
 Chapter XXVIII.
 Chapter XXIX.
 Chapter XXX.
 Chapter XXXI.
 Chapter XXXII.
 Chapter XXXIII.
 Chapter XXXIV.




 SEA-MEW ABBEY.

 CHAPTER I.

About a quarter of a century ago, under a bright May morning sun,
the English Channel Squadron steamed into the harbour of the French
town of Harbourg, with flags half-mast high. The Captain of one of the
vessels had lost his young wife that morning.

Until the very hour of her death, the poor fellow had persisted in
believing that she was getting better, that the weakness which had
been growing for months on the fragile little lady, the paleness of
her delicate cheeks, the feebleness of her sweet voice would pass
away. And now they had indeed passed away--into waxen death, and the
twenty-year-old wife lay peacefully in the little state cabin, while
her husband, stunned by uncomprehending grief, stood beside her with
her baby in his arms, not hearing its soft babble of inarticulate
sounds, not seeing anything but that horrible, agonising, still image
of the woman he had frantically loved.

“Speak to mamma, baby, wake her, wake her!” he had cried when,
noticing how still and white his wife had grown, and refusing to own
the truth, he had rushed out of the cabin, snatched the child from its
nurse, and held out its little warm arms towards its mother. But the
white, thin arms had lost their tenderness, and lay still; the cold
mouth met that of the child with no loving kiss; and as the great
brown eyes stared fixedly and without meaning at the ceiling, where
the reflection of the sparkling blue water outside danced and
shimmered, the man’s heart was torn by a pang of maddened
comprehension, and a black pall was cast for ever, for him, upon the
whole world.

Six hours later, when the sun was declining, and a fresh breeze was
blowing from the sea, and the angelus was sounding from the chapel of
the grey-walled convent, whose turrets rose up high upon the cliffs
above the town, a stranger rang for admission at the convent-gate. The
little sister who peeped at him through the wicket and then slowly
opened the door, was rather alarmed by his appearance, and found the
foreign accent in which he asked to see the Mother-Superior difficult
to understand. But she would not have dared deny him admittance, for
there was something in his curt tone and manner which would have made
refusal of any demand of his impossible to the meek nun.

As the Gothic-pointed outer door clanged to behind them, and the
stranger stepped in out of the shining sunlight into the darkness of
the white-washed cloisters, a little cry rose up from the burden he
carried in his arms, and the woman’s heart went out in an instant to
the hidden morsel of humanity.

“Holy mother!” cried she, “it’s a child! Let me see it, monsieur.”

The stranger’s hard features did not soften, but a light came into his
eyes as he drew aside the shawl which covered the child and showed a
weird, pale little face, with great frightened dark eyes.

“She has no mother?” whispered the sister, with quick apprehension and
sympathy.

“God help her! no,--unless,” and the man’s hoarse voice
trembled,--“unless she finds one here.”

The sound of sweet singing from the little chapel began to be heard,
muffled, through the cloister walls, and then it swelled louder as the
chapel door opened, and another dark-robed woman peeped out, hearing
the strange footsteps and a man’s voice.

“Come,” said the portress briskly, “this way, monsieur, you shall see
the Mother-Superior yourself.”

The smell of the white lilac came in from the quiet garden as they
passed through the cloister, and entered a great, square, bare-looking
room, with a floor polished like glass, high white-washed walls, a
round table, and a regiment of rush-bottomed chairs placed stiffly
against the wainscoting. A very large plain bookcase containing
brightly-bound religious and devotional works, a gloomy-looking
oil-painting of a former Mother-Superior, and a black stove standing
out from the wall, completed the furniture of the convent visitors’
room.

After some delay, the Mother-Superior came in. She was an elderly lady
with a face of intellectual type, to which the habit of her Order gave
a look of some severity. The stranger took in every detail of her
appearance with a searching look, and opened his business abruptly.

“I am in great trouble, madam,” he began, in a harsh voice, “where to
find a home for my little girl. And as I was wondering, down in the
harbour there, what I should do with her, I saw your walls looking
down over the water, and heard your bells, and I thought perhaps she
might find a shelter here. I am a sailor, and I have--no one to trust
her with.”

His voice got out of his control on the last words. The Superior
looked perplexed, but not yielding. As he unfolded the shawl which was
wrapped round the child, she gently shook her head.

“We couldn’t undertake the care of a child as young as that,” she
said, not unkindly. “She can’t be more than two.”

“That’s all,” said her father.

“Her mother----” began the Superior gently.

“Died this morning,” said he hoarsely.

“Oh!” The lady uttered this exclamation in a low voice, and bent at
once over the child, taking its little hand tenderly. “I am afraid my
sombre robe may frighten her,” she said.

But the child did not draw back, only looked wonderingly at the lined
face, at the snowy linen and the thick black veil.

“Is she of our religion?”

“No.”

“But you of course wish her to be brought up a Catholic?”

“No.”

The good Mother looked up in surprise.

“Then what induced you to bring her here?”

“Where women are I expected to find kindness and mercy for my
motherless child.”

“You are English, monsieur?”

“Yes.”

“And you would trust Catholics, Frenchwomen, as much as that?”

“I have been a traveller, madam, and I am no bigot.”

The Superior, with her face wrinkled up with deepest perplexity,
looked from him to the child, who had stretched out her tiny fingers
for the rosary.

“You see this omen. Does not that frighten you?”

The stranger hesitated, and looked down upon his little daughter, who
was clasping the crucifix with delight. Like most sailors, of high and
low degree, he was superstitious.

“One must risk something,” he said at last bluntly. “And if I’m ready
to risk that, surely you might give way.”

“I would if I could. My heart yearns to the poor little creature. But
she would be very unsuitably placed here. Have you no friends, no
relations, who would take charge of her?”

He laughed shortly.

“Plenty. I am not a poor man, madam; I did not use that as an
inducement to you, for it’s not money-bought kindness I want for
my--my poor wife’s child. But you could name what sum you like for her
keep, education, anything.”

“I had not thought of that, monsieur,” said the Superior, with more
dignity. “We take older girls to educate, but----”

“But not my poor lame baby. Very well.”

He was wrapping the child up quickly, when the Superior stopped him by
one word uttered in a different tone.

“Stop!”

The stranger, without pausing in his work, looked up.

“_Lame_, did you say?”

“Yes, I said lame,” he answered shortly. “I had forgotten that further
disqualification. A d----, I mean a fool of a nurse dropped her on the
deck when she was seven months old, and--and she’s lame, will always
be so. Come, Freda, we’ll get out in the sunshine and warm ourselves
again.”

The great room was cold, and the child’s lips and nails began to look
blue. But before he could reach the door, he saw the black garments
beside him again, and with a quick, strong, peremptory movement the
child was taken out of his arms.

“Lame! Poor angel. You should have told me that before.”

The heavy veil drooped over the little one, and the father knew that
she had found a home.

“God bless you, and all the saints too, madam, if it comes to that!”
he said with a tremor in his voice. And he cleared his throat two or
three times as, with uncertain, fumbling fingers, he searched for
something in his pockets.

At last he drew out a soiled envelope, which he placed upon the table.
It was directed simply “To the Mother-Superior, Convent of the Sacred
Heart.” The lady read the direction with surprise.

“You were pretty sure of success in your mission, then, when you came
up here?”

“Yes, madam, I have always believed I could succeed in
everything--until--this morning.”

His harsh voice broke again.

“You will find in that envelope an address from which any
communication will be forwarded to me. It is an old house on the
Yorkshire coast, which has been shut up now for many years. But there
is a caretaker who will send on letters.”

“And some day you will open the place again, and want your daughter to
keep house for you?”

He shook his head.

“It’s a lonely place, and would frighten a girl. The birds build their
nests about it. I believe the towns-folk have named it Sea-Mew Abbey.
Good-bye, madam, and thank you for your goodness. Good-bye, Freda.”

He printed one hasty kiss on the pale baby face of his daughter, and
the next moment his heavy footsteps were echoing down the cloister.
The Mother-Superior heard the outer door clang behind him and shut him
out into the world again, and then, still clasping the child in her
arms, she opened the envelope which the stranger had left. It
contained English bank-notes for fifty pounds, and a card with the
following name and address on it:


 “Captain Mulgrave, R. N.,
 “St. Edelfled’s, Presterby, Yorkshire.”


As she read the words, the child in her arms began to cry. At the
sound of the little one’s voice, one of the many doors of the room
softly opened; and secure from observation, as they thought, two or
three of the sombrely clad sisters peeped curiously in.

But the good Mother’s eyes had grown keen with long watchfulness; she
saw the white-framed faces as the door hurriedly closed.

“Sister Monica, Sister Theresa!” she called, but in no stern voice.

And the two nuns, trembling and abashed, but not sorry to be on the
point of having their curiosity satisfied even at the cost of a
rebuke, came softly in.

“We have a new little inmate,” said the Superior in a solemn voice, “a
tender young creature whom God, for His own all-wise purposes, has
chastened by two severe misfortunes, even at this early age. She is
lame, and she has lost her earthly mother.”

A soft murmur of sympathy, low, yet so full that it seemed as if other
voices from the dim background took it up and prolonged it, formed a
sweet chorus to the kindly-spoken words. The Superior went on:

“I have promised the father of this child that, so far as by the help
of God and His blessed saints we may, we will supply the place of the
blessings she has lost. Will you help me, all of you? Yes, all of
you.”

And again the soft murmur “Yes, yes,” of the two nuns before her was
taken up by a dimly-seen chorus.

“Come in, then, and kiss your little sister.”

They trooped in softly, the dark-robed nuns, their rosaries jangling
on the bare boards as they knelt, one by one, and kissed the tiny soft
face of the child in the Superior’s arms. Bending close to the baby in
the dim twilight which had now fallen on convent and garden, until the
snowy linen about their calm faces fell with cold touch on the tiny
hands, they scanned the childish features lovingly, and rose up one by
one, bound by holy promises of tenderness and sympathy to the little
one.

And so, before the evening primroses in the convent garden had shut up
their pale faces for the night, and the cattle had been driven to
their sheds on the hill, Freda Mulgrave was no longer motherless.




 CHAPTER II.

The years rippled away so quietly at the convent that Freda Mulgrave
shot up into a slender girl of eighteen while yet the remembrance of
her romantic arrival was fresh in the minds of the good sisters.
During all this time her father had given no sign of interest in her
existence beyond the transmission of half-yearly cheques to the
Mother-Superior for her maintenance and education. When, therefore,
she declared her wish to become a nun, and Captain Mulgrave’s consent
was asked as scarcely more than a matter of form, his reply, which
came by telegraph, filled Freda and her companions with surprise.

This was the message:


 “Send my daughter to me immediately. Train to Dieppe; boat to
 Newhaven; train to Victoria, London; cab to King’s Cross; train to
 Presterby.

                                      “John Mulgrave,

                                      “St. Edelfled’s.”


From the moment Freda read the telegram until the bitterly cold
afternoon on which she found herself approaching her new Yorkshire
home, the train labouring heavily through the snow, she seemed to live
in a wild dream. She sat back in her corner, growing drowsy in the
darkness, as the train, going more and more slowly, wound its way
through a narrow, rock-bound valley, and at last entered a cutting
down the sides of which the snow was slipping in huge white masses.
The snorting of the two engines sounded louder, every revolution of
the wheels was like a great heart-beat shivering through the whole
train. Then the expected moment came, the engine stopped.

Freda heard the shouts of men as the passengers got out of the
carriages, and then a rough-looking, broad-shouldered fellow climbed
up to the door of her compartment, and called to her.

“Hallo! Hallo! Anybody here?” he cried, in a strange, uncouth accent.
“Why, it’s t’ little lame lass, sewerly! Are ye all reeght?”

“Yes, thank you,” answered Freda. “An accident has happened, hasn’t
it?”

“Ay, we’re snawed oop. Wheer were ye going to, missie? To Presterby?”

“Yes. Is it far?”

“A matter o’ nine mile or so.”

“And you don’t think we can get there to-night?”

“Noa. We’re fast. But there’s an inn nigh here, a little pleace, but
better shelter nor this, an’ we could get food an’ foire theer. Ah’m
afreed ye’ll find it rough getting through t’ snaw. But we must try
an’ manage it, or ye’ll die o’ cawld.”

Freda hesitated.

“I suppose there’s no way of letting my father know!”

“Who is your father, missie?”

“Captain Mulgrave, of St. Edelfled’s, Presterby.”

The words were hardly out of her mouth when, as if by magic, a great
change came over her companion. The hearty, good-natured, genial
manner at once left him, and he became cold, cautious and quiet.

“Rough Jock’s daughter! Whew!” he whistled softly to himself.

“Rough Jock!” repeated Freda curiously. “That’s not my father’s name!”

“Noa, missie, but it’s what some folks calls him about here;
leastways, so Ah’ve heerd tell,” he added cautiously. “Now,” he
continued after a pause, “Ah’ll do what Ah can for ye. An’ ye’ll tell
‘Fox’--noa, Ah mean ye’ll tell Cap’n Mulgrave how ye were takken aht
o’ t’ snaw-drift by Barnabas Ugthorpe.”

“Barnabas Ugthorpe!” softly repeated Freda, marvelling at the uncouth
title.

“Ay, it’s not a very pretty neame, and it doan’t belong to a very
pretty fellow,” said Barnabas, truly enough, “but to a honest,” he
went on emphatically, with a large aspirate; “an’ me and my missis
have ruled t’ roast at Curley Home Farm fifteen year coom next
Martinmas, an’ my feyther and my grandfeyther and their feythers afore
that, mebbe as long as t’ family o’ Captain Mulgrave has lived at
Sea-Mew Abbey.”

Without further parley, the stout farmer opened the door; and taking
the girl up, crutch and all, as if she had been a child, carried her
along the line, up a steep path on to the snow-covered moor above, and
across to a lonely-looking stone-built inn, into which the passengers
from the snowed-up train were straggling in twos and threes.

The accommodation at the “Barley Mow” was of the most modest sort, and
the proprietor, Josiah Kemm, a big, burly Yorkshireman, with a red
face, seamed and crossed in all directions by shrewd, money-grabbing
puckers, was at a loss where to stow this sudden influx of visitors.
He opened the door of the little smoking-room, where the half-dozen
travellers already penned up there made way for the lame girl beside
the fire. One of them, a sturdily built middle-aged man, whose heart
went out towards the fragile little lady, jumped up and said:

“Let me get you something hot to drink, and some biscuits.”

Freda’s new acquaintance was one of those men with “honest Englishman”
writ large on bluff features and sturdy figure, whom you might dislike
as aggressive and blunt in manner, but whom your instinct would impel
you to trust. This little convent girl had no standard of masculine
manners by which to judge the stranger, whose kindness opened her
heart. He seemed to her very old, though in truth he was scarcely
forty; and she babbled out all the circumstances of her life and
journey to him with perfect confidence, in answer to the questions
which he frankly and bluntly put to her.

“Mulgrave, Mulgrave!” he repeated to himself, when she had told him
her name. “Of course, I remember Captain Mulgrave was the owner of the
old ruin on the cliff at Presterby, popularly called ‘Sea-Mew Abbey.’”

“Yes, that’s it,” cried Freda, with much excitement. “That is my
father. Oh, sir, what is he like? Do you know him?”

“Well, I can hardly say I know him, but I’ve met him. It’s years ago
now though; I haven’t been in Yorkshire for nineteen years.”

“But what was he like then?”

“He was one of the smartest-looking fellows I ever saw. But he’s a
good deal changed since then, so I’ve heard. I was only a youngster
when I saw him, and he made a great impression upon me. Of course he
was older than I, high up in his profession, while I hadn’t even
entered upon mine.”

“And what is yours?” asked Freda simply.

“I have a situation under government,” he answered, smiling at her
ingenuousness. “The way I came to hear of the change in Captain
Mulgrave,” he went on, “was through a brother I have in the navy. Of
course you have heard the circumstances: how Captain Mulgrave shot
down four men in a mutiny----”

“What!” cried the girl in horror, “my father--_killed_ four men!”

“Oh, well, you are putting it too harshly--as the authorities did.
Those who know best said that if only there had been one of our
periodical war-scares on, a couple of shiploads of such fellows as he
shot would have been better spared than a man of the stamp of Captain
Mulgrave. But the affair ruined him.”

“My poor father!” whispered Freda tremulously.

“I believe you wouldn’t know him for the same man. But cheer up,
little woman, perhaps your coming will waken up his interest in life
again. I’m sure it ought to,” he added kindly.

“Oh,” she said in a low voice, “that is almost too good to hope; but I
will pray that it may be so.”

She leant back wearily in her chair, her arms slipping down at her
sides. Her friend rose and left the room, speedily returning with the
landlady, an untidy, down-trodden looking woman, who shook her head at
the suggestion that she should find a room for the lady upstairs.

“There’s a sofy in t’ kitchen wheer she can lie down if she’s tired.
But there’s a rough lot in theer, Ah tell ye. And ye, mester, can bide
here. They doan’t want for company yonder.”

The kitchen was a large, bare, stone-flagged room, with a wide, open
fireplace and rough, greyish walls. From the centre-beam hung large
pieces of bacon, tied up with string in the north-country fashion. On
a bare deal table was a paraffin lamp with a smoke-blackened chimney.
The only other light was that thrown by the wood-fire. Freda,
therefore, could see very little of the occupants of the room. But
their voices, and strong Yorkshire accent, told that they belonged to
a different class from that of the travellers in the bar-parlor.

These men stood or sat in small groups talking low and eagerly. Mrs.
Kemm upset Freda, rather than assisted her, on to the sofa, with a nod
to her husband.

“She’s a soart o’ furreigner, and saft besides, by t’ looks on her.
She’ll not mind ye.”

“Ah tell tha,” one of the men was saying to Kemm, “Rough Jock’s not a
mon to play tricks with, either; tha mun be squeer wi’ him, or leave
him aloan. Ah’ it’s ma belief he wouldn’t ha’ quarrelled wi’ t’
Heritages, if t’ young chaps hadn’t thowt they could best him. An’ see
wheer they’ll be if he dew break off wi’ ’em! It’ll be a bad deay for
them if he dew!”

“Ah tell tha,” said Kemm, doggedly, “he has broke off wi’ ’em. As for
them chaps, they weren’t smart enough to do wi’ a mon loike Rough
Jock. That’s wheer t’ mischief lay. They shouldn’t nivver ha’ tuk on
wi’ him.”

“Ah’m thinking if they hadn’t tuk on wi’ him, they’d ha’ tuk on wi’ t’
workhouse; and that’s what it’ll coom to neow, if Rough Jock leaves
’em in t’ lurch, wi’ their proide and their empty larder! An’ thur’ll
be wigs on t’ green tew, for Bob Heritage is a nasty fellow when his
blood’s oop. Have a care, Josiah, have a care!”

“Oh, ay, Ah’m not afraid o’ Bob Heritage, nor o’ Rough Jock either;
an’ me an’ him are loike to coom to an unnerstanding.”

“Weel, ye mun knaw yer own business, Kemm; but Ah wouldn’t tak’ oop wi
him mysen,” said the third man, who had scarcely spoken.

“Not till ye gotten t’ chance, eh, lad?” said Josiah stolidly. “Coom
an’ have a soop o’ ale; it shall cost ye nowt.”

He led the way out of the room; and the rest, not all at once, but by
twos and threes and very quietly, followed him, until Freda was left
quite alone. As she leaned upon her elbow, trying to piece together
the fragments she had understood of the talk, she heard in the
passage, to her great relief, a voice she recognised. It was that of
her farmer friend, Barnabas Ugthorpe, who looked in at the kitchen
door the next moment.

“Weel, lass,” he said, cheerily, “How are ye gettin on? T’ night’s
cleared a bit, an’ Ah can tak’ ye on to Owd Castle Farm. T’ fowks
theer are very thick wi’ Capt’n Mulgrave. It isn’t more’n a moile from
here.”

Within ten minutes a cart was at the door, and they were on their way.
The road lying over a smooth expanse of moorland, and the moon giving
a little more light; it was not long before a very curious building
came in sight, on rising ground a little to the east of the road as it
went northwards.

The front of the house, which faced south, was long and singularly
irregular. At each end were the still solid-looking remains of a round
tower built of great blocks of rough-hewn stone, roofed in with red
tiles. Both were lighted by narrow, barred windows. Between the towers
ran an outer wall of the same grey stone, much notched and ivy-grown
at the top, and broken through here and there lower down to receive
small square latticed windows greatly out of character with the
structure. Into a breach in this wall a very plain farm-house building
had been inserted, with rough white-washed surface and stone-flagged
roof.

Barnabas got down, raised the knocker and gave three sounding raps.

In a few moments Freda heard rapid steps inside, and a woman’s voice,
harsh and strident, saying in a whisper:

“That’s not the Captain, surely!”

Freda turned quickly to her companion.

“Who are these people? What is their name?”

“Their neame’s Heritage,” said Barnabas.

Freda started. It was the name she had heard at the “Barley Mow” as
that of the family who had quarrelled with “Rough Jock.”




 CHAPTER III.

Freda watched the opening of the farmhouse door with dread, as there
peeped out a man’s face, pale, flat, puffy, with light eyes and
colourless light eyelashes. Freda took an instantaneous dislike to
him, and tried to draw her companion back by the sleeve.

“What do you want at this time of night?” asked, the man pompously.

And Freda knew, by his speech and manner, that he was a man-servant,
and that he was not a Yorkshireman. He now opened the door wider, and
she saw that he was dressed in very shabby livery, that he was short
and stout, and that a lady was standing in the narrow entrance-hall
behind him. Barnabas caught sight of her too, and he hailed her
without ceremony.

“Hey theer, missus,” he cried cheerily, “can Ah have a word with ’ee?”

Rather under than above the middle height, dressed plainly in a black
silk gown, Mrs. Heritage was a woman who had been very pretty, and who
would have been so still but for a certain discontented, worried look,
which seemed to have eaten untimely furrows into her handsome
features.

“Well, Mr. Ugthorpe, and what do you want?”

“Here’s a young gentlewoman without a shelter for her head, an’ Ah
thowt ye would be t’ person to give it her.”

“Young gentlewoman--without shelter!” echoed the lady in slow, solemn,
strident tones. “Why, how’s that?”

“I was snowed up in the train, madam, on my way to my father’s. And we
are very sorry to have troubled you. Good-night.”

Very proudly the girl uttered these last words, in the high, tremulous
tones that tell of tears not far off. While Barnabas stopped at the
door to argue and explain, Freda was hopping back through the snow
towards the lane as fast as she could, with bitter mortification in
her heart, and a weary numbness creeping through her limbs.

Suddenly through the night air there rang a cry in a deep, full, man’s
voice, a voice that thrilled Freda to the heart, calling to something
within her, stirring her blood.

“Aunt, she’s lame! Don’t you see she’s lame?”

She heard rapid footsteps in the snow. As she turned to see who it was
that was pursuing her, and at the same time raised her hand to dash
away the rising tears and clear her sight, her little crutch fell. She
stooped to grope in the snow, and instantly felt a pair of strong arms
around her. Not Barnabas Ugthorpe’s. There was no impetuous acting
upon impulse about Barnabas. And in the pressure of these unknown arms
there seemed to Freda to be a kindly, protecting warmth and comfort
such as she had never felt before.

“Who is it? Who are you?” she cried tremulously.

“Never mind, I’ve been sent to take care of you,” answered the voice.

Again it thrilled Freda; and she was silent, rather frightened. She
gave one feeble struggle, seeing nothing through her tears in the
darkness, and her ungloved hand touched a man’s moustache. To the
convent-bred girl this seemed a shocking accident: she was dumb from
that moment with shame and confusion. The good-humoured remonstrance
of the unseen one caused her the keenest anguish.

“Oh, you ungrateful little thing. You’ve scratched my face most
horribly, and I don’t believe there’s a bit of sticking-plaster in the
house. Next time I shall leave you to sleep in the snow.”

“I--I am sorry. I beg your pardon,” she faltered. “I did not see.”

“All right. I’ll forgive you this once. Not that I think you’ve
apologised half enough.”

At first she took this as a serious reproach, and wondered what she
could say to soothe his wounded feelings. But the next moment, being
quick-witted, she began dimly to understand that she was being laughed
at, and she resolved to hold her peace until she could see the face of
this creature, who was evidently of a kind quite new to her
experience, with puzzling manners and a way of looking at things which
was not that of the nuns of the Sacred Heart.

In a few moments Freda heard the voice of Barnabas thanking Mrs.
Heritage for her good cheer as he came out of the house. Then she
found herself put gently down on her feet inside the doorway, while
she heard the strident tones of the lady of the house, asking her not
unkindly whether she was wet and cold. But even her kindness grated on
Freda; it was hard, perfunctory, she thought. There was all the time,
behind the thoughtful hospitality for her unexpected guest, some black
care sitting, engrossing the best of her. Mrs. Heritage hurried on,
through a labyrinth of rooms and passages, to an oaken door, old and
worm-eaten, studded with rusty nails.

“This room,” she said, turning back as the door rolled slowly inwards,
“is the one wreck of decent life on which we pride ourselves. It is
the old banqueting-hall of the castle. We took it into use, after an
hundred and fifty years’ neglect, when we were obliged to come and
bury ourselves here.”

It was a long and lofty room with a roof of oak so ancient that many
of the beams were eaten away by age. The walls were of rough stone,
hung, to a height of six feet from the ground, with worn tapestry,
neatly patched and mended. The hall was lighted by six Gothic windows
on each side, all of them ten feet from the ground. The furniture, of
shabby and worm-eaten oak, consisted chiefly of a number of presses
and settles, quaintly shaped and heavy-looking, which lined the walls.
On one end of a long table in the middle, supper was spread, while at
the further end of the hall a log-fire burned in a large open
fireplace.

“Where is Richard?” asked Mrs. Heritage solemnly, just as the door was
pushed open, and three or four dogs bounded in, followed by a tall
young man in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with a dog-whip
sticking out of his pocket. It was Freda’s unknown friend.

“Let me introduce you,” said his aunt. “My nephew, Mr. Richard
Heritage to---- What is your name, child?”

Freda hesitated. Then, with the blood surging in her head, she
answered in a clear voice:

“Freda Mulgrave.”

She had expected to give them a surprise; but she had not reckoned
upon giving such a shock to Mrs. Heritage as the announcement plainly
caused her. Dick, whose careless glance had, for some reason which she
did not understand, pained her, at once turned to her with interest.

“You know my father. What is he like?” she ventured presently, in a
timid voice, to Mrs. Heritage, when she had explained how she came to
be travelling alone to Presterby.

“He is a tall, dignified-looking gentleman, my dear, with a
silver-grey beard and handsome eyes.”

“And does he live all by himself?”

“I believe his establishment consists of a housekeeper, and her
husband, who was one of his crew.”

“And decidedly a rough-looking customer, as you will say when you see
him, Miss Mulgrave,” chimed in Dick. “This Crispin Bean, who belonged
to Captain Mulgrave’s ship at the time of the--the little difficulty
which ended in his withdrawing from the Navy, has followed him like a
dog ever since. It’s no ordinary man who can inspire such enthusiasm
as that,” he went on, as he stood by the big fireplace, and kicked one
of the burning logs into a fresh blaze. “You must have noticed,” he
said presently, “that the discovery of your being your father’s
daughter had some special interest for us?”

“Yes, I did think so,” said Freda.

“You see,” Dick went on, pulling his moustache and twisting up the
ends ferociously, “we’re very poor, poor as rats. It’s Free Trade has
done it. We--my cousin and I--have to farm our own land; and as we
can’t afford the railway rates, we sell what we produce to our
neighbours. If they left off buying we couldn’t live. Well, my cousin
and your father have had a quarrel, and we’re afraid Captain Mulgrave
won’t buy of us any more. You understand, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Freda slowly, struggling with her sleepy senses. “He
has quarrelled with your cousin, and so you’re afraid he’ll buy what
he wants not from you but from Josiah Kemm.”

Both her hearers started violently, and Freda perceived that she had
let out something he had not known.

“I stayed for an hour at an inn called the ‘Barley Mow,’” she
explained, “and I heard something there which I think must have had
some meaning like that. But perhaps I am wrong. I am tired,
confused--I----”

Her voice grew faint and drowsy. Dick glanced at Mrs. Heritage.

“Don’t trouble your head about it to-night,” said he. “You are tired.
Aunt, take Miss Mulgrave to her room. Good-night.”

And poor Freda, sleepy, contrite, was hurried off to bed.

Next morning she was down early, but she saw nothing of Dick. The
mistress of the house read prayers in a tone of command rather than of
supplication; and, as the servants filed out afterwards, she called
the butler, and asked:

“What is this I hear about Master Richard’s going off on ‘Roan Mary’
at this time in the morning?”

“It’s a telegram he wants to send to Master Robert; and he has to ride
to Pickering because the snow’s broken down the wires on this side,”
answered Blewitt sullenly. “I saw the message. It said: ‘He is on with
Kemm. Call on your way back.’”

Freda caught the name “Kemm.” She felt very uncomfortable, but nobody
noticed her, and she was suddenly startled by an outbreak of sobs and
moans from Mrs. Heritage, who had begun to pace up and down the room.

“That’ll do,” said Blewitt sullenly, “I’m going to have a talk with
you, ma’am. We’d best have things square before your precious son
Robert comes back. I want to know when I’m to have my wages. I don’t
mean my thirty-five pounds a year for waiting at table, but the wages
I was promised for more important work.”

“I will speak to Mr. Robert as soon as he returns, Blewitt,” said Mrs.
Heritage, who was evidently in a paroxysm of terror. “I am quite
sure----”

“That I shall get no good out of _him_,” went on Blewitt, doggedly.
“Do you think I don’t know Mr. Robert? Why, miss,” and the man turned,
with a sudden change of manner to deprecating respect, to Freda, “your
father, Captain Mulgrave, knows what Mr. Robert is, and that’s why
he’s made up his mind, like the wise gentleman he is, not to have
anything more to do with him. And _I’ve_ made up _my_ mind,” he went
on with vicious emphasis, heeding neither Mrs. Heritage’s spasmodic
attempts to silence him, nor the young girl’s timid remonstrances,
“either to have my due or to follow his example.”

Freda had crept up, with her little crutch, to Mrs. Heritage’s side,
and was offering the mute comfort of a sympathetic hand thrust into
that of the lady.

“Run away, my dear child, run away,” whispered the latter eagerly.

The man went on in a brutal tone:

“I’m not such a fool as Master Dick, to stay here and be made a
catspaw of, while your precious son goes off to enjoy himself. Why
should some do all the work, and others----”

The rest of his sentence was lost to Freda, who had got outside the
door into a great bare apartment beyond. Here, lifting the latch of a
little modern door which most inappropriately filled an old Gothic
doorway, she found herself, as she had expected, in the courtyard.




 CHAPTER IV.

Freda crossed the courtyard to one of the ruined corner-towers, and
finding the staircase still practicable, continued her wanderings,
with cautious steps, along the top of the broken castle-wall. She got
along easily as far as the thatched roof of a big barn. But here her
crutch slipped on the snow and went crashing through a
tarpaulin-covered hole in the thatch, carrying its owner with it, into
a loft half-filled with hay. There was no way of escape until somebody
came by to rescue her. Freda therefore could do nothing but look down
into the hazy light of the barn below; and presently, nursed into a
comfortable warmth by the hay, she fell asleep.

She was awakened by being shaken pretty roughly, while a voice cried
close to her ear:

“Now, then, I’ve got you; and if I let you get home with a whole bone
in your little thievish body, you may think yourself jolly lucky, I
can tell you.”

Having recognised the voice as Dick’s, Freda was not alarmed by the
assumed ferocity of his tone. Besides, he had evidently mistaken her
for somebody else. So she shook herself free from the hay, and sat up
and looked at him. By that time he had got used to the gloom of the
loft, and to her surprise, he drew back so quickly that he risked
falling off the ladder. A little more contemplation, and then he
murmured:

“Of course--it’s the hair!”

The net in which, in primitive fashion, she was accustomed to tuck
away her hair, had been lost in her tumble through the roof, and her
red-brown locks, which had a pretty, natural wave, had fallen about
her ears and given to her pale face quite a new character. Dick,
however, was not a young fellow looking idly at a pretty girl, but a
man full of responsibilities and anxieties.

“You said last night,” he began abruptly, “that you had heard
something at the ‘Barley Mow’ about us and your father. What was it?”

She answered in a low, modest voice, but without any fear.

“You say my father is quarrelling with you. You wish to find out all
his movements. Then if I tell you about them, I am betraying my own
father!”

“I warn you that your principles won’t agree with his any more than
they do with mine. Do as you _would be_ done by is what you were
taught at the convent, I suppose. Do as you _are_ done by is the motto
we live by here.”

“It seems very dreadful,” whispered Freda, “to do things that are
wrong and not to mind!”

And the young man perceived that she had tears in her eyes.

“Don’t cry,” said he gently. “I shouldn’t have said what I have to you
but that I wanted you to go back to your convent before you hear
anything more to pain you. I want to take you to Presterby this
afternoon, without your seeing my cousin Bob.”

“Ah!” cried Freda with a start. “Your cousin! Tell me, is he good to
you? Are you fond of him?”

“Not particularly. That answer will do to both questions.”

“Then why do you stay here? Would it not be better for you to go away?
They say--do they not say, that he makes you work for his advantage?”

He paused a few moments, and his face grew graver. Then he said
abruptly: “Supposing I were to tell you that I am content to be taken
advantage of, and that I’d rather live on here anyhow than like a
prince anywhere else. I tell you,” he went on, with the ring of
passion in his voice, “I love every foot of ground about here as you
love your convent and your nuns; the stones of this old place are my
religion. And so I shall live on here in some sort of hole-and-corner
fashion, bringing grist to a mill that gives me neither honour nor
profit, until----”

He stopped short. Freda was deeply moved; but she only asked him, in a
constrained voice, if he would let her come down the ladder. He ran
rapidly down, held the ladder firm for her, and gently assisted her as
she came near the ground, taking her crutch and returning it to her
when her feet touched the floor.

“Poor little lame girl!” said he softly, and the words brought sobs
into her throat. “Why, you’re crying! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No-o, no,” said Freda, drawing herself away. “Let me go, please.”

“Well, say that we’re friends first.”

Freda raised her eyes, but her glance passed Dick and remained fixed
on a face that appeared at the window beyond. A young man, with sandy
hair and moustache, was looking in with a cynical grin. Dick turned
quickly, when he saw the change on the girl’s face. His own expression
altered also.

“Bob! Back already!” he cried.

The young man had climbed in. Nodding at his cousin, with a glance at
Freda which she found exceedingly offensive, he asked:

“Well, and who is the little girl?”

Perhaps the girl’s mind, having retained a child-like purity, was able
at once to detect the taint in that of Robert Heritage; but certainly
the persistent stare of his small grey eyes, which he honestly
believed to be irresistible, affected her no more than the gleam of a
couple of marbles; while every other feature of his face, from the
obtrusively pointed nose to the thin-lipped mouth, seemed to her to
betray ugly qualities, the names of which she scarcely knew. He, on
his side, regarded her face with a bold, critical stare, which changed
into contempt the moment he caught sight of her crutch. Dick grew red
with anger.

“You didn’t get my telegram then?” he said shortly, interposing his
person to shield the girl from his cousin’s impudent gaze.

“No, I got no telegram. What was it about?”

“Come into the house and I’ll tell you.”

He moved to the door. Robert would not let him open it.

“What! and interrupt your studies of the maim, the halt, and the
blind?” he asked, in a low voice which, however, the girl’s quick ears
caught.

Freda had been reprimanded at the convent for occasional outbursts of
passion. But she had never yet felt the force of such a torrent of
indignation as seemed to sweep through her frame at this, the first
sneer at her infirmity she had ever heard. She scarcely noticed Dick’s
angry remonstrance; but raising her flushed face to Robert, she said:

“You can sneer at me now. Perhaps you will not when I am in the house
of my father, Captain Mulgrave.”

“Come, that’s rather strong, little girl,” he said coolly. “To be
Mulgrave’s daughter--which you may be for anything I know--is one
thing, but to live in his house is another. I can assure you he has
made no preparations for your reception.”

His insolent tone stung Freda to a greater heat of passion.

“Perhaps you are not in my father’s confidence,” she said in a voice
which shook a little. “If you had been, you might have known that he
was going to visit Josiah Kemm.”

Without waiting to see the effect of her words, Freda ran out of the
barn, across the court-yard, and up to the room she had slept in.
There she put on her hat and cloak, and after waiting some time in
fear lest she might be hunted out, stole out of the room and came, to
her disgust, face to face with Blewitt. He had on a thick coat and
riding-boots.

“I beg pardon, ma’am, but I was a-coming to inform you that I have
been hordered by Mr. ’Eritage to go to the Abbey with a letter for
your respected father, Captain Mulgrave. Now, ma’am, I should esteem
it a honour to be sent to a gentleman like Captain Mulgrave on any
hordinary errand. But knowing, as I happen to do, the himport of the
letter, I feel it very different, I assure you, ma’am.”

Freda was too unsophisticated to guess by what simple means Blewitt
had arrived at the knowledge he alluded to. But she was afraid he
wanted to tell her something she ought not to hear, and she
interrupted him hurriedly.

“Yes, I’m sure that all you say is quite--quite right,” she said
nervously. “But I--I am going out, and I cannot----”

“You cannot stay under the roof of such people as them. Which I was
sure, ma’am, that such would be your feelings. Barnabas Ugthorpe, the
farmer, has been here with his cart a-inquiring after you; and I know
where he is to be found now, if so be as you would like me to show you
how to get out by a private door.”

“Oh, yes, please show me out,” cried Freda piteously, delighted at the
thought of seeing her rough friend, whom she hoped to persuade to take
her on to the Abbey.

“I will do so, ma’am,” answered Blewitt, who by this promise forced
her to listen to him. “And if you could say a good word to the Captain
for me that would induce him for to take a hard-working man into his
service, why, I could tell him a many little tales about the goings on
in this house which would astonish him, and just show him how he
misplaced his confidence in some people I could name.”

“How can you think my father could listen to such things!” Freda broke
out indignantly.

“Well, ma’am, gentlemen’s ways is not always straight ways, when they
wants pertic’ler to know things,” said Blewitt, drily though
respectfully. “But the Captain’s a ’asty and ’aughty sort of gentleman
as you don’t always quite know where to have him! and when he gets
this letter, which threatens to do for him if he don’t give up all
dealings with Josiah Kemm immediate, why he’ll be in such a taking
that he’ll be more likely to do for me than to listen to anything what
I can say.”

“Why do you take the letter then?”

The fact was that Mr. Blewitt did not wish to be off with the old love
until he was quite sure of being on with the new. He put this to
Freda, however, in a nobler light.

“You see, ma’am,” said he, “so long as I take Mr. ’Eritage’s wages, I
must carry out his horders.”

“Yes, of course, of course,” said Freda, with almost a shriek of
delight as Blewitt opened a little side-door and she found herself out
of the house, standing in the snow under the grey old outer wall.

She found Barnabas just driving off from one of a group of cottages at
the bottom of the lane. At her cry he stopped, waiting for her to come
up.

“Barnabas!” she cried, quivering with anxiety, “won’t you drive me
over to the Abbey? Oh, do, do! You will, won’t you?”

The farmer scratched his ear.

“Happen one o’ t’ young gentlemen ’ll droive ye over.”

“Oh no,” said Freda quickly. “I wouldn’t go back there for anything in
the world!”

The farmer grinned, nodded, helped Freda into his cart, and started
off at a much better pace than they had made with Josiah Kemm’s old
mare the night before.

“Weel, lassie,” he said, as they jogged along, “ye’ve made a better
conquest nor any scapegrace of a Heritage. That theer swell that was
so kind to ye at t’ ‘Barley Mow,’ he’s gone clear creazed about ye.
When Ah left ye at t’ farm last neght, Ah fahnd him on t’ road,
mahnding for to get to Presterby. Ah towd him he couldn’t the neght,
an’ Ah tuck him back; an’ t’ missus, when she’d satisfied herself he
warn’t a woman in disguise, was moighty civil. An’ he said sooch
things abaht yer having a sweet little feace, an’ he said he should
call at t’ Abbey to see ye.”

“Barnabas,” said Freda suddenly, “why did you look so mysterious last
night when I told you that he had something to do with the
government?”

The farmer gave her an alarmed glance, as he had done the night
before, and said in a cautious tone:

“Ye’ve gotten a pair of sharp ears, an’ they hear more’n there’s ony
need. Ye didn’t reeghtly unnerstand, lass.”

After this there came a long pause, during which Freda puzzled herself
as to what the inhabitants of this district had been doing, to have
such a fear of the government. It was getting dark when Barnabas broke
the long silence by saying, as he pointed with his whip to the summit
of a hill they were about to ascend:

“T’ Abbey’s oop top o’ theer.”

Freda was too much agitated to answer except by a long-drawn breath.
The Abbey! Her father’s home! A terrible presentiment, natural enough
after the scant experience she had had of his care, told her that
there was no welcome waiting. She crouched down in the cart and clung
to the farmer’s arm.

“Barnabas,” she whispered, “I’m afraid to go on. Drive slowly; oh, do
drive slowly!”

But the robust farmer only laughed and jogged on at the same pace. The
road, however, grew in a few minutes so steep that they could only
proceed very slowly, and Barnabas got down to lead the horse and
lighten his burden as he ploughed his way up. Traffic between the
little town of Presterby and its neighbours had been so much hindered
by the blockade of snow, that there were no wheel-marks on the white
mass before them.

“Soomun’s been riding oop a horseback, though,” said Barnabas, as he
looked at the print of hoofs.

“Perhaps the man Blewitt from the farm,” suggested Freda. “He said he
was going to ride to the Abbey.”

“Oh, ay,” said the farmer with interest. “If he was cooming, noa doubt
it’s him. Hey,” he went on, in a different tone, “Ah think Ah hear his
voice oop top theer! He’s fell aht wi’ soomun by t’ sounds, Ah fancy.”

He stopped the cart a moment to listen. Plainly both Freda and he
could hear the voices of men in angry discussion, the one coarse and
loud, the other lower and less distinguishable.

“My father!” cried Freda, trembling.

“A’ reeght, lass, a’ reeght; doan’t ye be afraid. We’ll be oop wi ’em
in a breace o’ sheakes.”

“Barnabas! Make haste, make haste! They’re quarrelling, fighting
perhaps!” cried the girl in passionate excitement.

“Weel, Ah’ll go and see,” answered the farmer who, knowing more than
his little companion did of the reckless and violent character of the
disputants, was in truth as much excited as she was.

“He’s carrying a letter which he said would enrage my father!” cried
Freda in a tremulous voice to Barnabas, who was already some paces
ahead, running up the hill as fast as he could.

The road lay between stone walls of fair height, and was full of
curves and windings; so that it would have been impossible, even in
broad daylight, for the farmer to see the two men until he was close
upon them. He was not yet out of Freda’s sight when a sharp report,
followed by a second, and then by a hoarse cry, broke upon their ears.
There was silence for a moment, and then the sound of galloping hoofs
upon the snow. A riderless horse, bearing a man’s saddle, came down
the hill, with nostrils dilated and frightened eyes. Barnabas, who
considered a horse as rather more a fellow-creature than a man, set to
work to stop the animal before making his way to the human beings.
This accomplished, he tied the horse to the gate of a field a few
yards higher up, and quickening his pace again, reached the top of the
hill.

Here, in the middle of the road, were two figures, the one prone on
the ground, the other kneeling in the snow beside him.

The kneeling man started and rose to his feet as Barnabas came up. He
held in his left hand an open letter, and in his right a revolver,
which, without resistance, he allowed the farmer to take.

“Captain Mulgrave!”

The Captain only nodded. Barnabas went down in the snow beside the
second figure. He was on his face, but Barnabas knew, even before he
attempted to raise him, that it was Blewitt, the servant from
Oldcastle Farm.

He was dead.




 CHAPTER V.

The unfortunate Blewitt had never, in his lifetime, excited the
liking or respect of any one. Selfish and mean, he had been tolerated
because he was useful to his employers, who mistrusted him, and feared
and avoided by the rest of his neighbours. But these facts, so it
seemed to Barnabas Ugthorpe, heightened the tragedy of the
man-servant’s death. The honest farmer could not have expressed his
thought in words, he but felt that the poor wretch whose body lay at
his feet had somehow lost his chance forever.

As Barnabas stood there, considering the sight before him, Captain
Mulgrave, who had not uttered a word, turned quickly, and was about to
climb over the stone wall to the right, on his way back to the Abbey,
when he felt a strong hand on his shoulder.

“Not quite so fast, Capt’n,” said Barnabas drily, “Ah want yer opinion
o’ this metter.”

“My opinion is,” said Captain Mulgrave, shortly, “that this is the
most d--d mysterious thing I ever saw. And I’ve seen a few queer
things in my life too.”

“Aye,” said Barnabas, “it’s a bad job this.”

He continued to stare at the dead man, and never once raised his eyes
to the face of his living companion.

“Well,” said the Captain, after a long silence, “you don’t ask me to
tell you how I found him?”

“Noa, sir, Ah doan’t,” said Barnabas drily.

“Well, why not?”

“Weel,” said the farmer, scratching his ear, “Ah doan’t knaw as Ah
should knaw so mooch more’n Ah did afore.”

“You wouldn’t take my word then?”

“Ah doan’t know as, oonder t’ circumstances, Ah’d tek t’ word o’ any
gentleman.”

“You think I had a hand in this man’s death?”

Barnabas paused a long time, still looking at the body, still
scratching his ear.

“Aye, sir, it dew look like it,” he admitted at last.

“Well, at first sight it, dew,” mimicked Captain Mulgrave in a lighter
tone than the farmer thought becoming. “But I tell you it’s all d--d
nonsense, I was coming down here to see what state the roads were in,
and I heard men’s voices, and then two shots. I was half-way across
that field. I ran, got over the wall, and found the fellow lying like
this, with the revolver in his hand. I took it up, and found that two
chambers had been discharged. I looked up and down the lane, but I
couldn’t see any one.”

“Noa,” said Barnabas with a movement of the head, “Ah should suppose
not.”

He bent down over the body again, examining it.

“He’s shot in t’ back. Did it hissen, most loike.”

“Now what reason have you for supposing I shot him?”

“Weel, sir, asking yer pardon, but to begin with, ye’ve gotten t’ name
o’ being free wi’ them things.” And he raised the revolver, which he
still held in his hand. “Then, sir, Ah happen to knaw as he came to
bring ye a letter as were not loike to put ye into a good humour.”

He glanced at the letter which Captain Mulgrave held.

“I don’t know how you came to hear about this letter, but you’re quite
right as far as that is concerned. Only the man did not give it me; I
found it on his dead body.”

“Ye found it moighty quick then, Capt’n. That’s not t’ weay moast on
us cooms nigh a dead mon, to begin rummaging in ’s pockets before he’s
cawld.”

“As to that, I guessed he’d come on an errand to me and had some
message about him. And why should I have more respect for the fellow
dead than I had for him alive? His carcase has no more value in my
eyes than that of a carrion crow.”

“It’ll have a deal more, though, in t’ eyes of a jury, Capt’n.”

“Do you mean to try to hang me then, honest Barnabas?”

“Ah mean to tell what Ah seen, an’ leave it to joodge an’ jury to seay
what they thinks on it.”

“And knowing me for such a desperate character you dare to tell me
this to my face?”

“Happen Ah shouldn’t be so bold, but Ah gotten t’ revolver mysen.”

And Barnabas glanced at the weapon in his hand.

Captain Mulgrave laughed a little, and both men stood silent
considering.

“I can’t think who can have had such a grudge against the poor devil
as to shoot him,” he said at last, as if to himself. “It must have
been some one on foot, for there are no hoof-marks about but those of
the horse he was riding.”

Barnabas said nothing. With one steady look at Captain Mulgrave as if
to tell him that he hadn’t done with him yet, the farmer examined the
footprints in the snow round about. There were marks neither of wheels
nor of hoofs further than this point, but there were footprints both
of men and children, for this was the high road between Presterby and
Eastborough, the next important town southwards along the coast.

“Aye,” said the farmer, when he had finished his inspection, “it mun
ha’ been some one afoot, Capt’n, as you say.”

Captain Mulgrave had been considering the aspect of the affair, and he
looked more serious when Barnabas uttered these words.

“Barnabas,” he said at last, “I begin to see that these devils, with
their confirmed prejudice against me, may make this a serious
business.”

“Aye, so Ah’m thinking too.”

“Give a dog a bad name, you know. Because I shot down four rascals in
self-defence, I’m considered capable of depopulating the county in
cold blood.”

“Aye, that be so. Leastweays we knaw ye doan’t hawd human loife
seacred.”

“Well, and that’s true enough,--I don’t. There are men whom I should
consider it justifiable to exterminate like vermin.”

“Weel, sir, we moast on us thinks that in our seacret hearts, only we
moightn’t knaw wheer to stop if we let ourselves begin. But when we
foind a mon wi’ t’ courage o’ these opinions, we have to put a stop to
his little games pretty quick. It’s not that Ah bear ye any ill-will,
Capt’n, quoite t’ contrary: ye have t’ sympathy of all t’
coontry-soide, as ye knaw. But we must draw t’ loine soomwheer, an’ Ah
draw it at murder.”

“You won’t take my word?”

“Can’t, Capt’n.”

“Will you take my money?”

“Noa, sir.”

“What are you going to do then? Go down into the town and set the
police after me?”

Barnabas looked for a few moments puzzled and distressed. He would
have given this high-handed gentleman into custody without a moment’s
hesitation if it had not been for his little daughter, now on her way
to her unknown home all unconscious of the tragedy which darkened it.
On the other hand, he shrank from giving her into the care of a man
whose hands were reeking with the guilt of a most cowardly murder.
After pondering the matter, an idea struck him, and he raised his head
with a clear countenance.

“Ah’ll haud my toongue aboot this business, if so be ye’re ready to
mak’ a bargain.”

“Name your price then.”

“My price is that ye’ll give us yer room in these parts instead of yer
coompany. Ye’ve gotten a yacht, Capt’n, an’ a rich mon’s weays o’
gettin’ aboot an’ makhin’ yerself comfortable. So Ah’m not droiving a
hard bargain. But ye mun be aht of t’ Abbey by to-morrow, an’ all ye
gotten to do is to mak’ soom provision for your little darter.”

Captain Mulgrave was more startled by the three last words than by all
the rest of the farmer’s speech.

“My little daughter!” he repeated in a scoffing tone. “Yes, I’d
forgotten her. But what do you know about her, eh?”

“Ah was bringing her oop t’ Abbey,” answered Barnabas, jerking his
head and his thumb in the direction of the cart, which, however, was
not in sight.

Captain Mulgrave frowned.

“D----d nuisance!” he muttered to himself.

“Eh, but Ah think Ah’ll tak’ her aweay again till ye’re gone, Capt’n,”
said Barnabas drily. “T’ owd stoans will give her a better welcome
home than ye seem loike to.”

“No, you may as well take her up now. I shall not see her. You don’t
want to keep the girl out all day in the cold. I’ll just get across to
the house now and tell Mrs. Bean to make a fire for her. By the time
the cart comes round to the front I--I----” He hesitated, and Barnabas
saw that, under his devil-may-care manner, Captain Mulgrave was
agitated. “By that time,” continued he, recovering himself, “it will
be all ready for her, and--she’ll see nothing of me--I shall go
away--to-night--I shall be glad to. I’m sick of this pestilential
country, where one can only breathe by virtue of a special act of
parliament. Sha’n’t see you again, Barnabas.” He moved away, and just
as he put his hand on the stone wall to vault over, he turned his head
to say, “Thanks for your kindness to the little one.”

Then he disappeared from the farmer’s sight hastily, as he heard the
cart groaning and squeaking up the hill.

Freda had got tired of waiting for Barnabas, and after much vigorous
shaking of the reins, which he had put into her hands, she had
succeeded in starting the horse again.

“Barnabas!” she cried, as soon as she caught sight, in the gloom, of
the farmer’s figure, “is that you?”

“Aye, lassie,” said he, placing himself between the cart and the dead
body on the ground.

“Didn’t I hear you talking?”

“Aye, happen ye did.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Eh, lass?” said he, pretending not to hear her, so that he might gain
time for reflection.

“Who--were--you--talking to?” she asked slowly but querulously, for
she was cold and tired, and full of misgivings.

“Eh, but Ah was talking to a mon as were passing.”

“Passing? He didn’t pass me.”

“Noa, lass, Ah didn’t seay as he did. Ye’re mighty sharp.”

“It’s because I don’t understand you. There’s something different
about your manners. Something’s happened, I believe!”

“Eh, lassie, why, what’s coom over ye?”

“What’s that on the ground?”

She almost shrieked this, guessing something.

“Ye’ve gotten too sharp eyes, lassie. Ye’d better not ask questions.”

“Barnabas, Oh!--Barnabas, it’s not--not--my father!” whispered the
poor child, clinging, over the side of the cart, to the rough hands
the farmer held out to her.

“Noa, lass, noa.”

“Who is it? Tell me, quick.”

“Why, lass, it’s a poor mon as--as has been hurt.”

“He’s dead. He wouldn’t be there, so still, like that, if he was
not--dead,” she whispered. “Who is it? Tell me, Barnabas.”

“Weel, Ah have a noetion--that he’s soommet loike servant Blewitt, oop
to Owdcastle Farm.”

“Oh, Barnabas, it’s dreadful! Is he really dead?”

But she wanted no answer. She put her hands before her face,
reproaching herself for having disliked the man, almost feeling that
she had had a share in his tragic death.

“Who did it?” she asked at last, very suddenly.

Now Barnabas meant most strongly that the girl should not have the
least suspicion that her father had a hand in this affair. The
farmer’s soft heart had been touched as soon as Captain Mulgrave
betrayed, by a momentary breaking of the voice, that he was not so
utterly indifferent to his daughter as he wished to appear. Upon that
reassuring sign of human feeling, Barnabas instantly resolved to hold
his tongue for ever as to what he had seen. But unluckily, his powers
of imagination and dissimulation were not great. Feminine wits saw
through him, as they had done many a time before. While he was slowly
preparing an elaborate answer, Freda had jumped at once to the very
conclusion he wished her to avoid.

“Who did it?” she repeated in tones so suddenly tremulous and
passionate that they betrayed her thought even to the somewhat
slow-witted Yorkshireman.

“Lord have mercy on t’ lass!” cried he below his breath. “But Ah
believe she knows.”

“Do you mean to say,” she went on in a low, monotonous voice, “that
you _saw_ my father--kill him?”

Her voice dropped on the last words so that Barnabas could only guess
them.

“Noa, lass, noa,” said he quickly, “Ah didn’t _see_ him do it.”

“Then he didn’t do it!” cried she, with a sudden change to a high key,
and in tones of triumphant conviction. “You can tell me all about it
now, for I’m quite satisfied.”

“It’s more’n Ah be, though,” said he dubiously. “Ah found him standing
over t’ corpse loike this ’ere, wi’ this in his hand.” He produced the
revolver from his pocket. “And in t’ other hand he gotten letter ye
spoake of, lass, that ye said would enreage him.”

“And what did he say? Did you accuse him?”

“He said he didn’t do it, an’ Ah, why, Ah didn’t believe him.”

“But I do,” said Freda calmly.

“Weel, but who could ha’ done it then?” asked he, hoping that she
might have a reason to give which would bring satisfaction to his mind
also.

But in Freda’s education faith and authority had been put before
reason, and her answer was not one which could carry conviction to a
masculine understanding.

“My father,” she said solemnly, “could not commit a murder.”

“Weel, soom folks’ feythers does, why not your feyther? There was
nobody else to do it, an’ t’ poor feller couldn’t ha’ done it hissen,
for he was shot in t’ back.”

“I will never believe my father did it,” said Freda.

“Happen he’ll tell ye he did.”

Freda shook her head.

“I have been very foolish,” she said at last, “to listen to all the
things I have heard said against him. And perhaps it is as a
punishment to me that I have heard this. He was good and kind when I
was a baby: how can he be bad now? And if he has done bad things since
then, the Holy Spirit will come down into his heart again now, if I
pray for him.”

“Amen,” said Barnabas solemnly.

This farmer had no more definite religion himself than that there was
a Great Being somewhere, a long way off behind the clouds, whom it was
no use railing at, though he didn’t encourage honest industry as much
as he might, and whom it was the parson’s duty to keep in good humour
by baptisms, and sermons, and ringing of the church-bells. But he had,
nevertheless, a belief in the more lively religion of women, and
thought--always in a vague way--that it brought good luck upon the
world. So he took off his hat reverently when the girl was giving
utterance to her simple belief, and then he led the horse past the
dead body, and jumping up into the cart beside her, took up the reins.




 CHAPTER VI.

After a little more jolting along the highroad they turned to the
right up one less used, and soon came in full sight of the Abbey
ruins. Just a jagged dark grey mass they looked by the murky light of
this dull evening, with here and there a jutting point upwards, the
outline of the broken walls softened by the snow.

Freda sat quite silent, awestruck by the circumstances of her arrival,
and by the wild loneliness of the place. A little further, and they
could see the grey sea and the high cliffs frowning above it. Barnabas
glanced down at the grave little face, and made an effort to say
something cheering.

“It bean’t all so loansome as what this is, ye know. Theer’s t’ town
o’ t’other soide o’ t’ Abbey, at bottom of t’ hill. And from t’
windows o’ Capt’n Mulgrave’s home ye can see roight oop t’ river, as
pretty a soight as can be, wi’ boats a-building, an’ red cottages.”

“Oh!” said Freda, in a very peaceful voice, “I don’t mind the
loneliness. I like it best. And I have always lived by the sea, where
you could hear the waves till you went to sleep.”

“Aye, an’ you’ll hear ’em here sometimes; fit to split t’ owd cliffs
oop they cooms crashing in, an’ soonding like thoonder. Ye’ll have a
foin toime here, lass, if ye’re fond of t’ soond o’ t’ weaves.”

“My father has a yacht too, hasn’t he?”

“Aye, an a pretty seeght too, to see it scoodding along. But it goes
by steam, it isn’t one of yer white booterflies. That sort doan’t go
fast enough for t’ Capt’n.”

Freda was no longer listening. They were on the level ground now at
the top of the hill. To the right, the fields ran to the edge of the
cliff, and there was no building in sight but a poor sort of
farm-house, with a pond in front of it, and a few rather dilapidated
outhouses round about. But on the left hand hedged off from the road
by a high stone wall, and standing in the middle of a field, was the
ruined Abbey church, now near enough for Freda to see the tracery left
in the windows, and the still perfect turrets of the East end, and of
the North transept pointing to heaven, unmindful of the decay of the
old altars, and of the old faith that raised them.

Barnabas looked at her intent young face, the great burning eyes,
which seemed to be overwhelmed with a strange sorrow.

“Pretty pleace, this owd abbey of ours, isn’t it?” said he with all
the pride of ownership.

“It’s beautiful,” said Freda hoarsely, “it makes me want to cry.”

Now the rough farmer could understand sentiment about the old ruin;
considering as he did that the many generations of Protestant
excursionists who had picknicked in it had purged it pretty clear of
the curse of popery, he loved it himself with a free conscience.

“Aye,” said he, “there’s teales aboot it too, for them as loikes to
believe ’em. Ah’ve heard as there were another Abbey here, afore this
one, an’ not near so fine, wheer there was a leady, an Abbess, Ah
think they called her. An’ she was a good leady, kind to t’ poor, an’
not so much to be bleamed for being a Papist, seeing those were
dreadful toimes when there was no Protestants. An’ they do seay
(mahnd, Ah’m not seaying Ah believe it, not being inclined to them
soart o’ superstitious notions myself) they say how on an afternoon
when t’ soon shines you can see this Saint Hilda, as they call her,
standing in one of t’ windows over wheer t’ Communion table used for
to be.” Perceiving, however, that Freda was looking more reverently
interested than was quite seemly in a mere legend with a somewhat
unorthodox flavour about it, Barnabas, who was going to tell her some
more stories of the same sort, changed his mind and ended simply: “An’
theer’s lots more sooch silly feables which sensible fowk doan’t
trouble their heads with. Whoa then, Prince!”

The cart drew up suddenly in a sort of inclosure of stone walls. To
the right was an ancient and broken stone cross, on a circular flight
of rude and worn steps; to the left, a stone-built lodge, a
pseudo-Tudor but modern erection, was built over a gateway, the
wrought-iron gates of which were shut. In front, a turnstile led into
a churchyard. Barnabas got down and pulled the lodge-bell, which gave
a startingly loud peal.

“That yonder,” said he, pointing over the wall towards the churchyard,
in which Freda could dimly see a shapeless mass of building and a
squat, battlemented tower, “is Presterby Choorch. An’ this,” he
continued, as an old woman came out of the lodge and unlocked the
gate, “is owd Mary Sarbutt, an she’s as deaf as a poast. Now, hark ye,
missie,” and he held out his hand to help Freda down, “Ah can’t go no
further with ye, but ye’re all reeght now. Joost go oop along t’ wall
to t’ left, streight till ye coom to t’ house, an’ pull t’ bell o’ t’
gate an’ Mrs. Bean, or happen Crispin himself will coom an’ open to
ye.”

The fact was that Barnabas did not for a moment entertain the idea
that Captain Mulgrave would have the heart to leave his
newly-recovered daughter, and the farmer meant to come up to the
Abbey-house in a day or two and let him know quietly that he had
nothing to fear from him as long as he proved a good father to the
little lass. But just now Barnabas felt shy of showing himself again,
and he shook his head when Freda begged him to come a little way
further with her. For a glance through the gates at the house showed
her such a bare, gaunt, cheerless building that she began to feel
frightened and miserable.

“Noa, missie, Ah woan’t coom in,” said Barnabas, who seemed to have
grown both shyer and more deferential when he had landed the young
lady at the gates of the big house; “but Ah wish ye ivery happiness,
an’ if Ah meay mak’ so bawld, Ah’ll shak’ honds wi’ ye, and seay
good-bye.”

Freda with the tears coming, wrung his hand in both hers, and watched
him through the gates while he turned the horse, got up in his place
in the cart and drove away.

“Barnabas! Barnabas!” she cried aloud.

But the gates were locked, and the old woman, without one word of
question or of direction, had gone back into the lodge. Freda turned,
blinded with tears, and began to make her way slowly towards the
house.

Nothing could be more desolate, more bare, more dreary, than the
approach. An oblong, rectangular space, shut in by high stone walls,
and without a single shrub or tree, lay between her and the building.
Half-way down, to the right, a pillared gateway led to the stables,
which were very long and low, and roofed with red tiles. This bit of
colour, however, was now hidden by the snow, which lay also, in a
smooth sheet, over the whole inclosure. Freda kept close to the
left-hand wall, as she had been told to do, her heart sinking within
her at every step.

At last, when she had come very near to the façade of the house,
which filled the bottom of the inclosure from end to end, a cry burst
from her lips. It was shut up, unused, deserted, and roofless. What
had once been the front-door, with its classic arch over the top, was
now filled up with boards strengthened by bars of iron. The rows of
formal, stately Jacobian windows were boarded up, and seemed to turn
her sick with a sense of hideous deformity, like eye-sockets without
eyes. The sound of her voice startled a great bird which had found
shelter in the moss-grown embrasure of one of the windows. Flapping
its wings it flew out and wheeled in the air above her.

Shocked, chilled, bewildered, Freda crept back along the front of the
house, feeling the walls, from which the mouldy stucco fell in flakes
at her touch, and listening vainly for some sound of life to guide
her.




 CHAPTER VII.

Freda Mulgrave was superstitious. While she was groping her way
along the front of the dismantled house, she heard a bell tolling
fitfully and faintly, and the sound seemed to come from the sea. She
flew instantly to the fantastic conclusion that Saint Hilda, in
heaven, was ringing the bell of her old church on earth to comfort her
in her sore trouble.

“Saint Hilda was always good to wanderers,” she thought. And the next
moment her heart sprang up with a great leap of joy, for her hand,
feeling every excrescence along the wall, had at last touched the long
swinging handle of a rusty bell.

Freda pulled it, and there was a hoarse clang. She heard a man’s
footsteps upon a flagged court-yard, and a rough masculine voice
asked:

“Who’s that at this time of night?”

“It is Captain Mulgrave’s daughter. And oh! take me in; I am tired,
tired.”

The gate was unbolted and one side was opened, enabling the girl to
pass in. The man closed the gate, and lifted a lantern he carried so
as to throw the light on Freda’s face.

“So you’re the Captain’s daughter, you say?”

“Yes.”

Freda looked at him, with tender eyes full of anxiety and inquiry. He
was a tall and rather thickset man with very short greyish hair and a
little unshaved stubble on his chin. Her face fell.

“I thought----” she faltered.

“Thought what, miss?”

There was a pause. Then she asked:

“Who are _you_?”

She uttered the words slowly, under her breath.

“I am your servant, ma’am.”

“_My_ servant--you mean my father’s?”

“It is the same thing, is it not?”

“Oh, then you are Crispin Bean!”

The man seemed surprised.

“How did you know my name?”

“They told me about you.”

“What did they tell you?”

“That you were a ‘rough-looking customer.’”

The man laughed a short, grim laugh, which showed no amusement.

“Well, yes; I suppose they were about right. But who were ‘they’?”

“The people at Oldcastle Farm.”

The man stopped short just as, after leading her along a wide,
stone-paved entry, between the outer wall and the side of the house,
he turned into a large square court-yard.

“Oh!” he said, and lifting his lantern again, he subjected the young
lady to a second close scrutiny. “So you’ve been making friends with
those vermin.”

Freda did not answer for a moment. Presently she said, in a stifled
voice:

“I am not able to choose my friends.”

“You mean that you haven’t got any? Poor creature, poor creature,
that’s not far from the truth, I suppose. That father of yours didn’t
treat you over well, or consider you over much, did he?”

Freda grew cold, and her crutch rattled on the stones.

“What do you mean? ‘_Didn’t_ treat me well’!” she whispered. “He will,
I am sure he will, when he sees me, knows me.”

“Oh, no, you’re mistaken. He’s dead.”

Freda did not utter a sound, did not move. She remained transfixed,
benumbed, stupefied by the awful intelligence.

“It isn’t true! It can’t be true!” she whispered at last, with dry
lips. “Barnabas saw him to-day--just now.”

“He was alive two hours ago. He went out this afternoon, came in in a
great state of excitement and went up to his room. Presently I heard a
report, burst open the door, and found him dead--shot through the
head.”

“Dead!” repeated Freda hoarsely.

She could not believe it. All the dreams, which she had cherished up
to the last moment in spite of disappointments and disillusions, of a
tender and loving father whom her affection and dutiful obedience
should reconcile to a world which had treated him harshly, were in a
moment dashed to the ground.

“Dead!”

It was the knell of all her hopes, all her girlish happiness. Forlorn,
friendless, utterly alone, she was stranded upon this unknown corner
of the world, in a cheerless house, with no one to offer her even the
comfort of a kindly pressure of the hand. The man seemed sorry for
her. He stamped on the ground impatiently, as if her grief distressed
and annoyed him.

“Come, come,” he said. “You haven’t lost much in losing him. I know
all about it; he never went to see you all these years, and didn’t
care a jot whether you lived or died, as far as any one could see. And
it’s all nonsense to pretend you’re sorry, you know. How can you be
sorry for a father you don’t remember?”

“Oh,” said Freda, with a sob, “can’t you understand? You can love a
person without knowing him, just as we love God, whom we can never see
till we die.”

“Well, but I suppose you love God, because you think He’s good to
you.”

“We believe He is, even when He allows things to happen to us which
seem cruel. And my father being, as I am afraid he was, an unhappy
man, was perhaps afraid of making me unhappy too. And he did send for
me at last, remember.”

“Yes, in a fit of annoyance over something--I forget what.”

“How do you know that he hadn’t really some other motive in his
heart?” said Freda, down whose cheeks the tears were fast rolling. “He
was a stern man, everybody says, who didn’t show his feelings. So that
at last he grew perhaps ashamed to show them.”

“More likely hadn’t got any worth speaking of,” said the man gruffly.

“It’s not very nice or right of you to speak ill of your master, when
he’s de-ad,” quavered Freda.

“Well, it’s very silly of you to make such a fuss about him when he’s
de-ad,” mimicked the man.

Although he spoke without much feeling of his late master, and
although he was somewhat uncouth of speech, manner and appearance,
Freda did not dislike this man. As might have been expected, she
confounded bluntness with honesty in the conventional manner.
Therefore she bore even his little jibes without offence. There was a
pause, however, after his last words. Then he asked, rather curiously:

“Come, honestly, what is your reason for taking his part through thick
and thin like this? Come,” he repeated, getting for the moment no
answer, “what is it?”

Freda hesitated, drying her eyes furtively.

“Don’t you see,” she said, tremulously, “that it is my only
consolation now to think the very, very best of him?”

The man, instead of answering, turned from her abruptly, and signed to
her with his hand to follow him. This she did; and they passed round
one side of the court-yard under a gallery, supported by a colonnade,
and entering the house, went through a wide, low hall, into an
apartment to the right at the front of the building. It was a pretty
room, with a low ceiling handsomely moulded, panelled walls, and an
elaborately carved wooden mantelpiece, which had been a good deal
knocked about. The room had been furnished with solid comfort, if
without much regard to congruity, a generation or so back; and the
mahogany arm-chairs having been since shrouded in voluminous chintz
covers with a pattern of large flowers on a dark ground, the room
looked warm and cheerful. Tea was laid on the table for two persons.
Freda’s sharp eyes noted this circumstance at once. She turned round
quickly.

“Who is this tea for?” she asked.

“Captain Mulgrave’s death was not discovered until it was ready.”

“But it was laid for two. Was it for you also?”

“Yes.”

Freda’s face fell.

“You think it was derogatory to his dignity to have his meals with
me?”

“Oh, no, no indeed,” said Freda blushing. “I knew at once, when you
said you were a servant, that it was only a way of speaking. You were
an officer on board his ship, of course?”

“Yes,” said he.

“But I had hoped,” said Freda wilfully, “that he had expected me, and
had tea made ready for me and him together.”

“Ah!” said the man shortly. “Sit down,” he went on, pointing brusquely
to a chair without looking at her, “I’ll send Mrs. Bean to you; she
must find a room for you somewhere, I suppose.”

“For to-night, yes, if you please. Mrs. Bean--that is your wife?”

He nodded and went out, shutting the door.

Freda heard him calling loudly “Nell, Nell!” in a harsh, authoritative
voice, as he went down the passage.

She thought she should be glad to be alone, to have an opportunity to
think. But she could not. The series of exciting adventures through
which she had passed since she left the quiet convent life had
benumbed her, so that this awful discovery of her father’s sudden
death, though it agitated her did not impress her with any sense of
reality. When she tried to picture him lying dead upstairs, she failed
altogether; she must see him by-and-by, kiss his cold face; and then
she thought that she would be better able to pray that she might meet
him in heaven.

It seemed to her that she had been left alone for hours when a bright
young woman’s voice, speaking rather querulously, reached her ears.
Freda guessed, before she saw Mrs. Bean, that her father’s
fellow-officer or servant (she was uncertain what to call him) had
married beneath him. However, when the door opened, it revealed, if
not a lady of the highest refinement, a very pleasant-looking, plump
little woman, with fair hair and bright eyes, who wore a large apron
but no cap, and who looked altogether like an important member of the
household, accustomed to have her own way unquestioned.

“Dear me, and is that the little lady?” she asked, in a kind, motherly
voice, encircling the girl with a rounded arm of matronly protection.
“Bless her poor little heart, she looks half-perished. Crispin,” she
went on, in a distant tone, which seemed to betray that she and her
husband had been indulging in a little discussion, “go and put the
kettle on while I take the young lady upstairs. Come along, my dear.
I’ll get you some hot water and some dry clothes, and in two-twos I’ll
have you as cosy as can be.”

Mrs. Bean looked a little worried, but she was evidently not the woman
to take to heart such a trifle as a suicide in the house, as long as
things went all right in the kitchen, and none of the chimneys smoked.
Crispin, who seemed to have little trust in her discretion, gave her
arm a rough shake of warning as she left the room with the young lady.
Mrs. Bean, therefore, kept silence until she and her charge got
upstairs. Then she popped her head over the banisters to see that
Crispin was out of hearing, and proceeded to unbend in conversation,
being evidently delighted to have somebody fresh to speak to.




 CHAPTER VIII.

“Oh,” began Mrs. Bean, with a fat and comfortable sigh, “I am glad
to have you here, I declare. Ever since the Captain told me, in his
short way, that you were coming, I’ve been that anxious to see you,
you might have been my own sister.”

“That was very good of you,” said Freda, who was busily taking in all
the details of the house, the wide, shallow stairs, low ceilings, and
oaken panelling; the air of neglect which hung about it all; the
draughts which made her shiver in the corridors and passages. She
compared it with the farm-house she had just left, so much less
handsome, so much more comfortable. How wide these passages were! The
landing at the top of the staircase was like a room, with a long
mullioned window and a wide window-seat. But it was all bare, cold,
smelling of mould and dust.

“Isn’t this part of the house lived in?” asked Freda.

“Well, yes and no. The Captain lives in it--at least _did_ live in
it,” she corrected, lowering her voice and with a hasty glance around.
“No one else. This house would hold thirty people, easy, so that three
don’t fill it very well.”

“But doesn’t it take a lot of work to keep it clean?”

“It never is kept clean. What’s the good of sweeping it up for the
rats?” asked Mrs. Bean comfortably. “I and a girl who comes in to help
just keep our own part clean and the two rooms the Captain uses, and
the rest has to go. If the Captain had minded dust he’d have had to
keep servants; I don’t consider myself a servant, you know,” she
continued with a laugh, “and I’m not going to slave myself to a
skeleton for people that save a sixpence where they might spend a
pound.”

It would have taken a lot of slaving to make a skeleton of Mrs. Bean,
Freda thought.

They passed round the head of the staircase and into a long gallery
which overlooked the court-yard. It was panelled and hung with dark
and dingy portraits in frames which had once been gilt.

“Does any one live in this part?” asked Freda, shivering.

Mrs. Bean’s candle threw alarming shadows on the walls. The mullioned
window, which ran from end to end of the gallery, showed a dreary
outlook of dark walls surrounding a stretch of snow.

“Well, no,” admitted her guide reluctantly. “The fact is there isn’t
another room in the house that’s fit to put anybody into; they’ve been
unused so long that they’re reeking with damp, most of them; some of
the windows are broken. And so I thought I’d put you into the Abbot’s
room. It’s a long way from the rest of us, but it’s had a fire in it
once or twice lately, when the Captain has had young Mulgrave here.
It’s a bit gloomy looking and old fashioned, but you mustn’t mind
that.”

Freda shivered again. If the room she was to have was more gloomy than
the way to it, a mausoleum would be quite as cheerful.

“The Abbot’s room!” exclaimed Freda. “Why is it called that?”

“Why, this house wasn’t all built at the same time, you know. There’s
a big stone piece at this end that was built earliest of all. It’s
very solid and strong, and they say it was the Abbot’s house. Then in
Henry the Eighth’s time it was turned into a gentleman’s house, in
what they call the Tudor style. They built two new wings, and carried
the gallery all round the three sides. A hundred and fifty years later
a banqueting room was built, making the last side of the square; but
it was burnt down, and now there’s nothing left of it but the outside
walls of the front and sides.”

This explained to Freda the desolate appearance the house had
presented as she approached it. The deep interest she felt in this,
the second venerable house she had been in since her arrival in
England, began to get the better of her alarm at its gloominess. But
at the angle of the house, where the gallery turned sharply to the
right, Mrs. Bean unlocked a door, and introduced her to a narrow stone
passage which was like a charnel-house.

“This,” said Mrs. Bean with some enthusiasm, “is the very oldest part;
and I warrant you’ll not find such another bit of masonry, still
habitable, mind, in any other house in England!”

Was it habitable? Freda doubted it. The walls of the passage were of
great blocks of rough stone. It was so narrow that the two women could
scarcely walk abreast. They passed under a pointed arch of rough-hewn
stone, and came presently to the end of the passage, where a narrow
window, deeply splayed, threw a little line of murky light on to the
boards of the floor. On the right was a low and narrow Gothic doorway,
with the door in perfect preservation. Mrs. Bean opened it by drawing
back a rusty bolt, and ushered Freda, with great pride, into a room
which seemed fragrant with the memories of a bygone age. Freda looked
round almost in terror. Surely the Abbot must still be lurking about,
and would start out presently, in dignified black habit, cowl and
sandals, and haughtily demand the reason of her intrusion! For here
was the very wide fireplace, reaching four feet from the ground, and
without any mantelshelf, where fires had burned for holy Abbot or
episcopal guest four hundred years ago. Here were the narrow windows
deeply splayed like the one outside from which the prosperous monks
had looked out over their wide pasture-lands and well-stocked coverts.

Even in the furniture there was little that was incongruous with the
building. The roughly plastered walls were hung with tapestry much
less carefully patched and mended than the hangings at Oldcastle Farm.
The floor was covered by an old carpet of harmoniously
undistinguishable pattern. The rough but solid chairs of unpolished
wood, with worn leather seats; the ancient press, long and low, which
served at one end as a washhand-stand, and at the other as a
dressing-table; a large writing-table, which might have stood in the
scriptorium of the Abbey itself, above all, the enormous four-poster
bedstead, with faded tapestry to match the walls, and massive
worm-eaten carvings of Scriptural subjects: all these combined to make
the chamber unlike any that Freda had ever seen.

“There!” said Mrs. Bean, as she plumped down the candlestick upon the
writing table, “you’ve never slept in a room like this before!”

“No, indeed I haven’t,” answered Freda, who would willingly have
exchanged fourteenth century tapestry and memories of dead Abbots for
an apartment a little more draught-tight.

“Ah! There’s plenty of gentlemen with as many thousands as the Captain
had hundreds, would give their eyes for the Abbot’s guest chamber in
Sea-Mew Abbey. Now I’ll just leave you while I fetch some hot water
and some dry clothes. They won’t fit you very well, you being thin and
me fat, but we’re not much in the fashion here. Do you mind being left
without a light till I come back?”

Freda did mind very much, but she would not own to it. Just as Mrs.
Bean was going away with the candle, however, she sprang towards her,
and asked, in a trembling voice:

“Mrs. Bean, may I see him--my father?”

The housekeeper gave a great start.

“Bless me, no, child!” she said in a frightened voice. “Who’d ever
have thought of your asking such a thing! It’s no sight for you, my
dear,” she added hurriedly.

Freda paused for a moment. But she still held Mrs. Bean’s sleeve, and
when that lady had recovered her breath, she said:

“That was my poor father’s room, to the right when we reached the top
of the stairs, wasn’t it?”

Again the housekeeper started.

“Why, how did you know that?” she asked breathlessly.

“I saw you look towards the door on the left like this,” said Freda,
imitating a frightened glance.

Mrs. Bean shook her head, puzzled and rather solemn.

“Those sharp eyes of yours will get you into trouble if you don’t take
care,” she said, “unless you’ve got more gumption than girls of your
age are usually blest with. We womenfolks,” she went on sententiously,
“are always thought more of when we don’t seem over-bright. Take that
from me as a word of advice, and if ever you see or hear more than you
think you can keep to yourself, why, come and tell _me_--but nobody
else.”

And Mrs. Bean with a friendly nod, and a kindly, rough pat on the
cheek which was almost a slap, left the girl abruptly, and went out of
the room.

But this warning, after all the mysterious experiences of the last two
days, was more than Freda could bear without question. She waited,
stupefied, until she could no longer hear the sound of Mrs. Bean’s
retreating footsteps, and then, with one hasty glance round her which
took in frowning bedstead, yawning fireplace and dim windows, she
groped her way to the door, which was unfastened, and fled out along
the stone passage. Her crutch seemed to raise strange echoes, which
filled her with alarm. She hurt herself against the rough, projecting
stones of the wall as she ran. The gallery-door was open: like a mouse
she crept through, becoming suddenly afraid lest Mrs. Bean should hear
her. For she wanted to see her father’s body. A horrible suspicion had
struck her; these people seemed quite unconcerned at his death; did
they know more about it than they told her? Had he really shot
himself, or had he been murdered? She thought if she could see his
dead face that she would know.

Tipity-tap went her crutch and her little feet along the boards of the
gallery. The snow in the court-yard outside still threw a white glare
on the dingy portraits; she dared not look full at them, lest their
eyes should follow her in the darkness. For she did not feel that the
dwellers in this gloomy house had been kith and kin to her. She
reached the landing, and was frightened by the scampering of mice
behind the panelling. Still as a statue she stood outside the door of
her father’s room, her heart beating loudly, her eyes fixed on the
faint path of light on the floor, listening. She heard no sound above
or below: summoning her courage, she turned the handle, which at first
refused to move under her clammy fingers, and peeped into the room.

A lamp was burning on a table in the recess of the window, but the
curtains were not drawn. There was a huge bed in the room, upon which
her eyes at once rested, while she held her breath. The curtains were
closely drawn! Freda felt that her limbs refused to carry her. She had
never yet looked upon the dead, and the horror of the thought,
suddenly overpowered her. Her eyes wandered round the room; she noted,
even more clearly than she would have done at a time when her mind was
free, the disorder with which clothes, papers and odds and ends of all
sorts, were strewn about the furniture and the floor. On two chairs
stood an open portmanteau, half-filled. She could not understand it.

Just as, recovering her self-command, she was advancing towards the
bed, with her right hand raised to draw back the curtain, she heard a
man’s footsteps approaching outside, and turned round in terror. The
door was flung suddenly open, and a man entered.

“Who’s in here?” he asked, sharply.

“It is I,” said Freda hoarsely, but boldly. “I have come to see my
father. And I will see him too. If you don’t let me, I shall believe
you have killed him.”

She almost shrieked these last words in her excitement. But the
intruder, in whom she recognised the man she knew as Crispin Bean,
took her hand very gently and led her out of the room.




 CHAPTER IX.

Freda was so easily led by kindness that when, not heeding her
passionate outburst, Crispin pushed her gently out of the room, she
made no protest either by word or action. He left her alone on the
landing while he went back to get a light, and when he rejoined her,
it was with a smile of good-humoured tolerance on his rugged face.

“So you think I murdered your father, do you, eh?” he said, as he
turned the key in the lock and then put it in his pocket.

“Why don’t you let me see him?” asked she, pleadingly.

“I have a good reason, you may be sure. I am not a woman, to act out
of mere caprice. That’s enough for you. Go downstairs.”

Freda obeyed, carrying her crutch and helping herself down by the
banisters.

“Why don’t you use your crutch?” called out Crispin, who was holding
the lamp over the staircase head, and watching her closely. “If you
can do without it now, I should think you could do without it always?”

He spoke in rather a jeering tone. At least Freda thought so, and she
was up in arms in a moment. Turning, and leaning on the banisters, she
looked up at him with a gleam of daring spirit in her red-brown eyes.

“It’s a caprice, you may be sure,” she answered slowly. “I am not a
man, to act upon mere reason.”

Crispin gave a great roar of derisive laughter, shocking the girl, who
hopped down the rest of the stairs as fast as possible and ran, almost
breathless, into the room she had been in before. Mrs. Bean was
bringing in some cold meat and eggs, and she turned, with an alarmed
exclamation at sight of her.

“Bless the girl!” she cried. “Why didn’t you wait till I came to you?
I have a bundle of dry clothes waiting outside, and now you’ll catch
your death of cold, sitting in those wet things!”

“Oh, no, I sha’n’t,” said Freda, “we were not brought up to be
delicate at the convent, and it was only the edge of my dress that was
wet.”

Mrs. Bean was going to insist on sending her upstairs again, when
Crispin, who had followed them into the room, put an end to the
discussion by drawing a chair to the table and making the girl sit
down in it.

“Have you had your tea?” asked Freda.

“I don’t want any tea,” said he gruffly. “I’ve got to pack up my
things; I’m going away to-night.”

“Going away!” echoed Freda rather regretfully.

“Well, why shouldn’t I? I’m sure you’ll be very happy here without
me.” And, without further ceremony, he left the room.

Mrs. Bean made a dart at the table, swooped upon a plate and a knife
which were not being used, and with the air of one labouring under a
sudden rush of business, bustled out after him.

There was a clock in the room, but it was not going. It seemed to
Freda that she was left a very long time by herself. Being so tired
that she was restless, she wandered round and round the room, and
thought at last that she would go in search of Crispin. So she opened
the door softly, stepped out into the wide hall, and by the dim light
of a small oil lamp on a bracket, managed to find her way across the
wide hall to the back-door leading into the court-yard. This door,
however, was locked. To the left was another door leading, as Freda
knew, into Mrs. Bean’s quarters. This also was locked. She went back
therefore to the room she had left, the door of which she had closed
behind her. To her astonishment, she found this also locked. This
circumstance seemed so strange that she was filled with alarm; and not
knowing what to do, whether to call aloud in the hope that Mrs. Bean
or Crispin would hear her, or to go round the hall, trying all the
doors once more, she sat down on the lowest steps of the staircase
listening and considering the situation.

A slight noise above her head made her turn suddenly, and looking up
she saw peering at her through the banisters of the landing, an ugly,
withered face. Utterly horrorstruck, and convinced that the apparition
was superhuman, Freda, without a word or a cry, sank into a frightened
heap at the bottom of the stairs, and hid her eyes. She heard no
further sound; and when she looked up again, the face was gone. But
the shock she had received was so great that it made her desperate;
getting up from her crouching position, she sped across the hall,
frightened by the echoes of her crutch and her own feet, and threw
herself with all her force against the great door, making the chain
swing and rattle.

“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Bean’s cheery voice in the distance.

And in a few moments the door leading to the kitchen was opened, and
the buxom housekeeper appeared.

“Oh, Mrs. Bean,” cried Freda, throwing herself into her arms and
speaking in a voice hoarse with fear, “this house is haunted!”

“Bless the poor child! you’re overtired, and you fancy things, my
dear,” she said soothingly. “All these old places are full of strange
noises, but you’ll soon get used to them.”

“But _faces_! I saw a face, a dreadful face, with long sharp teeth
like a death’s head; it was looking at me through the banisters, up
there!”

And poor Freda, with her head still buried in Mrs. Bean’s plump
shoulder, pointed upwards with her finger.

“Oh, no, my dear, you didn’t. It was only your fancy. What you want is
to go to bed, and after a good night’s rest you’ll see no more death’s
heads.”

Mrs. Bean’s manner was so very quiet and matter-of-fact, and she took
the account of the appearance so unemotionally, that it occurred to
Freda to ask:

“Haven’t you heard of that face being seen before?”

“Well,” said the housekeeper, rather taken aback, “I believe I have
heard something about it.”

“And the doors, why do they lock of themselves?”

“Oh, that’s very simple,” answered the housekeeper quickly. “That’s a
patent invented by the Captain for the greater security of the house
when he didn’t live here himself. I will show you how to open them.”

She crossed to the door of the dining-room, followed by Freda. But it
seemed to the girl that she listened a few moments, before attempting
to open it. Then she turned what looked like a little ornamental
button above the keyhole, and the door opened.

“That’s how it’s done; you see it’s perfectly simple.”

“Ye-es,” said Freda, “but it all seems to me very strange.”

Mrs. Bean laughed, and wanted the girl to amuse herself with a book
while she cleared away the tea-things.

But no sooner was the housekeeper’s broad back turned than Freda was
off her chair in a moment, and out of the kitchen to a door which
opened into the court-yard. As this door had no secret bolt, she was
speedily outside, under the gallery.

Fancying, that she heard voices to the left, Freda turned in that
direction, and presently saw Crispin standing ankle-deep in the snow,
looking up at the gallery above.

“Were you talking to some one, Crispin?” she cried.

He started at the sound of her voice, and came towards her with
impatient steps.

“What the d----l are you doing out here?” he asked angrily, with a
stamp of his foot on the ground.

“I came out to talk to you,” she answered. “I sha’n’t catch cold.”

“You’ll catch something worse than cold if you come wandering out here
at all hours of the night,” muttered Crispin roughly. “Nell must keep
you indoors.”

He came through the sheltered colonnade, stamping the snow off his
feet.

“You’re a very disagreeable man, Crispin,” said Freda, watching him
gravely. “You must have been very good to my father for him to have
kept you about him so long. It shows,” she went on triumphantly, “that
he must have been much more amiable than they say. Do you know I think
you only talk against him to tease me. But it is horrible, now that
he’s dead.”

Her voice sank on the last word, and the tears started again.

When Crispin answered, which was not at once, his voice was scarcely
so harsh as before, though he spoke rather scoffingly.

“Women are always full of fancies. I don’t wonder your father couldn’t
stand them!”

It was Freda’s turn to laugh now.

“Oh,” she cried, “then I knew him better than you after all. For he
loved one woman so well that he could never bear to look at another
after she died. And he left his own daughter among women, nothing but
women. And I believe that all those years he wouldn’t see me because
he thought I could never be good enough for her daughter. I was lame,
you see,” she added softly.

There was a long, long pause. Freda had managed to get on the right
side of rough Crispin. For he suddenly startled her by taking her in
his right arm with a sweeping embrace which nearly took her off her
feet, while he said huskily:

“Come in, there’s a dear child; you’re cold. You’re quite right, I’ll
be good to you for the sake of---- Well, for your own sake!”

He half led, half carried her along under the gallery and into the
house. Mrs. Bean, who was standing at the back door with rather an
anxious look upon her face, seemed relieved to see that they returned
in amity. Crispin took the girl into a long, low-ceilinged room, where
the furniture, in holland bags, was stacked up against the walls. He
led her before a large oil-painting of a lady, the charm of whose
gracious beauty, even the old-fashioned fourth-rate portrait-painter
had not been able wholly to destroy.

“I suppose you can guess who that is,” said Crispin.

“My mother,” said Freda softly.

“I believe the Captain thought a lot of this picture once. But for the
last few years his memory had grown a bit dim, and he remembered
bitter things better than sweet ones.”

Freda drew a little nearer to Crispin. She perceived by his tone how
strong the sympathy had been between him and her father. She gave a
little sigh, and they instinctively turned to each other and exchanged
glances of growing liking and confidence as they went down the long
room and crossed the hall to the dining-room. Crispin turned up the
lamp, and was about to refill his pipe when it occurred to him to turn
to the girl and say:

“You won’t be able to stand this indoors, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, I shall. They smoked all the time in the kitchen, at the
‘Barley Mow.’”

“The ‘Barley Mow,’ eh? How did you get there?”

Freda told him the whole story of her journey, her sojourn at the inn,
the mysterious character they gave her father.

When she mentioned her friend who was connected with the government,
Crispin grew very attentive, and asked for a minute description of
him, at the end of which he said: “The scoundrel! That’s the fellow
who was sneaking about here this afternoon. If I’d guessed----”

He did not finish his sentence, but he looked so black that Freda
hastened to get off the unpleasant subject, and rushed into a
description of her adventures at Oldcastle Farm. This, however, proved
even less pleasing. Crispin listened with a frown on his face to her
account of the kindness of the Heritages, and at last broke out into
open impatience.

“Mind,” said he sharply, “if those two young cubs come carnying about
here while I’m away--as they will do, my word on it--you are not to
let them inside the door on any pretence, remember that.”

“I wouldn’t let Robert in,” said Freda decidedly.

“No, nor Dick, either.”

“I should let Dick in,” said Freda softly.

Crispin sat back in his chair to look at her face, and perceived upon
it a rosy red flush.

“Now look here,” he said, like one trembling on the borders of a great
outburst of passion, “if you let Dick Heritage come fooling about you
here, I’ll shoot him through the head. Now you understand.”

Freda looked up with a sudden flash of haughtiness.

“I am going back to the convent, Crispin, and these gentlemen are
nothing to me. But if I were going to stay in this house, I should see
whom I liked, for I should be the mistress here.”

If she had stabbed him he would not have been more surprised. He held
his pipe in his hand, and stared at her, unable at first to find
words. She, on her side, felt very uncomfortable as soon as the
outburst had escaped her. She felt that a confession had slipped out
against her will, and she hung her head, and looked into the fire,
hoping that the glow would hide her flaming cheeks.

“So you would be mistress here, would you?” he said. “And you intend
to go back to the convent? And I suppose you think your father’s
wishes nothing.”

“I don’t know what they were; and I shall never know now!”

“Well, I’ll tell you. His wishes were that you should remain here, and
call yourself mistress if you like, while I go away to manage his
property abroad for him.”

“But, Crispin, what could I do here? I should be miserable. I should
like a nun’s life, but not a hermit’s!”

“Oh, well, you’ll get used to it. Your father had a troop of
pensioners in the town here: you will have them to look after.”

“Crispin,” she said suddenly after a pause, in a whisper, “who do you
think it was that killed Blewitt?”

Crispin was rather startled by the question.

“Well,” he asked in his turn, looking stolidly at the fire, “who did
Barnabas Ugthorpe think it was?”

“Oh,” said Freda quickly, “he was wrong, altogether wrong. I told him
so.”

“And supposing he had been right, altogether right, your father would
be a murderer.”

Freda bent her head, but said nothing.

“What do you say to that?”

The girl burst out fierily:

“Why, that he was not a murderer! he was not, he was not! And I
wouldn’t believe it if--if everybody in England had been there!”

She kept her head up, and looked at him steadily, her eyes flashing
defiance. After a few moments he got up.

“You’re tired, and you’re very silly,” he said, huskily.

And, with a nod, but without again looking at her he left the room, as
Mrs. Bean came in with a candle.




 CHAPTER X.

“You’ll be glad to go to bed, I dare say, my dear,” said the
housekeeper. “If you hear any noises in the night, don’t be afraid;
this old house is full of them. Good-night.”

Freda fled across the hall and hopped up the stairs.

Oh! How long that gallery seemed, skim over the floor as she might!
The candle smoked and flared and guttered in her hand, and the boards
creaked, and the musty smell seemed to choke her. The row of stately
carved oak chairs, ranged along the wall on one side, seemed to be set
ready for the midnight hour when the faded ladies and the sombre
gentlemen should come down from their frames and hold ghostly converse
there. She ran along the stone passage to the door of her room, and
threw it open suddenly.

A man sprang up from his knees before the wide, open grate, in which a
wood fire now burned. The girl, no longer mistress of herself in her
fright and excitement, uttered a cry.

“It’s all right,” said the rough voice which had already begun to grow
familiar to her, “I thought you’d like a fire. So I brought some
sticks, and a log. It’s cold here after France, I expect. Anyhow, the
blaze makes it look more cheerful.”

Freda was touched.

“Oh, thank you--so very much! How kind of you.”

“Stuff! Kind! You’re mistress here now, you know, as you said; and one
must make the mistress comfortable.”

He spoke in a jeering tone, but Freda did not mind that now.

“I wish,” she said, looking wistfully at the blazing log, “that you
were going to stay here, Crispin.”

He gave one of his short, hard laughs.

“I should get spoilt for work,” he said. “You’d make a ladies’-man of
me. Sha’n’t see you again. Good-night.”

Freda held out her hand, and he held it a moment in his, while a gleam
almost of tenderness passed over his seamed and rugged face. Then he
gave her fingers a sudden, rough squeeze, which left her red girl’s
hand for a minute white and helpless.

“Good-night,” he then said again, shortly and as if indifferently. “If
I come into these parts again, I’ll give you a look in.”

He left her hardly time to murmur “good-night” in answer, before he
was out of the room. He put his head in again immediately, however, to
say “Draw the bolt of the door, and you’ll be all right.”

Freda obeyed this direction at once, with another little quiver of the
heart. But Crispin’s kindness had so warmed her that what now chiefly
troubled her was the fact that she would see no more of him for an
indefinite time. The strongest proof of the confidence he had inspired
in her was the fact that she accepted implicitly his assurance as to
her father’s wishes, and resolved to make no attempt to return to the
convent. Indeed, the last three days had been so full of excitement
and adventure that the old, calm years seemed to have been passed by
some other person.

Freda’s last thought as she fell asleep, watching the dancing light of
the fire on the roughly white-washed beams of the ceiling, was,
however, neither of quiet nuns at their prayers in the convent by the
sea, nor of Crispin Bean with his rugged face and hard voice, but of
Oldcastle Farm and one of its occupants.

The girl was tired out; so utterly weary that she was ready to lie
like a log till morning. But presently she began to dream, with the
leaden drowsiness of a person in whom some outward disturbance
struggles with fatigue, of thunder and battling crowds of men. And
then she started into wakefulness, and found that the fire had burnt
low, and that men’s loud voices were disturbing her rest. They seemed
to come, muffled by the massive boards between, from a chamber under
hers; they died away into faintness, and she was so overpowered with
fatigue that she would have dropped to sleep again almost without
troubling herself, when one voice suddenly broke out above the murmur.
It was loud and shrill, and high-pitched, a voice Freda had never
heard before. She could hear the words it uttered:

“Ye maun stay, ye maun stay. We can’t get on wi’out ye. Do ye want us
to starve?”

And a chorus of evidently assenting murmurs followed. The voices
dropped again, and again the listening girl’s attention relaxed, as
sleep got the better of her senses. But suddenly she was aroused
again, this time by sounds which came from behind the head of the bed,
and were so plain that they seemed to be in the very room. Sounds as
of a man’s footsteps coming up a stone staircase, coming up
unsteadily, with many pauses. Sounds, too, as of heavy weights being
dragged up, and of suppressed laughter and jeers.

“Eh, but tha’s gotten aboot as much as tha’ can carry, eh, Crispin?”
said one voice.

“Tha’ couldn’t climb oop a mast to-night, Crispin,” said another,
during the laughter which succeeded the first speech.

The voice of the man who was on the stairs answered, in low and husky
tones. Although he was the nearest to her, Freda could not distinguish
what he said, except the word “hush.” Then she heard a mumbling sound,
like the drawing back of a sliding door, and then the dragging of some
heavy weight over the boards, and the opening of a window. Presently
the man came back, went down the stone steps, and re-ascended in the
same manner as before. This happened three or four times, until the
voices below died gradually away, and the sounds ceased. Not until
long after all was quiet did Freda fall asleep again, and for the
remainder of the night her rest was troubled by all sorts of wild
dreams.

Next morning, as a consequence of her broken night’s rest, she did not
wake until the housekeeper knocked loudly at the door. Springing up
with a sudden rush of confused memories through her brain, Freda ran
to the door, drew back the bolt, and pulled Mrs. Bean into the room.

“Oh,” she cried, “this is a dreadful house; how can you stay in it? It
is haunted, or----”

Mrs. Bean interrupted her with a peculiar expression on her face.

“Didn’t I tell you to take no notice of anything you heard?” she asked
quietly. “What does it matter to you what goes on outside your door,
while you’re locked safe inside?”

“But I want to know----” began Freda.

Again Mrs. Bean cut her short.

“Didn’t they teach you, in the place you came from, that curiosity was
the worst sin a woman can have?” she asked drily. “A wise woman
doesn’t meddle with anything outside her own business, and especially
she does not poke her nose into any business where men only are
concerned. I see you’ve had a fire,” she went on in a less severe
tone.

“Yes, Crispin made it for me.”

Mrs. Bean shook her head good-humouredly.

“You’re making a fool of that man. He was to have gone away last
night, and he is still hanging about this morning. And it’s all
because of you, I’m certain. Now make haste and get dressed, for I’ve
got a tiresome day’s work before me, and I want to get the breakfast
done with as soon as I can.”

It was a bright, sunny morning. The numerous windows let in floods of
sunshine, the snow outside dazzled the eyes, even the knights and
dames in the picture-gallery seemed to be in better spirits. In the
dining-room Freda found Crispin, who affected to treat her with marked
coldness, and to be grieved that he had had to put off his journey
until the following night. Now although she stood in some awe of the
housekeeper, Freda had no fear whatever of Crispin; so she very soon
opened the dangerous subject.

“Crispin,” she began solemnly, “I heard you last night after I was in
bed.”

“Very likely,” he answered quietly.

“There were some men with you.”

“Yes, so there were.”

“The voices seemed to come from under my room.”

“So they did.”

“And some one came up the stairs.”

He nodded.

“Dragging a heavy weight over the floor,” continued she. “And then
some one opened a window. And the sounds went on over and over again.”

“Quite right. Well?”

“What did it all mean?”

“That I had some of the men from your father’s yacht here, and told
them all about his death. I suppose you don’t wish the yacht sold? It
would throw half a dozen men out of work.”

“No-o,” said Freda. “But----”

“Here’s your breakfast,” he interrupted, as Mrs. Bean brought a laden
tray into the room.




 CHAPTER XI.

Crispin had breakfasted, but he remained in the room, “to wait,” as
he said with grim jocularity, “on the mistress of the house.” Whenever
she tried to bring the talk again to the subject of the noises of the
night, he slid away from it in a most skilful manner, so that she
could find out nothing from him, and presently got rather a sharp
warning about the value of silence. When she again expressed a wish to
see her father, too, he answered very shortly, so that she began to
understand that Crispin’s goodwill did not render him pliable. Mrs.
Bean was in the room when she made this last request. She stood up
suddenly, with a crumb-brush in her hand, and a look of great
annoyance upon her face.

“There’ll have to be an inquest!” cried she. “Did you ever think of
that?”

And she turned in great agitation to Crispin, who was just lighting
his pipe. He only nodded and said quietly:

“Don’t you trouble yourself. I’ve thought of all that. You just put on
your bonnet and run down to the town, and tell Eliza Poad that the
master’s shot himself. Then it will be all over the county in about
three quarters of an hour, and the police will have notice, and the
coroner will be sent for without any trouble to you. And within two
hours Mr. Staynes will come panting up the hill with religious
consolation.”

“I sha’n’t see him, interfering old nuisance!” said Mrs. Bean
indignantly.

“No, Miss Freda will. And you, Nell, will go to the undertaker’s; go
to John Posgate--we owe him a good turn--and tell him you don’t want
any of his measuring: he’s to send a coffin, largest size he makes, up
to the house-door by to-night, and leave it there. And then go round
to the house of that young doctor that’s just come here (he lives in
one of the little new red houses on the other side of the bridge past
the station) and tell him what has happened. And you will be glad if
he will step up at once. That’s all.”

These details made Freda sick; she retreated, shivering, to the
window, and there she perceived a long, much trampled foot-track in
the snow across the walled-in garden. She noticed it very
particularly, wondering whether it was by this way that the men had
entered the house on the preceding evening. Then, as she was by this
time alone, she went softly out of the room and upstairs, and turned
the handle of the door of her father’s room. It opened. She saw, with
a wildly-beating heart, that the curtains of the bed were drawn back,
and that on it there lay the body of a man.

Suddenly she was lifted off her feet, and carried back from the door
of the room.

“Look here,” said Crispin drily, as he put her down, “haven’t you
learnt by this time that it’s of no more use to try to circumvent me
than to fight the sea? You will see your father when I please and not
before. Now go downstairs and wait till the Vicar comes, and tell the
old fool just as little as you can help, if you don’t want to get
yourself or anybody else into trouble.”

Freda obeyed, mute and ashamed. She crept downstairs, returned to the
dining-room, and fed the hungry birds till the bell sounded. Running
out to the court-yard gate, she drew back the two heavy bolts which
fastened it. Waiting outside were a lady and gentleman whom she at
once guessed to be the Vicar and his wife.

The Reverend Berkley Staynes was generally considered the greatest
“character” in Presterby. A member of one of the county families, with
a fairly good living and a better private income, he was an autocrat
who considered his flock of very small account indeed compared with
the well-being of their pastor. Although close upon eighty years of
age, and quite unable to perform a tithe of his parish duties, he
would never take a curate, partly from motives of economy, and partly
because he feared that an assistant might introduce some “crank” of
week-day services or early Communion, and wake up some of the
parishioners into disconcerting religious activity. Never at any time
over-burdened with brains, he had been at one time an exceedingly
handsome man, athletic and muscular, and a great encourager of
health-giving sports and pastimes. For these former good qualities,
and from a natural, loyal conservatism, the good Yorkshire folk bore
with him, maintained respectful silence while he droned out his
antiquated sermons, and shut their eyes to his inefficiency. Mrs.
Staynes belonged to a type of clergyman’s wife sufficiently common.
She was much younger than her husband, and slavishly devoted to him,
giving him the absurd homage which he believed to be his due, and
working like a nigger to shield his deficiencies from the public
notice.

Something of this was to be guessed even by inexperienced Freda as she
opened the gate to them. A tall, but somewhat bent old gentleman,
still handsome in his age, with silver-white hair and a good-looking,
rather stupid face, dressed well and with scrupulous neatness, stood
before her. Behind him rather than at his side was a small,
middle-aged woman dressed in what looked like a black pillow-case, a
long narrow black cloth jacket and a rusty black hat of the old
mushroom shape. She had a fresh-coloured face and a simple-minded
smile, and she habitually carried her left hand planted against her
waist in a manner which emphasised the undesirable curves in her
“stumpy” figure.

“H’m, a new servant!” said the Reverend Berkley Staynes, looking
searchingly at Freda. “Well, what the Captain wanted more servants
for, considering that he never received anybody or kept the place up,
I’m sure I don’t know! Why don’t you wear a cap, young woman?”

“I’m not a servant,” said Freda. “I’m Captain Mulgrave’s daughter.
Will you please come in?”

She led the way, without waiting for any more comments, across the
court-yard, through the hall, and into the dining-room; and she
noticed as she went how both her visitors peered about them and walked
slowly, as if they had not been inside the house before, and were
curious about it. In the dining-room they sat down, and the Vicar,
glancing round the room inquisitively as he spoke, began a close
interrogatory as to Freda’s history. His wife looked uncomfortable and
he solemn when she mentioned the convent.

“Ah! Bad places, those convents,” he said, shaking his head, “nests of
laziness and superstition.”

“Dear me, yes,” said Mrs. Staynes. “But we’ll cure you of all that.
You shall come to the Sunday school and hear Mr. Staynes talking to
the girls; and when you feel pretty firm in the doctrine, we’ll have
you confirmed.”

“Thank you,” said Freda.

“I’ll come in again myself in a day or two, and perhaps we’ll have you
round to tea. You’d like to come, I daresay.”

“Of course she would,” chimed in Mrs. Staynes.

“Thank you,” said Freda.

“I think,” said the Vicar, rising and moving towards the door, “that
I’ll go upstairs and just look upon the poor Captain’s face again. I
feel it my duty to. I wish I could have felt happier about him, but
I’m sorry to say he was always deaf to the exhortations of religion.”

“I’m afraid you can’t see him,” said Freda, quietly.

She had had particular injunctions on this point from Crispin, who had
foreseen that the Vicar would think it his duty to satisfy his
curiosity. As Mr. Staynes persisted, brushing her angrily out of his
way, Freda followed him upstairs, and had to point out the door of the
death-chamber. The Vicar tried to open it, but it was locked; Freda
let him push and shake in vain.

“Can you open it for me, girl?” he was at last constrained to ask.

“I think I could, but I have been told not to. I am sorry, but I
cannot help you.”

“And pray who is it that has more authority with you than the Vicar of
the parish?” asked Mr. Staynes when, finding indignation and
expostulation useless, he had to accompany her downstairs.

“Crispin Bean,” she answered simply.

“What!” cried the Vicar, almost staggering back. “That drunken ruffian
Bean! A disgrace to the neighbourhood! Why, it was enough to keep
Christian people away from this house that such a scoundrel was ever
allowed about it.”

The implied taunt at her dead father incensed Freda as much as the
accusations against Crispin.

“I suppose,” she said very quietly, “that my father liked scoundrels
better than Christian people. I think I do too.”

The Vicar drew himself up.

In the midst of his anger at being thwarted, the girl’s answer rather
tickled him.

“I shall come and have a talk to you, young woman,” he said more
amiably, “when you’re in a better frame of mind. You’ve had everything
against you, and I make allowance for it.”

Little Mrs. Staynes, who had listened to the latter part of this
conversation in such horror that she had scarcely breath left to play
her usual part of chorus, followed her husband out, pausing as she did
so to say, in a warning voice:

“Oh, dear child, pray to be forgiven for your conduct to-day.”

Freda, who was distressed to the verge of tears by the whole
interview, let them out by the big gate, and returned to the house.
She was almost frightened to find Crispin in the dining-room, in roars
of laughter.

“Well done, little one,” he said, as she came in. “That’s the way to
serve the tract-mongers.”

But Freda was shocked.

“What did you hear? Where were you?” she asked in a whisper.

“I heard everything. Never mind where I was; there’s many a corner in
this house that you will never see.”

But the girl shrank away, ill-pleased at his praise.

When the housekeeper returned, she was accompanied by the doctor
Crispin had sent her for, and he and Mrs. Bean went upstairs at once.
As soon as she heard their footsteps overhead, Freda went quickly out
into the court-yard, through the great gate, and into the enclosure
beyond, waiting for the doctor to come out.

At last the gate opened to let out a youngish-looking man, with a
correct professional air of unimpeachable respectability. Freda waited
until Mrs. Bean had wished him “good-morning,” and shut the gate; then
she quickly overtook him, and greeted him with some agitation.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she began modestly; “you have just seen my
father, I believe.”

“Yes, I have seen him, if Captain Mulgrave was your father.”

Freda answered in the affirmative.

“Did you know him?” she then asked.

“I had not that pleasure. You know, Miss Mulgrave, what a secluded
life your father always led. I have not been long in Presterby, and
although of course, I’ve heard a great deal about him, I never saw him
in life.”

“Do you think he shot himself?”

“No, I think not. From the position of the wound I should think it
more likely that somebody else shot him.”

“And where was the wound?”

“In the back.”

There was a pause. Then Freda looked up in the doctor’s face.

“They won’t tell me anything, so I had to ask you. Thank you for
telling me. Good-bye.”

She left the doctor, and went back slowly to the gate. Mrs. Bean, who
answered her summons, looked angry and disconcerted on learning how
she had been employed.

“I think you’d best have followed your own whims and gone back to the
convent,” she said drily, “we don’t want any more questions than
necessary asked here just now. There’ll be quite enough of a rumpus as
it is.”

She turned her back upon Freda pretty sharply, and walked back to her
kitchen with an offended air. The girl, however, was not to be shaken
off.

“Mrs. Bean,” she said, following her, “this doctor never saw my father
while he was alive!”

There was a pause. Mrs. Bean took up a fork and violently stirred the
contents of a saucepan she held.

“Look here, my dear,” she said, “what has put all these silly ideas
into your head? Don’t you know there’s going to be an inquest?”

She went on stirring her saucepan without looking up. Freda turned to
her eagerly.

“And are these inquest-people men who have known him, and seen him,
and talked to him?”

“Why, of course they are. They’ll be tradesmen out of the town, most
of them, who have supplied him with butter and cheese, beef and
candles, for years and years.”

“Oh,” said Freda, evidently much relieved.

“Now then, you’re satisfied, I suppose?” said Mrs. Bean rather
curiously.

“Oh, yes, thank you very much.”

But in the girl’s tone there was still the vestige of a doubt, and she
went out with a thoughtful face.

It was a very curious thing, Freda thought, that the servant Blewitt’s
body should be found shot in the back, and then that her father should
be shot in exactly the same way. She puzzled herself over this until
her brain reeled, and then she unlocked the front door, and went along
the foot-tracks in the snow the whole length of the garden to the wall
at the bottom. Here was a door, which she went through, and instead of
following the little lane which ran to the right, down towards the
town, she still followed the foot-marks over a couple of meadows
straight in front of her until, coming to a stone wall, she looked
over and discovered the road by which she had come to the Abbey. A
great heap of freshly dug up snow stood almost in the middle of the
road, and by the help of a shed on the right, Freda was able to
identify the spot on which the body of the servant Blewitt had been
discovered by Barnabas Ugthorpe.

Freda turned sick with horror. Her mind had jumped, with that splendid
feminine inspiration which acts independently of logic, and which is
as often marvellously right as stupendously wrong, to the conclusion
that the body of Blewitt had been carried into the Abbey. So certain
did she feel of this, that the question she asked herself was: Why was
this done? And not: Was this done at all? She turned away from the
wall, and went back, this time avoiding the foot-track, which she
believed to have been made on a guilty errand. She was too
horror-struck for tears. She gazed upon the beautiful old house, as
she slowly drew near to it again, as she would have done on some
unhallowed tomb. The sun, which had been shining brightly all the
morning, had begun to melt the snow on the flagged roof, so that
patches of moss-grown stone appeared here and there where the white
mass had slid down, partially dissolved by the warm rays. The main
body of the house was Tudor, of warm red brick with gables, mullioned
windows, and stacks of handsome chimneys. But the west wing the
so-called Abbot’s House, was a plain structure of solid grey stone,
with one little scrap of decorated tooth work to bear witness to its
connection with the Abbey.

There were secrets behind warm red bricks and venerable grey stone
that it was better not to think upon. For the awful conviction was
pressing in upon her that if the body of the murdered manservant had
been brought there, it could only be to conceal the fact of his
murder. Unless, then, it was this mysterious father of hers who had
fired the shot, who could it have been?




 CHAPTER XII.

The following was the day of the inquest. It was to be held at the
Abbey itself, and Mrs. Bean had swept the drawing-room, and uncovered
the furniture in that dismal and damp apartment, so that the coroner
and jury might hold their deliberation there. Freda, who followed the
housekeeper about like her shadow, without acknowledging that it was
because a horror had grown upon her of being left alone in that dreary
old house, was helping to dust the old-fashioned ornaments.

“Mrs. Bean,” she said at last, stopping in the act of dusting the
glass shade over an alabaster urn, in order to clap her hands together
to warm them, “aren’t you going to light a fire here?”

“Yes, I will presently,” answered the housekeeper, whose lips and nose
and hands were purple and stiff with cold.

“It will take a long time to warm this great room, won’t it?”

“Oh, the fire will soon burn up when it’s once lighted.”

However, it didn’t get lighted at all until half an hour before the
coroner and jurymen arrived; and when Mrs. Bean did remember it, she
put in the grate a small handful of newspaper and a few damp sticks
which gave forth smoke instead of heat, and after hissing and
spluttering for some minutes, finally gave up the task of burning
altogether.

Freda stood by the kitchen fire, trying to puzzle out the meaning of
these strange actions, while Mrs. Bean went out into the court-yard at
the summons of the gate-bell. When the housekeeper returned, she met a
gaze from the young girl’s eyes which made her feel uneasy.

“Are they all come?” asked Freda.

“Yes, the coroner and all of them. They’re in the drawing-room now.”

“What are they doing now?”

“First, the coroner will charge them; then the witnesses will be
examined----”

“What witnesses?” asked Freda quickly.

“Why, Crispin and I.”

“Crispin will be examined?”

“Yes,” said Nell sharply, “and so will you, if you don’t keep out of
the way. You’d better go upstairs to your room till they’re out of the
house. They won’t be more than an hour, I should think, at the
outside. I’ll come up and tell you when they’re gone.”

So the girl went slowly out of the room, and across the hall, where
she could hear the deliberate tones of the coroner charging the jury,
and upstairs. But on the landing she stopped, and peeping about to see
that she was not watched, she tried the door of her father’s room,
found that it was locked, and dropping softly on her knees, looked
through the key-hole. The bed was opposite to the door.

The body was no longer there.

Freda sprang up from her knees with a white face, ran through the
picture-gallery, and shut herself up in her own room. She knew very
well that a dead body was not easily moved; half-an-hour ago she had
seen it lying on the bed; Mrs. Bean had not been upstairs since; if
Crispin was about the house still, could he move such a weight by
himself, and carry it down the stairs and out of the house without her
having heard or seen him? She sat on a chair near her window, with her
head between her hands, trying to puzzle out the meaning of these
strange occurrences, until the thought came into her mind that she
might perhaps be able, by secreting herself somewhere on the landing
outside her father’s room, to see the jurymen come up on their
investigations, and to hear what they said. So she came softly out of
the room, and through the picture-gallery, and out on to the wide
landing.

The most desolate spot in the whole house this had always appeared to
Freda. As large as a good-sized room, panelled from oaken floor to
moulded ceiling with a raised recess by the mullioned window, this
might have been made a comfortable as well as handsome corner, while
now it was left to the dust and the rats. So thick was the dust on the
boards that two paths might be traced in it, the one leading to
Captain Mulgrave’s room, the other to the door of the picture-gallery.
Except on these two tracks the dust lay thick, showing the state of
neglect into which the old house had fallen. Freda had often been
struck by this, and had even resolved to steal a broom from Mrs.
Bean’s quarters, and make up herself for the housekeeper’s lack either
of time or of care.

As her glance wandered over the floor as usual this morning, Freda,
therefore, noticed at once that there was a little difference in its
appearance. From her father’s door there was a semi-circular sweep in
the dust towards a little recess on the other side of the head of the
staircase. It looked as if something about two feet wide had been
dragged along the floor. With a loudly beating heart, Freda followed
this track, and reaching the recess, found it to be deeper than she
thought, and quite dark; venturing into it, she found that the boards
rattled under her feet.

At that moment she heard a door open downstairs, and the hum of
several voices, followed by the sound of men’s footsteps crossing the
hall and ascending the staircase. The coroner and jurymen! She could
hear some of the remarks they made to each other in low tones as they
came up the stairs, and she found out, by hearing several questions
addressed to Crispin, that he was among them. She caught fragments of
a good many questions asked about the Captain’s habits and the exact
position in which the body had been found lying; she heard complaints
of the cold and an inquiry why the body had been taken out of the
room. Crispin’s answers were all given in such a low voice that she
could not catch a word of them, but she made out that they satisfied
his interrogators. This part of the business occupied only a very few
minutes, and then they all tramped out and went downstairs again, the
one subject which seemed chiefly to occupy the thoughts of all being
the cold, the bitter cold. Their teeth seemed to chatter as they
talked. Freda, venturing out of her hiding-place, and passing again
over the rattling boards, leaned over the balustrade at the head of
the staircase, and saw Mrs. Bean talking in a respectful manner to the
coroner. He was complaining of having to go out in the snow to the
out-house to view the body.

“Indeed, sir,” said the housekeeper, who seemed to Freda to be very
nervous and excited, “I am very sorry that I had my poor master’s body
moved at all; Crispin and I thought it would be more convenient for
you, for my poor master’s room is, as you saw, so dreadfully crowded
up with his furniture and things.”

“Oh,” returned the coroner, “I’m not blaming you. Of course you did it
for the best. We have the doctor’s certificate, the viewing the body
is merely formal, it will only take a few moments.”

He left her and went out by the front door, following the last two
jurymen. Freda could not see the door from where she stood, but she
heard it close; and she saw the housekeeper, as soon as she was left
quite alone, burst into tears and wring her hands desperately.

“It will be found out, it will be found out!” she moaned.

And still sobbing and drying her eyes upon her apron, Mrs. Bean
hurried back to her own quarters.

Freda’s first impulse was to run after her; but recollecting that the
housekeeper was now more likely than ever to be reticent, she
refrained, and remaining where she was, awaited the return of the
coroner and jurymen in a state of the wildest excitement.

At last she heard the distant sound of voices, and then she heard Mrs.
Bean set ajar the kitchen door to listen. Louder and nearer the voices
came, and then the foremost man opened the front door and tramped in,
followed by the rest.

What had happened? Nothing, apparently, for again the uppermost
thought with the men was the intense cold. They were clapping their
hands, blowing on their fingers, stamping their feet.

“Like an icehouse, that place!” muttered one.

“They could keep the body there all the winter!” said another.

“Ah couldn’t hardly feel ma feet!” added a third.

In the meantime the housekeeper had come out, and greeted them with
outward composure, which astonished Freda and excited her admiration.

“Well, gentlemen, and the verdict I suppose is----”

Somebody interrupted her.

“Hush, hush, my good woman. We haven’t got so far as that yet. You
shall hear all in good time.”

The housekeeper apologised, and the coroner and jurymen returned to
the drawing-room. In a very few minutes they issued forth again,
drawing their mufflers more closely round their necks, and putting on
their hats.

Verdict? Oh, yes, the verdict. It was: That the deceased died from the
effects of a gunshot wound; but by whose hand the weapon was
discharged there was no evidence to show.

Mrs. Bean ushered them out with a decently grave and sad visage. But
when she re-entered the house from the court-yard she was singing like
a lark.

Freda was puzzled. Back to the recess she went, and feeling with her
feet and her crutch very carefully, she soon touched the rattling
boards. Then she dropped upon her knees, lit her candle and passed her
hand over the floor. Two of the boards were loose, she found, and
looking round for something with which to try to raise them, she saw a
flattened iron bar lying close under the wall. Suspecting that this
had been used previously for the same purpose, she proceeded to raise
one of the boards with it. This task easily accomplished, she shifted
the board so as to be able to see underneath it.

Extending to a depth of four feet below the surface of the floor, was
one of those mysterious enclosures between the ceiling of one room and
the floor of the one above, which so often exists in very old houses
to testify to forgotten dangers of persecution and pursuit. It was
dark, close, musty. Freda bent lower and lower, her eyes fixed in
horror on an object at the bottom. Something long, swathed in white:
the body of a dead man.

Freda had begun this search full of suspicion; but the shock was
almost as great as if she had been entirely unprepared for the
discovery of this ghastly secret. She did not scream, although after
the first shock she put her hands before her mouth in the belief that
she had done so. She felt benumbed, stunned. Who was it? She must
look, she must find out, if the discovery killed her. With trembling
hands she picked up her candle, which had fallen and gone out, and
relighting it, peered down at the dead face.

For the first moment she did not recognise it, or death had refined
the coarse outline and effaced the sinister expression. Presently,
however, came full recollection. It was the dead face of the servant
Blewitt.




 CHAPTER XIII.

The body of Blewitt, still wearing its clothes, had been wrapped in
a sheet and dragged to this hiding-place that morning. As soon as she
recognised the dead face, Freda sprang up from her knees, dropping her
candle and forgetting to replace the loose board. With flying feet,
not caring now who heard her, she went clattering down the stairs,
sick with horror of the house and everything in it, capable of only
one thought, one wish: that she could leave it at once, never to enter
it again.

The front door into the garden was ajar. Freda ran out into the snow,
which was now falling pretty thickly. But the intense cold was
pleasant to her: it seemed to give a little relief to her feverishly
hot head. She ran to the bottom of the garden; but the door in the
wall was locked. Returning slowly, despondently, she caught sight of
the door leading to the out-house and stable-yard. This had been left
open. She saw the track of many feet leading to one of the out-houses,
and guessing that it was that in which the jury had viewed her
father’s body, she instantly resolved to satisfy herself on one point
of the mystery. The door was not locked. Creeping in, her heart
beating wildly with excitement, Freda found herself in a bare
stone-paved building, which might once have been a court-house. It was
badly lighted by a small window, high up in the right-hand wall. Near
the middle of the floor was a coffin, supported by trestles. Freda
approached slowly, her feet slipping on the pavement, which was wet
with snow brought in by many feet. She was so much stupefied by the
sensations of the morning that she was no longer able to feel any
shock acutely. One dull pang of astonishment rather than any other
feeling shot through her as she looked in, expecting to see her
father’s face.

The coffin was empty.

Freda staggered away out of the building. She was now only capable of
one sensation--a longing to escape so strong, so fixed, that it became
at once a resolution. She stole past the stables, a long line of stone
buildings, with remnants of monastic character in blocked up Gothic
doorways and disused niches. No one had passed that way this morning,
for the night’s snow was untrodden. From the other extremity of the
line of stables, however, there were footprints in the snow going
backwards and forwards through the stone entrance to the open space in
front of the banqueting-hall. From this entrance the gates had been
torn down, so that the one barrier between Freda and liberty was now
the outer gates at the lodge.

She had nothing to fear from the blind eyes of the blocked-up windows
in the roofless hall. So she went across the enclosure to the lodge,
and tried the iron gates. They were fastened. She did not dare to
summon the woman in charge to open for her: hatless as she was, she
would never be allowed to pass. This place, with its secret locks, its
well-guarded exits, its high stone walls, was practically a prison at
the will of its owners. Her only chance was to wait until the gates
were opened for some one else to go in or out, and then to slip past
and take her chance of being unnoticed. Of course this plan could not
be tried until darkness set in; but it was such a gloomy day that dusk
could not fail to be early. In the meantime she must find a
hiding-place. There was no nook or corner in this great bare enclosure
into which she could creep; she had to retrace her steps, forgetting
the tell-tale print of her poor little feet in the snow, to the
stable-yard, where she found an unlocked door. Entering a four-stall
stable, which had evidently not been used for years except as a
storage-place for lumber, she sat down on an empty packing-case, and
prepared to wait.

She was so bitterly cold that she began to feel too benumbed to move
or even to think. She tried to clap her hands together, but the
movement caused her so much pain that she gave up this attempt, and
remained in a crouching attitude with her arms folded. The incident of
the morning faded from her mind, so that she soon almost forgot how
she came there. Perhaps she was dreaming it all. Then she drew herself
up with a start, remembering stories that she had heard of the danger
of falling asleep in the cold. Danger! why danger? If she died there
she would go to heaven, and meet the Mother-Superior and Sister Agnes
and the rest some day, and perhaps God would forgive her father for
the sake of her prayers. She could pray for him now, die praying for
him, that was the best thing she could do. For now, although the
mystery was not cleared, there seemed no doubt possible that he was
the murderer of the man Blewitt.

So she fell on her knees, and, supporting herself against a pile of
old hampers and mouldy straw, tried to pray. But she could not keep
her mind from straying, and, with the words of supplication still on
her lips, the thought would flit through her mind that it was to
Barnabas Ugthorpe she must escape; or again, the figure of Dick
Heritage would seem to appear before her eyes, with the good-humoured
smile which had so won her heart. And then prayers and thoughts alike
merged into a sensation of nameless horror, which she could neither
understand nor fight against.

At this point, when she was on the verge of insensibility, there came
a noise, a light, a touch. She was shaken by the shoulder, then lifted
up bodily, and some one spoke to her in a voice which at first seemed
to come from a long way off, and then suddenly, without any warning,
sounded close to her ear.

“Wake up, child, wake up. Are you asleep?” Then it was that the change
came, and the words almost stunned her like a loud cry: “Merciful God!
She is not dead, not dead?”

Freda raised her head feebly.

“Is it you, Barnabas?” she said.

There was no answer, and the girl had time to collect her thoughts.
Raising herself, she found she had been supported by the arms of
Crispin Bean, who hung over her with a face of dumb solicitude.
Struggling away from him, with what would have been a shriek if her
vocal powers had been fully restored, she ran towards the door, but
stumbled blindly. He ran after her and supported her against her will.

“Let me go, I entreat you let me go,” she pleaded hoarsely.

“Presently, perhaps,” answered Crispin in a gentle tone, “but I want
to talk to you first.”

Freda was still too benumbed with cold and fright to offer much
resistance. Finding that her hands were blue and stiff and that she
looked starved and miserable, Crispin lifted her right off her feet,
and, without heeding her weak ejaculations of protest, carried her out
of the stable, holding her with her face against his shoulder, so that
she could not see. Freda protested and tried to cry out, but he only
laughed at her.

“Oh,” she cried hoarsely, when she found that Crispin stopped to turn
the key in a lock, “don’t take me into that dreadful house again; I
shall go out of my senses if you do.”

“No, you won’t.”

He spoke rather peremptorily, and she was cowed into silence. The next
moment she heard the tramp of his feet on stone flags and heard the
echo of every step, so that she fancied they must be passing through a
passage or chamber with a vaulted stone roof. In spite of the warnings
she had received, she first tried to lift her head and look round, and
being checked in this attempt by the wary Crispin, she suddenly
endeavoured to jump out of his arms. He laughed grimly.

“Don’t you ever intend to learn prudence?” he asked.

Freda was desperate.

“No,” she cried with determination. “I don’t care what happens to me
as long as I have to stay in this wicked place, and if my curiosity
causes me to be sent away any sooner, why, I shall be very glad.”

“I suppose it depends where you will be sent away to?”

“No. I would rather be anywhere in the world, yes, anywhere than
here.”

She was now being carried up a flight of wooden steps. She counted
twenty. The next flight, a shorter one, was of stone. Then came a few
steps of level ground, and again Crispin proceeded to turn a key. When
they had passed through this second door, and while Crispin was
engaged in relocking it, Freda took the opportunity to drop her own
handkerchief unseen by him. Then she was carried on again, along
boarded floors and through two or three more doors, down a flight of
stairs and to the dining-room. Here Crispin put her down and pushed
her gently inside. Then he summoned Mrs. Bean, who looked at her with
a puzzled and frightened face, and told her to bring something for the
young lady to eat. Freda, who had sunk down in a chair by the fire to
warm herself, sprang up at these words, and interrupted Crispin.

“Not for me,” she cried. “I will never eat anything again till I’m out
of this house.”

“Then you’ll starve,” said Crispin quietly.

The girl flew up, shaking with fear, and horror, and anger. Mrs. Bean,
who kept her eyes on the ground, but looked exceedingly troubled,
remained in a half-furtive manner near the door.

“Do you think I care?” cried the girl, in a broken voice, “I know this
house is a place to murder people in, and if I’m to be hidden away
under the floor, like the poor man I found upstairs, I don’t care by
what way you kill me first!”

The housekeeper’s face blanched at the girl’s words, but she did not
utter a word, did not even look up. Crispin dismissed her with a nod,
and turned to the young girl. Freda cowered on a chair, expecting a
great outburst of anger from him. But there was a long silence, during
which she heard him poke the fire and push the blazing logs together.
At last he said, in an unemotional voice:

“I am not surprised that you want to know the meaning of the strange
things you have seen and heard here.”

Freda answered passionately, only raising her head sufficiently to be
heard,

“I do know the meaning of it all. It is you who have murdered both my
father and Blewitt!”

“The d----l it is!” exclaimed Crispin, in unmistakable amusement and
surprise. “If you give information against me on that ground, you will
create a small sensation in Presterby.”

Freda perceived at once that her shot was wide of the mark. She sat up
and looked at him.

“Well, if you didn’t, then who did?”

Crispin looked at her steadily, with rather a comical expression, for
a long time. Then he shook his head.

“Of course you won’t believe me,” he said; “but I don’t know.”

“But wasn’t it you that brought Blewitt’s body into the house?”

Crispin nodded.

“And had it seen by the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“And then hid it under the floor?”

“Well, I had a hand in that too.”

“Why?”

“Because, if the body had been found in the road, your father would
have been hanged for the murder.”

“But he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it,” wailed Freda, in a tone which
implored him to agree with her.

“Perhaps he thought a live man could prove his own innocence better
than a dead one,” suggested Crispin drily.

Freda sprang up, and in great excitement, forgetting her crutch, half
hobbled, half leapt across the room until she stood close to him, face
to face, eye to eye.

She seized his hands, and devoured his face with eyes which seemed to
burn and shoot forth flames.

“Then he is--not--dead?” she hissed out, with hot breath.

“Hush, hush, for goodness’ sake, girl, hold your tongue,” said
Crispin, whose turn it was to feel alarmed. “Do you know, you little
fool, what it would mean to everybody in this house if such--such
craziness were suspected?”

“Oh, yes,” said she, turning suddenly grave, “of course I know that.
Tell me, Crispin, where is he? where is my father?”

“He’s where he hasn’t got to trust his life to your prattling tongue,”
said Crispin gruffly.

“He is about the house somewhere, I expect,” said Freda yearningly. “I
saw the empty coffin,” she continued, in a whisper of suppressed
horror, “not more than half an hour after they had all gone, so I am
sure he cannot have got far. He is in hiding somewhere about. Oh,
Crispin, Crispin, you are in all the secret, you were the chief
witness, you helped in it all, you _do_ know. Tell me, tell me where
he is. Is he going away? Can’t I see him, just for one moment. I would
not say one word.”

She seemed to be moving him: as she clung about him, he turned away
his head uneasily. She continued her pleading, more and more
earnestly, more and more passionately, until at last he burst out: “He
was a bad man. You’d better forget him.”

“How can he be so bad when you and your wife take all sorts of risks
to shield him?”

“It’s to our interest.”

“I believe you’re a better man than you pretend, Crispin,” said Freda
after a pause.

“Perhaps so. Here’s your tea,” he answered laconically, as Mrs. Bean,
tray in hand, entered the room.




 CHAPTER XIV.

The funeral was to take place on the following day. It was not
without a shudder that Freda made her way up to her bedroom that
night, although she had taken the precaution of insisting that Mrs.
Bean should accompany her to the very door. Even then she was
reluctant to let the housekeeper go.

“Mrs. Bean,” she said in a whisper, as she clung to the housekeeper’s
rough arms after bidding her good-night. “What room is there under
this one?”

The housekeeper looked rather uneasy, and laughed.

“Really, I don’t know what it was. It’s a long time since any of the
rooms in this wing have been used except this one.”

“But it was used the other night! I heard men talking there. Crispin
said they were the sailors of my father’s yacht.”

“Well, if he said that, what more do you want to know?”

“I want to know how they got in. I haven’t seen any door on the
outside of this part of the house.”

“I suppose they came through the other part then.”

“I suppose so.”

There was a pause, and Mrs. Bean shuffled a step nearer the door. Then
she turned, to whisper plaintively:

“Child, I wish you’d be persuaded to keep a still tongue in your
head.”

But not only was Freda unable to obey this precept, she was further
resolved to use both eyes and ears on her own account. Being assured
now that both Crispin and Nell were her friends, she felt bold enough
to try to satisfy herself on the one point of greatest interest to
her: Was her father still in the house? Perhaps that very night he was
going away, under cover of the darkness! Stung to action by this
suggestion, conquering even the horror of the day’s adventures, she
took her candle from the table and went out of the room into the stone
passage. Freda softly open the door into the gallery, and shielding
her candle with her hand, to minimise the risk of its light betraying
her, crept along that portion of it which ran along the west side of
the house. As she went she caught sight of something white on the
ground, close underneath the panelling. It was the handkerchief she
had slyly dropped that day, in the hope that it would afford some clue
to the way Crispin was bringing her.

A close inspection of the panelling disclosed a tiny keyhole in the
ornamental part of the carving, and although the panel in which it was
pierced fitted perfectly into its place, yet a tap revealed the fact
that there was a hollow or open space behind. She hailed this
discovery with much excitement. This then was a very good place to
watch, if her father really was in hiding about the house. The
question now was how to conceal herself. There was nothing in the
gallery but pictures, and a row of chairs. As she stood debating with
herself, she heard footsteps, as it seemed to her, behind the
panelling. In a frenzy of excitement she instantly blew out her
candle, and scurried across the gallery to the furthest corner, where
she crouched in a heap on the floor. She had not to wait long. A
little scraping sound, and a panelled door opened from the other side.
Then Freda heard a distant murmur of voices, and the next moment the
man who had opened the door stepped into the gallery.

Freda need not have been afraid of discovery. The man carried no
light, and she could only dimly see the outline of his figure as he
crossed the floor noiselessly towards one of the long windows. This he
pushed up with only the very faintest sound, and putting his head out,
said in a low voice:

“Ready?”

Freda who in her eagerness to discover whether this was her father on
the point of escaping, had crawled along the bare boards close under
the windows, was listening, watching with her heart beating so
violently that she was afraid it would betray her. She heard no answer
given, but the man drew in his head and retired again through the
panel-door. By his gait she knew that he was not a gentleman, and
therefore that he could not be her father. She heard him go down the
stone steps, which she guessed to be those up which Crispin had
carried her; and then making the most of her opportunity, she ran to
the open window, and looked out.

A man was waiting in the court-yard underneath. He must have heard her
footsteps, for he raised his head, and seeing that somebody was at the
window, he said, in a hoarse whisper:

“Eh, but thou’rt a long toime to-neght. Thou’rt not very spry for a
sailor! Art droonk again?”

Freda drew in her head before he had time to see that it was a woman
whom he was addressing; but not before she had seen enough of his
figure, and heard enough of his rough, thick voice, to ask herself
whether this was not Josiah Kemm, of the “Barley Mow.” The man,
whoever he was, had hardly finished speaking, when from behind the
panelling she heard again the distant murmur of voices, and footsteps
coming up the stone staircase. She hastily retreated from the window,
not to the corner she had left, but to the door by which she had
entered the gallery. She had scarcely done so when the man she had
previously seen reappeared. As she was now much nearer to him, she
could distinctly see that he had upon his back a package about three
feet square which was evidently heavy. This he carried across to the
window, and let down by means of a rope into the court-yard. Then she
heard faintly the voice of the man in the court-yard asking some
question. Although she could not distinguish his words, the answer of
the man above, “No. Nobody,” told her that the question had concerned
her own appearance at the window. Judging therefore that an
investigation might follow, she crept along the stone passage and
locked herself in her own room as quickly as she could.

Next morning, however, she would not have her breakfast until she had
found an opportunity of exchanging a few words with Crispin Bean.

“Crispin,” she began solemnly, “you remember telling me that the
sailors of my father’s yacht were in the house one night when I heard
a noise?”

He grunted an affirmative rather shortly.

“Well,” she went on, “they were here again last night.”

“What of that?” said Crispin.

“I believe they were stealing something. I saw one of them throw a
package out of the window to a man in the court-yard underneath.”

“I should like to know what you don’t see,” grumbled Crispin, not very
well pleased.

Freda drew herself up.

“I ought to know all that goes on in my own house,” said she, holding
her head back with a pretty little air. “And I mean to go over the
place, and see that there is no way for people to get in that have no
business here. And as for this yacht, it is of no use now, so what is
the use of paying a lot of sailors for doing nothing.”

Crispin looked down on the floor, with rather a whimsical expression
of face.

“They’re all old servants of your father’s, you know. If they’re
turned off, they’re very likely to starve. As for what you thought was
stealing, it was only an old salt, who has been one of the yacht’s
crew for seven years, throwing down his own traps to a friend from the
town who had promised to take care of them.”

“But why did he do it so mysteriously, and at night?” asked Freda,
still incredulous.

But Crispin was tired of answering her questions, or else he had no
reply to give, for without any more words he proceeded to light his
pipe and walk away.




 CHAPTER XV.

The day of the funeral was a trying one for Freda. She ran up to her
own room when the undertaker’s men arrived, and would have remained
there for hours if she had not been disturbed by a peremptory knock at
her door, and by Crispin’s voice telling her to get ready to go to the
church. She opened the door, trembling with fear and repugnance.

“Crispin,” she entreated, “don’t make me go! I can’t go, when I know
it is only a sham. I can’t pretend to be sorry, I can’t, and I won’t.”

“Oh, well, nobody will expect much sorrow from you, but you will have
to go to the church. Haven’t you got a black dress?”

“Yes.”

“Well, put it on, and make haste. Nell is waiting.”

“Aren’t you going?”

For Crispin wore his usual costume: a threadbare velveteen coat,
evidently one of his late master’s, riding-breeches and gaiters.

He shook his head.

“No, I can’t stand old Staynes. If I went I should laugh.”

“People won’t think it very respectful of you, will they?”

“People know me. Besides, I don’t care what they think. Now you look
sharp.”

He went away, and Freda very reluctantly obeyed his injunctions,
dressed herself all in black and went downstairs to the hall, where
she found Nell waiting for her.

“Come along,” said the housekeeper rather crossly.

And seizing Freda by the arm, she dashed across the court-yard and the
enclosure beyond, and dragged her through the open iron gates, outside
which the funeral procession could be seen on its way through the
churchyard. Freda felt so sick with disgust at the part she had to
play in the farce, that she looked unutterably miserable, and heard
sympathetic murmurs from many lips, as Nell with a strong hand half
dragged her through the crowd.

“Poor little thing!” “Doan’t she look unhappy, poor lass!” and many
such exclamations reached Freda’s ears and made her furious. Nell
seemed to feel that there was a danger of the girl’s wrathful honesty
breaking out, for she hurried her on into the church, and heaved a
sigh of relief when she had pushed the girl into a square pew lined
with green baize, immediately over which an old-fashioned three-decker
pulpit frowned. Freda, at last distracted from her thoughts of the
proceedings, looked about her in amazement.

“Is this a _church_?” she whispered.

Her ignorance was pardonable. Surely never yet did wild churchwardens
in the frenzy of their Puritanism so run riot in a church before.
Originally a plain Norman structure, erected by the monks of Presterby
Abbey, and given to the townsfolk when their own Abbey church was
completed, it had been transformed by later improvements into a very
good copy of the interior of a ship. Clumsy little galleries had been
erected wherever there was room for one, even before the old Norman
chancel-arch. These galleries were entered from the outside of the
church by covered flights of wooden steps, made on the model of the
entrance to a bathing-machine. The roof was perforated by small cabin
windows; the whole of the interior was covered with white-wash,
including any small fragments of stone-work which the modern
improvements had left visible; the Norman windows had all been
carefully stopped up, and replaced by ordinary house windows, filled
with small panes of poor glass. The only decorations were an enormous
coloured coat of arms over the gallery of the chancel-arch, and a
series of texts, indifferently spelt and painted coarsely on square
wooden boards, which hung on the white-washed walls.

Nell scented popery in the girl’s innocent question, and answered with
a frown.

“Of course it is. People don’t want tawdry fal-lals to help them to
worship God, when they come in the right spirit,” she said severely.
“Be quiet, here comes the Vicar.”

She thrust a prayer-book into the hand of the girl, who did not,
however, follow the service, and who certainly could not understand
much from the mumbling delivery of Mr. Staynes. She was shocked at the
deception which was being carried out through all these solemn
details, and when she was led to the side of the grave she shuddered
and looked away.

When it was all over, Nell tried hard to lead her at once back to the
house. But little Mrs. Staynes was too quick for her. Trotting up to
the girl with what was only a decorous caricature of grief on her
round apple face, she said:

“You must bear up, my dear Miss Mulgrave. ‘Whom the Lord loveth He
chasteneth.’ We must be resigned to His will. You must control your
grief, my dear.”

“I haven’t any grief,” said Freda in spite of Nell’s warning fingers
on her arm.

Poor little Mrs. Staynes looked shocked and disconcerted.

“Of course, my dear, we know it’s not the same as if you had been
brought up at home. Indeed, I told the poor Captain so, times without
number, but he hardened his heart and would not listen to me. But
still, of course, you feel all that it is right for a daughter to feel
under the circumstances.”

Mrs. Staynes was getting hurried and nervous. Indeed, she could only
give half her mind to the consolation of her husband’s bereaved young
parishioner, for she held the Vicar’s goloshes in her hand, and if she
did not turn up with them exactly at the moment when he was ready to
put them on, both he and she were apt to think that she had only
escaped perdition by the skin of her teeth.

Before Freda had time to answer, a rather loud and peremptory voice
close to them startled both ladies. Standing beside them was a
robust-looking man in a close cap and thick travelling ulster, who
suddenly struck in:

“And pray what is it, ma’am, that a daughter should feel under the
circumstances of losing a father who had, from a sentimental point of
view no claim to the name?”

He took Freda’s hand and shook it warmly, almost before she had had
time to recognise in him her friend of the journey.

“A friend of yours, Miss Mulgrave?” asked the Vicar’s wife rather
primly.

The new-comer replied for her.

“Yes, ma’am, a friend of Miss Mulgrave’s--whether she likes it or
not,” said he.

“This gentleman has been very, very kind to me,” said Freda,
recovering her voice. “On the journey here I----”

“Was indebted to this good gentleman for a biscuit and a cup of tea,”
chimed in the stranger’s good-humoured voice. “And unlike most ladies
to whom one may chance to render a small service of the kind, she
remembers it.”

“It is not always prudent for young ladies to make chance friends on
the railway,” said Mrs. Staynes.

“It is convenient though, madam, in case of an accident. And perhaps
the young lady had the judgment to see that there’s very little of the
gay Lothario about me.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Mrs. Staynes, who thought the stranger rather
flippant. “Ah, there’s the Vicar. I--er--I---- _Good_-morning, Miss
Mulgrave.”

With a curious little salutation to the stranger, which was half a bow
and half a “charity bob,” the Vicar’s wife trotted off, waving the
goloshes. Nell whispered to Freda to make haste home. The girl
withdrew her arm suddenly.

“You go home, Mrs. Bean,” she said. “I will come in a few minutes.”

Then she turned, in spite of Nell’s remonstrances and rejoined the
stranger.

The crowds of poor-looking people who had collected to see the funeral
had begun very slowly to melt away, and Freda overheard enough of the
remarks they exchanged to learn that her father had been very good to
the poor, especially to the seafaring folk, and that there was much
genuine sorrow at his death. She wanted to speak to some of these
people, to assure them that as far as lay in her power, she would fill
his place to them. But she was too shy. Her friend had to speak to her
to recall her attention to himself.

“Rum business this altogether,” he said. “They say your father was
found dead in his room, don’t they?”

“Yes,” mumbled Freda, with white lips.

“Nothing said about his being shot out-of-doors, eh?”

She shook her head.

“No man accused of having murdered him?”

“No.”

“Well, I could tell a tale--only it wouldn’t do for me just now to be
telling tales, and bringing myself into prominence. Besides, without
corroboration, I daresay my tale wouldn’t amount to much. Still----”

“Don’t, don’t,” said Freda hoarsely, “don’t find out anything, don’t
try to. What good could it do now?”

He looked at her searchingly, not unkindly. Yet there was something in
the expression of his face which impressed Freda with the belief that
he was a man with whom no prayers, no entreaties would avail anything
when he had once made up his mind.

She went on, as if anxious to change the subject: “You stayed the
night with Barnabas, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and came on the next day, and climbed up to this old place
because I wanted to see where you were going to live.”

“Did you meet anybody?”

“Only one person, a rough-looking fellow, who told me I was
trespassing, and ordered me into the road. I had got over into the
fields between the house and the ruin.”

“Was he tall, with a short greyish beard?”

“Yes.”

“That was Crispin Bean.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him; he was a devoted servant to your father.
I’ve been making inquiries to find out whose care you’d been left in.”

“That was very kind of you. Then you’ve been in Presterby on business?
What business?”

“Ah, that’s the question.”

“Secret business then?”

“No wise man cares to have his business prattled about.”

“But you will tell me if I guess right?”

“Perhaps I’ll go as far as that.”

“And you will tell me your name?”

“John Thurley.”

“And where you come from?”

“London.”

“John Thurley, of London.” She meditated a moment. “You have come on
some business connected with trade?”

“Well, not exactly,” said he, as if rather offended at the suggestion.

“I mean Free Trade,” corrected Freda.

John Thurley was perceptibly startled. He paused for a few moments,
looking at her attentively, before he asked, in an altered tone:

“What do you know about that?”

“Oh, I’ve heard people talking about it--on the journey. Nobody seems
to think it beneath him to be interested in trade up here.”

“You mean Free Trade?”

“Yes.”

“And I suppose you don’t know that Free Trade means smuggling?”

Now Freda had had suspicions of this before, so that she was not
greatly surprised by the information. She jumped at once to a
conclusion suggested by it.

“You are up here to look after the smugglers then?”

“Well, I’m not much given to disguise of any sort,” he admitted
bluntly, “but the feeling up here is so strongly against the law and
with the evildoers, that a little caution is absolutely necessary.”

“Have you caught them yet?” asked Freda with curiosity.

“No. Everybody seems banded together in a league to help them.”

“How are you sure there are any?”

“Well, we’ve had suspicions for years of a great organisation for
smuggling, admirably planned and carried out, defrauding the revenue
to the extent of thousands of pounds annually. The plans of these
wretches were so well laid that, though we have again and again caught
the receivers of smuggled spirits and tobacco, we have never yet been
able to lay hands upon the big offenders, and it is only lately that
we have had information pointing to the Yorkshire coast as the
probable centre of the trade. I have been sent down to investigate.”

“And what will be done to these men if they are caught?”

“Well, the usual punishment for smuggling is by fines; to be strictly
correct it is the value of the article smuggled and three times the
duty on it. But if, as we suspect, we get hold of a chief or chiefs of
a regular gang, why, then, he or they, whichever it proves to be, will
have to be proceeded against by some method more convincing.”

“Oh, yes,” said Freda.

“I am going southward for a few days, to visit two or three places
further down the coast. When I come back I shall call at the Abbey to
see you: will you make me welcome for an hour?”

“Indeed I would if I might, if I could,” said she mournfully. “But I
don’t feel that I am the real mistress there; there are Crispin and
his wife.”

Her friend frowned and spoke with kindly impatience.

“I can’t bear to think of your having to put up with the companionship
and protection of those people! I shall find out your guardian--you
must have some guardian, and get him to send you back to the convent,
at least for a little while, since that seems to be your ideal of
happiness.”

“My ideal of happiness!” echoed Freda wonderingly.

“Yes, you said so the other day at the ‘Barley Mow.’”

“Did I!” said the girl, blushing.

“Yes, you did. Now, I suppose, it is something else.”

She hung her head.

“Some young fellow has been talking to you!”

Freda gave him a glance of terror. How horribly shrewd he was, to
touch at once upon a kind of secret she hardly knew herself yet! She
would admit nothing, yet she was afraid to be silent. He might blunder
upon some other sensitive truth if she did not speak. So she evaded
the point.

“You seem here in England,” she began proudly, “to think that there is
only one subject which can interest a girl!”

“Quite true. Everywhere else it is the same. There _is_ only one. I
don’t want to force your confidence, but I know that you stayed at
Oldcastle Farm on the night of the journey.”

It seemed to Freda that an expression of disappointment crossed Mr.
Thurley’s face when she made no answer to this, and the next moment he
seemed suddenly in a great hurry to be off. Shaking her hand heartily
in both his, he uttered a number of good wishes, and questions about
her welfare with a bluff sincerity of interest which touched her. She
watched him as he went down the steep churchyard without one look
behind him, and the tears came into her eyes as she felt that here was
a friend, none the less real for being a new acquaintance, going away.

Freda felt almost like a prisoner coming of his own accord back to the
confinement from which he had escaped, as she pulled the lodge-bell
and passed through the iron gates. Mrs. Bean, who was probably on the
lookout, heard the loud clang, and was ready to open the inner gate.
She did not seem in very good humour.

“You have been a long time talking with your gentleman friend,” she
said coldly. “I didn’t know those were convent manners, to encourage
every man who chooses to cast sheep’s-eyes at one!”

Poor Freda entered the dining-room thoroughly heart-sick and
disgusted. Why did they say those coarse things to her, and about
people she liked too! She felt so miserable that, instead of trying to
eat, she sat down on the hearth-rug and cried, with her head on a
chair.

Presently Crispin looked in at the window, and coming round to the
door of the room, opened it and peeped in.

“What’s the matter?” asked he.

Freda sprang from the floor, but refused to give any other explanation
than that she was tired, and had stood talking in the churchyard.

“Talking! Who to?”

“To the gentleman who was kind to me in the train. Mrs. Bean, doesn’t
seem to think it was right of me to talk to him; but he was very
kind.”

Crispin said nothing to this, but persuaded her to eat her dinner,
waiting upon her himself. When she had finished, and he was making up
the fire for her, she suddenly addressed him.

“Crispin,” she said, “I want to ask you a question. There is a thing
which some people call Free Trade, and other people call smuggling.
Which do you call it?”

Crispin, who was holding the poker in his hand, stopped short in his
work, and remained for a few seconds quite still, without looking at
her. Then he answered in a very quiet manner, and went on making up
the fire.

“Smuggling, of course. And, what did your friend of the journey call
it?”

He suddenly turned as he spoke, and under the piercing gaze which he
directed upon her, Freda fancied that all her little girlish fancies
and secrets were laid bare to his eyes.

“He called it smuggling too,” she answered.

“And what was his name?”

Freda hesitated. Such a hard, disagreeable tone seemed suddenly to be
heard in Crispin’s voice. He repeated the question.

“His name is John Thurley.”

Without asking her any more questions, seeming, in fact, to become
suddenly unconscious of her presence, Crispin abruptly left her to
herself.




 CHAPTER XVI.

Freda Mulgrave had come face to face with the most difficult problem
of conduct she had ever encountered. There was now no shirking the
fact that her father was the organiser and head of a band of men who
carried on smuggling in a systematic and determined manner. It was
evident too that, if occasion came, they were quite as ready for still
guiltier exploits as their fore-runners of a by-gone time. Whether, as
she feared with a sickly horror, it was her father who had shot
Blewitt, or whether the servant had been murdered by some one else, it
was clear that his death was connected with the nefarious enterprises
in which the whole country-side seemed to be so deeply engaged. She
passed a miserable night, awake for a great part of the time, fancying
she heard in the many night-noises of the old house, voices and
footsteps, cries and even blows.

Next morning she wrote a long letter to Sister Agnes, saying that she
had been left alone in a position of great difficulty, and asking for
the prayers of all her old friends at the convent that she might do
what was right.

Mrs. Bean, who came in while she was directing the envelope, offered
to take it to the post, and Freda, with a reluctance of which she felt
ashamed, gave it into her keeping.

Then for ten days the poor child lived on the daily hope and
expectation of an answer.

During all that time she never once saw Crispin, and although she two
or three times tried to break through the ice of Nell’s reticence, she
always failed. For blank, deaf, impervious stolidity, and an ignorance
of everything outside her kitchen which approached the admirable, Nell
could never have had an equal. Crispin was away on business. This was
the most Freda could learn from her.

So the dull days passed, the wished-for letter never coming. For the
first two days the snow remained thick on the ground, and when it
began to melt the roads were in such a bad state that it was still
impossible for Freda to go out. Nell unlocked the library and made a
fire there. And in this old room, with its quaintly moulded ceiling,
its rows upon rows of musty-smelling books, its dust and its cobwebs,
the young girl passed her time, diving for the most part in records of
the county, of ancient priory and dismantled castle. Her flesh would
creep and her breath come fast as she read of lawless deeds in the
time past, and thought that even while she read, acts just as illegal,
if not as daring, might be taking place under the very roof which
sheltered her.

At the end of the ten days, however, it seemed to Freda one morning
that the patches of green on the snow-covered fields had grown much
wider; and she said, first to herself and then to Nell, that the
roads, if not yet clear, must now be passable to and from the town.
Mrs. Bean looked at her out of the corners of her eyes.

“What you, coming from a walled-up convent, can want with walks, is
more than I can understand. However, you can go over the ruins if you
like.”

And Nell unlocked a side-door in the wall of the garden which admitted
her into the meadow in which the Abbey-church stood.

“You’ll be safe there,” said Nell, half to herself, as Freda passed
through. “You can’t do any worse harm than getting your feet wet, and
that’s your own fault.”

“Safe! Of course I shall be safe!” laughed Freda.

But it occurred to her, as she turned and noted Nell’s furtive glance
at her, that it was not with her personal safety that the housekeeper
was concerned.

Freda cared little for this; she was half-crazy with the joy of being
again by herself in the open air; and the ruins of the old church, as
they rose above her in their worn majesty against the morning sky,
filled her with delight and awe. She was approaching the old pile from
the southwest, the quarter in which least of the building remained.
Scarcely a trace was left of the south aisle or the south transept.
Between the ruined west front and the pillars on the south side of the
choir there was nothing left but grass-grown mounds of fallen masonry
and one solitary pillar, massive and erect as when, seven hundred
years ago, pious hands placed the stones which were to defy, through
long centuries, the biting sea air, the keen north wind, the storms
which beat upon the cliffs, and the waves which, decade by decade, had
sapped and swallowed up, bit by bit, the once fertile Abbey lands.
Nearer to the cliff’s edge now than in its prime, the dismantled
church still filled one of its old offices, and formed, with its lofty
choir and mouldering pinnacles, a landmark from the sea.

Freda began to cry as she stole reverently into the roofless choir.
She had had no opportunity, in her secluded life, of visiting ruins as
showplaces; to her this was still a church, as holy as when the monks
kept watch before the altar. A sentiment of peace entered into her for
the first time since her arrival in England as she wandered about, not
heeding the fall of melting snow on her head and shoulders, and
listened to the shriek of the sea-birds as they wheeled in the air
above. She thought she had never seen anything so beautiful as the
graceful succession of pointed arches, with their clustered shafts,
and the triforium above, with the long-hidden beauties of its carving
now exposed to the light of day. Time had mellowed the tint of the
walls to a soft grey, deepening here and there into red. Crowned
kings, winged angels, stern-faced saints still looked out to sea from
the north side, with eager necks outstretched, all the deep meaning
the old monkish sculptors knew how to express in stone still to be
discerned in their weatherworn outlines. The gulls perched upon them;
in summer the wallflowers grew about them; but still they kept watch
and ward until, one by one, by storm and stress of weather they were
loosened in their places, and fell, sentinels who had done their work,
into the long grass underneath.

The north transept was still almost entire. An arcade ran round the
lower part of the wall, and in one of the arches was an old pointed
wooden door, leading by a circular staircase of steep steps, to the
passages in the walls above. This door was locked. Yet it must still
be used, thought Freda. For she noticed that the grass was worn away
before it, and that a narrow track had been beaten thence as far as
one of the windows on the north side of the nave. Here a gap had
evidently been intentionally made in the stone, and looking through,
Freda perceived that the foot-track went through the meadow outside as
far as the stone wall which bordered the road.

As she was looking at this path, she caught sight of two young men on
horseback whom, little as she could see of them above the stone wall,
she at once recognised. They were Robert and Richard Heritage. Both
saw her, raised their hats, and reined in their horses.

Freda pretended not to see them, yet she was conscious of a great
uplifting of the heart when they dismounted, tied their horses up in
the yard of a dismantled cottage at the other side of the road, and
climbing over the stone wall with the agility of cats, came along the
foot-path towards her.

“They have used that foot-path before,” thought Freda.




 CHAPTER XVII.

To Freda’s perhaps rather prejudiced mind, the contrast between the
two cousins seemed even stronger than when she had seen them a
fortnight before at their own home. The fact that both were evidently
harassed and anxious only emphasised the difference between them; for
while Robert looked savage and sullen even under the smile with which
he approached her, Dick seemed to Freda’s shy eyes to look haggard,
downcast and depressed to an extent which sent a pang through her
heart.

Robert came first, cracking his riding-whip and singing, and assuming
a jauntiness belied by the expression of his face. He raised his hat
again as he came through the ruined window, and greeted Freda with
much deference. He made a feint of holding out his hand, but the young
lady took no notice of it.

“I am afraid,” began he, in a deprecating tone, “that our acquaintance
did not begin in the most auspicious possible manner, Miss Mulgrave.”

“No, and I did not expect to see you again.”

Freda was far too unsophisticated to be otherwise than cruelly direct
of speech. Robert Heritage, however, was not easily disconcerted.

“But if the reason of my daring to appear before you again is to make
my peace in the humblest manner?”

“There is no need to be humble to me. You said so the last time I saw
you.”

“Pray forget everything I said then, and let us begin afresh. I had
had a good deal of worry that day, and I spoke to you under a
misapprehension.”

“I would rather have you remain under it, and not speak to me again.”

“You are very unforgiving.”

Freda hung her head. They used to tell her that at the convent. It was
true too, she felt. She had never been able to humble herself to
docile obedience--to the doctrine of forgiveness of enemies. Nothing
could be wrong in those she loved, nothing right in those she did not
love. And she did not love Robert Heritage. Guiltily, therefore, she
said, after a minute’s pause:

“I will hear what you have to say.”

Robert made a grimace to his cousin, to imply that this insignificant
little girl was giving herself great airs. As for Dick, Freda had
steadily avoided meeting his eyes, and he stood in the background,
silently watching the flying sea-mews, without taking any active part
in this interview.

“In the first place,” said Robert, still with a great show of
deference, “I came--my cousin and I came, to express our regrets at
your sad bereavement, at your father’s death, in fact.”

He looked at her rather curiously. Freda blushed.

“Thank you,” she said hurriedly.

“Yes,” he went on slowly, “we were very much shocked to hear about it,
and very much surprised too. For I was just coming over here to
inquire if Captain Mulgrave could tell me what had become of a servant
of mine, a man you saw at our house, Miss Mulgrave; Blewitt, I dare
say you remember him?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Freda, who had grown very pale.

“I sent him over here with a letter, a message to your father. From
that day to this he has never been seen, and we have been unable to
get any tidings of him. In the meantime comes the news of Captain
Mulgrave’s having committed suicide. Under the circumstances, your
father being known as a violent man, and the message being an
unwelcome one, it was impossible to help thinking that the two events
might have some connection with each other.”

“Well,” said Freda slowly, “but as both Blewitt and my father
are--gone, I don’t see how the truth is ever to be found now; unless,
indeed, the person who knows most about it should confess.”

Robert’s face flushed a little.

“I am afraid it will be difficult to clear your father’s name from
suspicion. Already I’ve heard these ugly rumors whispered about
everywhere. Nothing would set them at rest, unless I were to say that
I myself had sent Blewitt away to his home in London.”

“That would not be true.”

“But it would save your father’s reputation.”

Freda said nothing. Her mistrust of this man made her shrewd. After a
long pause she turned and looked straight into his face.

“Why do you tell _me_ this?”

“I wanted to know whether you would care to have your father’s name
cleared.”

“Not in such a way as that. I believe the best thing for my poor
father would be for the whole truth to come out, and though the
falsehood might seem to protect his name for the time, it would do
less real good than quietly waiting.”

“Then you wouldn’t do me any little favour, out of gratitude if I
tried to shield his name?”

“Little favour! Oh! and what is that?”

“For instance, you wouldn’t get Crispin Bean to deal with us instead
of with Josiah Kemm?”

“No!” flashed out the girl, “neither with you, nor Kemm, nor anybody
else. The Abbey’s mine now, and I won’t have it used for _smuggling_,
Mr. Heritage.”

Robert started violently, and his hand shook as he played with his
riding-whip.

“You are ready to accuse your own father of doing wrong then?”

“I don’t make any accusations, Mr. Heritage. I only tell you that the
Abbey is under my rule, now.”

“You think so, perhaps; but you will find yourself mistaken. The trade
will go on just the same whatever orders you may give; and it will
make no difference if I have to go away, and if my cousin Dick, who
brought you in out of the snow and was so good to you, has to starve.”

Freda moved uneasily and shot a furtive glance at Dick, who was
outside the old walls, apparently absorbed in unpleasant thoughts.
Robert perceived the expression on the girl’s face, its coy pity and
maidenly fear. This vein, so happily struck, would bear a little
further working, he thought.

“Yes,” he went on. “Poor Dick! It has always been his lot to have a
rough time of it. When he told me this morning of the impression you
had made upon him, and asked me to put in a word for him with you if I
got a chance, I knew it would be of no use. Not that he isn’t a
good-looking, good-hearted fellow enough, but because he is Dick, and
never has any luck!”

The girl’s face underwent many changes as she listened to this speech.
Compassion, surprise, pleasure, confusion, annoyance--all flitted over
her ingenious countenance, until at the end, suddenly perceiving that
Robert’s small light eyes were fixed upon her with great intentness,
she blushed and turned away from him even haughtily.

“I do not believe that he asked you to speak to me!” she said.

“You don’t? Well, I’ll fetch him and make him speak for himself.”

“No, no, no,” cried the girl, crimson with confusion and distress. “I
am going indoors. I--I am tired, cold. Good-morning, Mr. Heritage.”

While Freda was crossing the meadow which lay between the ruin and the
Abbey-house, she saw Nell at an upper window, watching her with an
uneasy expression of face; by the time she reached the side-door, the
housekeeper was there to admit her.

“Who was that I saw you talking to up there in the ruins?” asked Nell
sharply. “Come, I know, for I saw you.”

“Why do you ask me then?”

“After all the trouble I’ve taken too, to prevent those young rascals
getting at you! Why, they’ve been pulling the bell nearly off every
day and sometimes twice a day.”

“Oh, they’ve been to see me before then?”

“Yes, at least Bob Heritage has, and everybody knows what a nice
acquaintance _he_ is for a young girl! But they won’t see any more of
you, if I can help it. A pretty mess I should get myself into if they
did!”

Freda passed into the house and, without waiting for another word,
went straight into the library, which was in the west wing, away from
the rest of the inhabited part. The fire was burning very low, and the
room looked cold, dusty and forlorn. A great pile of the books with
which she had been amusing herself the night before still lay
undisturbed on the hearth-rug. The books had almost become living
friends to her, in the absence of sympathetic human beings. She threw
herself down beside them and rested her arms on a stack of calf-bound
histories and biographies.

What had Robert Heritage meant by those words about the “impression,”
she had made on Dick, and “putting in a good word for him.” Innocent
as she was, Freda could scarcely misunderstand the drift of these
expressions, and they roused a thought which brought the blood to her
cheeks, all alone as she was, and stirred her strangely. She did not
believe Robert; who was she, a little lame girl, to rouse any deep
interest in a big, strong, handsome man like Dick? And with a sigh,
the girl sat up among her books and tried to stir the log fire into a
blaze.

As she did so, a loud knocking on the wall behind her made her look
round. The whole of the side of the room from which the sound came was
filled with book-shelves from floor to ceiling. The knocking went on,
until suddenly Freda saw some of the books begin to shake in a
surprising manner, and a minute later six rows of books began to move
slowly forward, and then a face peered out from behind them. It was
that of Dick Heritage. Then she perceived that the books which he had
appeared to disturb were sham ones, mere leather backs pasted on a
door introduced among the genuine ones.

“How did you come in?” asked Freda in a husky whisper.

“By a way you don’t know of,” answered the young fellow, looking at
his riding-whip.

“You came in to see me?” asked Freda in a softer tone.

“Yes,” said Dick, suddenly standing erect, speaking in a full, firm
voice, and looking straight up at the dusty ceiling with flashing blue
eyes, “I came to see you, to speak to you about what that rascal Bob
said. He told you something about me, didn’t he? He made up some
ridiculous nonsense that I’d said about you?”

Freda, with her little head bending lower and lower, nodded an
affirmative very slowly.

“Well, there wasn’t a word of truth in it. I never said anything of
the sort. He only said it to serve his own interests. I was obliged to
come and tell you the moment he confessed to me what he’d done. I
didn’t wish you to think me a fool or a knave.”

Freda did not answer. When at last, after a long pause, Dick glanced
at her, he perceived that she was quietly crying. Dick looked closer,
in surprise and consternation.

“You’re not crying, are you?” asked he uneasily.

Freda shook her head. Rising from her chair, she picked up an armful
of the books that were scattered about the floor, and carrying them
back to the shelves, began to replace them very deliberately. Dick,
putting down his whip, followed with another load, which she took from
him so hastily and awkwardly that they all dropped on the floor.

“I hope it’s not anything in what I said, or the way I said it, that
made you cry?”

He had gone down on one knee to pick up the fallen books, and he
looked up into her face with an expression which seemed to Freda most
touching.

“I am not crying, Mr. Heritage,” she said, trying to be very
dignified; “and I quite understand that you were not so foolish as to
say that I had made a pleasant impression on you.”

Dick dropped the books, and looked up at her with curiosity,
compassion, and a little admiration. For although her eyes and nose
were red with crying, she looked rather pretty as well as very
pitiful.

“Oh,” he said, laughing with some embarrassment, “it’s not fair to put
it like that now, is it?”

“That is all that your cousin said to me about you.”

“No! Really? He told me that he said, implied rather, that I was
making up to you, wanted you to marry me, in fact.”

Freda blushed crimson.

“He never said anything like that to me,” she said, “if he had, I
should have known it was not true.”

Dick sprang up eagerly.

“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? You would have known it was impossible
such an idea should enter my head!”

Freda turned away and very quietly re-arranged some of the books she
had placed on the shelves.

“Oh, yes;” and she laughed with some bitterness but more sadness. “Did
you think it possible that I, who am lame, and fit for nothing but a
convent, where I can pray, and can work with my needle as well as the
strong ones, should ever put myself on an equality with the girls who
can dance, and ride, and row?”

Dick was overwhelmed. In her innocence, as she had misunderstood his
cousin, so she was misunderstanding him.

“Now look here, Miss Mulgrave,” said he, as he brought his right hand
heavily down on one of the bookshelves. “You are quite wrong. You have
mistaken Bob’s meaning and mine altogether. Don’t you see that what he
wanted was to get some sort of hold on you through me, since he
couldn’t get it in any other way? And can’t you understand how mean it
would be of me, and absurd (mean if I had any chance, and absurd as I
haven’t) to come to you and talk about admiration and love and
marriage, when I am just in the position of a farm-labourer about to
be turned off?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, that your father’s refusal to--to have anything more to do with
us has ruined us; so that Bob and my aunt will have to leave the farm
and go to London.”

“And you, what will you do?”

“I shall stay on at the old place.”

“But, you won’t be comfortable!”

“More comfortable than I should be anywhere else. You see I’m not like
the others, who just came to the old place when they had to let the
Hall. I was brought up at the farm, and used to spend my holidays
there. I was only annexed by my aunt and Bob when there was some dirty
work to be done and it was seen that I might prove useful.”

Dick’s voice was so sweet and he spoke so very quietly that it was not
until some minutes after he had finished this short autobiography that
Freda perceived all the bitterness he had expressed in it.

“Oh!” she sighed out at last, in a voice full of soft reproach. “How
could you?”

Dick laughed a little.

“I don’t think I could make you understand. You are too good. I wish
none of this business had ever come to your ears.”

Freda looked thoughtful for a few minutes. Then she said:

“I don’t wish that. You see I’ve been obliged to think a great deal
lately, and I see that there is a great deal more wickedness and
unhappiness in the world than we in the convent ever thought of. And
it seems to me that to shut oneself up out of it all and to try to
make a little heaven for oneself and to keep apart from all the
difficulties and miseries outside is selfish. So that I’m glad I can’t
be so selfish any longer.”

“Now I don’t quite agree with you. By coming out you only add to the
general sum of misery in the world by one more miserable unit; where’s
the advantage to your fellow-creatures of that?”

“But I don’t intend to be miserable. I am going to try to bring some
of the convent’s happiness and peace to the people outside, or at
least to--some of them.”

“I should like to know how you propose to set about it.”

“First, I am going to try to persuade--some people to give up doing
what is wrong. I am going to try to persuade _you_.”

“To give up----”

“Well, Free Trade.”

“And make a virtue of necessity? You see, _it_ has given _me_ up.”

“Did you like--doing that?”

“Smuggling? You called it smuggling this morning, and now that it has
nothing more to do with me, I don’t mind if I give it the same name.
I was first mixed up with it when I was seventeen, before the age when
one grows either a beard or a conscience, and I can’t honestly say
that I felt anything but enjoyment of the excitement.”

“Your cousin led you into it?”

“Well, I suppose so. Somebody else led him.”

Her face fell.

“I know--my father.”

“And it went on for a long time, and one got used to the risk and took
that as a set-off against the wrong. And after all, we were only
carrying out with logical thoroughness the blessed theory of Free
Trade, of which we are told we ought as a nation to be so proud. It
has ruined us small land-owners, by making it impossible to cultivate
the land remuneratively. Who can blame us then if we try to get
compensation by taking a hair out of the tail of the dog that bit us?”

“I can’t argue with you, because I don’t know enough. But I suppose
the laws are on the whole good and just, and it is right to obey them.
It must be bad for people to live always under the feeling that they
have to hide something.”

“Why, what bad effect has it had upon me? Have you found me such a
very redoubtable ruffian?”

“Oh, no! Oh, no; you have been very good and kind.”

“Well, certainly I have wished nothing but good to you. I came with
Bob this morning only to see that he didn’t bully you, and if in any
way I could help you or get you away out of this place, I would. Is
that rough brute Crispin kind to you?”

“Yes, and no. He is very strange. Sometimes he is harsh and hard and
so disagreeable I scarcely dare speak to him, and then at other times
he will be almost tender.”

“He hasn’t got tipsy yet, and frightened you?”

“Tipsy! Oh, no!” cried Freda half in alarm and half in indignation. “I
don’t believe he would. I am sure he wouldn’t,” she added warmly.

“You speak as if you were quite fond of him,” said Dick, surprised and
laughing.

“So I am, rather. Somehow I can’t help thinking he is fond of me. It
is very strange.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think it strange that any one seeing a good
deal of you should get fond of you. Well,” he added after a pause,
during which they both reddened and looked rather embarrassed, “and
have you tried yet to convert Crispin to your views upon smuggling?”

“Crispin! Oh, no, I should be afraid.”

“I see, you respect him more than you do me. You think he may smuggle
from conscientious conviction? For I may tell you that he is the right
hand in all these enterprises, so that they can go on as well without
the Captain as with him, if only Crispin is there.”

“I know that.”

She paused a moment and then went on: “I haven’t seen him the last few
days. When I do I have something to say to him which will stop his
smuggling too, I think.”

“Why, what’s that!”

Freda raised her finger in sign of caution, not without a little air
of importance.

“There is a man about here sent by government to look after the
smuggling: I’m going to tell him that.”

Dick’s face changed, and became full of excitement and interest.

“Why, how came you to hear of such a thing? Are you sure of it?”

“Quite sure. I have seen him, talked with him. He is a great friend of
mine.”

“Then if he is, I warn you most solemnly to tell him not to interfere
with these men, nor to let them know what he’s up to. They’re an
awfully rough lot, these fellows. Only the Captain, and Crispin Bean,
who’s been captain of the yacht so long, can manage them.”

“The yacht!” cried Freda. “Why, that is used for the smuggling then!”

“Oh, I don’t know that,” answered Dick hastily. “But, but--if you
don’t want to hear of any more mysterious deaths and disappearances in
the neighbourhood, remember to warn your friend. Now I must go;
good-bye.”

He held out his hand abruptly, but withdrew it with a shy laugh before
Freda could take it.

“Perhaps you would rather not shake hands with such a rascal.”

“Oh,” said Freda naïvely, as she held out both hers, “that doesn’t
matter. For all the men I know seem to be rascals.”

Dick laughed, but did not seem to like this observation. He drew
himself up a little, and a variety of emotions seemed to chase each
other across his face.

“I’m glad my poor mother isn’t alive to hear me called _that_,” he
said in a low voice.

Freda ran up to him, but stopped herself shyly as she was going to
take his hand.

“You used the word first, and I didn’t mean it seriously,” she
whispered, in great distress. “You could not think me so ungrateful.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to put on airs and pretend to be insulted. But
perhaps I am not so bad as you think. At any rate, if I do wrong,
there’s a comfort in knowing I get punished for it.”




 CHAPTER XVIII.

Dick disappeared through the door by which he had entered so quickly
that before Freda had had time to utter more than an exclamation, the
rows of real books and sham ones were again unbroken, and the noise of
a drawn bolt told her that it was of no use for her to try to follow
him.

She sat down again in a tumult of agitated feelings. Her heart felt
drawn out to this young fellow with what she thought must be gratitude
for his kindness. She looked with vivid interest at the various spots
in the room on which he had stood, and tried to imagine his figure in
them again. She even crossed to the bookshelves, and laid her hand on
the place where his had lain, and touched again the books which he had
handed to her. She felt so sorry for him, so sure that in his share of
the wicked enterprise of his cousin and her father, Dick had been
little more than a victim. And then these musings gave place to more
serious thoughts. She had two duties to perform; one was to tell
Crispin that there really was a government emissary on the look out,
the other was to warn John Thurley not to betray himself. This latter
duty was, however, clearly impossible for her to fulfil without the
aid of accident; but the former might be easier.

Now during all this time that Crispin had kept himself invisible to
her eyes, the night-noises which had alarmed Freda so much at first
had been continued regularly, with only this difference: that although
she had crept out to watch the panel-door in the gallery, no one had
passed through it, and no one had been visible in the courtyard. It
seemed clear then, to the girl, that there must be, as Dick had said,
some entrance to the house which she did not know of. To ascertain
this beyond a doubt, she laid an ingenious plan, and night having by
this time fallen, she proceeded to carry it out. For if, she said to
herself, she could once find the door by which the nocturnal exits and
entrances were made, she would not only be able to waylay Crispin as
he came in or went out, but would have a very important weapon in her
hand by this knowledge.

Freda had seen, in a corner of Mrs. Bean’s wash-house, a heap of
silver sand. Watching her opportunity, she filled her skirt with this,
slipped out, and making a careful tour of the house, stables, and
outbuildings, she put two narrow lines of the sand before every door,
including that by which Crispin had once carried her into the house.
The snow had by this time melted or been swept away from the
neighbourhood of all buildings, and in such places the ground had
dried sufficiently for her purpose. To do her work the more
thoroughly, she then went the round of the outer walls of the garden
and enclosures, and repeated her sand-strewing before every door she
found, and before the iron entrance gates. Then she crept back into
the house, feeling pretty sure that she had been unseen in the
moonless night, and went to bed, tired but full of excitement.

She was too restless to sleep, so presently she got up again, put on
her dressing-gown, and waited eagerly for a repetition of the usual
sounds. She was soon satisfied: first the distant mutterings, far
underneath her feet, then the mounting of slow feet up stone steps;
the voices subdued, but nearer; the moving of heavy burdens; a sound
of weights falling; the chink of glasses; a low murmur of talk in
men’s voices, the sounds gradually dying away. That was all. An hour,
by the little clock on her mantelpiece, from the first sound to the
last. Then all was quiet till morning, when Freda, after a disturbed
night of short snatches of sleep, woke with a start to the memory of
her undertaking. Ah! She had got them now! In an hour she would know
all about it; she would be able to waylay and confront them, if she
chose. And she almost thought she would choose.

Full of these ideas, Freda dressed hastily and ran downstairs. Nell
was busy in the kitchen; the place was as deserted as usual. She stole
out of the house with a loudly beating heart, feeling refreshed
instead of chilled by the air of the keen March morning. Stealthily,
with one eye on Nell’s quarters and one on her task, she began her
tour, her excitement increasing as door after door was reached, and
there was still no sign.

At last the tour was made, the inspection ended, in bitter
disappointment.

For the sand before every door was undisturbed.




 CHAPTER XIX.

The discovery of the fact that there was a secret way in and out of
the Abbey had a strong and most unhappy effect upon poor Freda. She
dared not say anything about it to Nell, and Crispin she never saw:
forced, therefore, to bear the burden of the secret alone, she crept
about the house day by day, not daring to make any fresh researches,
and suffering from a hundred fears. To add to her unhappiness, she now
could not but feel sure that Nell had kept back her letter to Sister
Agnes. For she got no answer to it. Mrs. Bean seemed to guess that the
girl had learned something about which she would want to ask
inconvenient questions. So Freda passed a week in silence and solitude
such as the convent had not accustomed her to. Even the nocturnal
noises had ceased. Once, and once only, she caught sight of Crispin,
and ran after him, calling him by name. It was dusk, and she was
watching the sea-mews from the courtyard, as they flew screaming about
the desolate walls of what had once been the banqueting-room. He did
not answer, but disappeared rapidly under the gallery in evident
avoidance of her.

Poor Freda felt so desolate that she burst into tears. Her old,
fanciful belief in her father was dead. Everything pointed to the fact
that he was really Blewitt’s murderer, and that, in order to save
himself from detection, he had feigned death and gone away without one
thought of the daughter he was deserting. Now that Crispin, whom she
had looked upon through all as her friend, was deserting her also, she
grew desperate, and recovering all the courage which for the last few
days had seemed dead in her, she resolved to make another attempt to
fathom the secrets the Abbey still held from her.

To begin with, she must explore the west wing. Now this west wing was
so dark and so cold, so honeycombed with narrow little passages which
seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, and with small rooms meagrely
furnished and full of dust, that Freda had always been rather afraid
of lingering about it, and had hopped through so much of it as she was
obliged to pass on her way to and from the library, with as much speed
as possible. Now, however, she got a candle, and boldly proceeded to
examine every nook and corner of the west wing. And the result of her
researches was to prove that on the ground floor, underneath her own
room, there was a chamber surrounded by four solid stone walls without
a single doorway or window. The only entrance to this mysterious
chamber seemed to be through the panel-door in the storey above.
Where, then, did the secret door in the library lead to? That question
she would solve at once. It was quite dark and very cold in the narrow
passages through which she ran, and the tipity-tap of her crutch
frightened her by the echo it awoke. She reached the library panting,
and running to the secret door, began pulling it and shaking it with
all her might.

Suddenly the door gave way, almost throwing her down as it opened upon
her; with a cry she recognised Dick behind it. She had thought of him
so much since his last strange appearance, that the sight of him in
the flesh made her feel shy. She said nothing, but crept away towards
the window, feeling indeed an overwhelming joy at the sight of a
friendly face.

“Did I frighten you again?” asked he.

The girl turned and looked up at him, shyly.

“I am always frightened here,” she said.

“Poor child! They are treating you very badly. I was afraid so. I have
been to see you twice, to make sure you had come to no harm.”

Freda, who had crept into the window-seat, as far away from him as she
could get, looked up in surprise.

“You have been to see me?” she exclaimed.

“Not to see you exactly, because the door was shut between us. But I
heard you in here, talking to yourself and turning over the leaves of
your books. I didn’t think it worth while to disturb you. I shouldn’t
have come in to-night, only I heard you shaking and pulling the door,
and I thought you had heard me and were frightened.”

“Oh, no. I wanted to know where it led to.”

“To the floor above by a staircase. See.”

He opened the door through which he had entered, and showed her the
lowest steps of a very narrow staircase, which went up along the outer
side of the library-wall.

“And how did you get into the floor above?”

“Well, it’s a secret I’m bound not to betray.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Freda coolly, “I shall find it out. I want
them to find that I am a meddlesome, inquisitive creature, who must be
got rid of.”

“Who’s ‘them’?” asked Dick.

“Crispin and Mrs. Bean.”

“And you want them to send you back to the convent?”

“Yes.”

“I think that would be a pity.”

“You didn’t last time.”

“No-o,” said Dick, clearing his throat. “Perhaps I didn’t see it quite
so well then. You see I hadn’t thought about it. But I have since; and
there’s a lot in what you said about the selfishness of it.”

“Ah, but now I’m just in the only position in the world in which it
isn’t selfish. I am quite alone, you see.”

“So you were a week ago.”

“But I had some hope then that I might be able to do some good. Now I
haven’t. And you don’t know what it is to be always lonely, to have
nobody to speak to even. It makes one feel like an outcast from all
the world.”

“Yes, so it does. So that one is glad of the very mice that run behind
the wainscot; and when one of the little brutes comes out of its hole
and runs about the room, why one wouldn’t disturb it for the world.”

“Oh, yes, I love the mice. Do you know I expect that sometimes when I
have listened to a scratching in the wall and thought it was mice, it
was really you all the time!”

“Very likely.”

“It was very good of you to come and see that I was all right.”

“Oh, I was glad to come. I’m lonely too now. They’ve gone away, the
others.”

“Your aunt, and your cousin? And left you all by yourself?”

“_That_ wouldn’t be much of a hardship, if only one could manage to
exist. But it is lonely, as you say. I shouldn’t mind it if the dog
wouldn’t howl so. Sign of a death, they say; I shouldn’t be sorry if
it were mine.”

“Your death! Oh, don’t say that. You didn’t seem at all miserable when
I went to your house.”

“No. The fact is, _you_ are at the bottom of my low spirits. It’s your
uncanny spells that have done it, Miss Mulgrave. Witches always have
little sticks like that.”

He took up her crutch almost reverently. It was leaning against the
window-seat between them, for he had sat down beside her.

“What do you mean, Dick?”

It was only a consequence of her extreme ignorance of the world’s ways
that she called him by the name by which she had heard others call
him. But it came upon the young man as a startling and delicious
surprise.

“Why, I mean,” he said, with rather more apparent constraint than
before, “that you said things which made me uncomfortable, preached me
a little sermon, in fact.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to preach indeed.”

“It’s all right, it did me good. I don’t mind a girl preaching, and I
thought over what you said very seriously. I--” he hesitated, and then
finished hurriedly, “I thought you’d like to know.”

“Indeed I’m very glad, if you didn’t think me rude. Perhaps if my
preaching did you good, it might do Crispin good too--if only I could
get hold of him.”

Dick laughed.

“I don’t think I should set my heart too much upon that. Crispin is a
thorough-paced old rascal.”

“You don’t know him. You haven’t seen into his heart,” cried Freda,
rising from the window-seat in her earnestness, and bending forward so
that she might look into the young man’s face. For very little light
now came through the old mullioned window.

“Well, I don’t believe he has a heart to see into.”

“Ah, that is because you have been careless, and have neglected your
religion. We all, even the worst, have a heart; it may sleep
sometimes, so that men think it is dead. But if God sends some one,
with love for Him alive and glowing, to speak to that sleeping heart,
it awakens, and a little spark of love and goodness will shine bright
in it. Don’t you believe that?”

“I believe that if anybody could work miracles through goodness, it
would be you. But it would take a thundering big miracle to make
Crispin Bean anything but an unprincipled rascal. Why, if you only
knew---- But then it’s better you should not know,” said he, pulling
himself up hurriedly and getting up to go.

“Oh, tell me, do tell me. I want to know!”

“You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t. But I’m not going to tell
you.”

And Dick drew himself up and looked out of the window, with the
obstinate look she had seen before on his face. Freda was far too
unconscious of her own feminine powers to attempt to move his
resolution. She only sighed as he held out his hand.

“Are you very lonely at the farm?” she asked.

“Very. At least I mean _rather_.”

“You have nobody there at all to speak to?”

“Nobody at all.”

“And you will go on living like that?”

“As long as I can hold out. The love of the old place, and of all this
country round, is a passion with me--the only one I’ve ever had, in
fact. And you,” he continued, leaving the subject of his own prospects
with some abruptness, “you are lonely too. May I come and see you
again?”

Freda hesitated.

“May I not come? Don’t you want to see me again?”

“Oh, yes. But----”

“I don’t frighten you, do I, with my rough, uncivilised ways?”

“Oh, no; Oh, no. Frighten me! Of course not.”

“Then, if I don’t frighten you, why did you screw yourself up into a
corner of the window-seat just now, to be as far from me as possible?”

He spoke in a low tone, bending towards her.

Freda blushed, but she never thought of denying the accusation. But
what had her reason been? She herself did not know.

“I--I think it must have been because I had been crying, and of course
nobody likes to be seen crying,” she answered slowly, hoping that she
had told the truth.

“Crying, had you? What about? Tell me just this: is it
about--Blewitt’s--death?”

“Why, why, do you know anything about that?”

“I know,” said Dick cautiously, “that it had something to do with your
father’s--disappearance.”

Freda shivered at the word.

“You know more than that?” she said hoarsely.

“Perhaps. But I swear I can’t tell _you_ what I know, so don’t ask
me.”

For a minute there was dead silence, as they stood face to face, but
scarcely able to see each other in the gathering darkness. Suddenly
both were startled by the sound of a man’s hoarse voice, muffled by
distance, which seemed to come from behind the door, through which
Dick had entered.




 CHAPTER XX.

At first both Dick and Freda listened to the faint sounds in
silence. Then Dick spoke.

“They’ve come back. I sha’n’t be able to get out that way,” he said.

“Why should you? I can let you out by the front-gate.”

“But--I don’t want to be seen,” he said. “If Captain Mulgrave were to
see me----”

Freda was startled by this suggestion, which betrayed how much the
young man knew or guessed. She turned from the door, where she had
paused with her fingers on the handle.

“Oh, yes,” he said in a low voice and very quickly, understanding her
thought, “it did take me in, for a time, and my cousin Bob too, that
story about his being dead, although we both knew him very well.”

“But why should he pretend any such thing?”

“That’s what we want to find out. It makes us careful. So Bob’s gone
away, and I keep watch.”

“And you are so sure he is alive?”

“I’ve seen him.”

Freda began to tremble. Here was an answer to the question she had so
often asked herself, whether her father was not really in hiding about
the place after all. She led the way out of the library, along the
corridor and out into the courtyard by the nearest door, without a
word. It was so dark that there was little fear of their being seen
crossing to the gate; though indeed Freda had forgotten that there was
need of caution, being absorbed in conjectures about her father. She
took the big key from its nail, opened the heavy gate, and led Dick
through to the open space before the blank wall of the
banqueting-hall. They crossed this, still in silence, and came to the
lodge. Here she was about to summon the lodge-keeper, when Dick
stopped her.

“Don’t,” said he. “The old woman would recognise me, and you would be
made to suffer. I must get out some other way.”

“There is no other way,” said Freda. “And when my friends come to see
me they should go out by the front way.”

And, before he could stop her, she had seized the iron bell-handle
which hung outside the wall of the lodge and rang it firmly.

The old woman who kept the key looked rather frightened when she saw
who was with Freda, but she unlocked the gate, waited, curtseying,
while the young people shook hands, and then popped back into her
cottage like a rabbit.

But there were eyes about more to be dreaded than the old woman’s.
When Freda returned to the inner gate, which she had left open, she
found it locked, and had to ring the bell. Mrs. Bean did not answer
the summons for some time, and when she did, it was with a frown of
ill-omen upon her face.

“So you’ve been receiving visitors, I see,” she began shortly.

“Yes, I’ve had one visitor.”

“One of the young Heritages, whom your father specially wished you not
to have anything to do with. Crispin told you that.”

“Yes,” said Freda tremulously, “but since they leave me here all by
myself with nobody to speak to, they can’t be surprised if I make any
friends when I can.”

“Well, and am I not friend enough for you, without your having to run
after any stranger or vagabond that happens to come into the parish?”

“No, you’re not, for I certainly couldn’t say anything I liked to you,
as one can to a friend. If I ask you a question, you put me off with
an answer that tells me nothing, as if I were a child. But I’m going
to show you that I’m grown up, and do some things that will astonish
you.”

And Freda hopped quickly away across the court-yard to the entrance of
the west wing, leaving Nell a little anxious and perturbed by this new
independence.

Freda returned to the study, her little brain actively spinning
fancies concerning her late visitor, all of a pretty, harmless kind,
dowering him with a great many ideal qualities to which the young man
could certainly not lay claim. It was now so dark in the room that she
had to feel her way carefully, well as she knew it. She walked along
close by the wall, touching the book-laden shelves as she went, until
she came to a point where they seemed to yield under her fingers. Her
heart leapt up. This was the secret door through which Dick had
entered: and he had left it open.

Freda’s first impulse was delight; her second fear. Now that the way
was at last open to her to learn the secrets of this guilty house, she
began to shrink from the knowledge she was about to gain. She opened
the door, listened, and looked in. Pitch-black darkness; utter
silence. She knew that Dick had come down by a staircase, so she felt
for it and mounted carefully. She counted fourteen rather steep steps,
and then she found that she had reached a level floor. It was so cold
here that her hands and feet were stiff and benumbed, although her
head was burning; she was in a passage the walls of which were of
stone, just like those outside her own room. But this passage was
narrower, she thought. There was no light whatever, so that she groped
her way cautiously, with her left hand outstretched before her face,
while with the right she tapped her crutch lightly on the ground in
front of her. After a few steps she came to a blank stone wall; it was
the end of the passage and she had to turn back. As she retraced her
steps, she suddenly came to a slight recess on the right hand, where
the stone wall was broken by a wooden door. Something in the sound of
this as she rattled it made her believe that this was the panel-door
into the gallery. If this were so, the way down was through a
trap-door in the floor; for this was the way Crispin had brought her
on the day that he found her in the disused stable. Down she went upon
her knees, feeling about until her hand touched an end of knotted
rope. Pulling this up, she found, as she had expected, that it raised
a door in the floor, beneath which was a flight of wooden steps. There
was still no sound to be heard, so, after a moment’s hesitation, she
decided to continue her explorations, and to trust to luck to hide
herself if she heard any one coming. The steps were rickety, but she
got down them in safety, and found herself in a stone passage, similar
to that on the floor above. At the end of this was a door, which
Freda, still groping in the dark, decided to be that which opened into
one of the out-houses in the yard outside. It was securely fastened.
She felt her way back along the walls until a door on the right
suddenly gave way under her hand, and a flash of light, after the
darkness in which she had been so long, streamed into her eyes and
dazzled her.

Freda thought she was discovered; but the utter silence reassuring
her, she presently looked up again, and found that she was standing
before the doorway of a big, stone-walled, windowless room, piled high
with bales and boxes which reeked with the unmistakable odour of
strong tobacco. She was in the smugglers’ storeroom. An oil-lamp,
which hung opposite to the door and gave a bright light, enabled her
to make an exhaustive survey of the room and its contents. In one
corner there was a rope and pulley fastened securely to one of the
strong beams which ran from end to end of the roof. There was no
ceiling. Directly under this rope and pulley was a square hole in the
floor; and Freda, peeping down, saw that a rope-ladder connected this
chamber with another underneath, which, however, was unlighted. She
had scarcely had time to make these discoveries when she heard dull,
muffled sounds which seemed to come from beneath the cellar. Afraid of
being caught by one of the unknown men whose coarse voices she had so
often heard, Freda hid herself among the bales not far from the
opening in the floor. The sounds came nearer, became distinguishable
as the tramp of one man’s feet, and then the rope-ladder began to
shake.

Freda, peeping out, began to tremble at her own daring. The man was
coming up, and already she knew, whether by instinct or by his tread
she hardly could tell, that it was not Crispin. She shrank back, with
a loudly-beating heart, and crouched behind the bales as the newcomer
reached the floor and pulled up the rope-ladder after him. He began to
move some of the bales, and Freda was half dead with fear lest he
should touch those behind which she was hiding. But presently he
desisted from this work, and she heard him drag out a heavy weight
from the space he had made, draw a cork, and presently began to take
long breaths of pleasure and to smack his lips. Very cautiously,
believing him to be too agreeably employed to notice her, she then
dared to peep at him. But the sight of his face turned her sick with
surprise and dread.

For she saw the grinning, withered face she had seen about the house
in the darkness, the face which Nell had tried to persuade her was the
creation of her imagination.




 CHAPTER XXI.

Freda fancied that the long-drawn breath which escaped her as she
recognised the man must attract his attention. But he was too intent
upon the enjoyment of the strong spirit, which he kept pouring from a
huge stone bottle into a cracked tumbler, to have eyes or ears for the
little eavesdropper in the corner. A horrible idea flashed into her
mind as she crouched again in her hiding-place: Was this grinning
creature, with the hideous face of an ape, the father she had waited
to know so long? A shiver of horror ran through her as she remembered
how this would tally with the facts she knew: with the dread in which
her father was held, with her belief that he was in hiding about the
house, and with the airs of proprietorship which this man was
assuming.

Even as these unwelcome thoughts pressed into her mind, the man got
up, and confirming her fears by his tone of authority, stamped upon
the floor and called down the opening in a loud voice:

“Hallo! Anybody there yet? Kelk! Harrison!”

There was no answer, and he walked up and down, swearing to himself
impatiently. Presently a muffled sound came from below, and he called
out again.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said a hoarse voice.

“Is that you, Braim?” asked the man above.

“Aye, sir.”

“Anybody else with you?”

“Theer be fower on us, sir.”

“All right. Close up, and I’ll be down with you in a minute.”

There were sounds now in the cellar below of several men moving about
and talking in low tones. Then the man above moved back a step or two
from the opening in the floor; and Freda, whose curiosity had grown
stronger than her caution, peeped out far enough to see him take from
a shelf a small revolver, which he secreted about his person. Then he
lowered the rope-ladder, let himself down into the cellar by it, and
immediately threw it up again so deftly that it landed safely on the
floor he had left. Freda heard a chorus of demands for “soomat to warm
them,” and by the sounds which followed she could soon tell that
drinking had begun. Being now able to lift her head without fear, she
could make out a good deal of their talk, although the strong dialect
in which all but the leader spoke often puzzled her. As the talk went
on and the drink went round, the men seemed to get more and more
excited; but just as they had done at the “Barley Mow,” they lowered
their voices as they grew warm in discussion, until Freda, whose
interest and curiosity had become deeply excited, crept softly out of
her hiding-place, and crawling to the opening in the floor, listened
with her head only just out of the men’s sight.

They were talking about some person against whom they had a grudge,
using oaths and threats which, although strange and new to Freda,
shocked her by their coarseness. At last her curiosity to see them
grew so great that she was impelled to glance down stealthily at the
group below. The men were seated at a rough deal table, over which
they leaned and sprawled, with their heads close together, in eager
converse. It was some moments before she got a view of any of the
faces; at last, however, two of them raised their heads a little, and
she instantly recognised one as a little wrinkled, oldish-looking man,
who wore rings in his ears and walked with the cat-like tread of one
accustomed to go barefoot, whom she had seen at the “Barley Mow.”

“Ah tell ye,” he was now saying, “it’s’ t’ same now as were at t’
‘Barley Mow’ on t’ neght when train was snawed oop. Barnaby Ugthorpe
fund him aht, and tawd me abaht it hissen.”

Freda forgot to draw back; her breath came with difficulty: this man
against whom they were using such hideous threats must be her friend,
John Thurley. From this moment, every word they uttered assumed for
her a terrible significance.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt your information is right enough,” said the leader,
who used fewer words than the rest, “the question is whether he hasn’t
found out too much for it to be any good interfering with him. You
see, he’s been about the neighbourhood some time now, keeping very
quiet, and he may have picked up and sent off to London enough
information to do for all the lot of us; in that case a bullet or two
through his hide would only increase the unpleasantness of our
position.”

“Aye, aye, Captain, but Ah’ve kep’ a eye upon him, to see what he were
up to. A pal of mine done that business for me, an’ as fur as we mak’
aht, he hasn’t done mooch correspondering, an’ nothing
suspicious-loike. Ah’ve a pal in t’ poast-office, as Ah have moast
pleaces, an’ ye can tak’ my word for’t.”

“An’ now we’ve fahnd him aht spying at us from t’ scaur, as we did
yesterneght, Ah seay it’s high toime as a stop wur put to his goings
on, an’ it’s not loike ye, Capt’n, to seay neay to that.”

“I don’t say nay to that,” said the little withered man, with an ugly
grin on his face. “You know me better. But no good ever comes of using
violent means until you’ve tried all others. I’ll be on the scaur
myself to-night and watch.”

Freda stared down at the group, fascinated with horror. There was a
brutal callousness of look and tone in these men which made her feel
as if she were watching a cageful of wild beasts. Every line of their
weather-beaten faces, dimly as she saw them by the light of two
flaring tallow candles, seemed to her to be eloquent of the risks and
dangers of a hardening and brutalising life. And the face which looked
the most repulsive of all was that of the leader. Was he her father?
The girl prayed that it might not be true. Although his speech was so
much more correct than that of the rest as to mark him as belonging to
a higher class, his voice was coarse and thick, and his manner furtive
and restless. Even the faint twinkle of humour which was visible in
the eyes of the wizened informer, James Braim, was absent from those
of his chief. Those few words, in which he said that he would watch on
the scaur that night, filled Freda with more anxiety for John
Thurley’s safety than all the coarse threats and menacing gestures of
the other three men.

“Goin’ to unload to-night, Capt’n?” asked one man.

The leader nodded.

“Must. Here’s three nights we’ve wasted hanging about, on account of
the scare about this spy, whoever he is. So to-night you’ll get to
work, and I’ll keep the lookout, and if anybody’s fool enough to be
loafing about where he’s not wanted when he ought to be in bed, why,
he can’t in fairness complain if he gets--sent home.”

He paused significantly before the last two words, and a low murmur of
appreciation and amusement went round the group. Then the talk was
carried on in short whispers, and Freda was presently seized with the
fancy that some of the questions and answers exchanged referred to
her. For the men talked about some woman, and all the questions were
directed to the repulsive-looking leader, who after some minutes rose,
with a remark a little louder than the previous talk.

“She won’t interfere with any of us much longer, at any rate. We can’t
afford to keep spies in the camp. Now, lads, it’s time for business.
Get off to the yacht, and to business as fast as you can. I’ll be down
on the scaur in less than half an hour.”

The men pushed back their seats without delay, Kelk alone venturing on
a grumbling word of remonstrance. And then, still watching closely
from above, Freda saw a very strange occurrence. The bare, ill-lighted
cellar grew empty of all except the leader as if by magic, the men
seeming to disappear into the bowels of the earth. As she looked,
bending her head lower and lower with straining eyes to spy out the
reason of this, Freda involuntarily drew a long breath of amazement.
The solitary man left in the cellar looked up, as he was in the act of
filling his own glass once more from the stone jar. The girl drew back
with a cry, for a look of intense malignity passed over the man’s
wrinkled face.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed very quietly, blinking up at her, “so it’s you,
is it? Playing the spy as usual?”

He muttered an oath below his breath, and came close under the opening
in the floor.

“Just throw down that rope,” he continued peremptorily.

“What rope?” asked Freda, trembling.

“Come, you know well enough. You haven’t got eyes in your head for
nothing.” He paused, but Freda remained motionless. “Now then,” he
added with a sudden access of anger and a stamp of his foot on the
stone floor, “throw down the rope-ladder I came down by. Do you
understand that?”

But Freda only attempted to get away. Excited by anger and drink, the
man took from his belt a revolver, which he pointed up at her. This
action, strangely enough, checked Freda’s impulse to retreat. She
looked down at him straightforwardly and fearlessly, eye to eye.

“Do you think you can make me obey you by shooting me?” she asked
simply.

“I think you are a d----d ungrateful little chit,” answered the man
sullenly. But he lowered the weapon in his hand.

“Ungrateful!” faltered Freda, the great fear rising again in her
heart. “Ungrateful!” she repeated. “Then you are--are you--my father?”

“Of course I am,” he answered sullenly. “Pretty filial instincts you
seem to have!”

Freda was overwhelmed. For a few moments she sat transfixed, looking
down on this newly-found parent with undisguised horror.

“Well, aren’t you going to obey me?” repeated he with rather less
ferocity of tone.

“Yes,” whispered Freda hoarsely.

She drew back a step or two from the opening in the floor, and began
to grope about with cold, clammy fingers for the rope-ladder. At last
she found it and threw it down.

If she had not been so benumbed with amazement and grief at this
discovery, she would have been frightened by the savage exclamation
with which the man set his foot on the ladder. As it was, she heard
nothing, saw nothing until she suddenly felt herself pulled up by the
arm. Dragged to her feet against her will, paralysed with alarm, she
turned to see the grinning, withered face held close to hers, full of
spite and malignity.

“Now,” said he, “I’m going to give you a lesson for your
disobedience.”

With a shudder and a low cry, Freda struggled with him, avoiding the
meeting with his eyes.

“Don’t,” she whispered hoarsely. “Don’t. I wish to remember my
obedience, my duty. I can’t if you treat me like a dog.”

He gave a short, rasping laugh.

“I sha’n’t do that,” he said. “I respect a dog.”

At the brutal words and tone, Freda, by a sudden movement, wrenched
herself free for an instant, and looked him steadily in the face.

“Now,” she said, “I know that you have been deceiving me. You are not
my father!”

“We’ll see about that. Come here.”

He seized her by the right wrist, giving it such a violent twist that
she cried out with pain. “Now if you struggle any more or cry out,
I’ll just give you a broken arm to match your broken leg.”

He gave her arm another wrench to prove that his threat was not an
idle one, and the girl with difficulty suppressed a moan. Just as he
gripped her arm more tightly to inflict further punishment for this
insubordination, a change came quite suddenly over his face; he
dropped her arm at once, and sliding over the floor as stealthily and
rapidly as a cat, he ran down the rope-ladder, and disappeared from
view just as his four subordinates had done.

Freda was bewildered, and not one whit relieved at his disappearance.
It only seemed to augur some fresh misfortune. As she stood where he
had left her, dazed, miserable, still nursing her arm for the pain,
she heard another step behind her. Her endurance had been tried too
much; she could not face a fresh enemy, as she believed the newcomer
to be. Putting her hands before her face, she turned and stepped
backwards, away from him, murmuring broken entreaties, interrupted by
sobs. As she retreated, she felt that the intruder was pursuing her,
and fled faster and faster.

“Stop, child, stop,” cried at last a voice she knew. At the same
moment she felt that she had gone a step too far, and was falling
through the opening in the floor. But even as she felt this, strong
arms were thrown round her, and she found herself in a warm clasp of
kindliness. Opening her eyes, she saw who her preserver was, saw too
that his eyes were full of tenderness.

“Crispin! Crispin!” she cried.

But the next moment, with a wild shriek, she flung her arms round his
neck in a passionate embrace.

“No, no, not Crispin, you are not really Crispin! You--are--_my
father!_” she sobbed out with a burst of hysterical tears and
laughter.




 CHAPTER XXII.

Not even the stolid silence with which he received her demonstrative
outburst could dissuade Freda from her new belief that this man, whom
she had always known as Crispin Bean, was really her father. She
wondered, as she looked into his stern, rugged face, and noted the
half involuntary tenderness in his eyes as he looked at her, how she
could ever have doubted it. She chose to believe now that she had
really known it all the time, and that she had only been waiting for
him to declare himself. This, however, he was not ready to do even
now.

“I am Crispin, Crispin,” he said, while he patted her soothingly on
the shoulder, “remember that.”

He did not speak harshly, but even if he had done so she would not
have been afraid of him. She was so overjoyed to have found her
father, as she still obstinately believed she had done, that she was
ready to submit to any condition it might be his fancy to impose.

“Yes, Crispin,” she said meekly, nestling up to his shoulder and
looking with shy gladness up in his face, “I will remember anything
you tell me, Crispin.”

He put his arm round her with a sudden impulse of tenderness, and
Freda fancied, as he looked into her eyes, that he was trying to trace
a resemblance to her mother; she fancied, too, by a look of content
mingled with sadness which came over his face, that he succeeded.

“I heard you crying out as I came in,” he said at last, abruptly. “Was
it my footsteps that frightened you?”

“No,” said Freda hesitatingly.

“What was it, then?”

“A man, a man I have seen about the house before, came up from
there,”--she pointed to the hole in the floor--“and frightened me.
_He_ said he was my father.”

Crispin looked black.

“How did he frighten you?” he asked shortly.

“He saw me looking through at him and some other men--dreadful looking
men--who were talking together; and I think he was angry because I saw
them. So he made me throw the rope down to him, and he came up, and he
was very angry.”

And Freda shuddered at the recollection.

“He didn’t hurt you, threaten you, did he?”

She hesitated.

“Not much. Perhaps he didn’t mean to hurt me at all, only to frighten
me. But I _was_ frightened.”

And she hid her face against Crispin’s shoulder.

“Jealous brute, he shall suffer for this!” he muttered angrily.
Turning to her suddenly again he asked: “Did you hear what the other
men said? Did they frighten you?”

“I didn’t hear much, and none of them saw me except that one man. But,
oh, Crispin, they are dreadful people! Why do you have anything to do
with them?”

“Little girls shouldn’t ask questions,” he answered rather grimly.

But Freda would not take his tone as a warning. Indeed she had an
object of vital importance at her heart.

“But there was something they said, something I did hear, which I must
tell you about, even if I make you angry--Crispin. There is a man whom
they want to hurt, perhaps to kill; they said so. They are going to be
out on the scaur to-night, and if he is there, as they expect, the
wicked man, the worst of them all, said he would be on the watch.”

“Well, a man may watch another without hurting him. Like a foolish
girl, who listens to what doesn’t concern her, you have half-heard
things, and jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.”

But Freda was not to be put off like that. She rose from the bench on
which they had been sitting side by side, and stood before him so that
she could look straight into his face.

“No, no,” she cried vehemently. “I know more than you think, and I
know they meant harm to John Thurley, who was kind to me, and wanted
me to go away because he thought I was lonely and not taken care of.”

Crispin glanced up hastily, with a guilty flush on his face.

“Mrs. Bean--Nell looks after you, doesn’t she?” he asked sharply.

“Oh,” said the girl with a little half-bitter laugh, “I am fed all
right; but perhaps Mr. Thurley thinks that food isn’t quite all a girl
wants.”

Crispin got up abruptly, almost pushing her aside, and began walking
about the room, as if in search of something to do, to hide a certain
uneasiness which he felt. He kicked a coil of rope into a corner, and
shifted one of the bales that had got a little out of place.

“I know,” he burst out suddenly, “that I--that you have not been
treated well. You have been neglected, shamefully neglected. Of course
you ought never to have come. It was a mistake, a caprice of temper on
the part of--your father. Then when you came, of course you ought to
have been sent back; it was cruel and wrong to keep you here. But by
that time--you had brought--something, a ray of humanity, perhaps, or
of sunshine, to--somebody, and so you stayed. And--and of course it
was wrong, and somebody--is sorry.”

Freda, touched, breathless, was drinking in every word, with her great
brown eyes fixed upon him. She flew up at the last words, and
forgetting even her crutch, limped across to him and fell into his
arms.

“Oh,” she whispered, “but you should have said so, you should have
told me! And then if you had wished me to live on here like this for a
year, ten years, without ever even seeing your face, I would have done
it gladly, if I had only known you cared, that it gave you one spark
of comfort or satisfaction. Oh, you believe me, do you not?”

He could not help believing her, for truth and devotion were burning
clear in her eyes. But it puzzled, it almost alarmed him.

“You--you are strangely, ridiculously sentimental,” he said, trying to
laugh. “How did you come by all these high-flown notions?”

“Whatever I feel God put into my heart, when he sent me to you to make
you happy again, as you were when my mother was alive.”

He half-pushed her away, with a sharply-drawn breath of pain; for she
had touched the still sensitive place.

“Ah, child,” he said, “they have educated you on fairy tales. There is
no going back to peace and happiness and innocence to men like me. The
canker has eaten too deep.”

These words gave Freda a sudden chill, recalling to her unwilling mind
the mysterious murder of Blewitt. She shuddered, but she did not draw
away.

“Well,” said Crispin brusquely, “if you are frightened you can go
away. I’m not detaining you.”

She looked up with a flushed face, full of sensitive feeling.

“I am sorry and sad with thinking of things which can’t be undone,”
she said softly; “but I am not frightened.”

He put his hand gently upon her head. She fancied that she heard him
murmur: “God bless you.” In a few moments, however, he withdrew his
hand abruptly, and said that he must “be off.”

“And you must go out of this place,” he continued in his harder tone.
“We don’t allow intruders here, you know.”

He led her up the stone staircase to the panel-door, which he
unlocked. Then he helped her through into the gallery, and said
“Good-night” in his usual matter-of-fact, brusque manner. But Freda
was not to be repulsed. Before he could close the door, she caught his
hand, and held it firmly, forcing him to listen to her.

“Crispin,” she whispered, “remember what I said. John Thurley was kind
to me. Don’t let them hurt him. Promise.”

But he would not promise. His face grew stern again, and he put her
off with a laugh as he freed his hand.

“Don’t worry yourself with silly fancies,” he said shortly. “He’s all
right.”

He closed the door sharply and fastened it. Freda remained for a few
moments listening to his footsteps as he went down the stone stairs.
Then remembering with excitement, that “Crispin” had forgotten to ask
her how she got in, and that the way through the library into the
locked-up portion of the house was still open, she went downstairs,
and passed again through the door among the bookshelves.

She would try and get down to the scaur by the secret way the
smugglers used.




 CHAPTER XXIII.

Freda went through the secret door the second time with more bravery
then she had felt on the first occasion. For although she was bound on
an expedition the dangers of which it was impossible to deny, she had
now at least some knowledge of the risks she ran; and she was
fortified by the belief that, even if she should not see him, her
father would be about, within call perhaps, if she should run any
danger from his rough associates. So she crept down into the room in
which she had before hidden herself, very softly, listening as she
went.

She could hear no sound. Her father had disappeared, leaving the light
lowered. She crossed the floor almost on tip-toe, and peeped down
through the opening. It was quite dark down there now; she could not
even see the table round which the men had sat. She raised her head
again and looked round her. She must go into that cellar, but she
dared not go without a light. Becoming used to the silence, and
feeling more secure, she began to make a tour of the room, hunting and
groping very carefully. For, she thought, there must certainly be
lanterns about somewhere; they would be a necessary part of a
smuggler’s stock-in-trade. And truly, when she did at last stumble
upon the right quarters, she found a selection of lanterns which would
have equipped the band twice over. They were stored in a
corner-cupboard, and were of all shapes and sizes, some old, battered
and useless, some new and untried. Freda made a careful choice, fitted
her lantern with a candle which she found in a box on a shelf, and
helped herself to a box of matches. Then she returned to the opening
in the floor, threw down the rope-ladder, and began the descent.

To the lame girl, quite unaccustomed to adventures of this sort, this
part of the journey was neither easy nor pleasant. Her trembling feet
only found firm footing on each succeeding rung after much futile
swinging to and fro, desperate clinging to the swaying ropes, and
nervous fears that her protruding foot would be caught by a rough hand
from below. But she reached the cellar-floor in safety, and proceeded
to light her lantern. Then she took a survey of the room.

It was large, lofty, stone-walled, and very cold. There was an
oil-stove in one corner, but it was not burning. There were no stores
of tobacco or spirits kept here, only lumber of ship’s gear, broken
oars, coils of rope, some ends of rusty chain and such like. Freda,
after a hasty inspection, proceeded to the corner where the men had
disappeared. Here there was a large opening in the floor, from which a
damp, earthy smell rose as she stooped to examine it. Freda could have
no doubt that this was the entrance to a subterranean passage.

She drew back in horror which made her cold and wet from head to foot.
Could she dare to trust herself alone in the very bowels of the earth,
away from all hope of help if one of the rough and brutal men she had
seen that evening should meet her?

She hesitated.

Then she thought of poor John Thurley, who had been so good to her:
perhaps he was even then lying stunned or dead on the scaur, struck
down by one of her father’s servants in evil. Ashamed of her
hesitation, fired with the determination to try to save him, she
dropped on to her knees, covered her face with her hands, and prayed
for strength and courage. Then she sprang up, boldly grasped her
crutch in her right hand and her lantern in her left, and plunged into
the passage with rapid steps.

There were a few worn stone steps to begin with, then a gentle slope,
and then a long, straight run. The passage was narrow and walled with
stones, old and green with damp. At frequent intervals air and
daylight were let in through small iron gratings which seemed to be a
very long way overhead. It was not difficult to breathe, and the
passage being stoned-paved and drained, the way so far was smooth and
easy. Freda did not know how long she had been down there nor how far
she had gone, when she became aware that the ground was sloping up
again. Then came a flight of steps upwards. At the top of these steps
Freda found herself in a very small octagonal chamber, which contained
part of a broken stone spiral staircase, going upwards. Behind this
staircase there was another large hole in the ground.

Freda guessed that she must be on the ground-floor of one of the
towers of the Abbey-church. In the wall in front of her was a stout
wooden door, which was ajar. She pushed it softly, guessing from this
circumstance that there must be some one about. Putting her head
through the aperture, she saw that she was in the western tower of the
north transept of the ruined church. She thought she heard a man’s
voice softly whistling to himself, but it did not sound very near, so
she ventured to push the door open a little further and to slip
through.

A clear, white moon, not long risen, was beginning to shine on the old
pile, and to cast long lines of bright light and black shade between
the old arches. To Freda the beautiful sight gave a fresh horror. How
dared these men ply their wicked trade in the very shelter of these
holy walls? She crept out, feeling more secure while she stood on this
sacred ground, and treading with noiseless footsteps down the
grass-grown nave, peeped through the broken window through which
Robert Heritage had come to speak to her. She could trace in the
moonlight the foot-path through the meadow outside to the outer wall,
and beyond that she could just see a horse’s ears, and a whip standing
up in such a fashion as to convince her that it was in a cart. She
waited without a sound while she heard the soft whistling nearer and
nearer, and then, peeping through the loose stones, she saw stolid
Josiah Kemm, walking slowly to and fro under the church walls, with
his hands behind him. He saw her immediately, and started forward to
find out who was watching him.

Freda was ready for him, however; the risks and excitement of the
adventure had made her quick-witted. She drew herself from a crouching
attitude to her full height, and said, in a clear voice:

“Is it you, Josiah Kemm?”

The man did not answer; he made a step back, taken by surprise. She
continued:

“I think you must have heard of me. I am Captain Mulgrave’s daughter.”

He touched his hat rather surlily, and seemed restless, as if
uncertain what she knew, or how he ought to treat her.

“Why are you not waiting in the court-yard?” she asked with an
inspiration. “You take your cart in there generally, don’t you?”

She thought that if she could persuade him that she knew all about his
business, she could perhaps learn from him by what way she could get
down to the scaur. Her confident tone had the desired effect. After a
few minutes’ hesitation, during which Freda pretended to be
unconcerned, but felt sick with anxiety, he answered:

“Well, noa; generally is a big word. Ah do soometoimes go into t’
yard, but more often Ah weait here.” He paused, but as his hearer took
care to show no deep interest, he presently went on: “Ye see, it
depends whether Ah teake t’ stuff streight from t’ boat, or whether Ah
have to teake what’s stored in t’ Abbey.”

“I see. If you take what is stored up, the cart waits under the
gallery window in the courtyard.”

“Aye. An’ Crispin Bean brings oop t’ stuff, an’ thraws it aht.”

“While if you take it straight from the boat----?”

“Why, Ah weait here, and when they’ve hauled it oop t’ cliff and
brought it along t’ first passage, they bring it oop to me, instead o’
teaking it along t’ other passage into t’ Abbey.”

“Aren’t you afraid of people passing late, who might see your cart and
wonder why it was so often standing there?”

Kemm shook his head decidedly, with a dry laugh.

“Noa, missie. T’ fowk hereabout’s all on our soide.”

“Oh,” said Freda.

She was wondering now how she should make her escape and find the
second passage; that which, by Kemm’s account, led down to the beach.
He himself unwittingly came to her succour.

“Ah thowt Ah heerd summat!” he suddenly exclaimed.

He gave a low, long whistle, but there was no reply. So without
heeding Freda, who had succeeded in making him believe that she was in
the secrets of the gang, he got through the ruined window, and went to
the tower in the north transept. Freda hopped after him as quickly as
she could. He pushed open the door, and going to the hole under the
broken staircase, called down it, and whistled. There was no answering
sound.

“False alarm!” said he, as he stepped again out into the transept.

But Freda had disappeared. She had followed him into the tower, and
having blown out her lantern, crouched on the lowest stair until she
found herself alone again. Then, waiting until Kemm’s voice, still
calling to her, sounded a long way off, she relighted her candle, ran
to the hole, and seeing a ladder in it, went down without delay. The
underground passage into which this led her was very different from
that which led from the church to the Abbey-house. As a matter of
fact, the latter was of very ancient origin, having been carefully
built and paved, six hundred years ago, as a private way for the Abbot
between his house and the church. The passage which led from the
church to the cliff, however, was an entirely modern and base
imitation, dug and cut roughly out of the red clay and hard rock of
which the cliffs were composed, ill-drained, ill-ventilated, almost
impassable here and there through the slipping of great masses of the
soft red clay. From time to time Freda, hurrying and stumbling along
as best she could, now ankle-deep in sticky mud, now hurting her feet
against loose stones, saw a faint gleam of moonlight above her, let
in, as in the other passage, through a narrow grating, which would
pass on the surface of the ground for the entrance to a drain. At last
the passage widened suddenly, and she found herself in a low-roofed
cave, partly natural, partly artificial, with a narrow opening, not
looking straight out to sea, but towards a jutting point of the cliff.

Here Freda paused for a moment, afraid that some one might start up
from one of the dark corners. But the total silence reassured her.
There was a lantern hanging on the rough wall, and there was a bench
on which lay some clothes. On the floor a few planks had been laid
down side by side, with a worn and damp straw mat, evidently used for
removing from the boots of the gang the clay collected on the way
through the passage.

But the most noteworthy objects in the cave were a strong iron bar
which was fixed from rock to rock across the mouth, to which a rope
ladder was fastened, which hung down the surface of the cliff, and a
windlass fastened firmly in the ground, by which, as Freda guessed,
bales of smuggled tobacco and kegs of contraband spirit, were hauled
up from the scaur below. She crept to the entrance and peeped out.

The moon was not yet fully risen, but there was light enough for the
girl to make out the admirable position of this den above the water.
Not only was the opening invisible from the sea, except for a little
space close in shore where even small boats scarcely ventured, but it
was also hidden from any one on the rocky beach below or on the cliff
above by jutting points of rock; while a perpendicular slab of rock,
descending sheer to the scaur beneath it, made it quite inaccessible
from below except by the means the smugglers used.

After waiting a few minutes, and peering down on to the rocks below
without hearing the least sound except the splash of the incoming
tide, Freda resolved to descend, and take her chance of being seen.
She must find out if John Thurley was there, and if any harm had come
to him.




 CHAPTER XXIV.

At the very first step she made on the rope ladder, Freda sustained
a sudden shock which almost caused her to lose her grip of the ropes.
With a wild, wailing cry, a great sea-gull flew out from a cleft in
the rock a few feet from her, and almost touching her with its long
grey-white wings, flew past her and circled in the air below, still
keeping up its melancholy cry of alarm or warning, which was taken up
by a host of its companions. Although she had heard the shrill
sea-bird’s cry before, it had never sounded so lugubrious as now. The
beating of the advancing tide on the rocks below made a mournful
accompaniment to the bird’s wailing; and Freda, startled and alarmed,
clung tremblingly to the ladder, not daring to descend a single step,
as she felt the rush of air fanned by their long wings, and dreaded
lest the great birds should attack her. At last, one by one, they
circled lower and lower, until they reached the sea, and, folding
their wings, settled in a flock upon the water: not till then did the
girl venture to proceed on her journey.

This descent, though long, was much less difficult than her first
trial of a rope-ladder in the secret-room of the Abbey; for the ladder
was firmly fixed to a rock below into which two iron hooks had been
driven. The greatest danger she had to contend with during the descent
was the extreme cold, which benumbed her fingers, and made it scarcely
possible for her to grasp the ropes, and to hold her crutch at the
same time; the lantern she had extinguished and tied round her waist.
At last her feet touched the solid rock: she drew a long breath of
relief: she had reached the scaur. Turning slowly, she took a survey
of the spot.

The cliff frowned at an immense height above her, rugged, and steep as
a wall. She was standing on a narrow ledge formed of broken bits of
rock which had, from time to time, been detached from the main cliff
by force of water and rough weather. Only a few feet away the sea was
breaking into little foaming cascades against the boulders. At sea,
just out of the silver light cast by the moon, and some distance away
from shore, she could dimly see a boat, which she guessed to be her
father’s yacht. On the right hand, a jutting point of cliff shut out
the view; on the left a bend in the cliff formed a tiny bay, beyond
which a sort of rough pier of black rocks stretched out into the sea.

The bay was the point the smugglers would make for, she felt sure; it
was in this direction, then, that she must go. She dared not light her
lantern, but had to trust to the faint light of the moon. The way was
infinitely more difficult than she had expected: to scramble, to
crawl, sometimes to leap from rock to rock would have made the path a
hard one for anybody; to a girl with a crutch it was absolutely
dangerous. Panting, bruised, breathless, she at last scrambled over
the last rough stone and found, to her relief, that in the tiny bay
there was a stretch of smooth land, part clay, part sand, which had
gathered in this inlet at the foot of the cliff, and on which a short,
coarse grass grew. This seemed a paradise to Freda after her exertion:
she sank down and rested her limbs, which were trembling with fatigue.

After a few moments, however, her sense of relief and rest was broken
by a sensation of horror, which seemed to creep up her tired limbs and
settle like a pall upon her. The utter silence, which not even a
sea-gull now broke; the great wall of rock stretching round her, like
a giant arm pointing its finger out to sea; the solitude, and the
piercing cold all united to impress the girl with a dread of what she
might be going to see and hear. With a little sobbing cry she shivered
and shut out the scene by burying her face in her hands.

Suddenly a faint sound caused her to start up; it was the splash of
oars in the water. There was a fringe of rock between the smooth land
and the sea, under cover of which Freda ran, stumbling as she went, in
the direction of the rough natural pier. From this she thought she
would be able to get a clear view of all that went on by sea or by
land. But on nearer approach this natural pier proved to be much more
difficult of access than she had supposed; for it consisted of a huge
rock, flattened on the top, rising so high out of the water that it
would need a climb to get upon it. Still Freda resolved to try to
overcome the difficulty. At this point she suddenly came in full view
of the approaching boat, which was making straight for the beach. In
another moment she had begun the climb. She had scarcely got her head
above the level of the top of the rock, when she caught sight of a man
crouching down on the smooth wave-worn surface, watching the approach
of the boat with eagerness which betrayed itself in his very attitude.
It was John Thurley.

Startled by the sight, Freda lost the footing she had obtained on the
flaky, rotten side of the rock, and slipping back a few steps, found
that she had all her work to do over again.

But she was quicker this time, her experience having stood her in good
stead. In a very few moments she had won back the lost ground, and
again glanced up at the crouching figure. She had scarcely done so
when she saw, and yet hardly believed that she saw, a second figure
crossing the smooth surface of the rock in the direction of the first,
crossing stealthily, with the cat-like tread she knew so well.

It was the man who had said he would “be on the watch.”

She wanted to cry out, she tried to cry out, but only a hoarse rattle
came forth from her parched throat. She knew what was going to happen,
though she saw no weapon in the rascal’s hand; and the knowledge
paralysed her. Before she could draw breath the blow had fallen: with
a horrible cry John Thurley sprang up with a backward step, turned,
staggered, and fell in a dark heap on the rock at his assailant’s
feet.

Freda’s voice had come back now; but it was too late. She stifled back
her cries, got up, by digging heels and clawing fingers, somehow,
anyhow, on to the top of the rock, and skimming along the surface,
lame as she was, like a bird, came up with the man who had threatened
her that evening. He started, looking up at her with blood-shot, evil
eyes, as she laid her hand upon his arm.

“Hands off, missus,” said he roughly, assuming more coarseness of
accent than usual.

“No,” answered the girl fiercely, as she fastened her fingers with a
firmer grip on his arm, “you have exceeded your orders to-night, and
now you’ve got to obey mine. You have to help me carry that man you
have hurt into the house, into the Abbey.”

The man was impressed, in spite of himself, by her manner.

“He’s dead,” he said impatiently. “Haven’t you had enough corpses
about the place lately?”

“He is not dead; he is moving; and you will take him in, dead or
alive. Do you forget I am your master’s daughter?”

“Perhaps I’m my master’s master,” said he shortly. Then, with a sudden
access of fury, to which his potations of earlier in the evening
evidently gave reckless intensity, he suddenly held up, with a
threatening movement, the knife with which he had stabbed his victim.
It was red with blood--a sickening sight. But Freda was too much
excited and exasperated to show a sign of fear now.

“You dare not hurt me,” she cried, in her high, girlish voice, that
echoed among the cliffs. “If this poor man dies you may escape; but if
you kill _me_, my father will not let you live another day.”

She thought it was her words which suddenly caused him to drop from a
defiant into a cringing attitude, and to hold himself quite limply and
meekly under her grasp. But his shifting glances made her turn her
head, and she saw that her father was standing behind, with his eyes
fixed on the fallen man. Freda forgot her reticence, forgot his
cautions. Rushing towards him with her left hand outstretched, she
cried, with a break in her voice:

“Father! father!”

He did not rebuke her. Taking a step forward, he caught the girl in
his arms, and looked tenderly down into her white face.

“What business have you here?” he said, but without harshness.

“I came to save John Thurley,” she answered, trembling. “But I was too
late. Make this man take him home--father--to the Abbey.”

He shook his head, while the other man gave a short laugh.

“He’s done for, guv’nor,” said he curtly. “Sorry if I went too far,
but it’s always dangerous work to put your nose into other people’s
business.”

Freda was on her knees beside the fallen man.

“He’s alive,” she cried triumphantly. “Make haste, oh, make haste, and
we shall be able to save him!”

“Him? Yes,” said her father gruffly and dubiously. “But how about
ourselves? His safety is our danger, child; don’t you understand?”

“But, father, you wouldn’t have him _murdered_! Oh, if it is true you
care for me--and you do, you do--tell that man to help you; and take
him in! Do this for me, as you would have done it for my mother.”

Captain Mulgrave hesitated. Then he tried to speak in a peremptory and
angry voice, but broke down. Turning at last sharply to the assailant,
who had been watching him with hungry intentness, he made a gesture
towards the wounded man.

“Here, Crispin, help me--to take him in. We must obey the ladies,” he
said with a hoarse and almost tremulous attempt at levity.

The grin died out of the lean and withered face, and Freda caught upon
it an expression of so much baulked malignity that she wondered
whether succour at these unwilling hands would mean death to the
succoured one. There was nothing for her to do but to watch, however,
while her father, with a skilful hand, tore his own shirt into
bandages, with which he stopped the flow of blood from the wounded
man’s side. Then, giving the word to start, he and his unwilling
assistant lifted the still unconscious man and began the difficult
journey to the Abbey.




 CHAPTER XXV.

The moon was high by the time Captain Mulgrave and his subordinate
started for the Abbey with their unwelcome guest.

John Thurley was still unconscious as they lifted him from the rock;
and the jolting to which they were forced to subject him, as they made
the difficult descent to the level land, failed to rouse him to the
least sign of life. Indeed Freda, who followed close, not without
suspicions of foul play in one of the bearers, was afraid that this
journey was a hopeless one, and that it was a dead man they would
carry into the Abbey.

“Up the steps,” directed Captain Mulgrave briefly.

And instead of turning to the left, towards the cave, they crossed the
stretch of flat, grass-grown land in the direction of a rough flight
of steps, partly cut in the cliff itself and partly formed of stones
brought for the purpose, which, guarded on one side by a primitive
handrail, formed the communication for the public between the top of
the cliff and the scaur.

“It’s a long way round, guv’nor,” grumbled the other. “Better haul him
up our way with the rest of the stuff.”

Freda uttered an angry and impatient exclamation. Her father who, to
her horror, had appeared not unwilling to act on the suggestion, now
shook his head and again nodded towards the steps. The other, though
he had to submit to the directions of his chief, did so with a very
bad grace, and muttered many expressions of ill-will as he staggered
along under his share of the burden. For the unfortunate John Thurley
was a solidly built, heavy man, and the ascent up the face of the
cliff was not an easy one even in ordinary circumstances.

When they had at last, after many pauses, reached the top of the
cliff, the little wizened face puckered up again with an expression of
intense slyness.

“The boys won’t be able to get on without one or other of us,
guv’nor,” he suggested. “They’ll have got the stuff through to the
house by this time, and if there ’s nobody there to look after them
they’ll just get roaring drunk, and perhaps manage to get up from the
cellar for more liquor, and kick up no end of a disturbance.”

Freda, who was afraid her father might leave her alone with this
odious man and the unconscious Thurley, instantly struck in with a
suggestion.

“There’s Josiah Kemm waiting about by the ruin,” she said. “I suppose
you have some whistle or signal that he would know, and he would bring
his cart.”

She would have suggested going in search of him herself, but she could
not pretend to have enough confidence in her companions for that. Her
father smiled, and seemed to be both amused and pleased by her
quickness. The other man, however, openly scowled at her. After a few
moments’ consideration, Captain Mulgrave turned to his subordinate.

“You whistle,” he ordered shortly. “When Kemm comes, she” (nodding
towards Freda) “will tell him what to do.”

So saying, he turned, and descending a dozen steps below the top of
the cliff, concealed himself; while the other man, most unwillingly,
whistled four times. By this Freda concluded that the fact of Captain
Mulgrave’s being still alive was unknown to some members at least of
the gang acting under him.

She knelt down by the wounded man, and was frightened by the coldness
of his face and hands, and by the impossibility of discovering whether
he still breathed. In a very few moments she was relieved to hear the
rattle of wheels; and almost immediately afterwards the cart appeared
in sight, and stopped in the road at the nearest point to where the
wounded man was lying. There was a gate in the wall, and she could see
Josiah Kemm opening it.

“Bring the cart through,” she cried out shrilly. “The cart!”

Kemm stopped, not at first understanding.

“T’ cart!” he echoed wonderingly.

“Yes, yes. Say yes,” she continued, turning with an impetuous air of
command to her companion. He repeated sullenly:

“Yes, bring the cart.”

Kemm obeyed. But his disappointment, disgust and dismay were unbounded
when, instead of a few bales of smuggled tobacco, he found that his
cart was wanted to bear the wounded man. His superstitious fears were
aroused, and he drew back hastily.

“He’s dead!” he muttered, “yon chap’s dead. It’s onlucky to carry a
dead mon.”

But Freda besought him, coaxed, persuaded, promised until the stubborn
Yorkshireman, impressed by her imperious manner, began to think that
in obeying her, he was currying favour with the higher powers. So that
at last he stooped, hoisted up the unfortunate man, placed him in his
cart, lifted Freda herself into the front seat without waiting to be
asked, and turned his horse’s head, by her direction, towards the
Abbey.

Freda was trembling with triumph, but also with some apprehension. The
Abbey was the only place to which she could take the wounded man, and
yet she could not but fear that it might prove a very unsafe refuge.
The little grinning man, whom they had left behind on the edge of the
cliff, was a trusted person in her father’s mysterious house, and
could go and come by secret ways, whenever he pleased. Her only hope
lay with Mrs. Bean. Freda believed in the little woman’s real kindness
of heart, and then too she would get at her first, before the
housekeeper could be influenced by less honest counsels.

The cart with its occupants reached the Abbey-lodge in very few
minutes. At the inner gate there was a little longer delay, and then
Mrs. Bean appeared and let them in without question.

“I didn’t expect you to-night, Mr. Kemm,” was all she said.

But she started back in astonishment and dismay when he said:

“Ah’ve browt ye back a friend an’ a stranger, Mrs. Bean. One’s a
leady, an’ t’other’s a gen’leman.”

At the same moment Freda, who had got down with Kemm’s help, ran up
and put her arm round Nell’s neck.

“Mrs. Bean, dear Mrs. Bean,” she whispered, “it’s a friend of mine,
the gentleman you saw me with at the churchyard, and he’s very, very
ill. You’ll be kind to him, won’t you?”

But Nell was not at all sure about that. She even began by resolutely
refusing to allow him to be brought into the house. Kemm, however, as
resolutely refused to take him away again. At last Freda thought of
away of overcoming the housekeeper’s objections.

“It was my father himself who brought him up from the scaur,” she
whispered, in a voice too low for Kemm to hear. And as the housekeeper
looked at her incredulously, she added: “My father, the man I have
always called Crispin. He told me to bring him home.”

Mrs. Bean turned abruptly to Kemm.

“Where did you find this gentleman?” she asked. “Who was with him?”

“This little leady, and your husband.”

Freda started. The wizened and grinning man who had threatened her and
stabbed John Thurley was, then, Nell’s husband, the veritable Crispin
Bean.

Kemm’s answer, while it disturbed her, reassured the housekeeper, who
reluctantly gave Kemm permission to bring the unconscious man indoors.

“I’m sure I don’t know where to put him,” she said discontentedly,
though Freda was happy in discovering a gleam of pity in her round
face.

“Put him in my father’s room,” said Freda with unexpected authority.
And she led the way upstairs, beckoning to Kemm to follow her with his
burden. She had rapidly decided that this room would be the safest in
the house.

As soon as John Thurley had been placed upon the bed and Kemm had
gone, Freda was delighted to find that her trust in Nell’s goodness of
heart had not been misplaced. The young girl wanted to go for a
doctor, but this the housekeeper would not allow, saying that she
could do what had to be done as well as any man. She proceeded to
prove this by binding up his wound with skilful hands. Presently John
Thurley opened his eyes, as he had done several times during the
journey from the beach. This time, however, he was not allowed to
relapse into unconsciousness. Applying a restorative to his lips, Mrs.
Bean spoke to him cheerfully, and got some sort of feebly muttered
answer. He caught sight of Freda, who was helping Mrs. Bean, and gave
her a smile of recognition. But Nell sent her away lest he should want
to talk to her.

Freda left the room obediently, but went on further away than the
great window-seat on the landing outside. Here she curled herself up,
trying to keep warm, and looked out on the moonlit stretch of country.
She was full of disquieting thoughts. This man, who had been kind to
her, whose life she was trying to save, had seen the murderer of the
man-servant Blewitt, and could recognise him. The fact of his having
kept this knowledge to himself for so long could only be explained by
his belief that the murderer was dead, and could not be brought to
justice. If he were to learn that the murderer was not dead after all,
Freda felt that she knew the man well enough to be sure that no
consideration would deter him from bringing punishment upon the
criminal. And that criminal she could no longer doubt was her father.
If she could only see her father again, and warn him to keep away, as
she had meant but had missed the opportunity to do, it would be all
right. It never occurred to her that her influence with John Thurley
would be strong enough to induce him to keep silence. On the other
hand, there was danger to be feared from the real Crispin; perhaps
also from his wife, who, when she learnt who struck the blow, might be
too dutiful to her husband to continue her care of his victim. But in
this she did Nell an injustice.

While the girl was still sitting in the window-seat crouching in an
attitude of deep depression, the door of her father’s room softly
opened, and Nell came up to her. She looked worried but spoke very
gently.

“This is a bad business,” she began. “It’s one of my lord and master’s
tricks, no doubt. And the worst of it is that when Crispin takes a job
like this on hand, he doesn’t generally stop till he’s finished it.”

“But can’t you prevent him? Can’t you persuade him that he’s hurt this
poor man enough?” asked Freda anxiously.

Nell shook her head.

“My dear,” said she, “since you’ve found out so much you may as well
know the rest. Crispin’s a bad man, but a moderately good husband. If
I were to interfere with him in any way, he would not be at all a
better man, and he’d be a much worse husband. Those are the terms we
live upon: I hold my tongue to him, and he holds his to me.”

“Then you won’t take care of this poor man any longer?”

“Yes, I will as long as I can. What he will most want is--watching.
You understand?”

“Yes,” said Freda, trembling.

“The wound isn’t dangerous, I think if he’s kept quiet. And I’m used
to nursing. Who is he?”

Freda hesitated. But the truth could not be concealed from Nell much
longer, so at last she faltered:

“He is sent down--by the government--to look after the smuggling.”

The housekeeper’s face changed, as if a warrant of death had been
contained in those words.

“The Lord help him then!” was all she said.

But Freda was so horror-struck at her tone that she sprang up and ran
like a hare to the door of the sick man’s room.

“What are you going to do?” asked Nell.

“I don’t know,” sobbed Freda. “But--but I think I ought to put him on
his guard.”

“No,” said Nell peremptorily. “Don’t disturb him now. Come here with
me; I have something to tell you.”

Fancying from the housekeeper’s manner that an idea for helping John
Thurley had occurred to her, Freda allowed herself to be led away to
the disused room opposite.





 CHAPTER XXVI.

Before the two women had entered the musty, damp-smelling apartment
which had once been one of the best bedrooms of the house, the younger
began to feel that her companion was unnerved and unstrung. Indeed
they were no sooner inside than Mrs. Bean, sinking down on a chair,
burst into tears. This was such an unusual sign of weakness in the
self-contained housekeeper, that Freda, in alarm, stood for a few
moments quite helpless, not knowing what to do. But the kindly
womanliness of her nature soon prompted the right action, and putting
her arms round Nell’s neck, she clung to her and soothed her with few
words but with genuine tenderness.

Recovering herself, Nell suddenly pushed her away.

“It is not fit that I should sit here and be comforted by you, child,”
she said, abruptly but not harshly, “when it’s you have brought it all
upon us--and it’s ruin, that’s what it is--ruin!”

“Mrs. Bean! What do you mean?”

“Why, that this is the end of it all, the end I’ve been dreading for
years, but worse, a thousand times worse, than I ever guessed it would
be! I thought it would only be the smuggling, and a break-up of the
old gang. I never thought it would be murder!”

“Murder!” hissed out Freda, not indeed in surprise, but in fear.

“Yes, and you know it, for all you may say. You know that the
man-servant Blewitt was murdered. And if you go in there, and listen
to that man’s mutterings”--and she pointed towards the
sick-room--“you’ll know more.”

Freda shook from head to foot, and at first tried in vain to speak.

“What does _he_ say! What does he know?”

“He knows that it was murder, for one thing, but he knows more than
that, or I’m much mistaken. It’s on his mind, and as the fever rises,
it will all come out.”

She began to sob again and to dry her eyes. Freda at first stood
motionless beside her, but as Nell got the better of her outburst, the
girl took courage and touched her on the shoulder.

“Mrs. Bean,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “who do you think did it?”

There was no answer.

“Do you think it was--Crispin?”

She asked this question timidly, but Nell did not seem offended by the
suggestion. She shook her head, however.

“No, he was in the house here with me. He had been out all night in
the yacht, and he was lying down to have a nap on the sofa in my
sitting-room. Then”--she lowered her voice, and spoke in an awe-struck
whisper--“the master came in, looking white and--and queer, bloodshot
about the eyes and that, and he called Crispin out, and they both left
the house together, by the back way, through the garden. And I
wondered, and watched, and presently I saw them come back and they
were carrying something. I didn’t guess what sort of burden it was
though, not then. But while I was watching, your ring came at the
bell; and as I was crossing the yard to answer it Captain Mulgrave
came running after me, and he said: ‘If it’s my daughter, say I’ve
shot myself, for I’m going away to-night, and I don’t mean to meet
her.’”

Here Freda interrupted, in some distress:

“He didn’t mean to meet me! Didn’t he want me to come, then?”

“Yes, and no, I think. I believe it made him feel ashamed of himself;
it reminded him, perhaps, of old days when your mother was alive, and
made him feel sorry that things were not with him now as they were
then.”

Freda, with tears in her eyes, drew nearer to Nell as the latter made
these tardy confessions.

“Mind,” continued the housekeeper, drawing back suddenly as the girl’s
arm stole round her neck, “it’s only like guess-work what I’m telling
you. The Captain has never said anything of the sort to me----”

“But it’s _true_!” whispered Freda eagerly, “it’s true: I know it, I
feel it. Go on, go on.”

“Well, at any rate that was only part of what he felt, remember; for
he’s done things he had better have left undone for a good many years
now. He also felt that a girl would be in the way here with her prying
eyes--as it has proved; and between the wish to see you and the wish
not to see you, he was quite unmanned. In fact, he’s not been the same
man since you’ve been about: it’s Crispin who has become master.”

Nell said this with sorrow rather than with pride. She paused, and
Freda urged her to go on:

“And on that day, when you were coming to let me in----?” she
suggested.

“Ah, yes. Suddenly he made up his mind to let you in himself, and he
said: ‘Don’t let her know who I am; I shan’t.’ ‘_I_ shan’t say
anything, sir, you may be sure,’ I said. And with that I walked back
to my kitchen, and he let you in, and you took him for Crispin, as you
know. And ever since then he’s been in too minds, now making believe
to be dead, so that he might get away quietly, and now bent on staying
here, whatever happened.”

“Whatever happened!” repeated Freda. “Why, what should happen, Mrs.
Bean?”

The housekeeper rose, and made answer very abruptly:

“I suppose you have some nerve, or you wouldn’t have got down on the
scaur by yourself to-night! Well, come with me, then.”

She opened the door, and led the girl back to the sick-room, where
John Thurley lay quietly enough, looking up at the old-fashioned
bed-draperies, and muttering to himself in a low voice from time to
time. Leaving Freda by the door, with a significant sign to be silent,
Nell went up to the bedside, and put her hand on the sick man’s
forehead.

“Are you better now?” she asked gently.

“Better!” he muttered in a husky voice. “I don’t know. I haven’t time
to think about that.”

“Why, what’s troubling you?”

“Oh, you know, you know. The old thing.”

“What, these men?”

“Yes, the gang. They’ve got to be caught, you know, to be caught,
every man Jack of them.”

“Why, what have they done?”

He went on muttering to himself, and she had to repeat the question.

“Done! They’ve done everything: robbed, cheated, killed.”

Freda started.

“Hush, hush, sir. You are going too far, aren’t you?”

“Too far, yes, he went too far--that morning,” said the sick man
drowsily, “I saw him slinking about--and I saw him take out his
revolver--and he crept up past me, over the snow, to the top of the
hill.”

“But you didn’t see him shoot, sir, now did you?”

He shook his head.

“I saw him return--presently, without the revolver,” he went on in a
very low voice, “with a look on his face--all the savagery gone out of
it--I did not understand it.”

“But when you heard later that a man had disappeared, and then a
rumour that he had been murdered----?”

“I knew that I had seen the murderer. I knew his face. It was he.”

He uttered these last words slowly and dreamily, and then as Nell
asked no more questions, he subsided into silence, and stared again at
the bed-hangings. Freda slipped softly out of the room, ran downstairs
into the library as fast as her feet and her crutch could take her,
and went through the bookshelf door into the secret portion of the
house for the third time that night. If she could only find her
father, and warn him! That was the thought that was in her mind as she
tripped up the first narrow stone staircase and down the second, and
reached the room where she had had her interview with him.

There was no one either in this apartment or in the cellar below. The
rope-ladder was hanging down just as she had left it, the lamp was
still burning. Would her father come in by this way, she wondered, as
she crouched on the floor by the opening, and listened for the sound
of footsteps approaching from below. At first she heard nothing. She
dared not go down into the cellar again, for fear of meeting Crispin,
who bore no goodwill either to her or to the patient she had
introduced into the house. Presently a distant rumbling down in the
earth below riveted her attention. It grew louder and nearer until
there was no mistaking the fact that some one was coming up the
underground passage.

It was not until that moment that Freda realised the danger of her
situation. She had been reckoning on meeting her father. But what
foundation had she for this hope? She had scarcely acknowledged to
herself that she had very little, when she perceived that her worst
fears were fulfilled, and that the man who, lantern in hand, had just
reached the floor of the cellar, was the real Crispin Bean. The faint
cry which escaped her lips attracted his attention, and with an oath
on his lips and a scowl on his face he made a rush for the ladder.

Freda was too quick for him. She pulled it up out of his reach with a
jerk, flung to the trap-door which closed the opening, and with some
difficulty drew the heavy iron bolt which made it fast. Then,
frightened both by what she had done, and by the storm of oaths and
blasphemies to which Crispin gave free vent, she crept out of the room
like a mouse, and gained the library as fast as she could.




 CHAPTER XXVII.

Danger had roused Freda from a little frightened girl into a
ready-witted and daring woman. No sooner had she fastened down the
trap-door and made it impossible for Crispin to get into the house
from below than another idea for securing the safety of her sick guest
flashed into her mind. As soon as the thought suggested itself, she
set about carrying it out. Flying out of the house, across the
court-yard, unlocking the first gate and taking care to keep it from
closing by a stone at its base, she was out of breath by the time she
reached the lodge-gates and pulled lustily at the bell. Of course the
old woman was asleep, and it was some moments before the gates opened.
In the meantime, Freda had had another inspiration. As soon as one of
the gates opened, she slipped through, and placed a stone at the foot
as she had done with the inner gate, and watched for the effect. As
she had hoped when the spring was pulled again by the lodgekeeper from
within, the gate swung to, but remained open a couple of inches.
Satisfied, the young girl went on her way.

She crossed the churchyard, not without certain nervous and
superstitious terrors, for some of which her convent training was
perhaps responsible: and passing by the shapeless church with its
squat stone tower, and the seat underneath where the old fishermen
would sit and smoke their pipes and tell their yarns, with one eye on
the listener, and one on their old love, the sea, she came to the
steep flight of worn stone steps that led down into the town.

The moon was in her second quarter, and the light she gave was bright
enough for Freda to see the silver river below, for the tide was high.
Here and there the weak little town-lights twinkled, but they were so
far between that they did not save Freda from a feeling that she was
plunging into an abyss of blackness and horror, as she found herself
in the steep, stone-paved street at the bottom of the steps. She had
been told where the Vicarage was, knew that she must turn to the left,
and go down Church Street until she came to it. But the sound of her
footsteps and her crutch on the rough stones of the narrow street
frightened her. The little irregular, old-fashioned shops, with their
overhanging eaves and tiny windows, seemed to the scared girl to have
a threatening aspect; she fancied every moment that one of the
desperate characters with whom her imagination peopled them was lying
in wait for her at the entrance of one of the squalid courts which ran
between the houses. Past the tiny market-place she ran, with a
frightened glance at the pillars which supported a pretentious
town-hall about the size of a large beehive. But no one was in hiding
among them; and she reached the Vicarage without even meeting a
drunken fisherman finishing his evening’s enjoyment by a nap on a
friend’s doorstep.

Her ring at the bell brought Mrs. Staynes to an upper window, and a
few words of entreaty brought her to the front door. The sight of Miss
Mulgrave without hat or cloak at three o’clock in the morning filled
her with shocked amazement; but when Freda implored her to come with
her at once to help to nurse a sick man, a stranger, who had been
wounded on the scaur that night in some not very clearly explained
manner, the good little woman at once agreed to come, and retreated to
get ready. Her toilette being always of the simplest, she soon
reappeared, tying on her rusty mushroom hat and clasping round her
neck a circular cloak, the rabbit-skin lining of which had been so
well worn that there was only enough of the fur left to come off on
the garments it touched. But to Freda’s eyes, who saw in her coming
safety for John Thurley, no princess’s court dress ever looked more
pleasing than the ragged garments of the Vicar’s old wife, as she
stepped cheerfully out in the raw April morning, first insisting on
tying up the young girl’s head and shoulders in her garden shawl.

“You have sent for a doctor, my dear, of course?” she said.

“No,” said Freda. “Mrs. Bean says it’s nursing and watching he wants.
So I thought of you. I knew you were good to the sick. Everybody says
so.”

“Everybody” only did the odd little woman justice. Tied to a selfish
husband for whom she thought it an honour to slave, she had learned to
look upon herself as born to drudge for his comfort and glory; and
feeling that whatever she did as the Vicar’s wife redounded to the
Vicar’s credit, she was a devoted nurse and visitor to the sick, at
the disposal of anybody in the parish. She received Freda’s thanks
almost apologetically.

“It is a luxury to do good,” she said.

And although her tone was dogmatic and “preaching,” she meant what she
said.

Nowhere could Freda have found a person better able to get her out of
her difficulty. Even Mrs. Bean gave a sigh of relief, after the first
moment of dismay at this unexpected intrusion of a stranger, on
finding the burden of her responsibility thus suddenly lightened.
Crispin would never dare do further harm to John Thurley while this
“outsider” was about. The very personality of the quiet, chirpingly
cheerful middle-aged woman, with her conversation largely made up of
texts and quotations from the book of Common Prayer, her placid
commonplaces, and her prosaic disbelief in any occurrence out of the
common was healing and healthful to these two women who had been
living under a volcano of crime and dread. When John Thurley raved in
her presence of smuggling and murder, the little lady placidly
ascribed his utterances to the effects of injudicious reading; when
she heard a mysterious noise in the night which the other watchers
knew too well how to account for, no arguments would have been strong
enough to shake her conviction that it was caused by rats behind the
wainscotting.

She brought in her train another safeguard for the sick man; the
Reverend Berkeley, who missed his wife’s ministrations on the one
hand, but was delighted at the opportunity of rummaging in the old
house on the other, was constant in his visits; so that under this
pastoral surveillance no bodily harm to the sick man could be
attempted; and Crispin, who, to Freda’s horror, still lurked about the
house, dared not show his face except to his wife.

John Thurley recovered rapidly; Mrs. Staynes soon gave up her watching
for occasional visits, and indeed there seemed no reason why he should
not go about his business. He must have been dull too, one would have
thought; for Freda, when he came downstairs, avoided him as much as
possible, dreading the fatal knowledge he possessed. She had never,
since that eventful night on the scaur, been able to meet her father
again, to warn him to keep out of the way of his danger. Every night
now she hid herself in the secret portion of the house, watching and
waiting for him. But he never came. Every day she would go out to the
cliff’s edge, looking out for the yacht; and then she would roam about
the Abbey ruins, and listen at the door of the tower in the north
transept, hoping to hear his voice or his tread. It was all in vain.

At last one day, when Thurley had been downstairs nearly a week, he
met her flying through one of the passages, and asked if she would
speak with him.

“I will only keep you a few minutes,” he said humbly, apologetically.
“I am going away. I must go away.”

Freda began to tremble. She dreaded some revelation about her father,
and felt that she must have a little while to prepare herself for what
she might have to hear, and for the entreaties she must make.

“I--I have got to go and help Mrs. Bean now,” she said in a frightened
voice. “Won’t it do this afternoon? I mean----”

She blushed and stammered, afraid that she seemed rude; but John
Thurley answered at once eagerly:

“This afternoon will do perfectly.”

Freda spent the intervening hours partly in prayer, partly in trying
to devise entreaties which would move him to spare her father. In
order to put off the evil hour of the interview, she roamed about the
ruined church, supposing that Thurley was where he usually spent his
time, in the library. Habit took her to the transept tower. She had
not, this time, her usual thought of trying to meet her father; it was
through custom, rather than by intention, that she leaned against the
wooden door. To her surprise, it gave way, and she only just missed
falling on her back. She forgot all about John Thurley in her
excitement. This was only the second time she had found the door open,
and she was convinced that there must be some one about. She listened
at the opening, first of the one underground passage and then of the
other, but could hear no sound in either. Should she dare to go down
into the one which led to the cliff?

While she was hesitating, she was startled by a faint noise from
outside the tower. It was like the falling of stones. At the same
moment there was a sound of footsteps in the passage beneath her feet.
She had to make up her mind quickly what she should do; and deciding
that it would be less dangerous to meet an enemy outside the tower
than in, if the new-comer should prove an enemy, she passed quickly
into the church, and came face to face with John Thurley.

Her cheeks blanched, and she stood before him without a word to say.
He, on his side, struck by the terror on her face, muttered an
apology, and was turning to retreat, when a footstep in the tower
caused him to stop. Freda recognised the tread, and a low cry escaped
her.

“Go, go,” she entreated in a hoarse voice. “Why do you stay when I beg
you, implore you to go?”

John Thurley hesitated. But that moment’s delay was too long. For the
door of the tower was pulled roughly open, and Captain Mulgrave, who
had heard his daughter’s pleading appeared, bristling with anger, as
her champion.

“Who is this annoying you?” he asked fiercely.

But Freda drew a long breath and said nothing. For the men had caught
sight of each other, had exchanged a long, steady look. It was
impossible to doubt that it was a recognition.

Captain Mulgrave did not repeat his question, asked for no further
explanation. With a stare of quiet defiance he took a great key from
his pocket, locked the door in the tower, and whistling to himself
with a splendid affectation of unconcern, walked past his daughter and
Thurley, and made his way over the fields towards the side-gate of
Sea-Mew Abbey.




 CHAPTER XXVIII.

Freda watched her father’s retreating figure for some moments,
without daring to look at John Thurley’s face. When at last she found
the courage to throw a shy, frightened glance in his direction, she
saw on his countenance an expression of deep pain and surprise as he
gazed steadily at Captain Mulgrave.

“It is--my father,” she faltered out, in pleading tones, while her
great brown eyes were full of entreaty.

“I know, I know,” he answered hastily, without looking at her.

And he began to pace up and down the choir, with his eyes on the long
rough grass at his feet, and his hands behind his back. Freda felt the
very faint hope she had entertained of moving him by her entreaties
melt utterly away as she watched him. The whole face of the man--the
steadfast eyes, square jaw, resolute mouth--all indicated strength of
purpose, and a will difficult to turn. The trouble and anxiety which
now clouded his face gave it no gentler character, but rather added
sternness. After considering him in silence for a few minutes, during
which he seemed intent on his own thoughts even to forgetfulness of
her presence, she stole away down the nave, and getting through the
window to the north side of the church, crossed the meadow towards the
road.

As she approached the wall which separated the meadow from the road,
Freda was startled by a man who sprang up suddenly on the other side.
Already unstrung by the events of the preceding twenty minutes, she
could scarcely repress a cry of alarm. The man, who had evidently
expected some one else, touched his hat and said:

“Beg pardon, miss. Sorry if I frightened you. I was expecting to meet
a friend here by appointment. I am afraid I startled you.”

Freda wondered who he was. Already she knew enough of the Yorkshire
types and the Yorkshire accent to be sure that he was not a native of
this part of the country; and there was a sort of trimness and
smartness about him in spite of the rough suit of clothes he wore, and
a precision in his manner, which made her think he was some sort of
official. She wondered whether it was John Thurley he was waiting for,
and if so, what his business with him was.

Going back to the ruins, she had got into the shadow of the east end
when she again came face to face with Thurley. The expression of his
countenance had changed; instead of the frown of anxiety he had worn a
few minutes before, care of another kind, far less stern, but scarcely
less disquieting to the young girl, was stamped upon his somewhat
rough features. Yet she could not have explained the feeling which
caused her to start and blush, and to hope that he would let her pass
without speaking.

But that was far from being his intention. He started forward at sight
of her, and his face flushed.

“Ah, I was looking for you; I have something to say to you.”

He turned to walk beside her, but went a few paces without saying
anything further. When they reached the angle of the ruin he stopped
and, looking down upon her rather shyly, said abruptly:

“Give me your arm. We are friends enough for that, aren’t we?”

Freda shyly complied, and they turned and walked back under the shadow
of the eastern wall of the ancient church.

“You are not afraid of me, are you?”

“No-o.”

“No-o! Why No-o? You are _not_ afraid of me, you know you are not.
Then why, lately, have you always avoided me?”

There was a long silence. Then Freda said, in a weak little voice:

“I expect you know.”

“You think I know too much about--about certain very disagreeable
occurrences?”

The girl answered by a long sob of terror. He patted her arm kindly:

“Come, come, my knowledge shall never hurt _you_, little one. That is
what I wanted to tell you. At least, it’s part of it.” Another pause.
“Don’t you want to hear the rest?”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“But you must. First, I want to tell you that I know who saved my life
and had me brought to the Abbey that night when I was attacked by
those ruffians----”

“Ruffians!” Freda turned upon him quickly. “There was only one. My
father wasn’t----”

She stopped, and drew a deep breath.

“I know, I know,” said Thurley.

“It was he who ordered that you were to be brought here--to the
house.”

“I know all about that,” said he quietly.

By his tone Freda knew that he must have heard more than at the time
had seemed possible.

“And I know who nursed me----”

“Mrs. Staynes.”

“And who watched over me----”

“Mrs. Bean.”

“And took care that I should come to no harm, although she knew all
the time that it would be better for those she cared about if I did
come to harm.” Freda tried to protest, but he silenced her
peremptorily. “And the little girl does care for those who belong to
her, no matter how she has been treated by them. But now,” he
continued in a different tone, “I want you to forget all that for the
present, though I never can. I want you to think of the day when I
first met you, a poor, tired, cold, hungry little girl; and to
remember how you gave me your confidence, and chattered to me, and
told me I was very kind.”

“And so you were,” cried Freda eagerly.

“Ah, but I had a motive: I had fallen in love with you.”

Freda wriggled her arm out of his, and looked up at him in
astonishment. Indeed John Thurley’s tone was so robust,
matter-of-fact, and dogmatic that this statement was the last she had
expected.

“In love with me! Oh!”

And she began to laugh timidly.

“But this is no laughing matter--to me at least,” said John Thurley,
in a tone more earnest still, and less matter-of-fact. “I tell you I
fell in love with you. I suppose you know what that means?”

“Not very well,” Freda admitted.

This answer seemed rather to take him aback.

“Why,” said he, looking out to sea and frowning with perplexity, “I
thought all girls knew that.”

“_I_ don’t,” said Freda shaking her head. “I don’t understand it at
all. It seems ridiculous to like a person very much, fall in love as
you call it, when you have only seen that person once, and can’t be
sure at all what that person is really like.”

“Perhaps one can be surer than you think. At any rate I felt sure
enough about you to make up my mind at once that you were the girl I
should like to make my wife.”

“Wife!” echoed Freda in astonishment and even horror, “me! a cripple!”

“Yes, _you_, just as you are, little crutch and all. Now, child, will
you have me? You don’t love me yet, but you will very soon, for I love
you deeply, and you are loving. You trust me, I know, although you
have avoided me lately. There is trouble coming upon this part of the
world, and I will take you away from it, and keep you safe for all
your life. Won’t you let me?”

But Freda grew white and began to tremble. Before she could attempt
any answer, however, he broke in again.

“I tell you you are not safe here; this place is infested with
desperate characters, who have access to the house by all sorts of
secret ways. Only this morning, as I was sitting in the library, a man
suddenly appeared before me, who seemed to spring out of the wall
itself.”

In an instant Freda became flushed and full of passionate interest.

“What was he like?” she asked breathlessly.

“He was a young man, with a thin, wolfish face, with light eyes I
think; dressed in an old brown shooting jacket. He looked half
starved.”

The girl’s face quivered with distress, and the tears sprang to her
eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

“Half starved!” she repeated in a heartbroken voice. “Oh, Dick!”

John Thurley stared at her in attentive silence for a few moments.
Then he said drily:

“You are sure you don’t know what falling in love is?”

Freda blushed, and began to dry her eyes.

“I know what it is,” she answered meekly, “to be sorry for a starving
man.”

“And you haven’t a word for the man who is starving for the love of
you?”

There was some passion in his voice now. Freda’s breath came quickly;
she bent her head in deep thought, and presently raised it to show a
face full of excitement, doubt, and entreaty.

“Do you love me enough to do something for my sake? something great,
something difficult?”

John Thurley was a practical man, who liked to keep fact and sentiment
well apart. A shade of caution came into his tone at once.

“Well, what is it? Let us hear.”

“Will you promise”--her voice trembled with passionate eagerness, “not
to make any inquiries, not to give any information, about the murder
of the man Blewitt?”

She hissed out the last words below her breath.

But John Thurley shook his head at once and decidedly.

“I couldn’t allow sentiment to interfere with my duty even for you, my
dear,” he said in a tone which precluded all hope of his softening.
“Besides,” he continued decisively, “as a matter-of-fact, I gave all
the information I had to the police long since.”

Without uttering another word or giving him time for one, Freda fled
away as if she had been struck. Running round the angle of the wall,
and under one of the clustered arches at the south side of the choir,
she stumbled, not seeing where she trod, against a heap of grass-grown
masonry, and fell to the ground.

Before she could rise, she heard the voice of the man who had
frightened her by jumping up behind the wall of the meadow.

“Beg pardon, Mr. Thurley,” said the voice, “but I’ve come to tell you
it’s all right. We’ve followed up the clue you sent, and I’ve been
sent down here to make the arrest. By to-morrow we shall have John
Blewitt’s murderer safe in quod.”




 CHAPTER XXIX.

When Freda overheard the words which told her the police were on the
track of the murderer, she did not lose a moment in making her way
back to the Abbey. Mrs. Bean opened the inner gate, as usual, and was
alarmed by the look on the girl’s face.

“Why, what’s come to you, child?” she said. “Where have you been? Has
anybody frightened you again?”

“No,” said Freda hoarsely. Then, bending forward, she whispered: “My
father--have you seen him?”

“Sh-sh!” said Nell, sharply. “Go into the dining-room.”

Freda thought there was a look of anxiety upon the housekeeper’s face,
but as it was always useless to try to force Nell’s confidence, she
hurried past her into the dining-room without a word. No one was in
the room, however. She was on the point of going back to Mrs. Bean
when the corner of a note, which had been thrust under the clock,
caught her eye. She pulled it out, and found that it was directed, in
her father’s handwriting, to “Freda.” She opened it eagerly but not
without fear. The note was very short:


 “My dearest Child,--I am away for a little while, you can perhaps
 guess why. As long as I am out of reach, this Thurley (who is, I
 believe, an honourable man) can do nothing. You need not be anxious on
 my account, little one. When I can, I shall come back, and carry you
 straight back to the convent. I ought never to have brought you away,
 it is the right place for a little saint. I wish I could have been a
 better father to you, but it is too late. ‘The tree has ta’en the
 bend.’ Good-bye, child.

                                       “Your affectionate,

                                               “Father.”


Freda sobbed over this; she was surprised to find, among the mingled
emotions which the note roused in her, a strong feeling of reluctance
to the idea of going back to the convent. The excitement of the
strange life she had led since leaving it had spoilt her for the old,
calm, passionless existence. What! Never again to leave the shade of
those quiet walls? Never to wander, as she now loved to do, about the
ruined church of Saint Hilda, whose roofless walls, with their choir
of wailing sea-birds, had grown to her ten times more sacred than the
little convent-chapel? Never to see her father? Never to see--Dick?

At this thought she broke down, and resting her head upon her hands,
let the tears come. And poor Dick had looked half-starved, so John
Thurley said! There began to steal into her heart a consciousness
that, _if_ things had been different, as it were, and _if_ she had not
been brought up in, and for, a convent, as one might say, she too
might perhaps, to use John Thurley’s words, “have known what falling
in love was.”

She was startled, in the midst of her tears, by the sound of John
Thurley’s voice in the hall, outside. He was talking to Nell, asking
“the way to Oldcastle Farm.” Freda sprang up in alarm. What if the
farm were her father’s hiding-place? It was the probable, the most
horrible explanation. The man who had spoken to Thurley that morning
was certainly a member of the London police force, and he had said
that he was on the murderer’s track. It might be, then, that he had
got wind of the fact that the farm was to be Captain Mulgrave’s
hiding-place. If not, what did Mr. Thurley want there?

It took Freda only a few minutes, when these thoughts had occurred to
her, to make up her mind what she should do. She waited until, by the
more distant sound of their voices, she knew that Thurley and Mrs.
Bean had retreated into the passage leading to the precincts of the
latter; and then ran upstairs to her own room, dressed hastily for
walking, and crept out of the house without being seen by any one.

It was Saturday, and market-day at Presterby. Barnabas Ugthorpe would
be at market; and Freda, in her short acquaintance with him, had
gained enough insight into that gentleman’s tastes and habits to be
sure that, instead of making the best of his way home as soon as the
business of the day was done, he would at this moment be enjoying
himself at the “The Blue Cow,” or “The Green Man,” or one or other of
the small hostelries which abutted on the market-place. So it was in
this direction that she turned her steps, flitting among the old
grave-stones and hopping down the hundred and ninety-eight worn steps,
until she reached Church Street.

It was six o’clock, and the streets swarmed with a noisy rabble.
Crowds of children, as usual, played about the steps; riotous
fisher-lads, in parties of half-a-dozen or so, streamed into the
streets from the Agalyth, a row of tumble-down houses, much out of the
perpendicular, that nestled right under the cliff, and some of which
fell down, from time to time, into the sea. Knots of women stood
gossiping at the doors; girls, in preposterous “best” hats, flaunted
down the street in twos and threes. Poor Freda, with her crutch and
her quaint dress, was laughed at as she sped along, her progress from
time to time impeded by the crowd. At last she reached the little
market-place, where business was long since over, but where women were
still busy packing up their baskets, and groups of men stood about,
discussing the news of the day. At the lower end a line of
primitive-looking carts and gigs stretched from one side of the
market-place to the other, and straggled into the narrow side-street.
From a nest of little beetle-browed and dingy taverns came a noise of
mingled merriment, wrangling and loud talking; it was in these
unprepossessing quarters she must look for her friend, Freda knew.

The hunt was not a pleasant task. She had to stand some rude “chaff”
from the sailor lads, as she stood about the doors peeping in when she
could. She was, however, so very simple-minded and unsophisticated,
that she bore this ordeal better than an ordinary girl could have
done. And then, too, her mind was so steadfastly fixed on its object
that many remarks intended for her failed to reach her understanding.
She had convinced herself that Barnabas was not in either of the three
taverns on the right hand side, and was beginning to despond, when she
recognised, among the horseless carts, the one in which the farmer had
brought her to the Abbey. Her spirits went up again, and with brisker
steps she continued her search. Down into the little side-street she
went boldly, and at last with a heart-leap of triumph she ran the
farmer to earth.

It was in a narrow slip of an inn that Freda, peeping in at the door,
spied the burly Barnabas laying down the law at the bar in a way that
he never dared do at home. Indeed, the girl had recognised his voice
some yards away. Without the least hesitation, she lifted up her
voice, without entering, causing all the guests to look round.

“Barnabas!” was all she said.

The farmer turned as if he had been shot.

“The Lord bless my soul!” he ejaculated. “It’s t’ little missie!”

“Come,” she cried peremptorily, “come at once.”

He obeyed as unhesitatingly as if he had received a mandate from the
queen. Leaving his glass of ale untasted on the counter, he followed
the girl down the street; for without waiting she led the way straight
to where his cart stood.

“Get your horse, Barnabas,” she said as soon as he came up, “you must
drive me to Oldcastle Farm.”

“But----” began the bewildered farmer.

She would not let him speak, but stamped her crutch impatiently on the
stones. Barnabas was as weak as water with any one who had a will;
whistling to himself as if to prove that he was carrying out his own
intentions instead of somebody else’s, he went straight to the place
where his horse was put up. Within ten minutes the cart was jogging
down slowly through the crowded street, with Barnabas and Freda side
by side on the seat, the farmer shouting to the crowd to keep out of
the way.

For a long way they did not exchange a word. As they proceeded down
the stone-paved street the throng grew less and less, until, when they
got to that point where the houses on the one side give place to the
river, they passed only an occasional foot-farer. They were now on the
outskirts of Presterby. The lights from the other side twinkled on the
water; the distant sounds of the town, and the voices of men calling
to each other from the barges, came faintly to their ears. Then for
the first time Barnabas, drawing a deep breath, looked down at his
companion.

“Eh, but ye’re a high-honded lass. What’s takin’ ye to t’ farm?”

“Never mind what’s taking me. I have something to say to _you_,” said
Freda with decision. “Barnabas, you know you didn’t keep that secret!”

“What secret?” said he uneasily.

Freda lowered her voice.

“About the dead man, and--the person you found beside him.”

Barnabas shuffled his feet.

“Ah doan’t knaw as Ah’ve said a word----”

“Oh, yes, you have. You haven’t meant to, perhaps, but you’ve let out
a word here, and a hint there, until----”

Freda stopped. Her voice was breaking.

“Weel, Ah’m downright sorry if Ah have. Mebbe Ah have let aht a word
that somebody’s picked oop, and--and--weel, Ah hope no harm’s coom of
it.”

“There’s only this harm come of it,” answered the girl bitterly, “that
you have perhaps put the police on the track of--of----”

“A dead mon. Weel, and where’s t’ harm of that?”

Freda was silent. She had forgotten her father’s pretended death.

“Mind ye, missie, there’s no good of being too sentimental, and,
asking your pardon, t’ Capt’n’s reputation was none so good, setting
aside that little business. So, as Ah said, there’s small harm done.
And now mebbe you’ll tell me what’s taking you to Owdcastle Farm.
There’s ne’er a pleace Ah wouldn’t sooner be droiving ye to.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s bad teales towd of it; an’ there’s bad characters
that goes there.”

“Oh, Barnabas, I’m getting used to bad characters. I mean----”

She stopped. The farmer scratched his ear.

“Weel, but it’s t’ bad characters that are fahnd aht that’s t’ worst.
T’ other sort, that keeps dark, aren’t near so degreading. An’, by
what Ah’ve been told, Ah reckon there’s some that’s fahnd aht at
Owdcastle Farm.”

Not a word of explanation of this dark hint could Freda get from him.
With Yorkshire obstinacy he shut up his mouth on that one subject,
and, although she plied him with entreaties, all that he would add on
the subject was:

“Weel, now, ye’re warned. Folks that tek’ oop wi’ dangerous characters
must be prepared to tek’ t’ consequences.”

After this speech, Freda fell into frightened silence; and for the
rest of the journey there was little conversation between them.




 CHAPTER XXX.

From time to time, when they got into the open country, Freda was
alarmed by the sight of another cart some distance behind them on the
road. For long tracts the hedges, the winds in the road, the hills and
vales, hid it from her sight, but again and again it would reappear,
filling her with misgivings.

“Barnabas,” she said at last, when the farmer asked what it was she
was turning round to look at so constantly, “there’s another cart
following us; I am sure of it. Who do you think it is?”

“Fred Barlow, moast loike,” answered he, with a glance back. “He’s
generally home early, an’ he lives only two moile aweay from wheer Ah
do.”

And there was silence again.

But Freda was not satisfied; however long it might be before it
reappeared, that cart was sure to come in sight again, and as for Fred
Barlow, he would surely come in a little vehicle the size of the one
she was driving in, not in a big, lumbering conveyance like that!
Before Barnabas turned up the lane that led to the farm, though, the
big cart had been lost sight of for so long that the girl’s fears had
calmed a little, and by the time they drew up at the front door, she
had forgotten everything but Dick, and the object of her journey.

Barnabas got down and pulled the bell, but no one answered. He pulled
it a second time, and came back to speak to Freda.

“Toimes are changed here,” he said, with a sagacious nod. “Ye woan’t
find a merry welcome and troops of servants to weait on ye this
toime.”

As nobody had yet come to the door, he gave it a kick with his
hob-nailed boots, and called out lustily:

“Here, here! Is noabody cooming to open this door? Here’s a leady
weating, an’ aht of respect to t’ sex, Ah’ll burst t’ door in if
soombody doan’t open it!”

This frank-spoken summons succeeded. The door opened at once and Dick
looked out. But was it Dick, this haggard, cavernous-eyed creature
with his clothes hanging loosely upon him? He looked like a hunted
criminal, and Freda felt a great shock as she noted the change.

“What do you want?” asked he shortly.

“Ask t’ leady,” said Barnabas in the same tone.

Dick started when he caught sight of the girl.

“_You!_ Miss Mulgrave!”

She held out her hands.

“Help me down, please,” she said in a husky voice, “I want to speak to
you. Let me come inside.”

“Are you coming too?” said Dick, not very graciously, to Ugthorpe, as
he helped Freda down.

“No, no, don’t you come, Barnabas,” said the girl quickly, turning to
the farmer. “I want to speak to Dick by himself. You wait for me.”

Barnabas, laughed with some constraint.

“Ah doan’t knaw what Ah’m to seay to that.”

“Why, do as she wishes. She shan’t come to any harm, Ugthorpe,” said
Dick with a break in his voice.

But the farmer still hesitated.

“Ah’m not afreaid of you, Mr. Richard. But--who have ye gotten abaht
t’ pleace?”

Dick flushed as he answered quickly: “Nobody who can or will do any
harm to Miss Mulgrave.”

This answer, while it reassured Barnabas, alarmed Freda. For it seemed
to confirm her fears that it was her father who was in hiding about
the farm.

“Yes, Barnabas, let me go,” she urged, touching his arm in entreaty.

“Well, Ah give ye ten minutes, an’ ye must leave t’ door open, and
when toime ’s oop, Ah shall fetch ye.”

“Thank you, thank you, good, dear Barnabas,” said she.

But he began instantly to scoff.

“Oh, yes, we’re angels while we let ye have your own weay, an’ devils
if we cross ye. Ye’re not t’ first woman Ah’ve hed to deal with,
missie,” he grumbled.

But Freda did not heed him. She was walking very demurely down the
unlighted passage with Dick, saying never a word now she had got her
own way, and keeping close to the wall as if afraid of her companion.
He felt bound to try to make conversation.

“I’m afraid you’ll find a great change in the place since my aunt
left, Miss Mulgrave. This is only a bachelor’s den now, and you know a
man with no ladies to look after him is not famous for his
orderliness, and in fact--I’m hardly settled here yet you know.”

They were passing through the passage, at right angles with the
entrance-hall, which ran alongside the servants’ quarters. No sounds
of merry talk and laughter now, no glimpses of a roaring fire through
the half-open kitchen door. Nothing but cold and damp, and a smell as
of rooms long shut-up to which the fresh air never came. Freda
shivered, but it was not with cold; it was with horror of the gloom
and loneliness of the place. Poor Dick! They passed into the huge
ante-room; it was entirely unlighted, and Dick turned to offer her his
hand.

“You will hurt yourself, against the--walls. There is nothing else for
you to hurt yourself against,” he added rather bitterly.

She gave him her hand; it was trembling.

“You are not frightened, are you? If you knew what it is to me to
touch a kind hand again, and--and yours----”

He stopped short, putting such a strong constraint upon himself that
Freda felt he was trembling from head to foot.

“Don’t, don’t,” she whispered.

Dick made haste to laugh, as if at a joke. But it was a poor attempt
at merriment and woke hoarse echoes in the old rafters. They had
reached the door of the banqueting-hall.

“You must be prepared for an awfully great change here,” he said, with
assumed cheerfulness. “My aunt wanted the furniture of this room; of
course she didn’t think I should use such a big place all by myself.
But I’ve got used to it, so I stick to it in its bareness. You won’t
mind my showing you in here; the fact is the--the--drawing-room’s
locked up.”

“No-o,” quavered Freda, who knew that all the furniture of the farm
had been seized and sold either before or immediately after Mrs.
Heritage’s departure, “not at all. In fact I would rather.”

“I don’t know about that,” rejoined Dick dubiously as he opened the
door.

All this had not prepared the girl for the desolate sight which met
her eyes. The great hall, which had looked so handsome with its rugs,
its old oak furniture and tapestry hangings, was barer than a prison
ward. A vast expanse of floor, once brightly polished, now scratched
and dirty; rough, bare walls with nothing to hide their nakedness,
formed a picture so dreary that she uttered a low cry. In the huge
fireplace a small wood fire burned low; an old retriever, crippled
with age and rheumatism, wagged his tail feebly without rising at his
master’s approach, and gave a feeble growl for the stranger. A kitchen
chair, with some of the rails missing; a small deal table; an
arrangement of boxes against the wall covered by a man’s ulster; these
formed all the furniture of the huge room. Freda stopped short when
she had advanced a few steps; and burst into tears. Dick affected to
laugh boisterously.

“I didn’t reckon on the effect these rough diggings would have on a
lady,” he said, in a tone of forced liveliness which did not deceive
his guest. “Why, this is a palace to some of the places I’ve stayed in
when in the Highlands. A man doesn’t want many luxuries when he’s
alone. But I suppose it shocks you.”

“Ye-es, it does,” sobbed Freda.

“Come and take a chair. I’m sorry there isn’t much choice; I’ve
ordered a couple of those wicker ones with cushions, but they haven’t
come yet. I’ll sit upon the sofa.”

But Freda knew that the pile of boxes on which he seated himself,
carelessly nursing his knee, was his bed. She had regained command of
herself, however, so she took his only chair, and looked steadily into
the fire. Dick sprang up again immediately, and affected to look about
him with much eagerness.

“What an idiot I am!” he exclaimed. “I believe I’ve forgotten to bring
in any candles; I know I was out of them last night.”

Freda said nothing, but sat very still. The tears were silently
rolling down her cheeks again. She waited while he rummaged in the
table drawer, and opened the door by the fireplace, as if in search.
Then quick as lightning, while his back was turned, she whipped out
from under her long cloak a large neat brown paper parcel, unrolled
it, and took out two candles, which she proceeded to fix on the table
by the primitive schoolgirl fashion of melting the ends at the fire.
Then she took out of the parcel a box of matches, and lit the candles.
In the meantime Dick had returned from his fruitless errand, and was
watching her helplessly from the other side of the table. When she had
finished, Freda dared not look at him, but tried furtively to draw
towards her the tell-tale parcel, out of which several small packages
had rolled. But at last she made a bold dash, and with a shaking voice
said:

“I know better than you think what a man is, left to himself. I
know--you’ve forgotten--to get in--any supper.”

By the time she reached the last words, her voice had dropped to a
guttural whisper. But she was so much excited that it was quite easy
for her to laugh long and naturally, as she opened, one after another,
a series of little packages, and spread them out before his eyes.

“There’s butter and bacon, and a piece of cold beef, and tea, and
sugar, and even bread!” she ended in a shrill scream, with her breath
coming and going in quick sobs.

For, glancing up, she had caught on Dick’s face, which looked more
haggard than ever in the candle light, the terrible look of hunger,
real, famishing hunger. She looked down again quickly at her
provisions.

“Aha!” she cried in a quavering voice, “_I_ know how to take care of
myself! _I_ wasn’t going to trust myself to the tender mercies of a
man!”

Dick said nothing, but she talked on with scarcely a pause.

“You’ve got some plates, I suppose, and one knife and fork at least.
Go and fetch them. Make haste, make haste!”

And she rattled her crutch upon the floor. The old dog was hungry too;
he came sniffing and barking about her, as if he knew that she had
brought help to him and his master. Dick had some plates and knives
and forks, and a broken teapot. These Freda arranged upon the table
with nimble, graceful fingers. For the moment, moved by the unguessed
extremities to which her host was reduced, she had forgotten that the
chief object of her visit was one of warning.

She was recalled to the truth in a startling manner. A handful of
earth and stones was flung up at one of the lofty windows by some one
in the court-yard. Freda sprang forward with a cry, her worst fears
confirmed; as Dick turned hastily from the table, she clung to his arm
and tried to speak. But at first words refused to come.




 CHAPTER XXXI.

When Freda recovered her voice, Dick had broken away from her
restraining touch, and was moving, in a hesitating sort of way,
towards the door.

“Dick?” cried the girl in a frightened whisper, “Listen! I had
forgotten why I came. There are men coming here, perhaps to-night,
policemen from London, I think. Is--he--safe?”

Dick started, and began to tremble violently.

“Great Heavens!” he said in a hoarse voice, “how did _you_ know? How
did _you_ hear? Is it known all over the place?”

“I don’t know,” said Freda sadly, “but I don’t think it is. Barnabas
didn’t seem to know anything about it.”

He stood still for a moment, considering.

“Men coming here, you say! You are sure of that?”

“I am not sure that they are coming to-night, but they will come
sooner or later. One said they knew where he was, and the other asked
the way to Oldcastle Farm.”

Dick turned to her quickly and decisively.

“Do you mind if I leave you here alone for a little while?”

“No-o, but won’t you let me come too? Oh, do let me!”

“I can’t. It would only alarm him the more. You stay here, and if you
hear any one at the front door, don’t take any notice, but come across
the yard as softly as you can; and if you see a light shining through
a grating close to the ground on the other side, throw a stone
through, but don’t cry out.”

“Very well,” said Freda.

As Dick turned again to go, the provisions laid out on the table
caught his eye. With a hotly flushing face, he took up the bread and
cutting off a piece, said, with an awkward laugh:

“We may as well give him some supper, don’t you think so?”

Without a word, Freda loaded him with meat, bread and butter.

“The tea isn’t ready yet,” she whispered. “I’ll make it, and you can
come back for that.”

He nodded and went off, not without trying to utter some husky thanks,
which the girl would not hear. He had one of her candles and a box of
matches in his pocket. Left alone in the great bare room, poor Freda
felt all the womanish fears which the need of active exertion had kept
off for so long. Terror on her father’s account, grief for poor
starving Dick; above all, an awestruck fear that God would not forgive
such black crimes as some of those laid to their account, caused the
bitter tears to roll down her cheeks, while her lips moved in
simple-hearted prayer for them.

Presently the old dog, whom she had been feeding, pricked up his ears
and growled ominously. She sprang to her feet, but at first heard
nothing. Crossing the floor quickly and lightly, she opened the door
and listened. Somebody at the front of the house was knocking. The
summons, however, was neither loud nor imperative, and she crept
through the passages, fancying that it might perhaps be only Barnabas
Ugthorpe who had come back for her. Creeping into the deserted
kitchen, she peeped through the dusty panes of the window, which was
heavily barred. She could just see the outline of a large hooded cart,
and a couple of men standing beside it. At once she knew it was the
cart which had followed Barnabas Ugthorpe’s.

Retreating from the window as noiselessly as she had come while the
intermittent knocking at the front door went on a little louder than
before, she returned through the passage and slipped into the
court-yard. She knew where to look for the grating of which Dick had
spoken, having noticed it in the course of her investigations on the
occasion of her previous visit. It consisted of two iron bars placed
perpendicularly across a small opening in the wall of the very oldest
part of the building--the portion known as “the dungeons.” Freda crept
to the grating and stooped down. Yes, there was a light inside. She
took up a handful of earth and stones, as she had been told to do, and
threw them in with a trembling hand.

Instantly the light was extinguished.

Freda stole away from the grating, afraid that if the front door were
burst open and the police were to find her there, her presence might
afford a clue to her father’s hiding-place. If she got on to the top
of the old outer wall, she thought, she might watch the course of
events without herself being seen. She had hardly reached this post of
vantage when she heard a crash and a noise as of splintering wood, and
a few moments later she saw the black figures of half a dozen men
dispersed about the court-yard below. She was crouching down in the
narrow path that ran along the ruinous old wall, and peeping over the
fringe of dried grass and brambles which grew along the edge. Suddenly
she felt a hand placed roughly over her mouth and eyes, so that she
could neither see nor cry out. After the first moment, she did not
attempt to do either, but remained quite still, not knowing in whose
grasp she was. She heard the man breathing hard, felt that his hands
trembled, and knew that he was in a paroxysm of physical terror. Was
it her father himself? That thought would have kept her quiet, even if
his rough clasp had been rougher still. As it was, the pressure of his
hand caused her teeth to cut through her under-lip.

Crouching still in the same cramped attitude, and still gagged and
blindfolded by the mysterious hand, she presently heard a stealthy
footfall close behind, and then a whispered word or two.

“Let her go,” hissed Dick’s voice peremptorily.

The next moment Freda felt herself free, heard a soft thud on the
earth below, and saw the figure of a man crouching close under the
wall on the outer side.

“Oh, Dick, will he get safe away?” she whispered, breathing the word
close to his ear.

“I don’t know,” answered Dick gloomily. “Sh! Keep quiet.”

But they had already been seen. In a very short time the men in the
yard below had found their way up, and Freda and her companion found
themselves flanked on either side by a stalwart policeman.

“Hallo!” cried a voice from the court-yard, which Freda recognised as
Thurley’s, “have you got him?”

Dick said nothing, but Freda, moved by a sudden, overpowering impulse,
threw her arms round his neck and cried aloud:

“No, no!”

Thurley spoke again, in a hard, altered voice.

“Bring them both down here,” he said sharply.

But Dick would not suffer a strange man’s hand to touch the girl.

“I will take her down,” he said quietly.

And, escorted by a policeman in front and another behind, they made
their way down into the court-yard, and were conducted to John
Thurley, who, with a police-officer in plain clothes, evidently took
the lead in this expedition.

“What are you doing with that young lady?” asked Thurley harshly.

“That is no business of yours,” answered Dick. “By what authority have
you forced your way into my house?”

Thurley was about to answer, but the police-officer with him spoke
instead, in a conciliatory tone.

“You see, sir, we’ve got a search-warrant.”

And he produced a document at which Dick glanced hastily.

“Very well,” he said shortly. “But you won’t find any one here!”

“I hope not, sir,” said the man, touching his hat and stepping back.

Meanwhile Thurley, a good deal agitated by the discovery of Freda’s
presence, was trying to persuade her to let him send her back to the
Abbey at once. She refused simply but firmly; and turning her back
upon him, went straight to Dick, who had withdrawn a little from the
group. Thurley went up to him.

“If you have any of the feelings of a man,” he said, “which perhaps is
not likely, you will persuade this young lady to go back to her
friends.”

“I am with one of them now,” cried Freda, clinging to Dick’s arm.

“I think,” said Dick, whose deep voice was trembling, “that you had
better go back to your manhunting, and not insult people who have done
you no harm.”

“I have a right to interfere on behalf of this lady. I love her.”

“So do I,” said Dick in a low voice.

“_You!_”

“And Dick has more right to say so than you,” broke in Freda’s clear
voice, shaking with feeling, “for I love him!”

Dick pressed her arm against his side, but he did not speak. Neither
did John Thurley, but he reeled back a step, as if he had received a
blow. Then, with a shrug of the shoulders which was meant to be
contemptuous, but which was only crestfallen and disgusted, he turned
away and left the young fellow with Freda, while he rejoined the
search-party.

Neither Dick nor his companion spoke for some minutes. In all the
misery of this strange situation, with the messengers of the law
hunting high and low around them for a man who had incurred the
penalty of death, the new and strange delight each felt of touching a
loving hand, deadened the anxiety and the pain. Each felt the
intoxication of the knowledge that each was loved. Dick spoke first;
he looked down into the girl’s face and said gently:

“I am afraid you are cold, dear.”

She shook her head.

“No, no, no,” she whispered, “if they hear you say that, they will
take me away.”

He led her back into the house, and wished to place her in the one
chair by the fireplace in the banqueting-hall. But she would not take
it.

“Eat,” she whispered. “If they find you having your supper quietly
they will be more likely to believe that there is no one here.”

This was undeniably a good suggestion; and Dick took advantage of it.
But hungry as he was, having indeed been half-starved of late, he
would have eaten little but for Freda’s insistence. She waited on him
herself, cutting bread and butter, making the tea, hovering about like
a good spirit. He, however, having hungered for more than bread during
these solitary latter days, would have neglected the food before him
to watch her tender eyes, to kiss her little hands. But whenever he
turned from the table, he felt a peremptory touch on his shoulder, and
heard a stamp of Freda’s crutch and her commanding voice saying:

“Eat, eat!”

So the minutes passed by, and their spirits began to rise. For,
although they did not tell each other so in so many words, both felt
that on this great happiness which was stealing upon them the shadow
of a great misfortune could not come.

When he had finished his supper, Dick drew his one chair to the
fireside, made Freda sit in it, and curled himself up on the ground at
her feet.

“Isn’t it strange,” said the girl, “that they leave us alone so long?
You don’t think they have gone away, do you?”

“No such luck, I’m afraid.”

“Hadn’t we better go out and see what they are doing?”

“Why should we leave off being happy any sooner then we need?”

“What do you mean, Dick? You don’t think they’ve--caught him?”
whispered she in alarm.

“No, and I don’t think they will catch him. But when we leave this
room we shall be just strangers for the rest of our lives.”

“But we shan’t! Oh, Dick, do you think I would ever treat you as a
stranger?”

“You won’t be able to help yourself,” said he, looking up at her with
a dreary smile. “You are so ridiculously ignorant of the world, little
one, and you’ve been so neglected since you’ve been here that I don’t
know how to explain the smallest thing to you without frightening you.
But I assure you that after this escapade to-night you will never be
allowed to go out by yourself again.”

“Escapade!”

“Yes. That is what you will hear your expedition called, and you will
never be allowed to make another. Quite right too. If you had been
left to run wild here, you would have been spoilt, and you would have
begun to mix up right with wrong like the rest of us.”

“I don’t think so,” said Freda gently. “I should have been told the
difference.”

“But who was there to tell you?”

“God would have told me.”

There was a pause, and then Dick said:

“You’re a Roman Catholic, aren’t you?”

“No, I was not allowed to be one.”

“Well, what are you then?”

Freda looked puzzled, and rather grieved.

“I don’t know, I’m sure.”

“If you’re religious, you must belong to some religion, you know.”

“Well, I’m a Christian. Isn’t that enough religion?”

“I’ve never met any sort of Christian who would admit that it was.”

Freda sighed.

“I am afraid mine is a religion all to myself then. But somehow,” and
she lowered her voice reverently, “I don’t believe it makes any
difference to God.”

“I don’t suppose it does,” said Dick gently. “I think,” he went on
presently, “judging by its effect on you, I would rather have your
religion than any other.”

“I wish you would, then,” she rejoined eagerly. “For then you could
never do wrong things and think they were right.”

“How shall I begin?”

“Go to church.”

“What church?”

“It doesn’t matter. Sister Agnes used to say that in every church in
the world there was some good spoken to those who wanted to hear it.”

“I wonder what good Sister Agnes would have heard from old Staynes?”

“Something, you may be sure. Or, how would his wife be such a noble
woman?”

More pleased by her ingenuousness than convinced by her arguments,
Dick promised that he would go to church, to the delight of Freda, who
thought she had secured a great moral victory.

They had forgotten the police, who were searching the house; they had
forgotten the jealous Thurley; when again the old dog, half opening
his eyes, gave a low growl of warning. Dick jumped up and faced the
door. There was no enemy, but Barnabas Ugthorpe, wearing a very grave
and troubled face.

“What is it? Speak out, man,” cried Dick impatiently.

“Let me teake t’ little leady aweay first, mester.”

Dick staggered.

“They haven’t--caught him, Barnabas?”

“Ah’m afreaid so.”

Low as he spoke, Freda caught the words. Overcome with self-reproach
for having momentarily forgotten her father’s danger, with misery at
his unhappy plight, she tottered across the room towards the farmer,
who, lifting her up in his arms as if she had been a child, carried
her straight out of the room, to the front door of the farm-house.




 CHAPTER XXXII.

The covered cart, in which the police had come, had now disappeared.
Beside Barnabas Ugthorpe’s cart was a gig, with John Thurley standing
at the horse’s head.

“This way,” said Thurley in a peremptory tone, as Barnabas was
carrying the girl to his own cart, “I’m going back to the Abbey and
can take Miss Mulgrave with me.”

Freda shuddered. The farmer said a soothing word in her ear, and
without heeding Mr. Thurley’s directions, placed her on the seat on
which she had come.

“If it’s t’ seame to you, sir, Ah’ll tak’ t’ leady mysen.”

“Pray, are you the young lady’s guardian?”

“Ah’ve as mooch reght to t’ neame as you, sir,” answered Barnabas
surlily. And without waiting for further parley, the farmer got up in
his seat and drove away.

Freda and her driver made their way back to the Abbey almost in
silence. All that he would tell her about the capture of the murderer
was that “t’ poor fellow was caught in a field at back o’ t’ house.”

Mrs. Bean was waiting at the lodge-gates for her, and Freda saw by the
housekeeper’s white face that she had heard the result of the
expedition.

“Oh, Mrs. Bean, it is too horrible; I can’t bear it!” sobbed the girl,
throwing her arms round Nell’s neck.

But the housekeeper pushed her off with a “Sh!” and a frightened look
round, and Freda saw that John Thurley was standing in the deep shadow
under the gateway. With a sudden cry the girl stepped back, and would
have run away to Barnabas, whose cart was just moving off, if Thurley
had not started forward, led her within the gates with a strong but
gentle hand, and closed them behind her. He would not let her go until
they had reached the dining-room; then he apologised rather brusquely,
and asked her to sit down.

“I can hear what you have to say standing,” she said in a low,
breathless voice.

“Why are you so changed to me? Why did you run away from me just now?”
asked Thurley, distressed and irritated. “It is by your invitation I
am here; you have only to say you are tired of my presence, and late
as it is I will go out and try to find some other lodging.”

The instincts of a gentlewoman were too strong in Freda for her not to
be shocked at the idea of showing incivility to a guest, however ill
he might have requited her hospitality. She overcame the abhorrence
she felt at his conduct sufficiently to say:

“You are very welcome to stay here as long as you please, Mr. Thurley.
If my conduct towards you has changed, I hope you will own that it was
not without reason.”

“But I think it is,” said he stoutly. “It’s all to your interest that
this nest of smugglers should be cleared out; and as for a certain
cowardly criminal whom we have had to take up for something worse,
why, _you_ have no reason, beyond your natural kindness of heart, to
be sorry he has met his deserts.”

Without answering him, and with much dignity, Freda turned to leave
the room. But the words he hastened to add arrested her attention.

“To-morrow I have to return to London. Now as there may be scenes in
this place not fit for a lady to witness, in the course of breaking up
this gang, I intend to take you away with me, and to put you under
proper care.”

“Will you send me back to the convent?” asked Freda eagerly.

John Thurley, who had a strong dislike to “popery” frowned.

“No,” he said decidedly, “I can’t do that. But I will undertake to
have you well cared for.”

Freda paused one moment at the door, looking very thoughtful.

“Thank you,” she then said simply, as, with her eyes on the floor, she
turned the handle; “good-night!”

There was something in her manner which made John Thurley,
inexperienced as he was in women’s ways, suspect that she meant to
trick him. Therefore, from the moment she left her room on the
following morning, she felt that she was watched. Mrs. Bean had
evidently gone over to the enemy, being indeed convinced that John
Thurley’s plan was a good and kind one. When Freda announced her
intention of going to church, the housekeeper said she would go with
her. Freda made no objection, though as Mrs. Bean never went to
church, her intention was evident. Old Mrs. Staynes was delighted to
see the girl, and thanked her for coming.

“Why,” said Freda in surprise, “I should have come long ago, only I
didn’t know you, and I was afraid.”

“Two blessings in one day!” whispered the little woman ingenuously.

And she glanced towards one of the free pews, where Freda, with a
throb of delight, saw Dick’s curly head bending over his hat.

Only once, throughout the entire service, did Freda dare to meet his
eyes, although they were, as she knew, fixed upon her all the time.
When she did so, she was so much shocked that the tears rushed into
her eyes. Pale, haggard, deathly, he scarcely looked like a living
man; while the great yearning that burned in his blue eyes seemed to
pierce straight to her own heart. She had to bite her lips to keep
back the cry that rose to them: “Dick, Dick!”

When the service was over, he disappeared before the rest of the
congregation had moved from their seats. Poor Freda tottered as she
went out, and had to lean for support on Mrs. Bean. She had forgotten
that the story of her father’s crime and capture would be likely to be
in every one’s mouth that morning; the whispering groups gathering in
the churchyard suddenly woke her to this fact, and stung her to put
forth all her strength to reach the Abbey quickly. John Thurley met
her at the gates.

“You will have to make haste with your packing,” he said abruptly but
not unkindly, “our train goes at four.”

“I will see to that,” said Nell.

Freda said nothing at all. She passed the other two, and went into the
house, and appeared, in due time, quiet and composed, at the
dinner-table.

When the meal was over, Thurley told her to go and put on her things.
She rose obediently and left the room; but instead of going to her own
apartment, she went to the library, and finding the secret door as she
had left it, closed, but not locked, had little difficulty in opening
it, and in securing it behind her. Now Thurley knew of this door,
since he had seen Dick come through it; so to secure herself from
pursuit in case he should guess where she had gone, Freda closed the
trap-door at the head of the narrow staircase, and bolted it securely.
Then, running down the second staircase, she locked herself into the
room where her father had made himself known to her, and as a last
precautionary measure, let herself down the rope ladder into the
cellar beneath.

He must go to London without her now!

The triumphant thought had scarcely flashed through her mind when,
with a start, she became aware that she was not alone. A man was
creeping stealthily from the opposite side of the room towards her.




 CHAPTER XXXIII.

Freda was by this time getting too much accustomed to the shifts and
surprises of the smugglers’ haunt to be greatly alarmed by the
discovery that she was not alone in the underground chamber. Besides,
her indignation against Thurley gave her a fellow-feeling with even
the most lawless of the men he had been sent to spy upon. So she cried
out in a clear voice:

“It is I, Freda Mulgrave; I have come down here to escape being
carried off to London by John Thurley. Who are you?”

The man raised to the level of his face a dark lantern, turning its
rays full upon himself. The girl, in spite of the fact that she was
prepared to keep her feelings well under control, gave a cry of joy.

It was her father.

Freda stretched out her arms to him, trembling, frightened, crying
with misery and with joy.

“You have escaped!” she whispered. “Escaped! Oh, what can I do to help
you? to save you?”

Captain Mulgrave laughed, but with a quiver in his voice, as he
smoothed her bright hair.

“Calm down, child,” he said kindly. “I--I want to talk to you. Come
with me to the ruins! I want to get out to the daylight, where I can
see your little face.”

“But, father, John Thurley may still be about. He wanted to take me
away to London this afternoon, and I came down here to be safe.
Perhaps----”

“Never mind him. He shan’t take you anywhere unless you want to go.
Come with me.”

Surprised by the tone he took, which was not that of a hunted man,
Freda followed her father in silence along the underground passage,
and up the steps into the ruined church. Captain Mulgrave then helped
his daughter up the broken steps which led to the window in the west
front, and they sat down on the old stones and looked out to the sea.
A conviction which had been growing in Freda’s mind as they came
along, brightening her eyes and making her heart beat wildly, became
stronger than ever when he deliberately chose this spot, in full view
of any one who might stroll through the ruins. It was a grey, cold
day, with a drizzle of rain falling; the sea was all shades of murky
green and brown, with little crests of foam appearing and
disappearing; the sea-birds flew in and out restlessly about the worn
grey arches, screaming and flapping their wide wings; the wind blew
keen and straight from the northwest, but Freda did not know that she
was bitterly cold, and that her lips and fingers were blue, for her
heart and her head were on fire.

“Father,” she whispered, crouching near him and looking into his face,
“forgive me for what I thought. Oh, I see it was not true, and I could
die of joy!”

She was shaking from head to foot, panting with excitement. Captain
Mulgrave looked affectionately into her glowing face.

“Why, child,” he said, “there wasn’t a man or woman in England who
wouldn’t have condemned me! Why should you blame yourself. When
Barnabas Ugthorpe caught me, as he thought, red-handed, I saw that
nothing but a miracle could save my neck; if I lived, it was sure to
leak out. So I died. And they buried the murdered man instead of me.”

“But father, the jury--were they all in the secret!”

“No. They viewed a live body instead of a dead one. I had a
beautifully painted wound on my breast, and I lay in the coffin till I
was as cold as the dead; and I took care that the jury shouldn’t be
warm enough to want to hang about long, or to have much sensitiveness
of touch left if they were inclined to be curious.”

“But, father, wouldn’t it have been less risk just to go away?”

“No, for my disappearance would have told against me at the inevitable
time, when Barnabas should babble out his secret. I thought, too, that
my supposed death would put the real murderer off his guard, and that
I might be able to track him down in the end.”

“Did you know who it was?” she asked in a whisper, after a pause.

“I guessed--and guessed correctly.”

“Who was it?”

“Bob Heritage.”

“And they have caught him?”

“Last night, hiding about the old farm-house. I went away yesterday in
my yacht, because I had got wind of the search, and thought they were
after _me_. This morning I came sneaking back to find out whether you
were safe, and Crispin was on the scaur with the news.”

Freda listened to these details, conscious, though she would not have
owned it, of a secret disappointment in the midst of her joy at
learning her father’s innocence. In spite of the kindness he showed
when he was with her, she was to him only an afterthought. He had made
no provision for her safety yesterday, left her no directions for her
protection in the time of trouble which was coming. One other
consideration grieved her deeply: the shame and distress which had
been lifted from her shoulders now fell upon those of poor Dick. These
thoughts caused her to drop into a silence which her father made no
attempt to break. While they were still sitting side by side without
exchanging a word, they heard the click of the gate behind, and a
man’s voice saying “Thank you” to the lodge-keeper. It was John
Thurley.

Captain Mulgrave and he caught sight of each other at the same moment,
and the former at once came down. The meeting between the two men was
a strange one. Each held out his hand, but with diffidence. Thurley
spoke first.

“Captain Mulgrave,” said he, “I am indeed sorry that I should have
been the means of bringing justice down upon you. At the same time I
must say I should have thought that a man who had served his country
so well would be the last to have any hand in defrauding her.”

Captain Mulgrave laughed harshly.

“‘My country’ rated my services so highly that in return for them they
turned me off like a dog. ‘My country’ made me an outlaw by her
treatment; let ‘my country’ take the blame of my reprisals.”

“I should have expected more magnanimity from you.”

“To every man his own virtues; none of the meeker ones are among
mine,” said the other grimly. “I have been disgraced and left to eat
my heart out for fifteen years. And I tell you I think the debt
between my country and me is still all on her side.”

“Perhaps your country begins to think so too. At any rate the
government, I feel sure, would be reluctant to prosecute you, as it
would have done anybody else in your case. For it would not be only
smuggling against you, Captain Mulgrave; it would be conspiracy.”

“The government knows, as well as I do, that prosecution of me would
lead to unpleasant inquiries and reminiscences. The same party is in
now that was in at the time of my disgrace; and as we are on the eve
of a general election, my case would make a very good handle for the
opposite side to use.”

“Well, don’t count on that too much. You can’t deny it is a serious
offence to form such an organisation for illegal purposes as you have
done. This place must be cleared out, the underground passages (which
I know all about) blocked up; and if you don’t find it convenient to
leave England for a time, I am afraid you’ll find that your past
services won’t save you from arrest.”

“The organisation is better worked than you think; my going away will
not break it up. There’s another good head in it.”

“If you mean Crispin Bean’s, it is a good head indeed. On finding,
this morning, that the game was up, he came to me and gave me full
details of the band, its working, names, everything.”

Captain Mulgrave was not only astonished, he was incredulous.

“The d----l he did!” he muttered.

And it was not until John Thurley had read him out some notes he had
taken down during Crispin’s confession, that the master of Sea-Mew
Abbey would believe that his lieutenant had gone over to the enemy.
Then he shrugged his shoulders and chose a cigar very carefully.

“Will you have one?” he said, offering the case to Thurley. “They
smoke none the worse for being contraband.”

John Thurley declined.

“Ah, well,” continued the other, “I bear you no ill-will for causing
my expatriation, especially as in doing so you have cleared my name of
a charge I saw no means of disproving. By-the-bye, why didn’t you
speak out sooner about the murder?”

“Because I had no very strong evidence myself. I put the case in the
hands of the police, and detectives were sent down here who discovered
that a man on horseback had come from Oldcastle Farm on the day of the
murder, that he had tied up his horse in a shed at the bottom of the
hill, just outside the town, and had been seen with a revolver in his
hand making his way across the field to the spot where Barnabas
Ugthorpe found the body. The man was identified as Robert Heritage; it
was found out that he had just learnt the servant’s intention to
betray his master’s secrets to you. This is evidence enough to try the
man on, if not to hang him.”

“And the cousin, what becomes of him?”

This was the question Freda had been dying to ask, and she drew near,
clasping her hands tightly in her anxiety to learn Dick’s fate.

“I don’t quite know. He seems to have been used as a tool from a very
early age by his good-for-nothing cousin. It’s an exceedingly awkward
business, especially for me, as I am distantly connected with the
family, and I feel for the poor lady very much. I must look into their
affairs, and try to get the farm let for her benefit. As for this
Dick, he had better emigrate.”

“He won’t do that,” interrupted Freda quickly.

“He would rather starve than leave his old home!”

Both gentlemen turned in surprise, for the girl spoke with feeling and
fire. John Thurley looked hurt and angry, her father only amused.

“What do you know about the young rascal’s sentiments?” asked the
latter.

“I only know what he told me,” she answered simply, with a blush.

There was a pause in the talk for a few minutes. Then Captain Mulgrave
said:

“We might go over to the farm this afternoon, and see the fellow.”

The other assented without alacrity. There was another person to be
provided for, whose welfare interested him more than that of a hundred
young men.

“What about your daughter?” he asked in a constrained voice.

“Oh, Freda’s going back to the convent. You have always wanted to,
haven’t you, child?”

“Yes, father,” answered the girl, who had, however, suddenly fallen
a-trembling at the suggestion.

“I--I could have provided for her better than that, if--if she had
chosen,” said John Thurley, blushing as shyly as a girl, and finding a
difficulty in getting his words out.

“Eh! _You?_ cried Captain Mulgrave. Do you mean that you thought of
marrying my little lame girl? Here, Freda, what do you say to that?”

Freda blushed and kept her eyes on the ground.

“I say, father, that I am very much obliged to Mr. Thurley, but I
would rather go back to the convent, if you please.”

“You hear that, Mr. Thurley? I told you so. The child was born for a
nun--takes to the veil as a duck does to water.”

But John Thurley did not feel so sure of that, and he looked troubled.

When, later in the day, the dogcart stood at the door waiting for the
two gentlemen, they found Freda standing beside it in her outdoor
dress.

“What, little one, are you going with us?” asked Captain Mulgrave.

“Yes, if you will please take me, father.”

“Well, as you’re going to see so little more of the world, I suppose
you must be humoured. Jump up in front. Mr. Thurley, will you drive,
or shall I?”

“You drive one way, and I the other, if you will let me.”

“All right. You’ll take the reins coming back then.”

And Freda saw by the expression of John Thurley’s face that he was too
much annoyed to wish to sit by her just then.




 CHAPTER XXXIV.

It was getting dark when the dogcart drove up to Oldcastle Farm. The
front door which had been partly destroyed by the forcible entry of
the police was open, and both gentlemen were inclined to the
conclusion that the lonely tenant of the house had left it. They were
confirmed in this opinion when, on ringing the bell, they found no
notice taken of their summons.

“Poor lad’s turned it up,” said Captain Mulgrave turning to Thurley
with a nod.

“It looks like it.”

They tied the horse up to an iron ring in the farm-house wall provided
for such purposes, and went inside, leaving Freda, who now hung back a
little, to come in or not, as she pleased. As soon as the two
gentlemen had gone down the entrance hall, Freda slipped in after
them, and waited to see which way they would turn. After a glance into
the rooms to right and left, they went through into the court-yard.
Taking for granted that Dick had at last followed the only possible
course of abandoning the old shell of what had been his boyhood’s
home, they were going, by Thurley’s demand, to explore those recesses
where the smuggled goods had formerly been stored.

Freda knew better than they. Tripping quickly through the empty rooms
and passages, she reached the door of the banqueting-hall, but was
suddenly seized with a fit of shyness when she heard the sound of a
man coughing. However, she conquered this feeling sufficiently to open
the door under cover of the noise Dick made in poking the fire, and
then she stood just inside, shy again. Dick felt the draught from the
open door, turned and saw her. He was sitting in his own chair by the
fire, with the old dog still at his feet. The shadows were already
black under the high windows on the side of the court-yard, but the
light from the west was still strong enough for Freda to see a flash
of pleasure come into his face as he caught sight of her.

“You have a bad cold,” she said in a constrained voice, coming shyly
forward as he almost ran to meet her.

“Yes, there’s a broken window up there,” said he, glancing upwards,
“and--and the curtains the spiders make are not very thick.”

“Poor Dick!”

She said it in such a heartfelt tone of commiseration that the tears
came into his eyes, and when she saw them, a sympathetic mist came
over her eyes too.

“They think you have gone away,” she said in a whisper, glancing up at
the windows which overlooked the court-yard, “but I knew better!”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“My father and Mr. Thurley.”

“Your father! I didn’t know that he was alive till yesterday. What
will he do? There will be all sorts of difficulties about the trick he
played.”

“He will have to go away. But he seems rather glad; he is tired of
living up here, he says.”

She spoke rather sadly.

“And you?” said Dick.

“Oh, I’m not tired of it. I think the old Abbey-church the most
beautiful place in the world. I should like to spend my life here.”

“And will you go away with him?”

“No, he is going to take me back to the convent.”

“What! For ever? For altogether? Will you be a nun?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like that?” asked Dick very earnestly, “to go and waste your
youth and your prettiness, shut up with a lot of sour old women who
were too ugly to get themselves husbands?”

Freda laughed a little.

“Oh, you don’t know anything about it,” she said, shaking her head,
“they are not at all like that.”

“But do you seriously like the thought of going back as much as you
liked the thought of being a nun before you left the convent?”

There was a long pause. At last:

“No-o,” said Freda very softly. “But--it’s better than what I should
have had to do if I hadn’t chosen that!”

“What was that?”

“Marry Mr. Thurley.”

Dick started and grew very red.

“Oh, yes, it is better than that, much better,” he assented heartily.

“Yes, I--I thought you’d think so.”

She said this because they were both getting rather flurried and
excited, and she felt a little awkward. Both were leaning against the
table, and tapping their fingers on it. Something therefore had to be
said, but in a moment she felt it was not the right thing. For Dick
began to breathe hard, and to grow restless, as he said quickly:

“You see it’s not as if some young fellow of a suitable age, whom
you--whom you--rather liked, could ever have a chance of--of asking
you to be his wife. That would be a different thing altogether.”

“Ah, yes, if I were not lame! If I could ride, and row, and--and sail
a boat!” said Freda with a quavering voice.

“No, no, just as you are, the sweetest, the dearest little----”

He stopped short, got up abruptly, and rushed at the fire, which he
poked so vigorously that it went out. Then, quite subdued, he turned
again to Freda, and holding his hands behind him, as he stood in a
defiant attitude with his back to the fireplace, he asked abruptly:

“Would you like to know what I’ve been making up my mind to do, during
these days that I’ve been living here like a rat in a hole?”

“Ye-es,” said Freda without looking up.

“Well, you’ll be shocked. At least, perhaps you won’t be, but anybody
else would be. I’m going to turn farm-labourer, and here, in the very
neighbourhood where I was brought up a gentleman, as they call it.”

The girl raised her head quickly, and looked him straight in the face,
with shining, straightforward eyes.

“I think it is very brave of you,” she said in a high, clear voice.

“Hundreds of well educated young fellows,” he went on, flushed by her
encouragement, “go out to Manitoba, and Texas, and those places, and
do that or anything to keep themselves, and nobody thinks the less of
them. Why shouldn’t I do the same here, in my own country, where I
know something about the way of farming, which will all come in
by-and-by? You see, I know my family’s disgraced, through my--my
unfortunate cousin’s escapade; for even if it’s brought in
manslaughter in a quarrel, as some of them say, he’ll get penal
servitude. But, disgrace or no disgrace, I can’t bring myself to leave
the old haunts; and as I’ve no money to farm this place, I’ll get work
either here, if it lets, or somewhere near, if it doesn’t. I’ve made
up my mind.”

The obstinate look which Freda had seen on his face before came out
more strongly than ever as he said these words. During the pause that
followed, they heard voices and footsteps approaching, and then
Captain Mulgrave opened the door. The breaking up of the organisation
he had worked so long seemed already to have had a good moral effect
on him, for he spoke cheerfully as he turned to John Thurley, who
followed him.

“Here’s the hermit! but oh, who’s this in the anchorite’s cell with
him? Why, it’s the nun!”

John Thurley looked deeply annoyed. He had an Englishman’s natural
feeling that he was very much the superior of a man who looked
underfed; and it was this haggard-faced young fellow who, as he
rightly guessed, had been the chief cause of the failure of his own
suit. Captain Mulgrave’s good-humored amusement over the discovery of
the young people together woke in him, therefore, no responsive
feeling. Before they were well in the room, Freda had slipped out of
it, through the door by the fireplace, and was making her way up to
the outer wall. Dick was at first inclined to be annoyed at the
interruption; but when Captain Mulgrave explained the object of his
visit and that of his companion, the young man’s joy at the project
they came to suggest was unbounded. This was the setting up of himself
to farm the land, for the benefit of his aunt, to whom it had been
left for life.

“Mr. Thurley is a connection of hers and wishes to see some provision
made for her. So, as I felt sure you would be glad to do your best for
her too,” continued Captain Mulgrave, “and as you have some knowledge
of farming, I suggested setting you up in a small way as farmer here,
and extending operations if you proved successful. How would that meet
your views?”

Dick was overwhelmed; he could scarcely answer coherently.

“I never expected such happiness, sir,” he stammered, in a low voice.
“I would rather follow the plough on this farm than be a millionaire,
anywhere else. Why,” he went on after a moment’s pause, in a tone of
eager delight, “I might--marry!”

He flushed crimson as Captain Mulgrave began to laugh.

“Well,” said the latter, “I don’t know that you could do better. You
were always a good lad at heart, and my quarrel was never with you,
but with your cousin. He used your services for his own advantage, but
I must do you the justice to say it was never for yours. So find a
wife if you can; I think you’re the sort to treat a woman well.”

Dick took the suggestion literally, and acted upon it at once. Leaving
the two other men together in the darkening room, with some sort of
excuse about seeing after the house, he went outside into the
court-yard, and soon spied out Freda on the ruined outer wall. He was
beside her in a few moments, looking down at her with a radiant face.

“I’m going to stay here--on the farm--to manage it myself--to be
master here.”

“Oh, Dick!” was all the girl could say, in a breathless way.

“It sounds too good for belief, doesn’t it? But it’s true. That old
Thurley must be a good fellow, for he’s going to help to start me.
It’s for my aunt’s benefit he’s doing it; he’s a connection of hers.”

“Oh, Dick, if you had had a fairy’s wish, you couldn’t have chosen
more, could you?”

There was a pause before Dick answered, and during that pause he began
to get nervous. At last he said:

“There is one more thing. Your father said----”

A pause.

“Well, what did my father say?”

“He said--I might marry. Is--it true?”

And it took Dick very few minutes to find out that it was.

 THE END.




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ back-door/back door,
farmhouse/farm-house, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add TOC.

Punctuation fixes: sentences missing periods, quotation mark pairings,
etc.

[Chapter XIII]

Change “in which the jury had _veiwed_ her father’s body” to _viewed_.

[Chapter XXXI]

“and the other asked the way to _Oldastle_ Farm.” to _Oldcastle_.

“a good suggestion; and Dick took advantage _af_ it.” to _of_.

[End of text]







        
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