The Black Tor Part 5

"Exactly, my boy; and I do not feel much fear of Captain Purlrose and his men."

"No, father; I suppose he will keep on half-drawing his sword, and thrusting it back with a clang."

"Exactly, Ralph, boy," cried Sir Morton, laughing. "Just that one act shows the man's character to a T. Bl.u.s.ter, and then retreat. But suppose it should come to fighting, my boy. Hadn't you better go back to school, and stay till the trouble's over?"

"What!" cried Ralph fiercely.

"You surely don't want to fight, boy?"

"No, father, I don't want to fight; but if you are obliged to--Oh, father, you will not send me away?"

Sir Morton looked searchingly at the flushed countenance before him for some moments before speaking.

"If you wish to stay, Ralph, certainly I shall not send you away. I only gave you the opportunity to go if you wished. However, perhaps we shall hear no more of the matter. Eden may not listen to that scoundrel. If he does, we may set to work and furbish up our arms, lay in stores of provisions, and be prepared for our defence."

"Then I hope he will engage the men, father," cried Ralph.

"Eh? And pray why, boy?" exclaimed Sir Morton.

"Because, father," said the lad, speaking in a deeply-moved tone of voice, his eyes flashing and his cheeks flushed. "You have done nothing lately to show how deeply you resent all the old wrongs; and if the Edens hire these men, it will be a good opportunity for fighting our old foes, beating them and taking possession, and ending the feud."

"Yes," said Sir Morton, smiling, "a good opportunity, boy; but we might lose the day."

"We will not lose the day, father," cried the lad hotly. "Those men who fight for pay are cowards at heart, and they will lead the Edens to their destruction."

"But suppose that, after all, the Darleys were the ones to blame?"

"Oh, father, we can't stop to think of that. We do know that they have committed outrage after outrage against our family, and you have always taught me that it was our duty to punish the Edens."

"Yes, my boy, I have, as my father and my grandfather taught me; but I have often wished the wretched business were at an end. I want to be at peace."

"And you shall be, father, and soon, too, now," cried Ralph excitedly.

"But you will begin at once?"

"What, making peace?"

"No, father, war," cried the lad eagerly.

"Yes," said Sir Morton sternly, "if the Edens do."

"Oh, father, how calmly you take it all. I should have thought you would be ready to begin at once."

"Yes, Ralph, because you are young, and have never seen what even the pettiest war means, not even the bright side, with its chivalry and panoply, and gay show. I have seen that, and the other side too."

"But you would fight, father?" cried the lad, looking astonished.

"Yes," said Sir Morton, with his face turning hard and stern, "if the need arises, boy, and to the death."

CHAPTER FOUR.

MARK EDEN HAS A MORNING'S WALK.

Eden, fresh from Linkeham, on account of a terrible attack of fever ravaging the school to such an extent that it was considered wise to close it for a time, was enjoying the pleasant change, and wondering how long it would be before the school would reopen, and whether his father, Sir Edward Eden of Black Tor, would send him back.

"I ought to be old enough now to give up a schoolboy's life," he said to himself, "and begin thinking of what I shall be as a man."

He said this to himself as he descended the stone steps which led to the platform at the side of the precipice, where a natural Gothic arch hung over the entrance to the mine, which began with a steep slope running down through the limestone for fifty yards, and then opened out into an extensive cavity, whose roof was a hundred feet overhead, and in whose floor the square hole had been cut to follow the great vein of lead, which spread like the roots of some gigantic tree in various directions.

The great hole represented the trunk of the tree, and this had once been solid lead ore, but all had been laboriously cut away, as well as many of the branches, which represented the roots, though plenty were left to excavate, and fresh ones and new cavities were constantly being formed, so that the Eden mine at Black Tor was looked upon as the richest in the county.

Mark Eden stopped to have a chat with some of his father's men, who were going and coming from the square trunk-hole, and he watched them ascending and descending the greasy ladders fixed against the side, each man bearing a candle, stuck in his leather cap.

"I shan't want to be a miner," he said, as he gazed down at the tiny sparks of light below. "Faugh! how dark and dismal it looks. A dirty hole. But father says dirty work brings clean money, and it's just as well to be rich, I suppose. But what a life! Might just as well be a mole."

He began to hum over an old English ditty, and his voice echoed strangely from above.

"Let's see: Mary wants some of that blue spar, and I promised to get a lot. Must go down one of these days with Dummy Rugg: he says he knows of some fine bits. Not to-day, though."

He hurried out into the bright sunshine again, went up the steps to the castle, which stood perched at the top of a huge ma.s.s of rock, surrounded on all sides by the deep gorge, and then crossed the natural bridge to the main cliff, of which the foundation of the castle was the vast slice, split away, most probably by some volcanic disturbance.

Ma.s.ses of lava and scoria uncovered by the miners, from time to time, showed that volcanic action had been rife there at one period; additional suggestion that the said action had not yet died out, being afforded by the springs of beautifully clear warm water, which bubbled out in several places in the district.

As the lad crossed the bridge, thinking nothing of the giddy, profound depths on either side, there being not the slightest protection in the way of rail to the six-foot wide path, he shook back his brown hair, thrust his hands in his pockets, and with the sheath of his sword banging against his legs, started off along the first level place for a run.

A looker-on would have wondered why he did this, and would have gazed ahead to see what there was to induce him to make so wild a rush in a dangerous place. But he would have seen nothing but rugged path, tree-top, and the face of the cliff, and would not have grasped the fact that the reason for the boy's wild dash was, that he was overcharged with vitality, and that energy which makes a lad exert himself in that natural spontaneous effort to get rid of some of the vital gas, flashing along his nerves and bubbling through his veins.

"What a day!" he cried aloud. "How blue the sky is. Hallo! there they go."

He stopped suddenly to watch a cavernous hole in the cliff, from which half-a-dozen blue rock-pigeons had darted out, and as he watched, others swooped by, and darted in.

The next minute he went on, followed the path, and turned a b.u.t.tress-like corner, which took him to the other side of the great chine of limestone, which was here quite as precipitous, but clothed with trees, which softened the asperities of nature, and hung from shelf, crack, and chasm, to cast shadows down and down, right to where the river flashed and sparkled in its rapid flow, or formed deep dark pools, which reflected the face of the cliff in picture after picture.

"One never gets tired of this place," muttered the lad, as he began to descend a zigzag path, worn in the face of the cliff, starting the powdered-headed jackdaws from their breeding shelves and holes, and sending the blackbirds c.h.i.n.king from out of the bushes which clung to the grey precipice.

"That's where the brown owl's nest was," muttered the lad. "Bound to say there's one this year. S'pose I'm getting too old for birds'-nesting and climbing. Don't see why I should be, though."

He reached the river's bank at last, and after walking for a few yards, trampling down the white blossoms of the broad-leaved garlic, which here grew in profusion, and suggested salad, he reached a rippling shallow, stepped down into the river, and waded across, the water only reaching to his ankles.

As he stepped out on the other side, and kicked and stamped to get rid of the water, he gazed along the winding dale at as glorious a bit of English scenery as England can produce; and on that bright May morning, as he breathed in the sweet almond-like odour of the fully-blown hawthorn blossom, he muttered: "Linkeham's nice enough, but the lads would never believe how beautiful it is here. Hallo! there he goes. I wonder where they are building this year."

He shaded his eyes as he looked up at a great blackbird, winging its way high up above the top of the great cliff which hung over the river, and watched till it disappeared, when, in a low melodious voice, he began singing softly another s.n.a.t.c.h of an old English song, something about three ravens that sat upon a tree, with a chorus of: "Down, a-down, a-down," which he repeated again and again, as if it helped him to reflect.

"Wonder where they are building this year," he said to himself again.

"I should like a couple of little ones to bring up. Get them young, and they'd be as tame as tame."

He went on wondering where the ravens, which frequented the neighbourhood of the river and its mountainous cliffs, built their nests; but wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great b.u.mble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping down beneath the stones.

A little farther on, where a hawthorn whitened the bank with its fragrant wreaths, there was a quick, fluttering rush, a glimpse of a speckle-breasted thrush, and a little examination showed the neat nest, plastered inside smoothly with clay, like a cup, to hold four beautiful blue eggs, finely-spotted at the ends.