Fifty-Two Stories For Girls Part 45

"I am not exactly surprised," he said at length, when he had heard the story; "something like this was bound to occur one day or other, and I cannot be too thankful that nothing has happened to injure my dear brave girl, or any of the household. Patty, I have felt so convinced of something dreadful happening during one of my unavoidable absences from home that I have made arrangements with an old friend of mine in town to lease this place to him for three years."

"And when does he come?" asked Patty breathlessly.

"Next month. He is going to make it a fishing- and shooting-box, and have bachelor friends to stay with him. So, my dear, we all clear out in a month's time."

Patty gave a long-drawn sigh. Her father did not know whether it was one of pleasure or regret.

"We can come back if we like after the three years," he whispered.

"I am glad we are going just now," she whispered back. "That pedlar's eyes haunt me, and they are all desperate men."

These words were sufficient to make Colonel Bingham hurry on his arrangements, so that before three weeks were over he and his whole household were on their way to their new home.

As they got out of the train Colonel Bingham turned to Patty. "You and I will drive to Lady Glendower's, where we shall stay the night."

"Oh, dad, darling dad, don't take me there. Aunt Glendower won't like a hoyden to visit her."

"She will like to welcome a brave girl," answered her father quietly.

But as Patty still shrank away from the thought he added:

"I have told her all that has happened, and she herself wrote asking me to bring you, and I promised I would."

Rose met her with soft, clinging kisses, and then Lady Glendower folded her in an embrace such as Patty had not thought her capable of giving.

"I am proud of my brave niece," she whispered. "Patty, go upstairs with Rose, and get Celine to measure you for your ball-dress. I am going to give another ball next month, and you are to be the heroine."

Under skilful treatment Timothy Smith recovered his usual health, though the injury to his hand and knee made him a cripple for the rest of his life. The trial was another terrible experience for Patty, and f.a.n.n.y thought she would have died when she saw the prisoners stand forward in the dock to receive sentence. "Five years' penal servitude," said the judge, and Patty sometimes shudders to think that the five years are nearly up.

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.

BY F. B. FORESTER.

"No, sir," the old keeper said reflectively. "I don't know no ghost stories; none as you'd care to hear, that is. But I could tell you of something that happened in these parts once, and it was as strange a thing as any ghost story I ever heard tell on."

I had spent the morning on the moor, grouse shooting, and mid-day had brought me for an hour's welcome rest to the lonely cottage, where the old superannuated keeper, father to the stalwart velvet-jacketed Hercules who had acted as my guide throughout the forenoon, lived from year's end to year's end with his son and half-a-dozen dogs for company.

The level beams of the glowing August sun bathed in a golden glow the miles of purple moorland lying round us; air and scenery were good to breathe and to look on; and now, as the three of us sat on a turf seat outside the cottage door enjoying the soft sleepy inaction of the afternoon, a question of mine concerning the folk-lore of the district, after which, hardened materialist though I called myself, I was conscious of a secret hankering, had drawn the foregoing remark from the patriarchal lips.

"Let's hear it, by all means," said I, lighting my pipe and settling myself preparatory to listening. A slight grunt, resembling a stifled laugh, came from Ben the keeper.

"You'll have to mind, sir," he put in, a twinkle in his eye. "Dad believes what he's agoing to tell you, every word of it. It's gospel truth to him."

"Ay, that I do," responded the old man warmly. "And why shouldn't I?

Didn't I see it with my own eyes? And seein's believin', ain't it?"

"You arouse my curiosity," I said. "Let us have the story by all means, and if it is a personal experience, so much the better."

"Well, sir," began the old man, evidently gratified by these signs of interest, and casting a triumphant glance at his son, "what I've got to tell you don't belong to this time of day, of course. When I says I was a little chap of six years old or thereabouts, and that I'll be eighty-five come Michaelmas, you'll understand that it must have been a tidy sight of years ago.

"Father, he was keeper on these moors here, same as his son's been after him, and as _his_ son"--with a glance of fatherly pride at the stalwart young fellow beside him--"is now, and will be for many years to come, please G.o.d. Him and mother and me, the three of us, lived together in just such another cottage as this one, across t'other side of the moor, out Farnington way. The railway runs past there now, over the very place the cottage stood on, I believe; but no one so much as dreamt o'

railways, time I talk on. Not a road was near, and all around there was nothin' but the moors stretching away for miles, all purple ling and heather, with not a living soul nearer than Wharton, and that was a good twelve miles away. It was pretty lonely for mother, o' course, during the day; but she was a brave woman, and when dad come home at night, never a word would she let on to tell him how right down scared she got at times and how mortally sick she felt of hearing the sound of her own voice.

"'Been pretty quiet for you, Polly?' dad would say at night sometimes, when the three of us would be sitting round the fire, with the flame dancing and shining on the wall and making black shadows in all the corners.

"'Ye-es, so, so,' mother would answer, kind of grudging like, and then she'd start telling him what she'd been about all day, or something as I'd said or done, so as to turn his attention, you see, sir. And as a woman can gen'rally lead a man off on whatever trail she likes to get his nose on dad would never think no more about it; and as for mother and me being that lonely, when he and the dogs were all away, why, I don't suppose the thought of it ever entered his head. So, what with her never complaining, and that, dad grew easier in his mind, and once or twice, when he'd be away at the Castle late in the afternoon, he'd even stay there overnight.

"Well, sir, one day when dad comes home to get his dinner he tells mother as how there's a lot of gentlemen come down from London for the shooting, and as he'd got orders to be on hand bright and early next morning,--the meaning of that being that he'd have to spend the night at the Castle. Mother didn't say much; 'twasn't her way to carry on when she knew a thing couldn't be helped, and dad went on talking.

"'To-morrow's quarter-day, Polly, and you've got our rent all right for the agent when he comes. Put this along wi' it, la.s.s, it's Tom Regan's, and he's asked me to hand it over for him and save the miles of walking.'

"I don't know what come to mother, whether something warned her, or what, but she give a sort of jump as dad spoke.

"'Oh, Jim,' says she, all in a twitter, 'you're never going to leave all that money here, and you away, and the child and me all alone. Can't you--can't you leave one of the dogs?'

"Dad stared at her. 'No,' he says, 'I can't, more's the pity. They're all wanted to-morrow, and I've sent them on to the Castle. Why, Polly, la.s.s, what's come to you? I've never known you take on like this before.'

"Then mother, seeing how troubled and uneasy he looked, plucked up heart and told him, trying to laugh, never to mind her--she had only been feeling a bit low, and it made her timid like. But dad didn't laugh in answer, only said very grave that if he'd ha' known she felt that way, he'd have took good care she wasn't ever left alone overnight. This should be the last time, he'd see to that, and anyhow he'd take the rent money with him and wouldn't leave it to trouble her. Then he kissed her, and kissed me, and went off, striding away over the moors towards Farnington--the sunset way I called it, 'cause the sun set over there; and I can see him big and tall like Ben here, moving away among the heather till we lost him at the dip of the moor. And I mind how, just before we saw no more of him, he pulled up and looked back, as if mother's words stuck to him, somehow, and he couldn't get them out of his mind.

"Mother seemed queer and anxious all that afternoon. Long before dusk she called me in from playing in the bit of garden in front of the door, and shut and barred it closely, not so much as letting me stand outside to watch the sunset, as I always liked to do. It was getting dark already, the shadows had begun to fall black and gloomy all round the cottage, and the fire was sending queer dancing gleams flickering up the wall, when I hears a queer, scratching, whining noise at the door.

"Mother was putting out the tea-cups, and she didn't hear it at first.

But I, sitting in front of the fire, heard it well enough, and I tumbled off my stool and ran to the door to get it open, for I thought I knew what it was. But mother had pulled the bar across at the top and I couldn't stir it.

"'There's something at the door that wants to come in,' I says, pulling at it.

"'There ain't nothing of the sort,' says mother shortly, and goes on putting out the tea. 'Let the door alone.'

"'Yes, there is,' I says. 'It's a dog. It's Nip, or Juno,' meaning the brace of pointers that dad had usually in the kennels outside.

"Then mother, thinking that perhaps dad had found that one of the dogs could be spared after all, and had told it to go home, went to the door and opened it. I had been right and wrong too, for on the doorstep there was a large black dog.

"My word! but he was a beautiful creature, sir, the finest dog I ever set eyes on. Like a setter in the make of him, but no setter that ever I saw could match him for size or looks. His coat was jet-black, as glossy as the skin of a thoroughbred, with just one streak of white showing down the breast, and his eyes--well, they were the very humanest, sir, that ever I see looking out of a dog's face.

"Now mother, although she had expected to find a dog outside, hadn't dreamt of anything except one of ourn, and she made like to shut the door on him. But the creature was too quick for her. He had pushed his head through before she knew it, and she scarcely saw how, or even felt the door press against her when he had slipped past and was in the room.

"Mother was used to dogs, and hadn't no fear of them, but she didn't altogether like strange ones, you see, sir, me being such a child and all; and her first thought was to put the creature out. So she pulled the door wide open and pointed to it, stamping her foot and saying, 'Be off! Go-home.'

"It was all very well to say that, but the dog wouldn't go. Not a step would he budge, but only stood there, wagging his tail and looking at her with them beautiful eyes of his, as were the biggest and beautifullest and softest I ever see in dog before or since. She took up a stick then, but his eyes were that imploring that she hadn't the heart to use it; and at last, for the odd kind of uneasiness that had hung about her ever since dad had gone was on her still, and the dog was a dog and meant protection whatever else it might be, she shut the door, barred it across, and said to me that we would let it stop.

"I was delighted, of course, and wanted to make friends at once; but the queer thing was that the dog wouldn't let me touch him. He ran round under the table and lay down in a corner of the room, looking at me with his big soft eyes and wagging his tail, but never coming no nearer.

Mother put down some water, and he lapped a little, but he only sniffed at a bone she threw him and didn't touch it.

"It was quite dark by this time, and mother lit a candle and set it on the table to see to have tea by. Afterwards she took her knitting and sat down by the fire, and I leaned against her, nodding and half asleep.

The dog lay in the corner farthest from us, between the fireplace and the wall; and I'd forgotten altogether about him, when mother looks up sudden. 'Bless me,' says she, 'how bright the fire do catch the wall to-night. I haven't dropped a spark over there, surely!' And up she gets and crosses over to t'other side to where the firelight was dancing and flickering on the cottage wall.