"Nay, nay, nay," he groaned, "not so owd as all that, mester. I can do it yet. Let me bide, I'm reight yet. Yow want to get shut o' me--to drift me off. Yow thowt wi' your new ways that I wasn't good enew for t' church, but revvylootion or no revvylootion, I stick to church as my fathers did afore me. When I'm down theer, and can howd out no more, thou mun do thy worst."

"That's all put aside, Mr Warmoth," said the Rector, smiling. "I do want to make improvements here, but not to that extent. I did not want to hurt your feelings. Come, shake hands."

"Nay; I'll not," cried the old man, fiercely, his bearing seeming to have wonderfully altered now. "Thou want'st to get round me wi' soft words, but I'll howd thee off--I'll howd thee off. There ain't every servant of t' owd church like me, and I'll howd my own unto the last."

"My good old fellow, Heaven forbid that I should be guilty of so unkind an act. You shall stop on, Warmoth, till the last, for no act of mine shall remove you from your post."

The old man's jaw fell, and he stepped back, slipped, and would have fallen, but for the Rector's hands, to which the old fellow clung spasmodically, his face working, his lips twitching in his efforts to speak. But for a long time no words would come, and then but two, twice repeated, though with earnest emphasis--

"Bless thee! Bless thee!"

Then, quickly s.n.a.t.c.hing his hands away, the old man turned aside, leaned his trembling arm against a tombstone which had gradually encroached upon the path, and stood with his head bent down, trying to recover his strength.

It was a strange contrast: the thin, sharply featured old man, and the handsome portly figure of the Rector, as he stood there vexed with himself at having, as he called it, been so weak as to give way at the first difficulty that he had to encounter; and he afterwards came to the conclusion that he might just as well have held out, for the people gave him the credit of killing old Warmoth so as to have his way.

"Let me help you into the church to sit down for a bit," he said to the trembling old man.

Old Warmoth turned and laid one hand upon the Rector's, gazing up in his face, and there was a piteous smile upon his withered lips.

"I was afraid thou'd want me to go as soon as I heard thou was coming back; and they said thou'dst get shut o' me. But sixty year, sir! It would have killed me. I couldn't have beared to go."

Two Sundays later the congregation had just left the church, and Portlock was going up to the vestry, when he saw there was something wrong in the clerk's seat.

"Why, Sammy, owd man," he cried, "what ails--"

He did not finish his broken sentence, but tore open the door of the clerk's desk, the Rector coming forward to where the old man knelt in his accustomed narrow place, his hands upon his book, his head upon his breast, as he had knelt down after the sermon.

"He's like ice," whispered the Churchwarden, putting forth his great strength, and lifting the old man bodily out, to lay him by the stove, the Rector placing a cushion beneath his head.

The motion seemed to revive the old man for a moment, and he opened his eyes, staring strangely at the Rector, who held one hand.

Then his lips moved, and in a voice hardly above a whisper they heard him say--

"Bless--thou!--Bless--thou!--those words would--have killed me."

There was a pause, and the Churchwarden was hastening forth to fetch help, when there arose in the now empty church a shrill "_Amen_."

It was the old clerk's last.

PART ONE, CHAPTER FOUR.

AT LAWFORD SCHOOL.

"Oh!" in a loud shrill voice; and then a general t.i.tter.

"Silence! who was that?"

"Please, Miss, Cissy Hudson, Miss. Please, Miss, it's Mr Bone."

This last delivered in a chorus of shrill voices; and Sage Portlock turned sharply from the semi-circle of children, one and all standing with their toes accurately touching a thickly-chalked line, to see a head thrust into the schoolroom, but with the edge of the door held closely against the neck, pressing it upon the jamb, so that the entire body to which the head belonged was invisible.

The head which had been thus suddenly thrust into the schoolroom was not attractive, the face being red and deeply lined with marks not made by age. The eyes were dull and watery, there was a greyish stubble of a couple of days' growth upon the chin, and the hair that appeared above the low brow was rough, unkempt, and, if clean, did no justice to the cleansing hand.

"How tiresome!" muttered Sage Portlock, moving towards the door, which then opened, and a tall man, in a very shabby thin greatcoat which reached almost to his heels, stumped into the room.

Stumped or thumped--either word will do to express the heavy way in which Humphrey Bone, thirty years master of Lawford boys' school, drew attention to the fact that he had one leg much shorter than the other, the difference in length being made up by a sole of some five inches'

thickness, which sole came down upon the red-brick floor like the modified blows of a pavior's rammer.

Such a clever man! Such a good teacher! the Lawford people said. There was nothing against him but a drop of drink, and this drop of drink had kept Humphrey Bone a poor man, dislocated his hip in a fall upon a dark night, when the former doctor of the place had not discovered the exact nature of the injury till it was too late, and the drop of drink in this instance had resulted in the partaker becoming a permanent cripple.

Lawford was such a slow-moving place in those days, that it took its princ.i.p.al inhabitants close upon twenty years to decide that a master who very often went home helplessly intoxicated, and who had become a hopeless moral wreck, living in a state of squalor and debt, could not be a fitting person to train and set an example to the boys left in his charge. And at last, but in the face of great opposition from the old-fashioned party arrayed against the Rev Eli Mallow and his friends--the party who reiterated the cry that Humphrey Bone was such a clever man, wrote such a copperplate-like hand, when his fingers were not palsied, and measured land so well--it was decided that Humphrey Bone should be called upon to resign at Christmas, and Luke Ross, the son of the Lawford tanner, then training at Saint Chrysostom's College, London, should take his place.

It was only natural that Sage Portlock, as she advanced to meet Humphrey Bone, should think of the coming days after the holidays, when Mr Ross, whom she had known so well from childhood, should be master of the adjoining school, and that very unpleasant personage now present should cease to trouble her with visits that were becoming more and more distasteful and annoying.

"Mornin'! Ink!" said Mr Bone, shortly. "Ours like mud. How are you?"

"Ink, Mr Bone?" said the young mistress, ignoring the husky inquiry after her health. "Yes; one of the girls shall bring some in."

This and the young mistress's manner should have made Mr Humphrey Bone retire, but he stood still in the middle of the room, chuckling softly; and then, to the open-eyed delight of the whole school, drew a goose-quill from his breast, stripped off the plume from one side of the shaft, and, with a very keen knife, proceeded to cut, nick, and shape one of the pens for which he bore a great reputation, holding it out afterwards for the young mistress to see.

"That beats training, eh? Didn't teach you to make a pen like that at Westminster, did they, eh?"

"No," said Sage, quietly; "we always used steel pens."

"Hah--yes?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old schoolmaster, with a laugh of derision.

"Steel pens--steel teaching--steel brains--they'll have steel machine teachers soon, who can draw a goose like that on a black board with a bit of chalk. Faugh!"

He pointed to one of a series of woodcuts mounted on millboard and hung against the whitewashed wall, stumped away three or four yards, and then returned.

"New ways--new theories--new machines! Wear the old ones out and chuck 'em away--eh?"

"I do not understand you, Mr Bone," said the young mistress, longing for the interview to come to an end; but he went on, speaking angrily, and ignoring her words--

"When old Widow Marley died, I said to Mallow and the rest of 'em, 'Knock a hole through the brick wall,' I said; 'make one school of it; mix 'em all up together, boys and gals. Give me another ten a year, and I'll teach the lot;' but they wouldn't do it. Said they must have a trained mistress; and here you are."

"Yes, I am here," said Sage Portlock, rather feebly, for she had nothing else to say.

"Only the other day you were a thin strip of a girl. Deny it if you can!"

"I do not deny it, Mr Bone," said Sage, determining to be firm, and speaking a little more boldly.

"No," he continued, in his husky tones, "you can't deny it. Then you leave Miss Quittenton's school, and your people send you to town for two years to be trained; and now here you are again."

Sage Portlock bowed, and looked longingly at the door, hoping for some interruption, but none came.

"And now--" began the old master.