Chapter IV (2)

To the end he asserted that his wife had run from him unfaithfully, and was pitied for it. So I hear, at least, and do not care; as I am sure she would not have cared. She had saved his honour, with my poor help, and having saved it, was quit of us both.

I pray the foreign earth may rest lightly on her.

THE JEW ON THE MOOR.

[The scene is the kitchen of a small farm-house above the Walkham River, on the western edge of Dartmoor. The walls, originally of rough granite, have had their asperities smoothed down by many layers of whitewash. The floor is of lime-ash, nicely sanded. From the ceiling--formed of rude, unplaned beams and the planching of the bedroom above--depends a rack crowded with hams and sides of bacon, all wrapped in newspapers. In the window a dozen geraniums are blooming, and beyond them the eye rests on the slope of Sharpitor and the distant ridge of Sheepstor. The fireplace, which faces the window, is deep and capacious, and floored with granite slabs. On these burns a fire of glowing peat, and over the fire hangs a crock of milk in process of scalding. In the ingle behind it sits the relator of this story, drying his knees after a Dartmoor shower. From his seat he can look up the wide chimney and see, beyond the smoke, the sky, and that it is blue again and shining. But he listens to the farmer's middle-aged sister, who stands at the table by the window, and rolls out a pie-crust as she talks. (The farmer is a widower, and she keeps house for him.) She talks of a small picture--a silhouette executed in black and gold--that adorns the wall-space between the dresser and the tall clock, and directly above the side-table piled with the small library of the house. The portrait is a profile of a young man, somewhat noticeably handsome, in a high-necked coat and white stock collar.]

'It is none of our family, though it came to us near on a hundred years ago. It came from America. A young gentleman sent it over from Philadelphia to my grandmother, with a letter to say he was married and happy, and would always remember her. Perhaps he did; and, again, perhaps he didn't. That was the last my grandmother heard of him.

'But it wasn't made in America. It was made in the War Prison, over yonder at Princetown, where they keep the convicts now. I've heard the man that drew and cut it out was a French sergeant, with only one arm. He had lost the other in the war, and his luck was to be left until the very last draft. He finished it the morning he was released, and he gave it to the young American--Adams, his name was-- for a keepsake. The Americans had to stay behind, because their war wasn't over yet.

'It came to my grandmother in this way: She was married to my grandfather that owned this very farm, and lived in this very house; and twice a week she would drive over to the prison, to the market that used to be held there every day from before noon till nightfall. Sometimes my grandfather drove with her, but oftener not. She could take care of herself very well.

'She sold poultry and pork, eggs and butter, and vegetables; lard sometimes, and straw, with other odds and ends. (The prisoners used the straw for plaiting bonnets.) Scores of salesmen used to travel to the prison every day, from Tavistock, Okehampton, Moreton, and all around the Moor: Jews, too, from Plymouth, with slop-clothing. But in all this crowd my grandmother held her own. The turnkeys knew her; the prisoners liked her for her good looks and good temper, and because she always dealt fair; and the agent (as they called the governor in those days) had given orders to set aside a table and trestles for her twice a week, close inside the entrance of the market square, on the side where the bettermost French prisoners lived in a building they called the Petty Caution.

'But with the prisoners, though many a time her heart melted for them, she was always very careful, and let it be known that she never smuggled tobacco or messages even for her best customers. After a while they got to understand this, and (though you may think it queer) liked her none the less. The agent, on his part, trusted her--and the turnkeys and the military officials--and didn't respect her the less because she never told tales, though they knew she might have told many.

'This went on, staid and regular, for close upon three years; and then, one fine October evening, my grandmother, after reaching home with her little cart, unharnessing and bedding up the donkey in his stable, walked out to the orchard, where my grandfather was looking over his cider apples, and says she to him,--

'"William, I've a-done a dreadful deed."

'My grandfather took off his hat, and rubbed the top of his head. "Good Lord!" he says. "You don't tell me!"

'"I've helped a prisoner to escape," says she.

'"Then we'm lost and done for," says my grandfather. "How did it come about?" And with that he waited a little, and said, "Damme, my dear, if any other person had brought me this tale I'd have tanned his skin." For I must tell you my grandfather and grandmother doted on one another.

'"I know you would," said my grandmother, dismally. "And I can't think how the temptation took me. But the poor creatur' was little more'n a boy--and there were a-something in the eyes of him--" She meant to say there was a-something that reminded her of her own eldest, that she had lost a dozen years before.

'I don't know whether my grandfather understood or whether he didn't. But all he said was, "However did you contrive it?"

'"It came," she said, "of my takin' they six white rabbits to market. I sold mun all; and when they were sold, and the hutch standin' empty--" My grandmother pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

'"You drove him out in the rabbit hutch?" asked my grandfather.

'"With a handful of straw between him and the bars," she owned. "He's nobbut a boy. You can't think how easy. And the look of him when he crep' inside--"

'"Where is he?" asked my grandfather.

'"Somewheres hangin' about the stable at this moment," she told him, with a kind o' sob.

'So my grandfather went out to the back. He could not find the prisoner in the stable, but by-and-by he caught sight of him on the slope of the stubble field behind it. The poor lad had taken a hoe, and was pretending to work it, while he edged away in the dimmety light.

'"Hallo!" sings out my grandfather across the gate; and goes striding up the field to him. "If I were you," says he, "I wouldn't hoe stubble; because that's a new kind of agriculture in these parts, and likely to attract notice."

'"I was doin' my best," twittered the prisoner. He was a delicate-lookin' lad, very white just now about the gills. "I come from Marblehead," he explained, "and, bein' bred to the sea, I didn't think it would matter."

'"It will, you'll find, if you persevere with it. But come indoors. We'll stow you in the cider-loft for to-night, after you've taken a bite of supper. And to-morrow--well, I'll have to think that out," said my grandfather.

'For the next few hours he felt pretty easy. He and his wife had a good reputation with the agent, who would take a long time before suspecting them of any hand in an escape. The three ate their supper together in good comfort, though from time to time my grandfather pricked up his ears as though he heard the sound of a gun. But the wind blew from the south-west that night, and if a gun was fired the sound did not carry.

'When supper was done my grandmother made a suggestion that the lad, instead of turning out to the cider-loft, should sleep in the garret overhead; and my grandfather, after a look at the lad's face, shut his lips, and would not gainsay her, though--as in bed he couldn't help reminding her--it would be difficult to pass off a visitor in the garret, with two blankets, for a housebreaker.

'As it happened, though, they were not disturbed that night. But my grandfather, for thinking, took a very little sleep, and in the morning he went up to the garret with the best plan he could devise.

'"I've been turnin' it over," he said, "and there's no road will help you across the Moor for days to come. You must bide here till the hue-an'-cry has blown over, and meantime the missus must fit up some disguise for you; but you must bide in bed, for a man can't step out o' this house, front or back, without bein' visible from all the tors around. So rest where you be, and I'll just dander down along t'wards Walkhampton, where the Plymouth road runs under Sharpitor, an' where I've been meanin' to break up a taty-patch this long time past. There's alway a plenty goin' and comin' 'pon the road, an' maybe by keepin' an eye open I'll learn what line the chase is takin'."

'So my grandfather shouldered his biddick and marched off, down and across the valley, marked off his patch pretty high on the slope, and fell to work. Just there he could keep the whole traffic of the road under his eye, as well as the fields around his house; and for a moment it gave him a shock as he called to mind that in the only field that lay out of sight he'd left a scarecrow standing--in a patch that, back in the summer, he had cropped with pease for the agent's table up at the War Prison. To be sure, 'twasn't likely to mislead a search-party, and, if it did, why a scarecrow's a scarecrow; but my grandfather didn't like the thought of any of these gentry being near the house. If they came at all they might be minded to search further. So he determined that when dinner-time came he would go back home and take the scarecrow down.

'The road (as I said) was always pretty full of traffic, coming and going between Plymouth and the War Prison. There were bakers' wagons, grocery vans, and vans of meat, besides market carts from Bickleigh and Buckland. My grandfather watched one and another go by, but made out nothing unusual until--and after he had been digging for an hour, maybe--sure enough he spied a mounted soldier coming up the road at a trot, and knew that this must be one of the searchers returning. In a minute more he recognised the man for an acquaintance of his, a sergeant of the garrison, and by name Grimwold, and hailed him as he came close.

'"Hallo! Is that you?" says the sergeant, reining up. "And how long might you have been workin' there?"

'"Best part of an hour," says my grandfather. "What's up?"

'"There's a prisoner escaped, another o' those damned Yankees," says the sergeant. "I've been laying the alarm all the way to Plymouth. You ha'n't seen any suspicious-lookin' party pass this way, I suppose?"

'My grandfather said very truthfully that he hadn't, but promised very truthfully that he would keep an eye lifting. So the sergeant wished him good-day and rode on towards Two Bridges.

'For the next twenty minutes nothing passed but a tax-cart and a market woman with a donkey; and a while after them a very queer-looking figure hove in sight.

''Twas a man walking, with a great sack on his shoulders and two or three hats on his head, one atop of another. By the cut of his jib, as they say, my grandfather knew him at once for one of the Plymouth Jews, that visited Princetown by the dozen with cast-off clothes for sale, and silver change for the gold pieces that found their way sometimes into the prison as prize-money. Sometimes, too, they carried away the Bank of England notes that the Frenchmen were so clever at forging. But though, as he came near, the man had Jew written all over him, my grandfather couldn't call to mind that he'd ever seen this particular Jew before.

'What is more, it was plain enough in a minute that the Jew didn't recognise my grandfather; for, catching sight of him aloft there on the slope, first of all he gave a start, next he walked forward a few steps undecided-like, and last he pulled up, set down his bundle like a man tired, and looked behind him down the road. The road was empty, so he turned his attention to my grandfather, and after looking at him very curiously for half a minute, "Good-morning," says he.

'By this time my grandfather had guessed what was passing in the man's mind, and it came into his own to have a little fun.

'"Good-morning, stranger," said he, through his nose, mimicking so well as he could the American manner of speaking.

'"How long have you been at work there, my man?" asks the Jew, still glancing up and down the road.

'"A long time," answers my grandfather, putting on a scared look, and halting in his words. "This piece of ground belongs to me"--which was true enough, but didn't sound likely; for he was always a careless man in his dress (the only matter over which he and my grandmother had words now and then), and to-day, feeling he had the whip-hand of her, he had taken advantage to wear an old piece of sacking in place of a coat.

'"Oh, indeed," says the Jew, more than dubious, and thinking, no doubt, of the three guineas that was the regular reward for taking an escaped prisoner.

'"It's the tarnal truth," says my grandfather, and fell to whistling, like a man facing it out. But the tune he chose was "Yankee Doodle!" This, of course, made the Jew dead sure of his man. But he was a lean little wisp of a man, and my grandfather too strongly built to be tackled. So the pair stood eyeing one another until, glancing up, my grandfather saw three soldiers come round the corner of the road from Plymouth, and with that he dropped his biddick and turned like a desperate man.

'The Jew saw them too, and almost upon the same instant. "Help, help!" he yelled, and leaving his bag where he had dropped it, tore down the road to meet the soldiers, waving both arms and still shouting, "Help! A prisoner! A prisoner!"

'My grandfather always said afterwards that, when he heard this, he fairly groaned. He wasn't by any means humorous as a rule, and, so far as he was concerned, the joke had gone far enough; and he used to add as a warning that a man may go so far in a joke he can't help but go farther--'tis like hysterics with women. At any rate, he saw the soldiers coming for him at the double, spreading themselves to head him off, and as they came he broke and ran straight up the slope towards the head of the tor.

'This violent exercise didn't suit him at all, and glad enough he was, after two minutes of it, to note that the soldiers were shortening the distance hand over fist. For a moment he had a mind to drop, as though worn out with hunger and exhaustion, but his face and shape wouldn't lend themselves to that deceit. So he held on and did his best, until the foremost soldier drew within thirty yards and shouted out, threatening to fire. Turning and seeing that he had his musket almost at the "present," my grandfather dropped his arms, stood still, and allowed them to take him like a lamb.

'"But," said he, sulky-like, "if 'tis to the prison you mean to carry me, then carry me you shall. Back to the road I'll go with you, but not a step farther on my own legs, and on that you may bet your last dollar."

'The soldiers--they were three raw youngsters of the Somerset Militia--threatened at first to prick him along the road with their bayonets. But by this time the little Jew had come up panting and yet almost capering with excitement.

'"No bloodthed!" said he, in his lisping way. "I'll have no bloodthed! The man 'ith worth three guineath to me ath he ith. He thall have a cart, if it cotht me five shillingth! Where 'th the nearetht village?"

'He ran off and down the road, while my grandfather sat down on the turf along with the soldiers, and smoked a pipe of tobacco. Very nice lads they were, too; but he felt shy in their company, thinking how badly he had deceived them, and also that the joke was near running dry. For, whatever cart the Jew might hire, the driver couldn't help recognising a man so widely known as my grandfather.

'But his luck stood yet. For the little man hadn't run above three-quarters of a mile on the road and was not half-way towards Buckland--his nearest chance of a cart--when he came full tilt upon a light wagon and three more soldiers, with a fourth riding behind, and all conveying the prisoners' weekly pocket-money up to Princetown, in sacks filled with small change. Here was a chance to save breath as well as carriage hire, and the little Jew charged down on them so fiercely, as they crawled up the hill, that the corporal who sat on the money with a musket across his knees, had nearly shot him for a highwayman before giving him time to explain.

'They whipped up the horses though, when they heard his story; and so, coming to the road under Sharpitor, and halting, they very soon had my grandfather trussed and laid upon the bags of money, and jogged away with him towards the Two Bridges, the Jew and three militiamen tramping behind at the cart-tail.

'It was one o'clock, or a little past, when they drove up to the prison gate; and a mist beginning to gather above North Hessary, as at this time of year it often does after a clear morning. My grandfather, looking out from under the tilt of the cart, felt as he'd never felt before what a cheerless place it must seem to a new-comer, and his heart melted a little bit further towards the lad he was hiding at home.

'"Hallo!" says the sentry at the gate.

'"You'll say something more than Hallo! when you see what we've got inside here," promised the corporal.

'Then they bundled my grandfather out in the light of day, and the corporal proudly told the sentry to summon the agent at once.

'"Good Lord!" said the sentry, "if it bain't Farmer Mugford!"

'Just then, as it happened, forth stepped the agent himself from the wicket, starting for his walk that he took for his health's sake every afternoon. Captain Sharpland his name was, and later on, when the Americans mutinied, he was accused of treating them harshly, but my grandfather said that a kinder-hearted man never stepped.

'"Hallo," says Captain Sharpland, halting and putting up his eyeglass. "Why, Mugford, whatever is the meaning of this?"

'"You'd best ask the Jew here, sir," my grandfather answered, nursing his sulks.

'"If you pleathe, noble captain," put in the Jew, who didn't yet guess anything amiss, "we've thecured the ethcaped prithoner--after a tuthle--"

'"And pray, who the devil may you be?" asked Captain Sharpland, screwing his eyeglass into his eye. He disliked Jews, upon principle.

'"Tho pleathe you, noble captain, my name 'th Nathan Nathaniel, of Thouththide Thtreet, Plymouth: and on my way thith morning, ath you thee, I came on the prithoner--"'

'"Prisoner be--" began Captain Sharpland, but broke off to swear at the sentry, that was covering his face with his hands to hide his grins. "My good Mr Mugford, will _you_ explain?"

'"With pleasure, sir," my grandfather answered, and told his story, while the Jew's eyes grew wider and wider, and his jaw dropped lower and lower.

'"You claim compensation, of course?" said Captain Sharpland at the close, and as gravely as he could, though he too had to smooth a hand over his upper lip.

'"Why, as for that, sir"--my grandfather was taken aback--"I took it for a joke, and bear no grudge against Government for it."

'"It wouldn't help you if you did," said Captain Sharpland. "But I suggest that Mr Nathan, here, owes you a trifle--shall we put it at twenty pounds?"

'But here Mr Nathan cast up his hands with a scream, and would have sat down in the roadway. The soldiers caught him, and held him upright, and you may guess if, in their temper at being fooled, they twisted his arms a bit.

'"Take him to my quarters, and we will discuss it," commanded Captain Sharpland, turning back to the wicket again, and leading the way. Well, the Jew, when he reached the agent's quarters, rolled on to his knees, and whined so long, beating down the price, that 'twas well after four o'clock before he counted out the five guineas which was the least sum Captain Sharpland would hear of. My grandfather counted them into his pocket, scarcely believing his good fortune. He stayed behind after the creature had slunk away out of the room-- to have a laugh with the captain, who very heartily offered him a glass of grog upon the top of it; and with that it came over him how he was deceiving this good man. He couldn't accept the drink; he could scarcely muster up face to say "Good-night, sir, and thank you," and if he, too, as he went out, didn't carry his tail between his legs, I doubt if he felt much better satisfied with himself than did Mr Nathan.

'But just outside the gate he found something to distract his mind. The soldiers, in a rage at being made to look foolish, had been waiting there for Mr Nathan with their belts; and my grandfather arrived in time to hear the wretched man howling for mercy, as they chevied him away over the moor under the lee of North Hessary and into the dusk.

'He stood and listened for a minute or so, but by-and-by there was an end of the yells, and the soldiers came strolling back, laughing together, as men who had taken a pleasant little revenge but not pushed it too far. So he turned his face for home, and reached it a little after nightfall; and there he turned out his pocket in front of my grandmother, who could not believe a word of the tale until she had handled each guinea separately. Then she, too, flung her apron over her head, and laughed till she was weak. But my grandfather wanted to know if by rights he oughtn't to share the money with the prisoner.

'My grandmother couldn't make up her mind about this, and advised him to sleep on it. The young man (she said) had faithfully kept his bed all day, but was growing resty. So my grandfather, before supping, took a light and went upstairs to the garret.

'"We've kept the scent wide to-day," he reported, very cheerful-like. "But you'll have to lie still for a while yet."

'"Lyin' here puts a strain on a man," the lad grumbled. "Couldn't I take a turn in the fields, now that dark has fallen? I'd promise not to stray far from the house."

'"That's a notion," my grandfather agreed. "I once had to lie in bed two days with a quinsy, and I hated it." He considered for a while, and could see no objection. "Come down and sup with us," he said; "and afterwards, if the missus agrees, you can take a stroll. But don't make too much noise when you let yourself in again."

'Well, so it was fixed; and after supper the lad put on a pair of high-lows my grandfather lent him, and started off for a ramble in the night air, with a plenty of instructions about the safest paths. At nine o'clock, which was their regular hour, my grandfather and grandmother made out the light and went to bed, leaving the door on the latch. It was an hour before my grandfather could get to sleep. He was thinking of the five guineas, and how they ought rightfully to be divided.

'At five in the morning his wife woke him, and declared that in her belief the lad was still abroad. If he had returned and gone to his garret she must have heard; but she had heard nothing. She harped on this till my grandfather climbed out and went to the garret for a look; and sure enough the bed was empty.

'They lay awake till daylight, the pair of them, cogitating this and that. But when the dawn came, my grandfather could stand it no longer. He pulled on his breeches and boots, went downstairs, and had scarcely thrown open the door before he heard screams and saw a wretched figure, naked to the shirt, running across the yard towards the house. It was Nathan the Jew, and he tumbled in front of my grandfather, and caught hold of him by the boots while he yelled for mercy.

'What do you suppose, was the explanation? My grandfather could scarcely make head or tail of it, even after listening to the Jew's story. And neither he nor my grandmother ever set eyes on the prisoner lad again. But about nine months later there came a letter from America that helped to clear things up.

'The poor boy--so he wrote in his letter--being turned loose under the sky after fifteen months of captivity, just couldn't go back to the garret. Though the night was pitch black and full of mist, and the stars hidden, he wanted no more than to pace to and fro, and look up and open his chest to it. To and fro he went, a bit farther each time, but always keeping my grandfather's directions somewhere at the back of his mind, and always searching back till he could see the glimmer of whitewash showing him where the house stood. In the letter he sent to my grandmother he told very freely of the thoughts that came to him there while he felt his way back and forth; and to a staid woman that had never been shut up behind bars the writing--or the most of it--was mad enough. "Liberty! Liberty!" it kept saying: and "good though it was, how much better if he'd been able to see just one star through the fog!"

'By little and little he stretched his tether so far, forgetting how the time went, that the dawn overtook him a good half-mile from the house; and through the gray of it he caught sight of a man standing about fifty yards away, and right in his path. He turned to run, and then his heart almost jumped out of his mouth as he saw another man standing to catch him with arms held wide!

'But what had happened was, he had strayed into the pea-patch and the figure with its arms stretched out was no man at all, but a scarecrow. The lad had no sooner made sure of this than he whipped behind it, stretched out his hands upon the cross-trees that served it for arms, and clung there, praying.

'Now the man creeping down the field was Nathan the Jew. He had been wandering the Moor all night, crazy with terror; and when the dawn showed him a house, he could have turned Christian and dropped on his knees. But casting a glance over his shoulder as he ran towards it, he caught sight of the scarecrow. For a second or two he ran faster, believing it to be either a man or a ghost. He took another glance back and came to a halt.

'He knew it now for a scarecrow. He stood, and he stood, and he eyed it.

'The scarecrow had a suit of clothes that was all tatters, and an old beaver hat. It was the hat that took Nathan's fancy. Beaver hats cost a deal of money in those days: but they had a knack of lasting, and Nathan had scarcely ever met with one, however old, that he couldn't sell for a few pence. For a minute or so he stood there, letting his sense of business get the better of his fright; then he swallowed down the last doubt sticking in his throat, walked straight up to the scarecrow, and made a grab at the hat.

'"Leave my head alone, can't you?" said the scarecrow. And with that Mr Nathan dropped in a fit; yet not so quick but that before dropping he caught a straight blow full on the jaw.

'When he came to, his coat was gone, and his bag, and his hats, including the scarecrow's. But the rest of the scarecrow stood over him, with its arms stretched out just as before; and he picked himself up and ran from it.

'As for the lad, by this time he had made the best of two miles towards Plymouth. In his letter he apologised very prettily to my grandmother for not saying good-bye. He owed his life to her, he said; but being taken unawares he had done the best he could in the circumstances.'

MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY.

[_From the Memoirs of a Pierrot_.]

I had come with high expectations, for Mr Felix, a bachelor of sixty-five, was reputed to have made for thirty years this particular cabinet his idol. Any nabob or millionaire can collect. Mr Felix, being moderately well to do, had selected. He would have none but the best; and the best lay stored delicately on cotton-wool, ticketed with the tiniest handwriting, in a nest of drawers I could have unlocked with a hairpin.

The topmost drawer contained scarabs (of which I am no connoisseur); the second some two dozen intaglios, and of these, by the light of my bull's-eye lantern, I examined five or six before sweeping the lot into my bag--Europa and the Bull, Ganymede in the eagle's claw, Agave carrying the head of Pentheus, Icarus with relaxed wing dropping headlong to a sea represented by one wavy line; each and all priceless. In the third drawer lay an unset emerald, worth a king's ransom, a clasp of two amethysts, and a necklace of black pearls graduated to a hair's-breadth. By this time I could see--I read it even in the exquisite parsimony of the collection--that I had to deal with an artist, and sighed that in this world artists should prey upon one another. The fourth drawer was reserved for miniatures, the most of them circleted with diamonds: the fifth for snuff-boxes-gold snuffboxes bearing royal ciphers, snuff-boxes of tortoise-shell and gold, snuff-boxes of blue enamel set with diamonds. A couple of these chinked together as they dropped into the bag. The sound startled me, and I paused for a moment to look over my shoulder.

The window stood open as I had left it. Outside, in the windless frosty night, the snow on the house-roofs sparkled under a wintering moon now near the close of her first quarter. But though the night was windless, a current of air poured into the room, and had set a little flame dancing in the fireplace where, three minutes ago, the sea-coals had held but a feeble glow, half-sullen. Downstairs, in some distant apartment, fiddles were busy with a waltz tune, and a violoncello kept the beat with a low thudding pizzicato. For Mr Felix was giving a Christmas party.

I turned from this hasty glance to pick up another snuff-box. As my fingers closed on it the music suddenly grew louder, and I looked up as the door opened, and a man stood on the threshold--a short, square-set man, dressed in black.

'Eh?' He gave a little start of surprise. 'No, no, excuse me, my friend, but you are seeking in the wrong cabinet.'

Before I could pull myself together, he had stepped to the window and closed it. 'You had best keep quite still,' he said, 'and then we can talk. There are servants on the stairs below, and should you attempt the way you came there are three constables just around the corner. I hired them to regulate the carriage traffic: but now that the last guest has arrived, they will be cooling their heels for a spell; and I have a whistle. I have also a pistol.' With a turn of his hand he flung open a door in a dark armoire beside the window, dived a hand into its recesses, and produced the weapon. 'And it is loaded,' he added, still in the same business-like voice, in which, after his first brief exclamation, my ear detected no tremor.

'By all means let us talk,' I said.

He was crossing to the fireplace, but wheeled about sharply at the sound of my voice. 'Eh? An educated man, apparently!' Laying the pistol on the mantelshelf, he plucked a twisted spill of paper from a vase hard by, stooped, ignited it from the flame dancing in the sea-coals, and proceeded to light the candles in an old-fashioned girandole that overhung the fireplace. There were five candles, and he lit them all.

They revealed him a clean-shaven, white-haired man, meticulously dressed in black--black swallowtail coat, open waistcoat, and frilled shirt-front, on which his laundress must have spent hours of labour; closely fitting black knee-breeches, black silk stockings, black polished shoes. They silhouetted, too, in the moment before he swung round on me, an enormous nose, like a punchinello's, and the outline of a shapely head, sufficiently massive to counterbalance and save it from caricature. The size of the head again would have suggested deformity, but for the broad shoulders that carried it. As he faced me squarely with his back to the hearth, his chest and shoulders narrowing to the hips of a runner, and still narrowing (though he stood astraddle) to ankles and feet that would not have disgraced a lady, he put me in mind of a matador I had seen years before, facing his bull in the ring at Seville. The firelight behind them emphasised the neat outline of his legs. He carried a black cloak on his left arm, and in his left hand an opera-hat, pressed flat against his left side. In closing the window, in finding and producing the pistol, and again in lighting the candles, he had used his right hand only.

'A gentleman?' he asked, contracting his brows and eyeing me.

'Well,' said I, with an uncomfortable, nervous laugh, that itself accused my breeding, so inferior it was to the situation, 'possibly you are one of those who mix up the name with moral conduct--'

'To some extent,' he answered, without seeming to interrupt. 'Every one does, I fancy.'

'At any rate I won't challenge it,' said I. 'But you may, if you will, call me a man of some education. I was at Magdalen once, but left Oxford without taking my degree.'

'Ah!' He inclined his head a little to one side. 'Cards?'

'Certainly not,' I answered with heat. 'I own that appearances are against me, but I was never that kind of man. As a matter of fact, it happened over a horse.'

He nodded. 'So you, too, though you won't challenge the name, have to mix up moral conduct with your disposition. We draw the line variously, but every one draws it somewhere. . . . Magdalen, hey? If I mistake not, the foundationers of Magdalen--including, perhaps, some who were undergraduates with you--are assembled in the college hall at this moment to celebrate Christmas, and hear the choir sing Pergolese's "Gloria."'

'The reminder hurts me,' said I--'if that be any gratification to you.'

'A sentimentalist?' Mr Felix's eyes twinkled.

'Better and better! I have the very job for you--but we will discuss that by-and-by. Only let me say that you must have dropped on me, just now, from heaven--you really must. But please don't make a practice of it! I have invested too much in my curios; and others have invested more. . . . That snuff-box, for instance, which you were handling a moment ago . . . at one time in its history it cost-- ay, and fetched--close on two hundred millions of money.'

I began to have hopes that I was dealing with a madman.

'Or rather,' he corrected himself, 'the money was paid for a pinch of the snuff it contains. Open it carefully, if you please! and you will behold the genuine rappee, the very particles over which France fought with Austria. What says Virgil? '_Hi motus animorum atque heac cerlamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu_'--yes, but in this instance, you see, the pinch of dust was the exciting cause. Sir, the Austrian ambassador, one fatal afternoon, refused to take from the box in your hand that which, three weeks later, and all too late, he would gladly have purchased with many millions. Observe the imperial crown on the lid, with the bees around it, as if to illustrate Virgil's warning. I bought the thing myself, sir, for six napoleons, off a dealer in the Rue du Fouarre: but the price will rise again. Yes, certainly, I count on its fetching three hundred pounds at least when I have departed this life, and three hundred pounds will go some little way towards my monument.'

'Your monument?' I echoed.

He nodded again. 'In good time, my friend, you shall hear about it; for you make, I perceive, a good listener. You have gifts, though you do less than justice to them. Suffice it to say that I am a sentimentalist, like yourself. I never married nor begat children; and I have but a shaky belief in the future state; but my sentimentality hankers after--you may even say it postulates--some kind of continuity. I cannot discuss this here and now, for by the sound of the violins, the dance is coming to an end, and my guests will be growing impatient. But you remember Samson's riddle? Well, out of my corpse (I trust) shall come forth honey: whereas out of yours, unless you employ your talents better--' He broke off, and stepped close up to me. 'Ah, but excuse me,' he said, and reaching out a hand, caught me suddenly by the collar.

The arrest--I made sure it was an arrest--took me unprepared, and threw me off my balance. I broke away a pace, drawing back my fist to strike: and in that moment I felt his hand relax with a curious fluttering movement as though his fingers drummed on the back of my neck. I heard him laugh too: and before I could hit out he sprang back, holding in his hand a white rabbit!

'An old trick--eh?--and a simple one.' He pressed out the spring of his opera hat, dropped the rabbit inside, dived his hand after it, and drew out two white rabbits by the ears. 'But it will amuse my young friends downstairs, and I practise this kind of thing at odd whiles.'

He set the rabbits on the floor, where they gave themselves a shake, and hopped off towards the shelter of the window-curtains.

'Now you are the very man I wanted,' said he, 'and I am going to make you sing for your supper.' He stepped to the armoire, and drew out a long cloak of scarlet, furred with ermine. 'I had meant to wear this myself,' he went on; but stopped all of a sudden at sight of my face, and began to laugh quietly, in a way that made me long to take him by the throat. 'Dear me, dear me! I understand! Association of ideas--Court of Assize, eh? But this is no judicial robe, my friend: it belongs to Father Christmas. Here's his wig now--quite another sort of wig, you perceive--with a holly wreath around it. And here's his beard, beautifully frosted with silver.' He held wig and beard towards the window, and let the moonlight play over them. 'On with them, quick! . . . And the boots.' Again he dived into the armoire, and produced a pair of Bluchers, the long ankle leathers gummed over with cotton-wool, to represent snow. 'It's lucky they reach a good way up the leg, seeing the cloak is a trifle short for a man of your inches.' He stepped back a pace and surveyed me as I fitted on the beard.

'There are punishments and punishments,' said I. 'And I hope, whatever your game may be, you will remember that there's punishment in dressing up like a tom-fool.'

'Ah, but you'll catch the spirit of it!' he assured me: and then, rubbing his hands, he appeared to muse for a moment. 'I ought,' said he, with a glance towards the fireplace, 'I really ought to send Father Christmas down by way of the chimney. The flue opens just above here, and I believe it would accommodate you; but I am not very sure if my housekeeper had it swept last spring. No,' he decided, 'the music has ceased, and we must lose no time. I will spare you the chimney.'

He called to his rabbits, picked them up as they came hopping from behind the curtains, popped them into his hat, shut it with a snap, and lo! they had vanished.

'You'll excuse me,' I ventured, as he stepped to the door; 'but--but the--the few articles here in the bag--'

'Oh, bring them along with you: bring them along by all means! We may have a present or two to make, down below.'

From the head of the staircase we looked down into a hall gaily lit with paper lanterns. Holly and ivy wreathed the broad balustrade, and the old pictures around the walls. A bunch of mistletoe hung from a great chandelier that sparkled with hundreds of glass prisms, and under it a couple of footmen in gilt liveries and powder crossed at that moment with trays of jellies and syllabubs.

They were well-trained footmen, too; for at sight of me descending the stairs in my idiotic outfit they betrayed no surprise at all. One of them set his tray down on a table, stepped neatly ahead as Mr Felix reached the lowest stair, and opened a door for us on the right. I found myself at a stand on the threshold, blinking at a blaze of light, and staring up a perspective of waxed floor at a miniature stage which filled the far end of the room. Light, as every one knows, travels farther than sound: were it not so, I should say that almost ahead of the blaze there broke on us a din of voices--of happy children's voices. Certainly it stunned my ears before I had time to blink.

The room was lined with children--scores of children: and some of them were gathered in little groups, and some of them, panting and laughing from their dance, had dropped into the chairs ranged along the walls. But these were the minority. The most of the guests lay in cots, or sat with crutches beside them, or with hands dropped in their laps. These last were the blind ones. I do not set up to be a lover of children: but the discovery that the most of these small guests were crippled hit me with a kind of pitiful awe; and right on top of it came a second and worse shock, to note how many of them were blind.

To me these blind eyes were the only merciful ones, as Mr Felix beckoned Father Christmas to follow him up to the stage between the two lines of curious gazers. 'O--oh!' had been their first cry as they caught sight of me in the doorway: and 'O--oh!' I heard them murmuring, child after child, in long-drawn fugue, as we made our way up the long length of the room that winked detection from every candle, every reflector, every foot of its polished floor.

We gained the stage together by a short stairway draped with flags. Mr Felix with a wave of his opera-hat, called on the orchestra to strike up 'A Fine Old English Gentleman' (meaning me or, if you like it, Father Christmas: and I leave you to picture the fool I looked). Then, stepping to the footlights, he introduced me, explaining that he had met me wandering upstairs, rifling his most secret drawers to fill my bag with seasonable presents for them. Five or six times he interrupted his patter to pluck a cracker or a bon-bon out of my beard, and toss it down to his audience. The children gasped at first, and stared at the magic spoil on the floor. By-and-by one adventurous little girl crept forward, and picked up a cracker, and her cry of delight as she discovered that it was real, gave the signal for a general scramble. Mr Felix continued his patter without seeming to heed it: but his hand went up faster and faster to my beard and wig, and soon the crackers were falling in showers. I saw children snatch them off the floor and carry them to their blind brothers and sisters, pressing them between the wondering, groping hands with assurance that they were real. . . . Mr Felix saw it too, and his flow of words ceased with a gulp, as though a flowing spring gurgled suddenly and withdrew itself underground. 'I am a sentimentalist,' he said to me quickly, in a pause which nobody heeded; for by this time crackers were banging to right and left, and the children shouting together. Their shouts rose to one yell of laughter as, recovering himself, he dived at my neck, and produced the two struggling rabbits. His opera-hat opened with a snap, and in they went. A second later it shut flat again, and they were gone, into thin air. He opened the hat with a puzzled frown, plunged a hand, and dragged forth yard upon yard of ribbon--red, green, white, blue, yellow ribbon, mixed up with packs of playing cards that, with a turn of the hand he sent spinning into air, to fall thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.

'Your turn!' he panted as, at the end of the ribbon he lugged out an enormous cabbage, and trundled it down the room. Catching my bag from me, he shook his cloak over it once, and returned it to my hands, bulging, stuffed full to the brim with toys--dolls, tops, whips, trumpets, boxes of animals, boxes of tin soldiers. . . .

'Father Christmas, now! Make way for Father Christmas!'

The infection took me, and stumbling down from the stage by the stairway, I fell to distributing the largesse left and right. The first bagful carried me less than a third of the way down the room: for I gave with both hands, and, when a blind child fumbled long with a toy, dropped it at his feet, and tried another, and yet another till his smile suited me. The dropped toys lay where they had fallen. The spirit of the game had made me reckless; and I halted with a cold shiver as my fingers touched the gems at the bottom of the bag, and, looking down the room, I was aware that my store was exhausted, and as yet two-thirds of the children had received no gift. I turned--all in a cold shiver--to retrace my steps and pick up the toys at the blind children's feet, and as I did so, felt myself a bungler past pardon. But in the act of turning, I cast a look back at the stage: and there stood Mr Felix, nodding approval and beckoning. So, as in a dream, I went back, 'Capital!' was his only comment. Taking my bag, he passed his cloak over it again, and again handed it to me, stuffed to the brim.

Thrice I returned to him; but the third refill was a scanty one, since by this time there lacked but half a score of the taller children to be satisfied. To these, too, I distributed their gifts, and when every eager pair of hands had been laden, I wheeled about for the next word of command.

But Mr Felix had skipped down from the stage, letting the curtain fall behind him. He stood with his back to me, waving both arms to the orchestra; and as the musicians plunged at the opening bars of the Toy Symphony, the curtain rose, almost as soon as it had dropped; and rose upon a scene representing a street with shops decked for Christmas, and snow upon their eaves and window ledges.

Then, still to the strains of the Toy Symphony, a Harlequin ran in, with a Columbine, whom he twisted upon his bent knee, and tossed lightly through the upper window of a baker's shop, himself diving a moment later, with a slap of his wand, through the flap of the fishmonger's door, hard by. Next, as on a frozen slide, came the Clown, with red-hot poker, the Pantaloon tripping over his stick, and two Constables wreathed in strings of sausages. The Clown boxed the Pantaloon's ears; the Pantaloon passed on the buffet to the Constables, and all plunged together into the fishmonger's. The Clown emerged running with a stolen plaice, passed it into the hands of the Pantaloon, who followed, and was in turn pursued off the scene by the Constables: but the fishmonger, issuing last in chase, ran into the Clown, who caught up a barrel of red herrings and bonneted him. The fishmonger extricated himself, and the two began to pelt each other with herrings, while the children screamed with laughter. . . .

It was a famous harlequinade; and, as usual, it concluded the entertainment. For after a harlequinade, what can stand between a child and happy dreams?--especially if he go to them with his arms full of Christmas presents. Five minutes after the curtain had fallen I found myself standing beside Mr Felix in the hall, while he bade good-night to his guests. Carriages of his hiring had arrived for them, and the coachmen apparently had received their orders. A dozen well-trained nurses moved about the hall, and, having dressed the little ones--who by this time were almost too drowsy with pleasure to thank their entertainer--carried them out into the portico, where the liveried footmen stood by the carriage doors. Slam! went the doors, and one after another--with scarcely a word of command-the carriages bowled off over the thick snow.

When the last guest had gone, Mr Felix turned to me.

'The play is over,' said he. 'When I am gone, it will be repeated year after year at Christmas, at the Cripples' Hospital. My will provides for that, and that will be my monument. But for a few years to come I hope to hold the entertainment here, in my own house. Come, you may take off your robe and wig and go in peace. I would fain have a talk with you, but I am tired, as perhaps you may guess. Go, then--and go in peace!'

Motioning the footman to fall back, he walked out with me and down the steps of the portico; but halted on the lowest step by the edge of the frozen snow, and with a wave of the hand dismissed me into the night.

I had gained the end of the street and the bridge that there spans the river before it occurred to me that I was carrying my bag, and-- with a shock--that my bag still held the stolen jewels.

By the second lamp on the bridge I halted, lifted the bag on to the snow-covered parapet, thrust in a hand, and drew forth--a herring!

Herrings--red herrings--filled the bag to the brim. I dragged them forth, and rained handful after handful overboard into the black water. Still, below them, I had hopes to find the jewels. But the jewels were gone. At least, I supposed that all were gone, when-- having jettisoned the last herring--I groped around the bottom of the bag.

Something pricked my finger. I drew it out and held it under the lamp-light. It was a small turquoise brooch, set around with diamonds.

For at least two minutes I stared at it, there, under the lamp; had slipped it half-way into my waistcoat pocket; but suddenly took a new resolve, and walked back along the street to the house.

Mr Felix yet stood on the lower step of the portico. Above him, still as a statue, a footman waited at the great house-door, until it should please his master to re-enter.

'Excuse me, sir--' I began, and held up the brooch.

'I meant it for you,' said Mr Felix quietly, affably. 'I gave precisely five pounds for it, at an auction, and I warn you that it is worth just thrice that sum. Still, if you would prefer ready-money, as in your circumstances I dare say you do,--he felt in his breeches pocket--'here are the five sovereigns, and--once more-- go in peace.'

THE MAYOR'S DOVECOT: A CAUTIONARY TALE.