The Squire's Daughter Part 6

On the brow of the next low hill he paused again. Before him, in a little hollow, lay the homestead his father had built; and spread out on three sides were the fields he had reclaimed from the wilderness.

It had been a hard and almost heartbreaking task, for when he commenced the enterprise he had but a faint idea what it would cost. It seemed easy enough to root up the furze bushes and plough down the heather, and the soil looked so loamy and rich that he imagined a heavy crop would be yielded the first year.

And yet it was not to make money that David Penlogan had leased a portion of Polskiddy Downs, and built a house thereon. It was rather that he might have a quiet resting-place in the evening of his life, and be able to spend his days in the open air--in the wind and sunshine--and be set free from the perils that beset an underground captain in a Cornish mine.

With what high hopes he embarked upon the enterprise none but David knew. It was his one big investment. All the savings of a lifetime went into it. He took his h.o.a.rded sovereigns out of the bank without misgiving, and felt as happy as a king, while he toiled like a slave.

His neighbours stared and shook their heads when it leaked out on what terms he had taken the lease.

"Sir John has been too many for you, David," an old farmer said to him one day. "You might as well empty your purse in his pocket right off.

You'll not have money enough to buy a coffin with when he's finished with you."

But David knew better, or fancied he did, which is much the same thing.

He hired horses and ploughs and stubbers and hedgers and ditchers, and masons and carpenters, and for a year that corner of Polskiddy Downs was alive with people.

The house was built from plans David prepared himself. Barn and cowsheds were erected at a convenient distance. Hedges were carried in straight lines across the newly cultivated fields. A small orchard was planted beyond the kitchen garden, and everything, to David's hopeful eyes, looked promising for the future.

That was twelve years ago, and in those years David had grown to be an old man. He had spent his days in the open air, it is true--in the wind and sunshine, and in the rain and snow--and he had contracted rheumatism and bronchitis, and all the heart had gone out of him in the hopeless struggle.

As Ralph looked out over the not too fruitful fields which his father had reclaimed from the waste with such infinite toil, and at the sacrifice of all his savings, he forgot the fair face of Dorothy Hamblyn, which had been haunting him all the way back, and remembered only the iron hand of her father.

CHAPTER V

THE CHANCES OF LIFE

Ralph had started so early that morning that he had had no time to get breakfast. Now he began to feel the pangs of hunger most acutely.

"I expect mother will have kept something for me," he said to himself, as he descended the slope. "I hope she is not worrying about what has become of me."

He looked right and left for his father, expecting to find him at work in the fields, but David was nowhere in evidence.

Ralph made a bee-line across the fields, and was soon in the shelter of the little homestead. He found his father and mother and his sister Ruth still seated at the breakfast-table. Ruth pushed back her chair at the sound of his footsteps and rose to her feet.

"Why, Ralph," she said, "where have you been? Mother's been quite worried about you."

"If that's all she has to worry her, she needn't worry much," he said, with a laugh. "But has anything happened? You all look desperately sober."

"We've heard some news that has made us all feel very anxious," David answered wearily. "We've sat here talking about it for the last half-hour."

"Then the news concerns us all?" Ralph questioned, with a catch in his voice.

"Very closely, my boy--very closely. The truth is, Julian Seccombe has got wounded out in Egypt."

"And he's the last life on the farm?" Ralph questioned, with a gasp.

"That is so, my boy. It seems strange that I should be so unfortunate in the choice of lives, and yet I could not have been more careful. Who could have thought that the parson's boy would become a soldier?"

"Life is always uncertain," Ralph answered, with a troubled look in his eyes, "whether a man is a soldier or a farmer."

"That is so," David answered reflectively. "Yet my father held his little place on only two lives, and one of them lived to be seventy-five."

"But, even then, I've heard you say the lease ran only a little over sixty years. It's a wicked gamble, is this leasehold system, with the chances in favour of the landlord."

"Why a gamble in favour of the landlord, my boy?" David questioned, lifting his mild eyes to his son's face.

"Why, because if all the 'lives' live out their threescore years and ten, the lease is still a short one; for you don't start with the first year of anyone's life."

"That is true," David answered sadly. "The parson's boy was ten, which I thought would be balanced by the other two."

"And the other two did not live ten years between them."

"Of course, n.o.body could foresee that," David answered sadly. "They were both healthy children. Our little Billy was three, and the healthiest baby of the lot."

"But with all the ailments of children in front of him?"

"Well, no. He had had whooping-cough, and got through it easily. It was the scarlet fever that carried him off. Poor little chap, he was gone in no time."

"And so, within a year, and after you had spent the greater part of your money, your farm hung upon two lives," Ralph said bitterly.

"But, humanly speaking, they were good lives. Not lives that would be exposed to much risk. Lawyer Doubleday told me that he intended to bring up his boy to the same profession, and Parson Seccombe told me he had dedicated Julian to the Church in his infancy. What better lives, humanly speaking, could you get? Neither parsons nor lawyers run any risks to speak of."

"Yes; that's true enough. The system being what it is, you did the best you could, no doubt."

"n.o.body could foresee," David said sadly, "that Doubleday's boy would go and get drowned. I nearly fainted when I heard the news."

"And now you say that young Seccombe has got shot out in Egypt."

"I don't know as to his being shot; but Tom Dyer, who was here this morning, said that he had just seen the parson, who was in great trouble, news having reached him last evening that Julian was wounded."

"Then if the parson's in great trouble, the chances are he's badly wounded."

"I don't know. I thought of walking across to St. Goram directly, and seeing the parson for myself; but I'm almost afraid to do so, lest the worst should be true."

"We shall have to face it, whatever it is," Ralph said doggedly.

"But think of what it would mean to us if the parson's son should die!

Poor mother is that troubled that she has not been able to eat a mouthful of breakfast!"

"She seems scarcely able to talk about it," Ralph said, glancing at the door through which his mother and Ruth had disappeared.

"She's a little bit disposed to look on the dark side of things generally," David said slowly. "For myself, I keep hoping for the best.

It doesn't seem possible that G.o.d can strip us of everything at a blow."