The Finger of Fate.

by Mayne Reid.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE HALF-BROTHERS.

In a wood, within ten miles of Windsor, two youths are seen, gun in hand, in pursuit of game. A brace of thoroughbred setters, guarding the cover in front, and a well-equipped keeper, walking obsequiously in the rear, precludes any suspicion of poaching; though the personal appearance of the young sportsmen needs no such testimony.

The wood is only an extensive pheasant-cover, and their father is its owner. They are the sons of General Harding, an old Indian officer, who, with a hundred thousand pounds, garnered during twenty years'

active service in the East, has purchased an estate in the pleasant shire of Bucks, in the hope of restoring health to a const.i.tution impaired upon the hot plains of Hindostan.

A fine old Elizabethan mansion, of red brick, now and then visible through the openings of the cover, tells that the General has laid out his lacs with considerable taste, while five hundred acres of finely timbered park, a "home farm," and half-a-dozen others rented out--to say nothing of the wood-covers and cottage tenements--prove that the _ci-devant_ soldier has not carefully collected a hundred thousand pounds in India to be carelessly squandered in England.

The two young sportsmen, already introduced as his sons, are his only sons; in short, the only members of his family, with the exception of a maiden sister, who, being sixty years old, and otherwise extremely uninteresting, will not figure conspicuously in our tale, however true it is.

Looking at the two youths, as they step through the pheasant-cover, you perceive there is but slight difference in their size; there is in their age, and still more in their personal appearance. Both are what is termed _dark_; but there is a difference in the degree. He who is the elder, and who bears the baptismal name Nigel, has a complexion almost olive, with straight black hair, that under the sunlight exhibits a purplish iridescence.

Henry, the younger, with fair skin and ruddier cheek, has hair of an auburn brown, drooping down his neck like cl.u.s.ters of Spanish chestnuts.

So great is their dissimilarity in personal appearance, that a stranger would scarce believe the two young sportsmen to be brothers.

Nor are they so in the exact signification of the word. Both can call General Harding father; but if the word "mother" be mentioned, their thoughts would go to two different personages, neither any longer on the earth. Nigel's should stray back to Hyderabad, to a tomb in the environs of that ancient Indian city; Henry's to a grave of later date, in the quiet precinct of an English country churchyard.

The explanation is easy. General Harding is not the only man, soldier or civilian, who has twice submitted his neck to the matrimonial yoke, though few ever wedded two wives so different in character as were his.

Physically, mentally, morally, the Hindoo lady of Hyderabad was as unlike her Saxon successor as India is to England.

Looking at Nigel Harding and his half-brother, Henry, one could not help perceiving that the dissimilarity had in both cases been transmitted from mother to son, without any great distraction caused by the blood of a common father. An incident, occurring in the cover, gives evidence of this.

Though especially a pheasant preserve, the young sportsmen are not in pursuit of the bird with strong whirring wings. The setters search for smaller game. It is mid-winter. A week ago the youths might have been seen, capped and gowned, loitering along the aisles of Oriel College, Oxford. Now home for the holidays, what better than beating the home-covers? The frost-bound earth forbids indulgence in the grand chase; but it gives rare sport by driving the snipes and woodc.o.c.ks--both migratory birds among the Chilterns--to the open waters of the running rivulet.

Up the banks of one--a brook that, defying the frost, gurgles musically among the trees--the young sportsmen are directing their search. This, with the setters, tells that woodc.o.c.k is their game. There are two dogs, a white and a black, both of good breed, but not equally well trained. The black sets steady as a rock; the white quarters more wildly, runs rash, and has twice _flushed_ the game, without _setting_ it.

The white dog belongs to Nigel; the black to his half-brother.

A third time the setter shows his imperfect training, by flushing a c.o.c.k before the sportsmen are nigh enough to obtain a fair shot.

The blood sprung from Hyderabad can stand it no longer. It is hot even under the shadows of a winter wood in the Chilterns.

"I'll teach the cur a lesson!" cries Nigel, leaning his gun against a tree, and taking a clasp-knife out of his pocket. "What you should have taught him long ago, Doggy d.i.c.k, if you'd half done your duty."

"Lor, Muster Nigel," replies the gamekeeper, to whom the apostrophe has been addressed, "I've whipped the animal till my arms ached. 'Tain't no use. The steady ain't in him."

"I'll put it into him, then!" cries the young Anglo-Indian, striding, knife in hand, towards the spaniel. "See if I don't!"

"Stay, Nigel!" interposed Henry. "You are surely not going to do the dog an injury?"

"And what is it to you, if I am? He is _mine_--not _yours_."

"Only, that I should think it very cruel of you. The fault may not be his, poor dumb brute. As you say, it may be d.i.c.k who is to blame, for not properly training him."

"Thank'ee, Muster Henry! 'Bleeged to ye for yer compliment. In coorse it be all my doin'; tho' not much thanks for doin' my best. Howsoever, I'm obleeged to ye, Muster Henry."

Doggy d.i.c.k, who, though young, is neither graceful nor good-looking, accompanies his rejoinder with a glance that bespeaks a mind still more ungraceful than his person.

"Bother your talk--both!" vociferates the impatient Nigel. "I'm going to chastise the cur as he deserves, and not as you may like it, Master Hal. I want a twig for him."

The twig, when cut from its parent stem, turns out to be a stick, three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

With this the peccant animal is brutally belaboured, till the woods for a mile around re-echo its howlings.

Henry begs his brother to desist.

In vain. Nigel continues the cudgelling.

"Gi'e it him!" cries the unfeeling keeper. "Do the beggar good."

"You, d.i.c.k," interposes Henry, "I shall report you to my father."

An angry exclamation from the half-brother, and a sullen scowl from the savage in gaiters, is the only notice taken of Henry's threat. Nigel, irritated by it, only strikes more spitefully.

"Shame, Nigel! Shame! You've beaten the poor brute enough--more than enough. Have done!"

"Not till I've given him a mark to remember me!"

"What are you going to do to him? What more?" hurriedly asks Henry, seeing that Nigel has flung away the stick, and stands threateningly with his knife. "Surely you don't intend--"

"To split his ear! That is what I intend doing!"

"For shame! You shall not!"

"Shall not? But I shall, and will!"

"You shall split my hand first!" cries the humane youth, flinging himself on his knees, and with both hands covering the head of the setter.

"Hands off, Henry! The dog is my own; I shall do what I please to him.

Hands off, I say!"

"I won't!"

"Then take the consequences."

With his left hand Nigel clutches at the animal's ear, at the same time lunging out recklessly with the knife blade. Blood spurts up into the faces of both, and falls in crimson spray over the flax-like coat of the setter.

It is not the blood of Nigel's dog, but his brother's--the little finger of whose left hand shows a deep, longitudinal cut traversing all the way from knuckle to nail.

"You see what you've got by your interference!" cries Nigel, without the slightest show of regret. "Next time you'll keep your claws out of harm's way."