"'Ay, and I might take her sister there, and marry her to-day after the same fashion, and no law could say me "nay."'

"'Yes, here, Ma.s.singberd Heath; but not at Kirk-Yetholm.'

"'And why not?' inquired the ruffian, with a mocking laugh, that had, however, something shrill and wavering in it.

"'Because Kirk-Yetholm is over the Border, and, by the laws of Scotland, my niece Sinnamenta is your wife, proud man, and nothing but death can dissever the bond!'

"An awful silence succeeded my uncle's words. Ma.s.singberd Heath turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was well nigh strangled by pa.s.sion.

"'I thank heaven, Rachel,' murmured my little sister, 'that I am not that shame to thee and to my race which I thought myself to be.'

"'You shall have but little to thank heaven for, girl, if this be true,'

cried her husband hoa.r.s.e with concentrated rage; 'somebody shall pay for this.'

"'It is true,' quoth my father, 'and you feel it to be so. Nothing remains, then, but to make the best of it. We do not seek anything at your hands, nor--'

"'Only the right of camping undisturbed about Fairburn,' interposed my uncle Morris, who was of a grasping disposition, and had planned the whole matter, I fear, not without an eye to the advantage of his tribe.

'You wouldn't treat your wife's family as trespa.s.sers.'

"'Certainly not,' returned Ma.s.singberd Heath, with bitterness; 'they shall be most welcome. I should be extremely sorry if they were to leave my neighbourhood just yet. In the meantime, however, I want my wife--my Wife. Come along with me, my pretty one.'

"He looked like a wild beast, within springing distance of his prey.

"'Oh, father, uncle, defend me!' cried the miserable girl. 'What have you done to bring this man's vengeance upon me?'

"'Ay, you are right there!' answered her husband, in a voice that froze my veins. 'That is still left for me--vengeance. Come along, I say; I hunger until it shall begin.'

"'Ma.s.singberd Heath,' cried I, throwing myself at his feet, 'for G.o.d's sake have mercy upon her; it is not her fault. She knew no more than you of all these things. Look how ill and pale she is--you above all men should have pity on her wretched condition. Oh leave her with us, leave my little sister here, and neither she nor we will ever trouble you, ever come near you. It shall be just the same as though you had never set eyes upon us; it shall indeed! Oh, you would not, could not surely be cruel to such a one as she.'

"I pointed to her as she stood clinging to her father's arm as much for support as in appeal, so beautiful, so pitiful, so weak; a spectacle to move a heart of stone.

"'Could I not be cruel,' returned he, with a grating laugh, 'ay, to even such a one as she? Ask her--ask her.'

"There was no occasion to put the question; you saw the answer in her shrinking form, her trembling limbs: his every word fell upon her like a blow.

"'She has not yet known, however, what I can be to my Wife,' continued he. 'Come, my pretty one, come.'

"'She shall not,' cried my father, vehemently; 'it shall never be in his power to hurt her.'

"'What! and I her husband?' exclaimed the other, mockingly. 'Both one until death us do part! Not come?'

"'He will kill her,' murmured my father; 'her blood will be on my head.'

"'Are you coming, wife?' cried Ma.s.singberd Heath, in a terrible voice; he stepped forward, and grasped her slender wrist with fingers of steel.

Morris and my father rushed forward, but the man had swung her behind him, placing himself between her and them, and at the same instant he had taken from his pocket a life-preserver--he carries it to this day--armed with which he was a match for five such men. 'And now,' cried he, 'what man shall stop me from doing what I will with my own?"'

"'I!' exclaimed a sudden voice, and with the word some dark ma.s.s launched itself so violently against the throat of Ma.s.singberd Heath that the giant toppled and fell; upon his huge breast, knife in hand, knelt Stanley Carew, his eyes gleaming with hate, his lithe body working like a panther's. He was not hesitating, not he, he was only drinking in a delicious draught of revenge, before he struck.

"'Strike!' cried I, 'strike hard and quick, Carew!' But while the blade was in air, Morris and my father plucked him backwards, and suffered his intended victim to rise, although despoiled of his weapon.

"'No, Carew; that will never do,' quoth Morris. 'We should have the whole country upon us in an hour, and they would hang us altogether.'

"'Carew is that man's name, is it?' exclaimed Ma.s.singberd Heath. 'I will not forget it, be sure. You shall all pay for this, trust me; but he, and this one, more than all. Come away, wife, come away.'

"'Yes, she must go, Carew,' interposed my uncle, checking a furious movement of the young man's. 'He knows all now, and has a right to what he demands.'

"'Ay, but if he lays one finger upon her,' cried the pa.s.sionate gipsy, 'if he dares to harm her even by a word, and I hear of it, as sure as I see the sun this day, I will know what is the colour of his life-blood.

You may take her away across the seas, but I will follow you; you may surround yourself with precautions, but I will come at you; you may go day and night in mail, but this knife shall find your heart out.'

"Ma.s.singberd Heath nodded contempuously, without speaking; and striding from the tent, signed to Sinnamenta to follow him, which she did, moaning and weeping, and casting backward, ever and anon, pitiful glances upon the home and friends she had exchanged for such an evil lot. I never saw my little sister more."

As if the remembrance of this sad scene had utterly overcome her, Rachel Liversedge hid her face in her hands, and wept until the tears welled through her tanned and shrivelled fingers.

"I am indeed distressed," said I, "to have caused you so much pain. I will not make you sad by telling me more."

"Nay, my boy, since I have begun it, let me finish with it; I shall think of it all the same, and it is better to speak than think. That very night Stanley Carew was arrested upon the charge of stealing the horse which he had bought in open market, and ridden home just in time to play the part I have described. In the days I speak of, forty pound was given as a reward to those who gave such evidence as produced a capital conviction, and many a gipsy perished innocently in consequence of that wicked ordinance. It is possible that this accusation was made by one of those who made a practice of earning blood-money; but I am positively certain the false witness was set on by Ma.s.singberd Heath, even if that man did not originate the charge. It was pressed against poor Carew very harshly; and although the farmer of whom he bought the animal came honestly forward, and swore to its being the same which he had sold the prisoner, his evidence was rejected on account of some slight mistake in the description. You must have heard tell of that awful execution long ago at Crittenden jail, when the wretched victim to perjury and revenge uttered these terrible words: 'O G.o.d, if thou dost not deliver me, I will not believe there is a G.o.d.' That unhappy man was Stanley Carew. My father and uncle were pitilessly persecuted and imprisoned, and died before their time. These wrists have worn fetters, this back has suffered stripes; nor did the vengeance of our enemy cease even with one generation. One of my boys is beyond seas, and another within stone walls; yet I know that the hate of Sir Ma.s.singberd Heath is not yet slaked."

"But what became of your little sister, poor Sinnamenta?"

"I know not what she suffered immediately after she was taken from us; Heaven only knows: her husband carried her a great way off out of our ken. But this I have heard, that when he told her of the death of Stanley Carew she fell down like one dead, and presently being delivered of a son, the infant died after a few hours; the mother lived--a maniac. Yes, Ma.s.singberd Heath, you did not kill my little sister, after all; yonder she lives, but recks not whether you are kind or cruel; she drinks no more the bitter cup of love's betrayal."

"She is surely not at Fairburn," asked I, "is she?"

"What else should keep us here, boy, to be harried by keepers, to be vexed by constables and justices? What else should keep me here in a place that tortures me with memories of my youth and of loving faces that have crumbled into dust? What else but the hope of one day seeing my little sister yet, and the vengeance of Heaven upon him who has worked her ruin!" The old woman rose up as she spoke, and looked menacingly towards Fairburn Hall. "I could almost exclaim with poor Carew," cried she, "that if Ma.s.singberd Heath escape some awful end, there is no Avenger on high. I am old, but I shall see it, yes, I shall see it before I die."

If there had been more to tell, which fortunately there was not, I do not think Rachel Liversedge could have spoken further; her emotion far more than her exertions, had reduced her strength so far, that though she uttered the last words energetically enough, I had had for some time a difficulty in hearing what she said.

"I thank you for listening to the tediousness of an ancient dame so long," murmured she: "if you were not a good boy, and half a gipsy, you would never have been so patient. I have told you all this to put you on your guard: it is no secret, but still you may not have heard it.

Distrust, despise, detest Ma.s.singberd Heath; and warn his nephew, if you be his friend, not to venture again within his uncle's reach."

"I will, I will!" cried I; "and I thank you in his name," I held out my hand, and she turned it over in her own.

"An honest palm," quoth she, "without a stain. There is one unlucky cross about it, Peter, that is all. You must not fret for that."

I mounted my horse amid cordial "good-byes" from the gipsies, who had been pursuing their usual avocations during the above recital, as though nothing was more common than that the head of the family should have a secret of two hours long to communicate to a strange young gentleman; and throwing a shilling to the boy who had shown me the way, I took my leave.

It was not till I left the plantation far behind me, and had ridden at speed for some distance on the open road, that I was able to shake off the sombre feelings that oppressed me, and to meet Mrs. Myrtle's welcome to the rectory with an answering smile.

CHAPTER XVI.

I DO SIR Ma.s.sINGBERD A LITTLE FAVOUR.

Upon my return to Fairburn, I became the object of immense curiosity and attraction. I was stared at in the rector's pew at church, and, in my solitary rides, whithersoever I went, as the repository of the great secret of the disruption between Sir Ma.s.singberd and his nephew. It was even whispered that I was the prime mover of the young man's rebellion, and had planned the very manner of his escape upon Panther, including the accident. At all events, I knew all that had happened, which n.o.body else knew, except my tutor himself. Now Mr. Long was as close as wax.

Many an invitation had Mrs. Myrtle obtained of late to take a dish of tea upon grounds which her hosts had since stigmatized as false pretences. As the housekeeper and confidential servant of the rector, she had been asked by Mrs. Arabel of the Grange Farm to take evening refreshment with her in a friendly way; also by Mrs. Remnants, who kept that extensive emporium in the village which supplied snuff to the aged of both s.e.xes (though not gratuitously), becoming cambrics to the young, and lollipops to those who had not yet reached that period of life wherein outward adornment is preferred to inward gratification; also by the exciseman's wife; nay, there was not anybody's wife in Fairburn, having the wherewithal to make a tea-table alluring, and being in a sufficiently high position in life to venture upon the step, who did not invite Mrs. Myrtle to visit her, and proceed to treat her like a refractory pump; they poured a little down, in hopes to be more than remunerated for the outlay. But, alas, although the dear good lady was willing enough, being indeed a gossip born, she had nothing to tell them. She was not equal to the task of Invention, and of facts, even to trade upon in tea and toast, she had absolutely none.