"And you have seen, sir, how uncertain everything is--even the crops."

"Wheat be vine to year."

"Well, even your mill-wheel stops sometimes from accidents, I suppose."

"Aw, a' reckon ull last my time. Wull ee drenk?"

"No, thank you. The fact is I'm anxious to warn you about betting on Mr Browne's horse. _He_ is upright--but--"

"Hum!"

In the depths of his beehive chair the glitter of the old man's grey eye was not observed by Felix.

"As you cannot get about and see for yourself, it seemed my duty to say something--for Miss Fisher's sake."

"Aw!" ominously low and deep.

"I say for Miss Fisher's sake, because I am in hopes, with your permission, to visit her as her--her future husband, and as I am sure her happiness and--"

Crash!

The blackthorn whizzed by St Bees' head and smashed the jug on the table.

"Jim! Bill! Jane! Jack!" shouted the old man, starting out of his chair, purple in the face. "Drow this veller out! Douse un in th'

hog-vault! Thee nimity-pimity odd-me-dod! [Little contemptible scarecrow] I warn thee'd like my money! Drot thee and thee wench!"

Poor Felix could do nothing but beat a retreat with half a dozen grinning chawbacons watching him over the bridge. On hearing their master's angry voice in the porch, they ran together from the rick-yard in the rear. For some distance Felix could hear the old man howling and telling the men to "zet th' dogs at un." When he got fairly out of sight of the mill his indignation disappeared in his sense of the ludicrous, and he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and then sobered down again. "For," thought he, "it is a wholesome doctrine--reverence for old age; and yet how little there is to revere! Ask this aged man's advice--you would suppose he would tell you of the vanity of the world, and instruct you to turn your mind to higher things. Not at all; he would say, 'Get money; dismiss all generous feelings: get money.' In the last decade of a century of life his avarice prompts him to risk heavy sums on this horse. But I must write and explain that _I_ do not want his h.o.a.rds."

Calling at Greene Ferne on the way home to see May, he found everyone discussing the att.i.tude of the labourers on the farm, who seemed inclined to neglect the haymaking, or even to leave it altogether. As the weather was fine and a large quant.i.ty of gra.s.s had been cut, it was a serious matter. Next morning Geoffrey Newton called on Felix at his cottage in Kingsbury to tell him that the men had actually struck work, and that Mrs Estcourt was anxious for his advice. For Felix, besides being a friend, was known to possess great influence among the working cla.s.ses. Kingsbury town, though situate in the midst of a purely agricultural country, and not more than four or five miles distant from the oaks at Greene Ferne, was the seat of a certain manufacturing industry, which had immensely increased its population. It was the high wages paid in the factories and workshops there that made the agricultural labourers discontented; many walked miles daily to and fro to receive them. There was unfortunately a reverse side to the medal, for the overcrowded town had become notorious for disease, drunkenness, and misery. Now this was why Felix, with many opportunities of preferment, chose to remain a simple curate, in order that he might work among that grimy and boisterous people. Rude and brutal as they were, the little figure in black penetrated everywhere without risk, and was treated with the utmost respect.

It chanced to be his morning for visiting certain purlieus, so Geoffrey went with him. They were to go over to Greene Ferne in the evening.

Down in the back streets they found that Melting-Pot, the pewter tankard, in full operation. Men and women were busy keeping it full, while their children, with naked feet, played in the gutter among the refuse of the dust heap, decayed cabbage, mangy curs, and filth. The ancient alchemists travailed to trans.m.u.te the baser metals into gold; in these days whole townships are at work trans.m.u.ting gold and silver into pewter. All the iron foundries, patent blasts, and Bessemer processes in the world cannot equal the melting power of the pewter tankard. When honest labour takes its well-earned draught it is one thing, or when friendship shares the gla.s.s; but the drinking for drinking's sake is another. Side by side with the Melting-Pot the furniture marts did a roaring business--marts where everything is sold, from a towel-horse to a piano or a c.o.c.katoo--sold beyond recall, all in the way of trade, and therefore quite legitimately. Is it not strange that while the law imposes fine and penalty on the p.a.w.nbroker, and strict supervision, the furniture mart, where the wretched drunkard's goods are sold for ever, seems to flourish without let or hindrance? "Money advanced on goods for absolute sale," is the notice prominently displayed, which to the poor artisan, being interpreted, reads, "'Walk into my parlour,' says the spider to the fly." Geoffrey, who had been to Australia, found he was mistaken in thinking that he had seen the world. There were things here, close to the sweet fields of lovely England, not to be surpa.s.sed in the darkest corners of the earth. At the end of a new street hastily "run up cheap" and "scamped," they found a large black pool, once a pond in the meadow, now a slough of all imaginable filth, at whose precipitous edge the roadway stopped abruptly, without rail, fence, or wall. Little children playing hare and hounds, heedless of their steps, fell in, and came out gasping, almost choked with foul mud. Drunken men staggered in occasionally, and came out stiff, ghastly, with slime in the greedy mouths that had gorged at the Melting-Pot. Yet this horrible slough was on the very verge of beauty; it was the edge and outpost of the town. Across this dark pit were green meadows, hawthorn hedges, and trees. The sweet breeze played against the dead red brick; odours of clover were blown against the windows; rooks came over now and then with their noisy caw-cawing. Shamefully "scamped" was the row of six-roomed houses--doors that warped and would not shut, and so on. Upstairs, in one of these, they found a tall young fellow lying on his bed in the middle of the summer day. The sickly fetid smell of the close room told of long confinement. Poor fellow, he had been sore beset; unmarried, untended; no woman to potter about him, nursed anyhow, only the strength of his const.i.tution carried him through; and now he lay there, weak and helpless, in spirit all but dead, as strong men are after tedious illness. A ma.s.s of iron had fallen on his leg in one of the factories some time before, as it was supposed through the carelessness of a fellow-workman not recovered from his weekly orgie of drink. The st.u.r.dy limb, though it had long ago united, was still feeble in the extreme.

His dull eye lit up when he saw them.

"You bean't from Millbourne, be you?" he said.

"We know many there," said Felix.

"I thaut perhaps uncle Jabez had found me out and sent ee. Do you knaw uncle Jabez, as works at Greene Ferne?"

"I recollect the shepherd," said Geoffrey.

"I wur under-shepherd thur till I took to factory work. Look at them lambs thur!"

They looked out of the window. Beneath, the green fields came right up to the dead brick wall. Away, some fifty yards distant, stood an enormous pollard oak, its vast gnarled root coiled round just above the earth, forming a broad ledge about the trunk. Half a dozen lambs were chasing each other, frisking round and round the rim, glad in the summer sunshine.

"Look at um," said the whilom shepherd, "an' I be choked for aair."

"Why not open the window?"

"He wunt open."

They examined it; the sashes were shams, _not made to open_. Neither was there a fireplace; the man was poisoned with the exhalations from his own weak frame.

"This is dreadful," said Geoffrey. "Is there no law--"

"Law enough," said Felix, bitterly; "but who troubles to enforce it for the sake of--a navvy? Why are crowded places sinks of misery and crime?

For want of a Master, like the colonel of a regiment. It makes me sigh for a despot."

"I'd a' smashed un fast enough," said the shepherd, "if I'd a-dared; but thaay ud 'a turned me out into the street, an' I couldn't abear the workuss. Is ould Fisher dead yet, zur?"

St Bees was busy with his penknife cutting away the putty, and did not for the moment answer. The pane came out speedily, and the breeze came in with a rush, and with it a bee that buzzed round and went forth again, and a scent of new-made hay, and the "Baa--maa" of the lambs, and behind it all the low roar of the railway and the factories.

"What did you say about Fisher?" asked Felix, turning.

"Be a' dead yet, th' cussed old varmint?"

"Hush, hush! whom do you mean?"

"I means ould Fisher of Warren Mill. He be my grandfeyther. Mebbe you minds Peggy Moulding, what married th' bailie? Hur wur my granny. My feyther died in Australia. Th' cussed ould varmint--a' let us all starve; he got sacks a' gold. I wants to hear as th' devil have got un."

"You must not bear malice," said Felix; but being a man as well as a clergyman, he halted there. The contrast was too great. He thought of the brutal miser on the hills.

"I wants to get back to Greene Ferne," said the invalid. "Do you knaw Mrs Estcourt? Hur be a nice ooman; a' wunder ef hur ud have me agen.

Wull ee axe hur?"

"I'll ask her," said Geoffrey. "I'm sure she will, though the men are on strike there now."

"Be um? Lord, what vools! I wants to get back to shepherding. Axe uncle Jabez ef I med come to his place and bide wi' he a bit. I thenks I should get better among the trees. I could a'most drag a rake, bless 'ee, now ef I had some vittels."

"You shall have food," said Felix, "and we will get you back to the hamlet." This poor fellow, rude as he was--so pathetically ignorant as to suppose, as ignorant people do, that strangers understood his private affairs--was in a sense distantly related to his darling May, and thus had a more than common claim upon him.

In the afternoon they went over to Greene Ferne, and Mrs Estcourt at once sent a trap for the injured man. His uncle Jabez, the shepherd, was greatly concerned, and ready to receive him. Yet, with the curious apathy of the poor, he had made no inquiries about him previously.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE WOODEN BOTTLE.

"Gee, Diamond! Now, Captain!" cried Margaret, imitating the gruff voice of the carter. Crack! The long-knotted lash of the waggon-whip, bound about the handle with brazen rings, whistled in the air and curled up with a vicious snap. She was in one of her wild impulsive moods. Away trotted the two huge carthorses, the harness merrily jingling and the waggon jolting. Jabez the shepherd could hardly keep pace with it, running beside the leader, Diamond. Margaret and May were riding.

Crack! Crack!

"Aw, doan't 'ee now--doan't 'ee, miss!" panted the shepherd. "Us ull go right drough th' winder! Whoa!"

For they were steering straight for the great window at Greene Ferne that opened on the lawn. It was wide open that beautiful midsummer morning.

"What are those children doing?" said Mrs Estcourt, in some alarm.

"Why, they have harnessed the horses!"