"They be middlin' fish, Miss Melun--they be middlin' fish, sure-ly,"

answered the old rustic.

"Why, I'm sure the big 'un must be over a pound," rattled on the girl joyously. "And didn't Violet just p.r.i.c.k her fingers over his spines."

Here again Mervyn conjured up another picture as he contemplated the great spiny dorsal fin and black stripes of a really finely conditioned perch. She had p.r.i.c.ked her fingers with something very harmless that time, he thought, grimly.

"We have had such a jolly time, Mr Mervyn," said Violet, animatedly.

"I've enjoyed it no end."

He felt that she was looking curiously at him. Her delighted tone seemed to tail off suddenly.

"I'm very glad to hear it," he said, throwing off his mood and striving to join in theirs.

"Over a pound. I'm certain it is," went on Melian, who was still wrapped up in contemplation of the "take". "Come along and let's weigh him."

And the two, aglow with life and spirits, headed for the kitchen and the weighing scales.

"Contrast--again?" thought Mervyn, as he followed.

So did another person, who, unseen, had witnessed the whole of the morning's doings from their very commencement.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

INTERIM--QUIET.

Even as Violet had said, to put such a superhuman strain upon the curiosity of two mere women seemed scarcely fair, and perhaps the hardest strain of all was Mervyn's injunction not to talk about the matter between themselves even; however, they followed it out with a tolerable show of loyalty; in fact, as great a one as could be expected of their s.e.x.

On Melian, of course, the strain fell the hardest. She was quick to recognise that the finding of that strange object had affected her uncle far more than he would allow to appear. Not only that, but as day followed upon day, there was no lessening of the effect. Then, too, what had he done with the thing when they had gone inside leaving him alone. Buried it--thrown it into the pond, or what? She, too, began to feel as though living under the spell of a fear. Perhaps it had been an error of judgment on her uncle's part, to enjoin so strict a silence upon them, she more than once thought--and the worst of this was that it precluded her from consulting Helston Varne.

She had been impressed by the promise that he had exacted from her that she would so consult him in the event of finding herself in any difficulty; in fact, under just such a contingency as had occurred; but she was debarred by her subsequent promise. There were other mysterious happenings she had considered the expediency of laying before him; more even than when we last saw her on the point of doing so; for she had since gained more than an inkling as to his real line in life and the discovery increased her interest in him well nigh to the pitch of vividness.

There was another matter as to which she had gained more than an inkling, and that, the ill-repute which was said to surround Heath Hover. She remembered how on her first arrival she had suggested that it looked like a haunted house, and the way in which her uncle had scoffed at the idea and turned away the question, struck her in subsequent lights as a trifle overdoing the part. One circ.u.mstance, however, seemed more suspicious still.

She was chatting with old Joe one day, and enjoining upon him the necessity of fixing a board over a pane of gla.s.s she had broken in her bedroom window, until it could be properly mended.

"I don't want any more bats coming in and flicking me in the face, Joe,"

she appended, "like that night just after I got here."

The old man dropped the handles of the barrow which he was just about to trundle, and stared at her queerly.

"What time might that ha' been, Missie?" he said.

"Why, a few days after I came."

"That warn't no flittermaouse," he said. "Yew won't see none o' they for--come weeks and weeks. They be all asleep they be."

"But it might have been a stray one."

The old rustic grinned pityingly and shook his head.

"That warn't no flittermaouse," he repeated.

Melian's eyes opened wider.

"What was it, then?" she said.

But the old rustic seemed suddenly to become alive to the fact that he had said too much; in short, had been betrayed into overstepping his employer's explicitly imposed injunctions.

"What war it? Narthen. You'd been dreamin', Missie, for sure. That's what it war." And old Joe had picked up the wheelbarrow handles and trundled off then and there with an energy which bade fair to put a stop to any further questioning.

But his statement had rendered Melian decidedly uncomfortable. If her acquaintance with natural history was defective, she had had ample opportunity of discovering that that of her uncle was not; in fact, eminently the reverse, and that he of all people should have been so hard put to it as to invent a bat flying about on a mid-winter night, showed something loose somewhere. Should she tax him with it under the form of chaff? But she decided not to. He might not like it, and again, he would almost certainly be angry with old Joe. On the other hand it looked as if he himself were not so sceptical as he made out.

She had also become aware that n.o.body had been able to inhabit Heath Hover for a long time past until her uncle had come; that is to say, do more than give it a very brief trial, perhaps one of fewer weeks than he had given it months. Well, as to that, he seemed quite comfortable there, and since her arrived, happy. She was letting her imagination run riot too much, she told herself--and certainly, she had never _seen_ anything since her arrival. Strange sounds might be produced by any cause, and as for "influences"--well, imagination might be a factor again.

Helston Varne had not been near them since that visit when they had met unexpectedly on the dusking road, and as a matter of hard fact Melian felt just a little sore with him for not having been. He had sent her a few lines--short, straight, and to the point--reminding her of his willingness to a.s.sist her at any time or at any moment, reminding her also of her promise not to be behindhand in claiming such aid. This note she had carefully kept. But he had not been near them again, and she had found herself very much wishing that he would come. There was something so refreshingly out of the ordinary about his personality-- about his conversation--and then, too, the high intellectual talent which must go to make him such a success in the line of life he had adopted; the suggestion of mystery blended with power was just the element to appeal strongly to a girl of her character and temperament.

The fact is, that during the intervening time--getting on for three months as it was--Melian had been thinking a great deal about Helston Varne.

Everything was favourable to introspection of the sort. The life she led, amid free, open, congenial surroundings, into the charm of which she had entered from the very first, and which had grown upon her more and more with every change of the advancing season--and yet the personality of the man seemed subtly to pervade it all. There were spots they had visited--a casual stroll along a woodland path, or a breezy, uphill climb to this or that point whence rolling views of some of the loveliest rural expanse in England swept away on either hand; and she could remember all that was said, and exactly where it was said, during their exchange of ideas, which were, for the most part, thoroughly in sympathy. And then, too, in her moments of shadowy fears in the mysterious ill-omened old house--small wonder that taking all things together she should have thought a good deal about Helston Varne during that intervening time.

It was the last day of Violet Clinock's visit, and on the morrow she would be returning to town and work. She was a cheerful contented soul, but the contrast between this glorious early June day, paradisical in its cloudless beauty, the air fragrant with spring flowers and melodious with the song of soaring larks; every meadow a golden sea of b.u.t.tercups; and soft ma.s.ses of new leaf.a.ge on high, irregular hedges, or towering hugely heavenwards from this or that n.o.ble wood--the contrast between this and the stuffy air and blackened chimney stacks which formed the sole and shut-in outlook from her own modest dwelling of all the year round was too marked even for her. She felt anything but lighthearted.

"You are in luck, Melian, dear," she could not restrain herself from saying, wistfully. "Look at all this, and then think of me this time to-morrow."

Melian was in the mood thoroughly to sympathise. This was one of those days which she appreciated every hour, every minute of--and on which she felt she could not get up too early or see the last of too late.

"Couldn't you anyway manage to stretch it out even a day or two longer?"

she said. "Surely you can?"

But the other shook a desponding head.

"No fear. I've pulled it out to its very utmost limits," she said. "I can't afford to play cat and banjo with my billet--certainly not yet."

There was that in the answer which seemed to remind Melian that the speaker had done that very thing on her behalf, what time she had been ill, and friendless, and nearly dest.i.tute.

"It's too bad," she declared. "Yes, I am lucky, Violet, dear, and I owe my luck entirely to you. But of course, when you have your long holiday--in August or September--you are to put in every day of it here.

Just think--all those glorious heather slopes above Plane Pond--right away back--will be blazing with crimson, and--what times we'll have. It isn't so far off either, so buck up. It's of no use talking about week-ends I suppose."

"You know I can't run to it, dear."

"I know you're altogether too beastly proud," was the answer. "If we gave you a birthday present of a new hat you wouldn't be too proud to take that, and a return ticket here runs to far less. It's an absurd distinction."

But the other's head shake was quite decided.

"We've hammered all that out before," she said. "Look, your uncle has finished his siesta. Here he comes."

The two girls had been picking wild flowers and had wandered away from the spot where they had been picnicking on sandwiches and ginger-beer-- and something stronger for the only male of the party. It was a lovely spot, an intermingling of heath and woodland, and the white stems of birches supporting their new feathery foliage, stood out in relief from a background of dark firs. Just glimpsed in the distance beyond stood a venerable wooden windmill raised on piles--one of its sails missing and another falling in half through sheer old age, like teeth. The whole made for that combination of charm and the picturesque so characteristic of, if not unique, as a sample of English rural scenery.

"Well," said Mervyn, knocking the ashes out of his pipe as he joined them, and looking very placid and contented. "Isn't it time to saddle up? We've come a precious long way, remember, and you have to allow a margin for punctures."