"What do you mean?" asked Gale, in no little disquietude, but putting silver, nevertheless, in the other's dirty hand.

"They say he do be a kinsman of Mistress Nelly, for sure," answered Ike.

"And it's like enough. They can't let him be, neither her nor the old man, by day or night. I do know well he do be in and out of the house at all hours, like a dog in a fair."

Roused beyond endurance, the Parson clenched his heavy riding-whip; and, but that he bit his lip till the blood came, in an effort to control himself, would have given his informant the full benefit of its weight.

Ike never knew how near he was having his head broke then and there.

"Do you mean that old Master Carew has a kinsman paying him a visit?" he asked; and while he spoke Abner Gale wondered at the resolution with which he kept down his wrath. "When did he come, lad? can ye tell, now?

And how soon is he going away?"

But Ike, whose fingers were itching to spend in drink the money he had earned so easily, did not care to sustain farther cross-examination.

"Them sort comes and goes like the shadows on Brendon Moor," said he.

"It's you and me, Master Gale, no offence, as stands to it, blow high blow low, like Dunkerry Beacon. I don't want to breed no mischief, and I don't want to tell no lies. There's others can say more than me. My service to you, Pa'yson, and thanking you kindly. If you've an odd job for a poor chap, I'm to be heard of mostly at the Wheat Sheaf; and I'll not forget to drink your honour's good health."

Thus speaking, Ike slunk off; and the Parson, with scowling brows, proceeded to Nelly's favourite haunt by the sea-sh.o.r.e.

What a bright fresh morning it had been, when he heard the lark singing on Exmoor a few short hours ago? Was it the gathering thunder-storm that made the sky so dark, the air so stifling, now?

A woman's tact seldom fails her at need. Mistress Nelly's greeting was just sufficiently cordial to soothe the Parson into decent behaviour, without exceeding the limits of such kindly reception as seemed due to her grandfather's friend. Ere John Garnet had ceased wondering what there was in this new comer to move her so much, she had cleared her brows, steadied her voice, and extended her hand with a pleasant smile.

At that moment, perhaps, the Parson knew for the first time, by the jealousy she was capable of arousing, how fiercely he loved her. And it may have been at the same moment that John Garnet discovered something he had never realised before.

An a.s.s between two bundles of hay has always been accepted as the ill.u.s.tration of a false position. Surely a young lady with an admirer on each hand, one of whom she knows she hates, while the other she dreads to acknowledge she is beginning to like, must be equally at a loss on which side to incline. What is she to say or leave unsaid? What is she to do or leave undone? Nelly Carew wished John Garnet had never come, wished he would go away; wished a spring-tide would flow in that moment, and float the Parson bodily up to Bossington Point, down to Barnstaple Bay, out into the wide Atlantic, where she might never set eyes on him again! Succour came when most she wanted it. A few heavy drops, a gust of wind, a flash, and a thunder-roll. In five minutes it was obvious that unless they hastened back to the village, all three would be drenched to the skin. With an imploring look at John Garnet, she made him understand he was to leave her without asking why. How delightful it was to feel that he caught her meaning at once, and obeyed! Then she hurried the Parson to her grandfather's cottage, at a pace that admitted of no explanation; and once over the threshold disappeared in her own chamber, with that plea of headache (thunder always gave her a headache) which must have been Eve's excuse when she did not want to work in the garden with Adam.

Finding he was not likely to see her again, Abner Gale made but a short visit. As he rode home across Exmoor, the sky was clear, the birds were singing, the long rank gra.s.s sprang fresh and green from its recent wetting, flags and rushes were dressed out with rain-drops glistening like jewels in the afternoon sun. But the Parson rode slowly and heavily, looking steadfastly between his horse's ears. Now and again he shook his head, or bit his lip, or glared round him with a troubled scowl, suggestive of annoyance and apprehension, as if he doubted there was still thunder in the air.

CHAPTER XV.

MORE THAN KIND.

"He understood me at once," thought Nelly, whose headache left her the moment she entered her own room. "How gentle he always seems, and how nice. I wonder who and what he is? Grandfather says there can be no mistake about his being well-born, and a man of fashion. Parson Gale often boasts _he_ is not a man of fashion; but I know I like a man of fashion best. I wonder when I shall see him again. Not that I want to see him one bit; only he must have thought me so rude to leave like that, and I ought to explain. How angry Mr. Gale looked, and how cross he seemed all the way home. What does it matter to me? What need I care how cross he is? Only--only I wish I was never going to set eyes on him again!"

Now this was hardly justice--perhaps I should rather say it was woman's justice. In the absence of other society, the time had been when Nelly was well pleased to accept, in a dignified distant kind of way, the Parson's homage, and felt flattered, if not gratified, by his obvious devotion to herself; now she seemed instinctively to shrink from him as from an enemy. And why? Because John Garnet had merry eyes and a ruddy cheek? Because he was the first specimen of his cla.s.s she had ever met?

Or because they were thrown together, two comely young people, in this pretty little village by the sea? She could not have given a reason--no more can I.

Twenty-four hours did not elapse, of course, before they met again. She looked timidly in his face, and put out her hand. He might be offended, she thought, and felt rather disappointed to have no opportunity of begging pardon; but his frank and pleasant manner was so rea.s.suring, that she wondered how she could have dreaded their meeting so much, and why she spent all the morning thinking of it. Nelly was always wondering now, and for the first time in her life had forgotten to take grandfather's posset off the hob last night before it was smoked.

It is no doubt provoking not to be able to irritate a man if you wish; but Nelly had hardly yet arrived at that stage in the malady which desires a quarrel for the pleasure of making up.

"You--you didn't get wet," she said, timidly, "when we were all obliged to hurry home yesterday. The showers here are very heavy, and apt to--to----"

"Wet a man to the skin," he said, laughing; "so they are everywhere else. I was sorry to lose your pleasant society, Mistress Carew; but, thinking the strange gentleman might be an old friend of your grandfather, I did not wish to intrude, and walked home as fast as I could."

She shot a grateful glance at him. "Yes," she observed, in rather a marked tone, "he _is_ a friend of grandfather's rather than of mine, though I have known him ever since I was a little girl."

"Is that so very long, Mistress Carew?" he asked, with another of his pleasant smiles.

They were walking through the orchard behind her home, along a path that led to the sh.o.r.e. She stopped and plucked some wild flowers from the hedge, perhaps to hide a blush.

"I have a favour to ask you," she said, in a low voice, and stooping her head over the posy. "Do not say Mistress Carew--I don't like it. I had rather _you_ would call me Nelly."

There was the least possible inflection of voice on the p.r.o.noun, just enough to make John Garnet's heart beat as it had never beat before.

"Nelly," he repeated, "will you give me one of those flowers?"

"You may take the whole bunch," she answered, "I only gathered them for you." But she walked on so fast after this gratifying avowal, that it was impossible to tell her one word of the old tale that was rising to his lips.

All that day she took care not to be alone with him another minute. From the orchard she took him to the beach, where the villagers were collecting sea-weed; thence to a field where harvest was already nearly done; home by the cow-house, with its attendant milkmaid; and so back to grandfather's parlour, where she poured out his evening draught of cider with her own hands.

Why Nelly should have cried like a naughty child when she laid her head on the pillow; why she should have woke before daybreak, and risen at sunrise to put new ribbons in her dress of a colour she had lately heard somebody say he liked, is more than I can take upon me to explain. I can understand, however, why John Garnet lay a-bed longer than usual that same morning, and turned on the other side, hoping to go to sleep again, that he might dream another dream like the last about Nelly Carew.

Abner Gale's dreams, if he had any, would seem to have been of no such pleasant nature, for he was stirring with the dawn, breakfasting fiercely before sunrise, on Devonshire mutton and strong ale, cursing, notwithstanding his profession, each of his servants in turn for imputed shortcomings, from his cherry-cheeked parlour-maid to the man who fed the pigs. In and out the house, and through the precincts of the farm-yard, or "barton," as he called it, the master's eye was only less dreaded than his tongue, his tongue than his hand. Yet was he well served too, with the scrupulous obedience of fear.

He would fain have mounted his horse and ridden across the moor in the direction of Porlock again to-day, but even Abner Gale was compelled to pay some respect to the decencies of life, and even such a parish as his exacted a few hours' attention after an absence of weeks.

There were conditions to be written out for a wrestling-match between two rival champions; arrangements to be made for supplying the ringers with unlimited cider at their approaching feast; a badger recently drawn to visit; and some terrier-puppies just opening their eyes on this wicked world, to inspect.

Also, there was a child to be baptised, a matter that would keep, and a wench to be married, a matter that would _not_.

"For to-day," thought the Parson, "I have got my hands full; to-morrow I shall be free again, and it's strange if I fail to find out something more of your goings on, Mistress Nelly, and put a spoke in the wheel of that young spark down by the water-side, who seems to make himself so much at home!"

Though he never saw him before, though he had not the vaguest notion that John Garnet was the man he had sworn to hunt to death, some antagonistic instinct caused him to hate this man with a deadly hatred, scarcely to be accounted for, even by that jealousy which is proverbially cruel as the grave.

In no appropriate frame of mind, the Parson was about to don his frayed and dirty canonicals for administration of that matrimonial rite it would be unwise to delay, when his quick eye caught sight of a man riding on the moor, whose appearance caused him to cast aside his sacred vestments with an oath, and rush to the door, carrying a br.i.m.m.i.n.g jug of cider in his hand.

Mr. Gale swore when he was pleased, and when he was angry, when he rode and when he walked, when he worked and when he rested. Altogether he swore a good deal between morning and night.

"It's the harbourer!" he exclaimed, steadying the vessel not to spill a drop; "the harbourer, as I'm a living sinner, Red Rube!" he shouted, while the new arrival drew the rein at the mounting-block, "stop and wet your whistle--you're always welcome, and you're always dry."

Red Rube, whose real name was Reuben Rudd, needed no second bidding.

Raising the jug to his weather-tanned face, he took a hearty pull, a pull that nearly emptied its contents.

The Parson scanned him approvingly. Rube wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and sat motionless in the saddle without a word.

He was a man of seventy at least, short, shrunken, withered, and tough as shoe-leather, with a keen grey eye, set in countless wrinkles, that seemed traced in the red-brown skin with the point of a needle. He rode a broken-kneed Exmoor pony, low in condition, but as hard as nails.

Sportsman was written in every line of his face, every turn of his limbs, yet his steed, saddle, bridle, and the clothes on his back would have been dear at five pounds.

Like a ghost, it was Rube's custom not to speak till he was spoken to.

His answers too were ghostly and mysterious, and he loved to vanish like a ghost when he had delivered his pithy say.

Presently, in such a whisper as denotes respectful confidence, the Parson broke silence.

"Three inches?" he asked, with the utmost concern.