She stopped as the word pa.s.sed her lips, looked back over her shoulder, and started violently.

I looked where my companion was looking. The dark figure of a man was standing, watching us, in the shadow of the elm-tree. I rose directly to approach him. Naomi recovered her self-possession, and checked me before I could interfere.

"Who are you?" she asked, turning sharply toward the stranger. "What do you want there?"

The man stepped out from the shadow into the moonlight, and stood revealed to us as John Jago.

"I hope I am not intruding?" he said, looking hard at me.

"What do you want?" Naomi repeated.

"I don't wish to disturb you, or to disturb this gentleman," he proceeded. "When you are quite at leisure, Miss Naomi, you would be doing me a favor if you would permit me to say a few words to you in private."

He spoke with the most scrupulous politeness; trying, and trying vainly, to conceal some strong agitation which was in possession of him. His wild brown eyes--wilder than ever in the moonlight--rested entreatingly, with a strange underlying expression of despair, on Naomi's face. His hands, clasped lightly in front of him, trembled incessantly. Little as I liked the man, he did really impress me as a pitiable object at that moment.

"Do you mean that you want to speak to me to-night?" Naomi asked, in undisguised surprise.

"Yes, miss, if you please, at your leisure and at Mr. Lefrank's."

Naomi hesitated.

"Won't it keep till to-morrow?" she said.

"I shall be away on farm business to-morrow, miss, for the whole day.

Please to give me a few minutes this evening." He advanced a step toward her; his voice faltered, and dropped timidly to a whisper. "I really have something to say to you, Miss Naomi. It would be a kindness on your part--a very, very great kindness--if you will let me say it before I rest to-night."

I rose again to resign my place to him. Once more Naomi checked me.

"No," she said. "Don't stir." She addressed John Jago very reluctantly: "If you are so much in earnest about it, Mr. John, I suppose it must be. I can't guess what _you_ can possibly have to say to me which cannot be said before a third person. However, it wouldn't be civil, I suppose, to say 'No' in my place. You know it's my business to wind up the hall-clock at ten every night. If you choose to come and help me, the chances are that we shall have the hall to ourselves. Will that do?"

"Not in the hall, miss, if you will excuse me."

"Not in the hall!"

"And not in the house either, if I may make so bold."

"What do you mean?" She turned impatiently, and appealed to me. "Do _you_ understand him?"

John Jago signed to me imploringly to let him answer for himself.

"Bear with me, Miss Naomi," he said. "I think I can make you understand me. There are eyes on the watch, and ears on the watch, in the house; and there are some footsteps--I won't say whose--so soft, that no person can hear them."

The last allusion evidently made itself understood. Naomi stopped him before he could say more.

"Well, where is it to be?" she asked, resignedly. "Will the garden do, Mr. John?"

"Thank you kindly, miss; the garden will do." He pointed to a gravel-walk beyond us, bathed in the full flood of the moonlight.

"There," he said, "where we can see all round us, and be sure that n.o.body is listening. At ten o'clock." He paused, and addressed himself to me. "I beg to apologize, sir, for intruding myself on your conversation. Please to excuse me."

His eyes rested with a last anxious, pleading look on Naomi's face. He bowed to us, and melted away into the shadow of the tree. The distant sound of a door closed softly came to us through the stillness of the night. John Jago had re-entered the house.

Now that he was out of hearing, Naomi spoke to me very earnestly:

"Don't suppose, sir, I have any secrets with _him_," she said. "I know no more than you do what he wants with me. I have half a mind not to keep the appointment when ten o'clock comes. What would you do in my place?"

"Having made the appointment," I answered, "it seems to be due to yourself to keep it. If you feel the slightest alarm, I will wait in another part of the garden, so that I can hear if you call me."

She received my proposal with a saucy toss of the head, and a smile of pity for my ignorance.

"You are a stranger, Mr. Lefrank, or you would never talk to me in that way. In America, we don't do the men the honor of letting them alarm us. In America, the women take care of themselves. He has got my promise to meet him, as you say; and I must keep my promise. Only think," she added, speaking more to herself than to me, "of John Jago finding out Miss Meadowcroft's nasty, sly, underhand ways in the house!

Most men would never have noticed her."

I was completely taken by surprise. Sad and severe Miss Meadowcroft a listener and a spy! What next at Morwick Farm?

"Was that hint at the watchful eyes and ears, and the soft footsteps, really an allusion to Mr. Meadowcroft's daughter?" I asked.

"Of course it was. Ah! she has imposed on you as she imposes on everybody else. The false wretch! She is secretly at the bottom of half the bad feeling among the men. I am certain of it--she keeps Mr.

Meadowcroft's mind bitter toward the boys. Old as she is, Mr. Lefrank, and ugly as she is, she wouldn't object (if she could only make him ask her) to be John Jago's second wife. No, sir; and she wouldn't break her heart if the boys were not left a stick or a stone on the farm when the father dies. I have watched her, and I know it. Ah! I could tell you such things! But there's no time now--it's close on ten o'clock; we must say good-night. I am right glad I have spoken to you, sir. I say again, at parting, what I have said already: Use your influence, pray use your influence, to soften them, and to make them ashamed of themselves, in this wicked house. We will have more talk about what you can do to-morrow, when you are shown over the farm. Say good-by now.

Hark! there is ten striking! And look! here is John Jago stealing out again in the shadow of the tree! Good-night, friend Lefrank; and pleasant dreams."

With one hand she took mine, and pressed it cordially; with the other she pushed me away without ceremony in the direction of the house. A charming girl--an irresistible girl! I was nearly as bad as the boys. I declare, _I_ almost hated John Jago, too, as we crossed each other in the shadow of the tree.

Arrived at the gla.s.s door, I stopped and looked back at the gravel-walk.

They had met. I saw the two shadowy figures slowly pacing backward and forward in the moonlight, the woman a little in advance of the man.

What was he saying to her? Why was he so anxious that not a word of it should be heard? Our presentiments are sometimes, in certain rare cases, the faithful prophecy of the future. A vague distrust of that moonlight meeting stealthily took a hold on my mind. "Will mischief come of it?" I asked myself as I closed the door and entered the house.

Mischief _did_ come of it. You shall hear how.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BEECHEN STICK.

PERSONS of sensitive, nervous temperament, sleeping for the first time in a strange house, and in a bed that is new to them, must make up their minds to pa.s.s a wakeful night. My first night at Morwick Farm was no exception to this rule. The little sleep I had was broken and disturbed by dreams. Toward six o'clock in the morning, my bed became unendurable to me. The sun was shining in brightly at the window. I determined to try the reviving influence of a stroll in the fresh morning air.

Just as I got out of bed, I heard footsteps and voices under my window.

The footsteps stopped, and the voices became recognizable. I had pa.s.sed the night with my window open; I was able, without exciting notice from below, to look out.

The persons beneath me were Silas Meadowcroft, John Jago, and three strangers, whose dress and appearance indicated plainly enough that they were laborers on the farm. Silas was swinging a stout beechen stick in his hand, and was speaking to Jago, coa.r.s.ely and insolently enough, of his moonlight meeting with Naomi on the previous night.

"Next time you go courting a young lady in secret," said Silas, "make sure that the moon goes down first, or wait for a cloudy sky. You were seen in the garden, Master Jago; and you may as well tell us the truth for once in a way. Did you find her open to persuasion, sir? Did she say 'Yes?'"

John Jago kept his temper.

"If you must have your joke, Mr. Silas," he said, quietly and firmly, "be pleased to joke on some other subject. You are quite wrong, sir, in what you suppose to have pa.s.sed between the young lady and me."