"The sweet creatures! A man shouldn't frighten them, though," he thought.

When he reached the porch he went down on all fours, and began mewing like a mournful tom-cat near to the bottom of the door. Then he listened with his ear to the jamb. He expected a faint cry of alarm, the raucous voice of Nancy Joe, and the clatter of feet towards the porch. There was not a sound.

"She's upstairs," he thought, and stepped back to look up at the front of the house. There was no light in the rooms above.

"I know what it is. Nancy is not home yet, and Kirry's fallen asleep at the rocking."

He stole up to the window and tried to look into the hall, but the blind was down, and he could not see much through the narrow openings at the sides of it.

"She's sleeping, that's it. The house was quiet and she dropped off, rocking the lil one, that's all."

He sc.r.a.ped a handful of the light gravel and flung a little of it at the window. "That'll remind her of something," he thought, and he laughed under his breath.

Then he listened again with his ear at the sill. There was no noise within. He flung more gravel and waited, thinking he might catch her breathing, but he could hear nothing.

Then rising hurriedly and throwing off his playfulness, he strode to the door and tried to open it. The door was locked. He returned to the window.

"Kate!" he called softly. "Kate! Are you there? Do you hear me? It's Pete. Don't be frightened, Kate, bogh!"

There was no response. He could hear the beat of the sea on the sh.o.r.e.

The dog had perched himself on one end of the window sill and was beginning to whine.

"What's this at all? She can't be out. Couldn't take the child anyway.

Where's that Nancy? What right had the woman to lave her? She has fainted, being left alone; that's what's going doing."

He tried to open the window, but the latch was shot. Then he tried the other windows, and the back door, and the window above the hall, which he reached from the roof of the porch; but they would not stir. When he returned to the hall window, the white blind was darker. The lamp inside the room was going out.

The moonlight was dripping down on him through the leaves of the trees.

He found some matches beside his pipe in his side pocket, struck one, and looked at the sash, then took out his clasp knife to remove the pane under the latch. His hand trembled and shook and burst through the gla.s.s with a jerk. It cut his wrist, but he felt the wound no more than if it had been the gla.s.s instead of his arm that bled. He thrust his hand through, shot back the latch, then pushed up the sash, and clambered into the room past the blind. The cat, sitting on the ledge inside, rubbed against his hand and purred.

"Kirry! Kate!" he whispered.

The lamp had given up its last gleam with the puff of wind from the window, and, save for the slumbering fire, all was dark within the house. He hardly dared to drop to his feet for fear of treading on something. When he was at last in the middle of the floor he stood with legs apart, struck another match, held the light above his head, and looked down and around, like a man in a cave.

There was nothing. The child, awakened by the draught of the night air, began to cry from the cradle. He took it up and hushed it with baby words of tenderness in a breaking voice. "Hush, bogh, hush! Mammie will come to it, then. Mammie will come for all."

He lit a candle and crept through the house, carrying the light about with him. There was no sign anywhere until he came to the bedroom, when he saw that the hat and cloak of Kate's daily wear had gone. Then he knew that he was a broken-hearted man. With a cry of desolation he stopped in his search and came heavily downstairs.

He had been warding off the moment of despair, but he could do so no longer now. The empty house and the child, the child and the empty house; these allowed of only one interpretation. "She's gone, bogh, she's left us; she wasn't willing to stay with us, G.o.d forgive her!"

Sitting on a stool with the little one on his knees, he sobbed while the child cried--two children crying together. Suddenly he leapt up. "I'm not for believing it," he thought. "What woman alive could do the like of it? There isn't a mother breathing that hasn't more bowels. And she used to love the lil one, and me too--and does, and does."

He saw how it was. She was ill, distraught, perhaps even--G.o.d help her I--perhaps even mad. Such things happened to women after childbirth--the doctor himself had said as much. In the toils of her bodily trouble, beset by mental terrors, she had fled away from her baby, her husband, and her home, pursued by G.o.d knows what phantoms of disease. But she would get better, she would come back.

"Hush, bogh, hush, then," he whimpered tenderly. "Mammie will come home again. Still and for all she'll come back."

There was the click of a key in the lock, and he crept back to the stool. Nancy came in, panting and perspiring.

"Dear heart alive! what a race I've had to get home," she said, puffing the air of the night.

She was throwing off her bonnet and shawl, and talking before looking round.

"Such pushing and scrooging, you never seen the like, Kirry. Aw, my best Sunday bonnet, only wore at me once, look at the crunched it is! But what d'ye think now? Poor Christian Killip's baby is dead for all. Died in the middle of the rejoicings. Aw, dear, yes, and the band going by playing 'The Conquering Hero' the very minute. Poor thing! she was distracted, and no wonder. I ran round to put a sight on the poor soul, and----why, what's going wrong with the lamp, at all? Is that yourself on the stool, Kirry? Pete, is it? Then where's the mistress?"

She plucked up the poker, and dug the fire into a blaze. "What's doing on you, man? You've skinned your knuckles like potato peel. Man, man, what for are you crying, at all?"

Then Pete said in a thick croak, "Hould your bull of a tongue, Nancy, and take the child out of my arms."

She took the baby from him, and he rose to his feet as feeble as an old man.

"Lord save us!" she cried. "The window broke, too. What's happened?"

"Nothing," growled Pete.

"Then what's coming of Kirry? I left her at home when I went out at seven.".

"I'm choking with thirst, woman. Can't you be giving a man a drink of something?"

He found a dish of milk on the table, where the supper had been laid, and he gulped it down at a mouthful.

"She's gone--that's what it is. I see it in your face." Then going to the foot of the stairs, she called, "Kirry! Kate! Katherine Cregeen!"

"Stop that!" shouted Pete, and he drew her back from the stairs.

"Why aren't you spaking, then?" she cried. "If you're man enough to bear the truth, I'm woman enough to hear it."

"Listen to me, Nancy," said Pete, with uplifted fist. "I'm going out for an hour, and till I'm back, stay you here with the child, and say nothing to n.o.body."

"I knew it!" cried Nancy. "That's what she hurried me out for. Aw, dear!

Aw, dear! What for did you lave her with that man this morning?"

"Do you hear me, woman?" said Pete; "say nothing to n.o.body. My heart's lying heavy enough already. Open your lips, and you'll kill me straight."

Then he went out of the house, staggering, stumbling, bent almost double. His hat lay on the floor; he had gone bareheaded.

He turned towards Sulby. "She's there," he thought "Where else should she be? The poor, wandering lamb wants home."

XVII.

The bar-room of "The Manx Fairy" was full of gossips 'that night, and the puffing of many pipes was suspended at a story that Mr. Jelly was telling.

"Strange enough, I'm thinking. 'Deed, but it's mortal strange. Talk about tale-books--there's nothing in the 'Pilgrim's Progress' itself to equal it. The son of one son coming home Dempster, with processions and bands of music, at the very minute the son of the other son is getting kicked out of the house same as a dog."

"Strange uncommon," said John the Widow, and other voices echoed him.