"What, Crellock? Oh, they've got him too. He came smelling after Hallam, who was like a decoy bird to him. Wanted to see him in the cage; and they let him see Hallam, and--"

"Ah, I heard that Hallam told the constable Crellock was worse than he, and they took him too. Yes, I heard that. Hallo! here comes Hallam's maid--doctor's owd la.s.s, Thisbe. Let's get a word wi' her."

Gemp shuffled out of the tailor's shop, and made for Thisbe, who was coming down the street, with her head up and her nose in the air.

"Mornin', good mornin'," he said, with one of his most amiable grins.

"I didn't say it wasn't," said Thisbe sharply; and she went straight on to Miss Heathery's, knocked sharply, and waited, gazing defiantly about the place the while.

"Well, she's a stinger, she is!" muttered Gemp, standing sc.r.a.ping away at his face with his forefinger. "Do her good to be married, and hev some one with the rule over her. Humph! she's gone. Now what does she want there?"

The answer was very simple, though it was full of mystery to Gemp.

Thisbe wanted her mistress and the child, who had gone to Miss Heathery's after dark, Millicent's soul revolting against the idea of staying at the old home now that it was in the possession of Christie Bayle, her husband's bitterest foe.

The gossips were quite correct. Hallam had been examined thrice before the county magistrates, and enough had been traced to prove that for a long time he had been speculating largely, losing, and making up his losses by pledging, at one particular bank, the valuable securities with which Dixons' strong-room was charged. When one of these was wanted he pledged another and redeemed it, while altogether the losses were so heavy that, had not the old bank proprietors been very wealthy men, Dixons' must have gone.

"Now, where's she a-going, neighbour?" said Gemp, sc.r.a.ping away at his stubbly face. "I don't feel up to it like I did, but I shall have to see."

Gorringe peered through his gla.s.ses and the window at the figure in black that had just left Miss Heathery's, leaning on Thisbe's arm for a few moments, and then, as if by an effort, drawing herself up and walking alone.

The day was lovely, the sky of the deepest blue; the sun seemed to be brightening every corner of the whole town, and making the flowers blink and brighten, and the sparrows that haunted the eaves to be in a state of the greatest excitement. King's Castor had never looked more quaintly picturesque and homelike, more the beau-ideal of an old English country town, from the coaching inn with yellow post-chaise outside, and the blue-jacketed postboy with his unnecessarily knotted whip, down to the vegetable stall at the corner of the market, where old Mrs Dims sat on an ancient rush-bottomed chair, with her feet in a brown earthenware bread-pancheon to keep them dry.

Mrs Pinet's flower-pots were so red that they seemed like the blossoms of her plants growing unnaturally beneath the leaves, and her window, and every one else's panes, shone and glittered with the true country brilliancy in the morning sun. Even the gra.s.s looked green growing between the cobble-stones--those pebbles that gave the town the aspect that, being essentially pastoral, the inhabitants had decided, out of compliment to their farm neighbours, to pave it with sheep's kidneys.

But there was one blot upon it--one ugly scar, where the yellow deal boards had been newly nailed up, and the walls and window-frames were blackened with smoke; and it was when pa.s.sing these ruins of her home that Millicent Hallam first shuddered, and then drew herself up to walk firmly by.

"Ah!" said Gorringe, making his shears click, "you wouldn't feel happy if you didn't know what was going on, would you, neighbour?"

"Eh? Know? Of course not. If it hadn't been for me looking after the bank, where would you have all been, eh?"

Gemp spoke savagely, and pointed at the tailor as if he were going to bore a hole in his chest.

"Well, p'r'aps you did some good there, Master Gemp; but if you'd take my advice, you'd go home and keep yoursen quiet. I wouldn't get excited about nothing, if I was you."

"Humph! No, you wouldn't, Master Gorringe; but some folk is different to others," said Gemp, talking away from the doorway, with his head outside, as he peered down the street.

"Hey! look at 'em now!--the curiosity of these women folk! Here's owd Mother Pinet with her neck stretched out o' window, and Barton at the shop, and Cross at the `Chequers,' and Dawson the carrier, all got their heads out, staring after that woman. Now, where's she going, I wonder?"

Old Gemp stumped back into the shop, shaving away at his cheek.

"She can't be going over to Lindum to see Hallam, because she went yesterday."

The tailor's shears clicked as a corner was taken out of a piece of cloth.

"She ain't going up to the doctor's, because he drove by half-an-hour ago with the owd lady."

Another click.

"Can't be going for a walk. Wouldn't go for a walk at a time like this.

I've often wondered why folk do go for walks, Master Gorringe. I never did."

_Click_!

"Nay, Master Gemp, you could always find enough to see and do in the town, eh?"

"Plenty! plenty, mun, plenty!--I've got it!"

"Eh?"

"She's going--Hallam's wife, yonder--to see owd Sir Gordon, and beg Hallam off; and, look here, I wean't hev it!"

Gemp banged his stick down upon the counter in a way that made the cloth spread thereon rise in waves, and became very broad of speech here, though it was a matter of pride amongst the Castor people that they spoke the purest English in the county, and were not broad of utterance, like the people on the wolds, and "down in the marsh."

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A PAINFUL MEETING.

Whether Gemp would have it or no, Millicent Hallam was on her way to Sir Gordon's quiet, old-fashioned house on the North Road--a house that was a bit of a mystery to the Castor children, whose young brains were full of conjecture as to what could be inside a place whose windows were blanks, and with nothing but a door to the road, and a high wall right and left to complete the blankness of the frontage.

It ought to have been called the backage; for Sir Gordon Bourne's house was very pleasant on the other side, with a compact garden and flowers blooming to brighten it--a garden in which he never walked.

Millicent Hallam pulled at the swinging handle of the bell at Sir Gordon's door with the determination of one who has called to demand a right.

The door was opened by a quiet-looking, middle-aged man in drab livery, whose brown hair and cocoa-nut fibry whiskers, joined to a swinging, easy gait, suggested that he would not have been out of place on the deck of a vessel, an idea strengthened by an appearance, on one side of his face, as if he were putting his tongue in his cheek.

He drew back respectfully before Millicent could say, "Is Sir Gordon at home?" allowed her to pa.s.s, and then, as Thisbe followed her mistress, he gave her a very solemn wink, but without the vestige of a smile.

Thisbe gave her shawl a violent s.n.a.t.c.h, as if it were armour that she was drawing over a weak spot; but Tom Porter, Sir Gordon's factotum, did not see it, for he was closing the door and thinking about how to hide the fact that his hands were marked with rouge with which he had been polishing the plate when the bell rang.

He led the way across the hall, which was so full of curiosities from all parts of the globe that it resembled a museum, and, opening a door at the end, ushered Millicent into Sir Gordon's library, a neatly kept little room with a good deal of the air of a captain's cabin in its furnishing; telescopes, compa.s.ses, and charts hung here and there, in company with books of a maritime character, while one side of the place was taken up by a large gla.s.s case containing a model of "The _Sea Dream_ schooner yacht, the property of Gordon Bourne." So read an inscription at the foot, engraved upon a bra.s.s plate.

Millicent remained standing with her veil down, while Tom Porter retired, closed the door, and, after giving notice of the arrival, went back into the hall, where Thisbe was standing in a very stern, uncompromising fashion.

Sir Gordon's man wanted to arrange his white cravat, but his fingers were red, and for the same reason he was debarred from pushing the Brutus on his head a little higher, so that, unable to rearrange his plumage, he had to let it go.

He walked straight up to Thisbe, stared very hard at her, breathing to match, and then there was a low deep growl heard which bore some resemblance to "How are you?"

Thisbe was "Nicely, thank you," but she did not say it nicely; it was snappish and short.

Mr Tom Porter did not seem to object to snappish shortness, for he growled forth:

"Come below?" and added, "my pantry?"

"No, thank you," was Thisbe's reply, full of asperity.

"Won't you take anything--biscuit?"

"No, I--thank--you," replied Thisbe, dividing her words very carefully; and Tom Porter stood with his legs wide apart and stared.