seemed to show a strange flaring of nervous energy, which enabled him to speak again and again without falling into his usual cough; yet she desired not to push unnecessarily the contradiction which agitated him. "Let me, pray, call some one else." "You let me alone, I say. Look here, Missy. Take the money. You'll never have the chance again. It's pretty nigh two hundred there's more in the box, and nobody knows how much there was. Take it and do as I tell you." Mary, standing by the fire, saw its red light falling on the old man, propped up on his pillows and bed-rest, with his bony hand holding out the key, and the money lying on the quilt before him. She never forgot that vision of a man wanting to do as he liked at the last. But the way in which he had put the offer of the money urged her to speak with harder resolution than ever. "It is of no use, sir. I will not do it. Put up your money. I will not touch your money. I will do anything else to comfort you; but I will not touch your keys or your money." "Anything else anything else!" said old Featherstone, with hoarse rage, which, as if in a nightmare, tried to be loud, and yet was only just audible. "I want nothing else. You come here you come here." Mary approached him cautiously knowing him too well. She saw him dropping his keys and trying to grasp his stick, while he looked at her like an aged hyena, the muscles of his face getting distorted with the effort of his hand. She paused at a safe distance. "Let me give you some cordial," she said, quietly, and try to compose yourself. You will perhaps go to sleep. And tomorrow by daylight you can do as you like." He lifted the stick in spite of her being beyond his reach, and threw it with a hard effort which was but impotence. It fell slipping over the foot of the bed. Mary let it lie, and retreated to her chair by the fire. By-and-by she would go to him with the cordial. Fatigue would make him passive. It was getting towards the chillest moment of the morning, the fire had got low, and she could see through the chink between the moreen window.curtains the light whitened by the blind. Having put some wood on the fire and thrown a shawl over her, she sat down, hoping that Mr. Featherstone might now fall asleep. If she went near him the irritation might be kept up. He had said nothing after throwing the stick, but she had seen him taking his keys again and laying his right hand on the money. He did not put it up, however and she thought that he was dropping off to sleep. But Mary herself began to be more agitated by the remembrance of what she had gone through, than she had been by the reality questioning those acts of hers which had come imperatively and excluded all question in the critical moment. Presently the dry wood sent out a flame which illuminated every crevice, and Mary saw that the old man was lying quietly with his head turned a little on one side. She went towards him with inaudible steps, and thought that his face looked strangely motionless; but the next moment, the movement of the flame communicating itself to all subjects made her uncertain. The violent beating of her heart rendered her perceptions so doubtful that even when she touched him and listened for his breathing she could not trust her conclusions. She went to the window and gently propped aside the curtain and blind, so that the still light of the sky fell on the bed. The next moment she ran to the bell and rang it energetically. In a very little while there was no longer any doubt that Peter Featherstone was dead, with his right hand clasping the keys, and his left hand lying on the heap of notes and gold. · RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE A very rash Visit. (From LORNA DOONE). My dear father had been killed by the Doones of Bagworthy, while riding home from Porlock market, on the Saturday evening. With him were six brother farmers, all of them very sober; for father would have no company with any man who went beyond half a gallon of beer, or a single gallon of cider. The robbers had no grudge against him: for he had never flouted them, neither made overmuch of outcry because they robbed other people. For he was man of such strict honesty, and due parish feeling, that he knew it to be every man's business to defend himself and his goods, unless he belonged to our parish, and then we must look after him. These seven good farmers were jogging along, helping one another in the troubles of the road, and singing goodly hymns and songs to keep their courage moving, when suddenly a horseman stopped in the starlight full across them. By dress and arms they knew him well, and by his size and stature, shown against the glimmer of the evening star; and though he seemed one man to seven, it was in truth one man to one. Of the six who had been singing songs and psalms about the power of God, and their own regeneration psalms as went the round, in those days, of the public-housesthere was not one but pulled out his money, and sang smallbeer to a Doone. such But father had been used to think that any man who was comfortable inside his own coat and waistcoat deserved to have no other set, unless he would strike a blow for them. And so, while his gossips doffed their hats, and shook with what was left of them, he set his staff above his head, and rode at the Doone robber. With a trick of his horse, the wild man escaped the sudden onset, although it must have amazed him sadly that any durst resist him. Then, when Smiler was carried away with the dash, and the weight of my father (not being brought up to battle, nor used to turn, save in plow harness), the outlaw whistled upon his thumb, and plundered the rest of the yeomen. But father, drawing at Smiler's head, to try and come back to help them, was in the midst of a dozen men, who seemed to come out of a turf rick, some on horse and some afoot. Nevertheless, he smote lustily, so far as he could see; and being of great size and strength, and his blood well up, they had no easy job with him. With the play of his wrist he cracked three or four crowns, being always famous at single-stick; until the rest drew their horses away, and he thought that he was master, and would tell his wife about it. But a man beyond the range of his staff was crouching by the peat-stack, with a long gun set to his shoulder, and he got poor father against the sky, and I cannot tell the rest of it. Only they knew that Smiler came home with blood upon his withers, and father was found in the morning dead on the moor, with his ivy-twisted cudgel lying broken under him. Now, whether this was an honest fight, God judge betwixt the Doones and me. and no Now, before I got home and found my sad loss boy ever loved his father better than I loved mine - mother had done a most wondrous thing, which made all the neighbours say that she must be mad, at least. Upon the Monday morning, while her husband lay unburied, she cast a white hood over her hair, and gathered a black cloak round her, and, taking counsel of no one, set off on foot for the Doone gate. In the early afternoon she came to the hollow and barren entrance, where in truth there was no gate, only darkness to go through. No gun was fired at her, only her eyes were covered over, and somebody led her by the hand, without any wish to hurt her. A very rough and headstrong road was all that she remembered, for she could not think as she wished to do, with the cold iron pushed against her. At the end of this road they delivered her eyes, and she could scarce believe them. For she stood at the head of a deep, green valley, carved from out the mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round it, eighty feet or a hundred high, from whose brink black wooden hills swept up to the sky-line. By her side a little river glided out from under-ground, with a soft, dark babble, unawares of daylight; then growing brighter, lapsed away, and fell into the valley. There, as it ran down the meadow, alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out upon it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry. But further down, on either bank, were covered houses, built of stone, square and roughly cornered, set as if the brook were meant to be the street between them. Only one room high they were, and not placed opposite each other, but in and out as skittles are; only that the first of all, which proved to be the captain's, was a sort of double house, or rather two houses joined together by a plank-bridge over the river. Fourteen cots my mother counted, all very much of a pattern, and nothing to choose between them, unless it were the captain's. Deep in the quiet valley there, away from noise, and violence, and brawl, save that of the rivulet, any man would have deemed them homes of simple mind and innocence. Yet not a single house stood there but was the home of murder. Two men led my mother down a steep and gliddery stairway, like the ladder of a hay-mow, and thence from the break of the falling water as far as the house of the captain. And there, at the door, they left her trembling, strung as she was, to speak her mind. - Now, after all, what right had she, a common farmer's widow, to take it amiss that men of birth thought fit to kill her husband? And the Doones were of very high birth, as all we clods of Exmoor knew; and we had enough of good teaching now let any man say the contrary to feel that all we had belonged of right to those above us. Therefore my mother was half ashamed that she could not help complaining. But after a little while, as she said, remembrance of her husband came, and the way he used to stand by her side and put his strong arm round her, and how he liked his bacon fried, and praised her kindly for it and so the tears were in her eyes, and nothing should gainsay them. - A tall old man, Sir Ensor Doone, came out with a bill-hook in his hand, and hedger's gloves going up his arms, as if he were no better than a labourer at ditch-work. Only in his mouth and eyes, his gait, and most of all, his voice, even a child could know and feel that here was no ditch labourer. Good cause he has found since then, perhaps, to wish that he had been one. With his white locks moving upon his coat, he stopped and looked down at my mother, and she could not help herself but courtesy under the fixed black gazing. "Good woman, you are none of us. Who has brought you hither?" |