Chapter I: Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 6.] SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

THE HEART OF MID-LONDON.

It was with singular pride that Mr. Thomas Bovington of Long Hornets, Bucks, viewed his first ‘lot’ of fat bullocks as they filed their way out of his stock-yard towards the nearest Station of the North Western Railway. They were so sleek, so well fed, and so well behaved, that they turned out of their stalls with the solemn sobriety of animals attending their own funeral. Except a few capers cut by a lively West Highlander, they sauntered along like beasts who had never had a care in their lives. For how were they to know that the tips of their horns pointed to that bourne from whence few bovine travellers return—Smithfield? Smithfield, the Heart of Mid-London, the flower of the capital—the true, original, London-Pride, always in full bloom! A merciful ignorance blinded them to the fact that, the master who had fed and pampered them with indulgent industry—who had administered their food out of the scientific dietaries of Liebig; who had built their sheds after the manner of Huxtable; who had stalled and herded them in imitation of Pusey; who had littered them out of ‘Stevens’s Book of the Farm’—was about, with equal care and attention to their comfort, to have them converted into cash, and then into beef.

This was Mr. Bovington’s first transaction in bullocks. Since his retirement from Northampton (where he made a small fortune by tanning the hides he now so assiduously filled out), he had devoted his time, his capital, and his energy to stock-farming. His sheep had always sold well; so well indeed, that he had out-stocked the local markets; and, on the previous morning, had driven off a threescore flock to the same destination and on the same tragic errand, as that of his oxen. His success in the production of mutton had given him courage: he had, therefore, soared to beef. Only the Thursday before a neighbouring farmer had pronounced of his herd to his face, that ‘a primer lot of beasts he never see—nowheres.’

Mr. Bovington had several hours to spare before the passenger-train was due in which he intended to follow his cattle. Like a thrifty man he spent a part of it over his stock-book, to settle finally at what figure he could afford to sell. He was an admirable book-keeper; he could tell to an ounce how much oil-cake each ox had devoured, to a root how many beets; and, to a wisp, how much straw had been used for litter. The acreage of pasture was, also, minutely calculated. The result was, that Mr. Bovington could find in an instant the cost price of each stone of the flesh that had just departed of its own motion towards the shambles.

To a mercenary mind; to a man whose whole soul is ground down to considerations of mere profit (considerations which many profound politico-philosophers deplore as entering too largely into the agricultural mind) the result of Mr. Bovington’s comparison of the cost with the present market prices, would have been extremely unsatisfactory. What he had produced at about 3_s._ 9_d._ per stone, he found by the ‘Marklane Express’ was ‘dull at 3_s._ 6_d._, sinking the offal.’ Neither had the season been favourable for sheep—at least, not for _his_ sheep—and by them, too, he would be a loser. But what of that? Mr. Bovington’s object was less profit than fame. As a beginner, he wanted to establish a first-class character in the market; and, that obtained, it would be time enough to turn his attention to the economics of feeding and breeding. With what pride would he hear the praises of those astute critics, the London butchers, as they walked round and round, pinching and punching each particular ox, enumerating his various good points, and contrasting it with the meaner, leaner stock of the mere practical graziers! With what confidence he could command the top price, and with what certainty he could maintain it for his ‘lots’ in future!

Mr. Bovington was as merciful as he was above immediate gain. He could not trust the stock he had nurtured and fed, to the uncontrolled dominion of drovers. Though hurried to their doom, he would take care that they should be killed ‘comfortably.’ He considered this as a sacred duty, else he—who was a pattern to the parish—would not have thus employed himself on a Sunday. As he took his ticket at the station, the chimes for evening service had just struck out. His conscience smote him. As his eye roved over the peaceful glades of Long Hornets, on which the evening sun was lowering his beams, he contrasted the holy Sabbath calm with the scene of excitement into which he was voluntarily plunging himself. As a kind of salve to his troubled mind, he determined to pay extra care and attention to the comfort of his cattle.

His consignment was to remain, till Smithfield market opened at eleven o’clock on the Sunday night, at the Islington lairs. Thither Mr. Bovington repaired—on landing at the Euston Station—in a very fast cab. On his way, he calculated what the cost would be of all the fodder, all the water, and all the attendance, which his sheep and oxen would have received during their temporary sojourn. The first question he put, therefore, to the drover on arriving at the lairs, was:

“What’s to pay?”

“Wot for?”

“Why,” replied the amateur grazier, “for the feed of my sheep since last night!”

“Feed!” repeated the man with staring wonder. “Who ever heerd of feedin’ markit sheep? Why, they’ll be killed on Monday or Tuesday, won’t they?”

“If sold.”

“Well they’ll never want no more wittles, will they?”

“But they have had nothing since Saturday!”

“What on it! Sheep as comes to Smithfield _never_ has no feed, has they?”

“Nor water either?” said Mr. Bovington.

“_I_ should think not!” replied the drover.

As he spoke, he drove the point of his goad into the backs of each of a shorn flock that happened to be passing. He had no business with them, but it was a way he had.

With sorrowful eyes, Mr. Bovington sought out his own sheep. Poor things! They lay closely packed, with their tongues out, panting for suction; for they were too weak to bleat. He would have given any money to relieve them; but relief no money could buy.

Mr. Bovington was glad to find his bullocks in better plight. To them, fodder and drink had been sparingly supplied, but they were wedged in so tightly that they had hardly room to breathe. Their good looks—which had cost him so much expenditure of oil-cake, and anxiety, and for which he had expected so much praise from buyers—would be quite gone before they got to Smithfield.

“It aint o’ no use a fretting,” said the master drover, “your’n aint no worse off nor t’others. What you’ve got to do, is, to git to bed, and meet me in the markit at four.” Naming a certain corner.

“Well,” said Mr. Bovington, seeing there was no help for it, “let it be so; but I trust you will take care to get my lots driven down by humane drovers.”

Mr. Whelter—that was the master-drover’s name—assented, in a manner that showed he had not the remotest idea what a humane driver was, or where the article was to be found.

Mr. Bovington could get no rest, and went his way towards the market, long before the time appointed. Before he came within sight of Smithfield, a din as of a noisy Pandemonium filled his ears. The shouting of some of the drovers, the shrill whistle of others, the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, and the lowing of cattle, were the natural expressions of a crowded market; but, added to these, were other sounds, which made Mr. Bovington shudder—something between the pattering of a tremendous hailstorm, and the noise of ten thousand games of single stick played, all at once, in sanguinary earnest.

He was not a particularly nervous man, and did not shudder without reason. When he came into the market, he saw at a glance enough to know that. He stood looking about him in positive horror.

To get the bullocks into their allotted stands, an incessant punishing and torturing of the miserable animals—a sticking of prongs into the tender part of their feet, and a twisting of their tails to make the whole spine teem with pain—was going on: and this seemed as much a part of the market, as the stones in its pavement. Across their horns, across their hocks, across their haunches, Mr. Bovington saw the heavy blows rain thick and fast, let him look where he would. Obdurate heads of oxen, bent down in mute agony; bellowing heads of oxen lifted up, snorting out smoke and slaver; ferocious men, cursing and swearing, and belabouring oxen; made the place a panorama of cruelty and suffering. By every avenue of access to the market, more oxen were pouring in: bellowing, in the confusion, and under the falling blows, as if all the church-organs in the world were wretched instruments—all there—and all being tuned together. Mixed up with these oxen, were great flocks of sheep, whose respective drovers were in agonies of mind to prevent their being intermingled in the dire confusion; and who raved, shouted, screamed, swore, whooped, whistled, danced like savages; and, brandishing their cudgels, laid about them most remorselessly. All this was being done, in a deep red glare of burning torches, which were in themselves a strong addition to the horrors of the scene; for the men who were arranging the sheep and lambs in their miserably confined pens, and forcing them to their destination through alleys of the most preposterously small dimensions, constantly dropped gouts of the blazing pitch upon the miserable creatures’ backs; and to smell the singeing and burning, and to see the poor things shrinking from this roasting, inspired a sickness, a disgust, a pity and an indignation, almost insupportable. To reflect that the gate of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was in the midst of this devilry, and that such a monument of years of sympathy for human pain should stand there, jostling this disgraceful record of years of disregard of brute endurance—to look up at the faint lights in the windows of the houses where the people were asleep, and to think that some of them had been to Public Prayers that Sunday, and had typified the Divine love and gentleness, by the panting, footsore creature, burnt, beaten, and needlessly tormented there, that night, by thousands—suggested truths so inconsistent and so shocking, that the Market of the Capital of the World seemed a ghastly and blasphemous Nightmare.

“Does this happen _every_ Monday morning?” asked the horror-stricken denizen of Long Hornets, of a respectable-looking man.

“This?” repeated the stranger. “Bless you! This is nothing to what it is sometimes.” He then turned to a passing drover, who was vainly trying to get some fifty sheep through a pen-alley calculated for the easy passage of twenty. “How many are spoke for to-night, Ned?”

“How many? Why five-and-twenty-thousand sheep, and forty-one-hundred beasts.”

“Ah! no more than an ordinary market, Sir,” said Mr. Bovington’s new friend; “yet you see and hear what’s now going on to wedge these numbers in. And it stands to reason, if you’ve got to jam together a fourth more animals than there is space for, there _must_ be cruelty.”

“How much legitimate accommodation is there?” asked Mr. Bovington.

“There are pens for two-and-twenty-thousand sheep and they can tie up twenty-seven-hundred beasts. Well! you hear; room has already been ‘spoke for,’ or bespoken, for three-thousand more sheep and fourteen-hundred more cattle than there is proper space for.”

“What becomes of the surplus?”

“The beasts are formed, in the thoroughfares and in the outskirts of the market, into what we call ‘off-droves;’ and the sheep wait outside, anywhere, till they can get in.”

Here the conversation was interrupted by a sudden increase in the demoniacal noises. Opposite the speakers, was a row of panting oxen, each fastened by a slip-noose to a rail, as closely as their heads could be jammed together. Some more were being tied up, and one creature had just escaped. Instantly a dozen hoarse voices yelled:

“Out! out! out!”

The cry was echoed by a dozen others.

“Out! out! out!”

A wild hunt followed, and then a shower of blows on the back, horns and sides, of the luckless truant. The concentrated punishment of two dozen drovers’ sticks made the bull too glad to resume its original station. It was then tied up, so tightly, that the swelled tongue protruded. That the poor brute should be rendered powerless for motion for some time to come, it was ‘hocked;’—that is to say, tremendous blows were inflicted on its hind legs till it was completely hobbled.

Mr. Bovington was glad it was not one of his bullocks. “Are _many_ strangled by these tight nooses?” he asked.

“A good many in the course of the year, I should say. All the rails are full now, and the off-droves are beginning.”

The battle raged faster and more furious than ever. In order to make the most of the room, they were forming ‘ring-droves;’ that is, punishing the animals till a certain number had turned all their heads together so as to form the inside of a circle—which at last they did, to avoid the blows inflicted on them. Mr. Bovington’s blood ran cold as he witnessed the cruelty necessary for this evolution. After every imaginable torment had been practised, to get them into the right position, a stray head would occasionally protrude—where a tail should be—on the outside of the ring. Tremendous blows were then repeated on the nose, neck, and horns, till the tortured animal could turn; and when he succeeded, the goad was ‘jobbed’ into his flanks till he could wedge himself in, so as to form his own proper radius of the dense circle.

“I have often seen their haunches streaming with blood,” said Mr. Bovington’s companion, “before they could get into the ring. Why, a friend of mine, a tanner at Kenilworth, was actually obliged to leave off buying hides that came out of this market, because they were covered with holes that had been bored in the live animals by the Smithfield drovers. He called these skins Smithfield Cullanders.”

“Cruel wretches!”

“Well,” said the stranger, thoughtfully, “I can’t blame _them_. I have known them forty years——”

“You are a salesman?”

“I _was_; but they worried me out of the market, for trying to get it removed, and for giving evidence against it before Parliament.”

Mr. Brumpton (that was the name of the ousted salesman) did a little fattening, now, on a few acres near London; and came occasionally to Smithfield to buy and sell in a small way,—just, in fact, as Mr. Bovington had begun to do.

“Well,” he continued, “I can’t lay all the blame on the drovers. What can they do? If they have got one hundred beasts to wedge into a space only big enough for seventy, they _must_ be cruel. Even the labour their cruelty costs themselves is terrible. I have often seen drovers’ men lying on the steps of doors, quite exhausted. None of them ever live long.”

“How many are there?”

“About nine-hundred-and-fifty—licensed.”

A deafening hullabaloo arose again. A new ring-drove was being begun, close by. Bovington threw up his hands in horror, when he saw that some of his cherished cattle were to become members of it. The lively West Highlander was struggling fiercely against his fate; but in vain: he was goaded, beaten, and worried with dogs, till forced into the ring.

Bovington hastened to the appointed corner, to expostulate with Mr. Whelter.

“How can _I_ help it!” was that individual’s consolation. “I spoke for _all_ your beasts; but there was only room for seven on ’em to be tied up; so the rest on ’em is in off-droves. Where else _can_ they be?”

“And my sheep?”

“Couldn’t get none on ’em in. They’re a waiting in the ‘Ram’ Yard, till the sales empties some of the pens. You’ll find ’em in the first floor.”

“What! Up stairs?”

“Ah, in the one-pair back.”

Mr. Bovington elbowed his way to the Ram Inn, to confirm by his eyes what he could not believe with his ears. Sure enough he found his favourite ‘New Leicesters’ a whole flight of stairs above ground. How they had ever been got up, or how they were ever to be got down, surpassed his ingenuity to conjecture.

At length there was pen-room; and sorely were Mr. Bovington’s feelings tried. When his little flock were got into the market, they met, and were mixed with, the sold flocks that were going out. Confusion was now worse confounded. The beating, the goading, the bustling, the shouting; the bleating of the sheep; the short, sharp, snarling of the dogs; above all, the stentorian oaths and imprecations of the drovers,—no human imagination, unaided by the reality, could conceive. Several flocks were intermixed, in a manner that made correct separation seem impossible; but while Mr. Bovington shuddered at all this cruelty and wickedness—SOLELY PRODUCED BY WANT OF SPACE, AND BY THE PREVIOUS DRIVING THROUGH THE STREETS—he could not help admiring the instinct of the dogs, and the ingenuity of the men, in lessening the confusion—the former watching intently their masters’ faces for orders, and flying over the backs of the moving floor of wool, to execute them.

“Go for ’em, Bob!”

Like lightning the dog belonging to the drover of Bovington’s sheep, dashed over their backs, and he beheld the ear of a favourite wether between its teeth. By some magic, however, this significant style of ear-wigging directed the sheep into the alley that led to the empty pens; and the others were pushed, punched, goaded, and thrashed, till each score was jammed into the small enclosures, as tight as figs in a drum.

“They seem a nice lot,” said Mr. Brumpton, who had followed the new seller; “but how is it possible for the best butcher in London to tell what they are, in a wedge like this. Can he know how they will cut up, after the punishment they have had? Impossible: and what’s the consequence? Why, he will deduct ten or fifteen per cent. from your price for bruised meat. It is the same with bullocks.”

Mr. Bovington, at this hint, reverted to his herd of cattle with a fresh pang. Crammed, rammed, and jammed as they were between raw-boned Lincolnshires and half-fed Herefords—a narrow bristling grove of gaunt shoeing-horns—how could his customers see and appreciate the fine ‘points’ of his fancy stock? He had worked for Fame; yet, however loud her blast, who could hear it above the crushing din of Smithfield?

Mr. Bovington, having returned to the rendezvous, leaned against a cutler’s door-post—where there was an old grindstone outside (which the market-people, by much sharpening of their knives upon it, had worn away, like an old cheese)—in profound rumination. He was at a dead lock. He could not sell all his stock, and he could not withdraw it; for it was so fearfully deteriorated from the treatment it had got, that he felt sure the recovery of many of his sheep and oxen would be very doubtful. The best thing he could wish for them was speedy death; and, for himself, sales at any price.

His reflections were interrupted by the pleasing information, that although some of his beasts that were tied up had been sold at the top price, only a few of those in the off-droves could find customers at the second, because the butchers could not get to see them. “And you see they _will_ have the pull of the market, if they can get it.”

Mr. Bovington looked unutterable despair, and told the salesman emphatically to _sell_.

“It don’t matter to him,” said Brumpton, who was again at poor Bovington’s elbow, “what the animals fetch. Sold for much or little, the salesman’s profit don’t vary—4_s._ a head for beasts, and from 10_s._ to 13_s._ a score for sheep, at whatever price he sells. That’s the system here, and it don’t improve the profits of the grazier. Why should _he_ care what you get, or lose?”

Towards the close of the market, Mr. Bovington perceived, that if it cost the animals intense torture to be got into their allotted places, it took unmitigated brutality to get them out again. The breaking up of a ring-drove might have made a treat for Nero; but honest Mr. Bovington had had enough. He retired from the arena of innumerable bull-fights in a state of mind in which disgust very much preponderated over personal disappointment. “And mentioning bull-fights,” thought he to himself, “Upon my life! I don’t think we are so much better than those people in Spain after all, while we stand this sort of thing, and eat our dinners, and make our wills.”

Mr. Brumpton and he determined to breakfast together, at the ‘Catherine Wheel,’ in St. John Street.

“What remedy do you propose for these horrors?” asked our dejected friend.

“A market in the suburbs,” was the answer.

“But look at the rapidity with which London spreads. How long will you guarantee that any site you may select will remain ‘out of Town?’”

“Ah, that’s the difficulty,” said Brumpton. “In 1808, it was proposed to remove the market to the ‘open fields’—Clerkenwell-fields; but, twenty years afterwards, there was not a blade of grass to be seen near the place. It was covered with bricks and mortar. Rahere-street—in the midst of a dense neighbourhood—now stands on the very spot that was suggested. Again, only last year a field between Camden-town and Holloway was proposed; but since then, houses have been built up to the very hedge that incloses it.”

“Islington market seems not to answer.”

“No; _I_ think it lies too low. They can’t drain it properly.”

“What is to be done, then?”

“I’ll tell you what I think would be best. Let a good site be fixed upon; and don’t rest contented with that. Fence off, also, a certain space around it with appropriate approaches. Let these be kept sacred from innovating bricks. Deal with a new cattle-market as the Board of Health proposes to deal with cemeteries. Isolate it. Allow of no buildings, except for market purposes—of no encroachments whatever—either upon the area itself or its new approaches.”

Mr. Bovington was about to hazard a remark about abattoirs, when deafening cries again arose in the street.

“Mad bull! mad bull! mad bull!” resounded from Smithfield-bars.

“Mad bull! mad bull!” was echoed from the uttermost ends of St. John Street.

Bovington looked out of window. A fine black ox was tearing furiously along the pavement. Women were screaming and rushing into shops, children scrambling out of the road, men hiding themselves in doorways, boys in ecstacies of rapture, drovers as mad as the bull tearing after him, sheep getting under the wheels of hackney-coaches, dogs half choking themselves with worrying the wool off their backs, pigs obstinately connecting themselves with a hearse and funeral, other oxen looking into public-houses—everybody and everything disorganised, no sort of animal able to go where it wanted or was wanted; nothing in its right place; everything wrong everywhere; all the town in a brain fever because of this infernal market!

The mad bull was Mr. Bovington’s West Highlander. He was quite prepared for it. When he saw him going round the corner, and at the same moment beheld a nursemaid, a baby, and a baked potato-can, fly into the air in opposite directions, he was horrified, but not surprised. He followed his West Highlander. He followed the crowd tearing after his West Highlander, down St. John Street, through Jerusalem-passage, along Clerkenwell Green, up a hill, and down an alley. He passed two disabled apple-women, a fractured shop-front, an old man being put into a cab and taken to the hospital. At last, he traced the favourite of his herds into a back parlour in Liquorpond Street, into which he had violently intruded through a tripe-shop, and where he was being slaughtered for his own peace and for the safety of the neighbourhood; but not at all to the satisfaction of an invalid who had leaped out of a turn-up bedstead, into the little yard behind. The carcass of the West Highlander was sold to a butcher for a sum which paid about half of what was demanded, from its owner, for compensation to the different victims of its fury.

Mr. Bovington returned to Long Hornets a ‘wiser,’ though certainly not—commercially speaking—a ‘better’ man. His adventures in Smithfield had made a large hole in a 50_l._ note.

Some of his oxen were returned unsold. Two came back with the ‘foot disease’, and the rest did not recover their value for six months.

Mr. Bovington has never tried Smithfield again. He regards it as a place accursed. In distant Reigns, he says, it was an odious spot, associated with cruelty, fanaticism, wickedness and torture; and in these later days it is worthy of its ancient reputation. It is a doomed, but a proper and consistent stronghold (according to Mr. Bovington) of prejudice, ignorance, cupidity, and stupidity:—

On some fond breast its parting soul relies,
Some pious alderman its fame admires;
Ev’n from its tomb, the voice of Suff’ring cries,
Ev’n in its ashes live its wonted Fires!

THE MINER’S DAUGHTERS.—A TALE OF THE PEAK.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.

CHAP. I.—THE CHILD’S TRAGEDY.

There is no really beautiful part of this kingdom so little known as the Peak of Derbyshire. Matlock, with its tea-garden trumpery and mock-heroic wonders; Buxton, with its bleak hills and fashionable bathers; the truly noble Chatsworth and the venerable Haddon, engross almost all that the public generally have seen of the Peak. It is talked of as a land of mountains, which in reality are only hills; but its true beauty lies in valleys that have been created by the rending of the earth in some primeval convulsion, and which present a thousand charms to the eyes of the lover of nature. How deliciously do the crystal waters of the Wye and the Dove rush along such valleys, or dales, as they there are called. With what a wild variety do the grey rocks soar up amid their woods and copses. How airily stand in the clear heavens the lofty limestone precipices, and the grey edges of rock gleam out from the bare green downs—there _never_ called downs. What a genuine Saxon air is there cast over the population, what a Saxon bluntness salutes you in their speech!

It is into the heart of this region that we propose now to carry the reader. Let him suppose himself with us now on the road from Ashford-in-the-water to Tideswell. We are at the Bull’s Head, a little inn on that road. There is nothing to create wonder, or a suspicion of a hidden Arcadia in anything you see, but another step forward, and—there! There sinks a world of valleys at your feet. To your left lies the delicious Monsal Dale. Old Finn Hill lifts his grey head grandly over it. Hobthrush’s Castle stands bravely forth in the hollow of his side—grey, and desolate, and mysterious. The sweet Wye goes winding and sounding at his feet, amid its narrow green meadows, green as the emerald, and its dark glossy alders. Before us stretches on, equally beautiful, Cressbrook Dale; Little Edale shows its cottages from amidst its trees; and as we advance, the Mousselin-de-laine Mills stretch across the mouth of Miller’s Dale, and startle with the aspect of so much life amid so much solitude.

But our way is still onward. We resist the attraction of Cressbrook village on its lofty eminence, and plunge to the right, into Wardlow Dale. Here we are buried deep in woods, and yet behold still deeper the valley descend below us. There is an Alpine feeling upon us. We are carried once more, as in a dream, into the Saxon Switzerland. Above us stretch the boldest ranges of lofty precipices, and deep amid the woods are heard the voices of children. These come from a few workmen’s houses, couched at the foot of a cliff that rises high and bright amid the sun. That is Wardlow Cop; and there we mean to halt for a moment. Forwards lies a wild region of hills, and valleys, and lead-mines, but forward goes no road, except such as you can make yourself through the tangled woods.

At the foot of Wardlow Cop, before this little hamlet of Bellamy Wick was built, or the glen was dignified with the name of Raven Dale, there lived a miner who had no term for his place of abode. He lived, he said, under Wardlow Cop, and that contented him.

His house was one of those little, solid, grey limestone cottages, with grey flagstone roofs, which abound in the Peak. It had stood under that lofty precipice when the woods which now so densely fill the valley were but newly planted. There had been a mine near it, which had no doubt been the occasion of its erection in so solitary a place; but that mine was now worked out, and David Dunster, the miner, now worked at a mine right over the hills in Miller’s Dale. He was seldom at home, except at night, and on Sundays. His wife, besides keeping her little house, and digging and weeding in the strip of garden that lay on the steep slope above the house, hemmed in with a stone wall, also seamed stockings for a framework-knitter in Ashford, whither she went once or twice in the week.

They had three children, a boy and two girls. The boy was about eight years of age; the girls were about five and six. These children were taught their lessons of spelling and reading by the mother, amongst her other multifarious tasks; for she was one of those who are called regular plodders. She was quiet, patient, and always doing, though never in a bustle. She was not one of those who acquire a character for vast industry by doing everything in a mighty flurry, though they contrive to find time for a tolerable deal of gossip under the plea of resting a bit, and which ‘resting a bit’ they always terminate by an exclamation that ‘they must be off, though, for they have a world of work to do.’ Betty Dunster, on the contrary, was looked on as rather ‘a slow coach.’ If you remarked that she was a hard-working woman, the reply was, ‘Well, she’s always doing—Betty’s work’s never done; but then she does na hurry hersen.’ The fact was, Betty was a thin, spare woman, of no very strong constitution, but of an untiring spirit. Her pleasure and rest were, when David came home at night, to have his supper ready, and to sit down opposite to him at the little round table, and help him, giving a bit now and then to the children, that came and stood round, though they had had their suppers, and were ready for bed as soon as they had seen something of their ‘dad.’

David Dunster was one of those remarkably tall fellows that you see about these hills, who seem of all things the very worst made men to creep into the little mole holes on the hill sides that they call lead-mines. But David did manage to burrow under and through the hard limestone rocks as well as any of them. He was a hard-working man, though he liked a sup of beer, as most Derbyshire men do, and sometimes came home none of the soberest. He was naturally of a very hasty temper, and would fly into great rages; and if he were put out by anything in the working of the mines, or the conduct of his fellow-workmen, he would stay away from home for days, drinking at Tideswell, or the Bull’s Head at the top of Monsal Dale, or down at the Miners’ Arms at Ashford-in-the-water.

Betty Dunster bore all this patiently. She looked on these things somewhat as matters of course. At that time, and even now, how few miners do not drink and ‘rol a bit,’ as they call it. She was, therefore, tolerant, and let the storms blow over, ready always to persuade her husband to go home and sleep off his drink and anger, but if he were too violent, leaving him till another attempt might succeed better. She was very fond of her children, and not only taught them on week days their lessons, and to help her to seam, but also took them to the Methodist Chapel in ‘Tidser,’ as they called Tideswell, whither, whenever she could, she enticed David. David, too, in his way, was fond of the children, especially of the boy, who was called David after him. He was quite wrapped up in the lad, to use the phrase of the people in that part; in fact, he was foolishly and mischievously fond of him. He would give him beer to drink, ‘to make a true Briton on him,’ as he said, spite of Betty’s earnest endeavour to prevent it,—telling him that he was laying the foundation in the lad of the same faults that he had himself. But David Dunster did not look on drinking as a fault at all. It was what he had been used to all his life. It was what all the miners had been used to for generations. A man was looked on as a milk-sop and a Molly Coddle, that would not take his mug of ale, and be merry with his comrades. It required the light of education, and the efforts that have been made by the Temperance Societies, to break in on this ancient custom of drinking, which, no doubt, has flourished in these hills since the Danes and other Scandinavians, bored and perforated them of old for the ores of lead and copper. To Betty Dunster’s remonstrances, and commendations of tea, David would reply,—‘Botheration Betty, wench! Dunna tell me about thy tea and such-like pig’s-wesh. It’s all very well for women; but a man, Betty, a man mun ha’ a sup of real stingo, lass. He mun ha’ summut to prop his ribs out, lass, as he delves through th’ chert and tood-stone. When tha weylds th’ maundrel (the pick), and I wesh th’ dishes, tha shall ha’ th’ drink, my wench, and I’ll ha’ th’ tea. Till then, prithee let me aloon, and dunna bother me, for it’s no use. It only kicks my monkey up.’

And Betty found that it was of no use; that it did only kick his monkey up, and so she let him alone, except when she could drop in a persuasive word or two. The mill-owners at Cressbrook and Miller’s Dale had forbidden any public-house nearer than Edale, and they had more than once called the people together to point out to them the mischiefs of drinking, and the advantages to be derived from the very savings of temperance. But all these measures, though they had some effect on the mill people, had very little on the miners. They either sent to Tideswell or Edale for kegs of beer to peddle at the mines, or they went thither themselves on receiving their wages.

And let no one suppose that David Dunster was worse than his fellows; or that Betty Dunster thought her case a particularly hard one. David was ‘pretty much of a muchness,’ according to the country phrase, with the rest of his hard-working tribe, which was, and always had been, a hard-drinking tribe; and Betty, though she wished it different, did not complain, just because it was of no use, and because she was no worse off than her neighbours.

Often when she went to ‘carry in her hose’ to Ashford, she left the children at home by themselves. She had no alternative. They were there in that solitary valley for many hours playing alone. And to them it was not solitary. It was all that they knew of life, and that all was very pleasant to them. In spring, they hunted for birds’-nests in the copses, and amongst the rocks and grey stones that had fallen from them. In the copses built the blackbirds and thrushes: in the rocks the firetails; and the grey wagtails in the stones, which were so exactly of their own colour, as to make it difficult to see them. In summer, they gathered flowers and berries, and in the winter they played at horses, kings, and shops, and sundry other things in the house.

On one of these occasions, a bright afternoon in autumn, the three children had rambled down the glen, and found a world of amusement in being teams of horses, in making a little mine at the foot of a tall cliff, and in marching for soldiers, for they had one day—the only time in their lives—seen some soldiers go through the village of Ashford, when they had gone there with their mother, for she now and then took them with her when she had something from the shop to carry besides her bundle of hose. At length they came to the foot of an open hill which swelled to a considerable height, with a round and climbable side, on which grew a wilderness of bushes amid which lay scattered masses of grey crag. A small winding path went up this, and they followed it. It was not long, however, before they saw some things which excited their eager attention. Little David, who was the guide, and assumed to himself much importance as the protector of his sisters, exclaimed, ‘See here!’ and springing forward, plucked a fine crimson cluster of the mountain bramble. His sisters, on seeing this, rushed on with like eagerness. They soon forsook the little winding and craggy footpath, and hurried through sinking masses of moss and dry grass, from bush to bush and place to place. They were soon far up above the valley, and almost every step revealed to them some delightful prize. The clusters of the mountain bramble, resembling mulberries, and known only to the inhabitants of the hills, were abundant, and were rapidly devoured. The dewberry was as eagerly gathered,—its large, purple fruit passing with them for blackberries. In their hands were soon seen posies of the lovely grass of Parnassus, the mountain cistus, and the bright blue geranium.

Higher and higher the little group ascended in this quest, till the sight of the wide, naked hills, and the hawks circling round the lofty, tower-like crags over their heads, made them feel serious and somewhat afraid.

‘Where are we?’ asked Jane, the elder sister. ‘Arn’t we a long way from hom?’

‘Let us go hom,’ said little Nancy. ‘I’m afeerd here;’ clutching hold of Jane’s frock.

‘Pho, nonsense!’ said David, ‘what are you afreed on? I’ll tak care on you, niver fear.’

And with this he assumed a bold and defying aspect, and said, ‘Come along; there are nests in th’ hazzles up yonder.’

He began to mount again, but the two girls hung back and said, ‘Nay, David, dunna go higher; we are both afreed;’ and Jane added, ‘It’s a long wee from hom, I’m sure.’

‘And those birds screechen’ so up there; I darna go up,’ added little Nancy. They were the hawks that she meant, which hovered whimpering and screaming about the highest cliffs. David called them little cowards, but began to descend and, presently, seeking for berries and flowers as they descended, they regained the little winding, craggy road, and, while they were calling to each other, discovered a remarkable echo on the opposite hill side. On this, they shouted to it, and laughed, and were half frightened when it laughed and shouted again. Little Nancy said it must be an old man in the inside of the mountain; at which they were all really afraid, though David put on a big look, and said, ‘Nonsense! it was nothing at all.’ But Jane asked how nothing at all could shout and laugh as it did? and on this little Nancy plucked her again by the frock, and said in turn, ‘Oh, dear, let’s go hom!’

But at this David gave a wild whoop to frighten them, and when the hill whooped again, and the sisters began to run, he burst into laughter, and the strange spectral Ha! ha! ha! that ran along the inside of the hill as it were, completed their fear, and they stopped their ears with their hands and scuttled away down the hill. But now David seized them, and pulling their hands down from their heads, he said, ‘See here! what a nice place with the stones sticking out like seats. Why, it’s like a little house; let us stay and play a bit here.’ It was a little hollow in the hill side surrounded by projecting stones like an amphitheatre. The sisters were still afraid, but the sight of this little hollow with its seats of crag had such a charm for them that they promised David they would stop awhile, if he would promise not to shout and awake the echo. David readily promised this, and so they sat down; David proposed to keep a school, and cut a hazel wand from a bush and began to lord it over his two scholars in a very pompous manner. The two sisters pretended to be much afraid, and to read very diligently on pieces of flat stone which they had picked up. And then David became a serjeant and was drilling them for soldiers, and stuck pieces of fern into their hair for cockades. And then, soon after, they were sheep, and he was the shepherd; and he was catching his flock and going to shear them, and made so much noise that Jane cried, ‘Hold! there’s the echo mocking us.’

At this they all were still. But David said, ‘Pho! never mind the echo; I must shear my sheep:’ but just as he was seizing little Nancy to pretend to shear her with a piece of stick, Jane cried out, ‘Look! look! how black it is coming down the valley there! There’s going to be a dreadful starm; let us hurry hom!’

David and Nancy both looked up, and agreed to run as fast down the hill as they could. But the next moment the driving storm swept over the hill, and the whole valley was hid in it. The three children still hurried on, but it became quite dark, and they soon lost the track, and were tossed about by the wind, so that they had difficulty to keep on their legs. Little Nancy began to cry, and the three taking hold of each other endeavoured in silence to make their way homewards. But presently they all stumbled over a large stone, and fell some distance down the hill. They were not hurt, but much frightened, for they now remembered the precipices, and were afraid every minute of going over them. They now strove to find the track by going up again, but they could not find it anywhere. Sometimes they went upwards till they thought they were quite too far, and then they went downwards till they were completely bewildered; and then, like the Babes in the Wood, ‘They sate them down and cried.’

But ere they had sate long, they heard footsteps, and listened. They certainly heard them and shouted, but there was no answer. David shouted, ‘Help! fayther! mother! help!’ but there was no answer. The wind swept fiercely by; the hawks whimpered from the high crags, lost in the darkness of the storm; and the rain fell, driving along icy cold. Presently, there was a gleam of light through the clouds; the hill side became visible, and through the haze they saw a tall figure as of an old man ascending the hill. He appeared to carry two loads slung from his shoulders by a strap; a box hanging before, and a bag hanging at his back. He wound up the hill slowly and wearily, and presently he stopped and relieving himself of his load, seated himself on a piece of crag to rest. Again David shouted, but there still was no answer. The old man sate as if no shout had been heard—immoveable.

‘It _is_ a man,’ said David, ‘and I _will_ make him hear;’ and with that he shouted once more with all his might. But the old man made no sign of recognition. He did not even turn his head, but he took off his hat and began to wipe his brow as if warm with the ascent.

‘What can it be?’ said David in astonishment. ‘It _is_ a man, that’s sartain. I’ll run and see.’

‘Nay, nay!’ shrieked the sisters. ‘Don’t, David! don’t! It’s perhaps the old man out of the mountain that’s been mocking us. Perhaps,’ added Jane, ‘he only comes out in starms and darkness.’

‘Stuff!’ said David, ‘an echo isn’t a man; it’s only our own voices. I’ll see who it is; and away he darted, spite of the poor girl’s crying in terror, ‘Don’t; don’t, David! Oh, don’t.’

But David was gone. He was not long in reaching the old man, who sate on his stone breathing hard, as if out of breath with his ascent, but not appearing to perceive David’s approach. The rain and the wind drove fiercely upon him, but he did not seem to mind it. David was half afraid to approach close to him, but he called out, ‘Help; help, mester!’ The old man remained as unconscious of his presence. ‘Hillo!’ cried David again. ‘Can you tell us the way down, mester?’ There was no answer, and David was beginning to feel a shudder of terror run through every limb, when the clouds cleared considerably, and he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Why, it’s old Tobias Turton of top of Edale, and he’s as deaf as a door nail!’

In an instant, David was at his side; seized his coat to make him aware of his presence, and, on the old man perceiving him, shouted in his ear, ‘Which is the way down here, Mester Turton? Where’s the track?’

‘Down? Weighs o’ the back?’ said the old man; ‘ay, my lad, I was fain to sit down; it does weigh o’ th’ back, sure enough.’

‘Where’s the foot-track?’ shouted David, again.

‘Th’ foot-track? Why, what art ta doing here, my lad, in such a starm? Isn’t it David Dunster’s lad?’

David nodded. ‘Why, the track ’s here! see;’ and the old man stamped his foot. ‘Get down hom, my lad, as fast as thou can. What dun they do letting thee be upon th’ hills in such a dee as this?’

David nodded his thanks, and turned to descend the track, while the old man adjusting his burden again, silently and wearily recommenced his way upwards.

David shouted to his sisters as he descended, and they quickly replied. He called to them to come towards him, as he was on the track, and was afraid to quit it again. They endeavoured to do this; but the darkness was now redoubled, and the wind and rain became more furious than ever. The two sisters were soon bewildered amongst the bushes, and David, who kept calling to them at intervals to direct their course towards him, soon heard them crying bitterly. At this, he forgot the necessity of keeping the track, and darting towards them, soon found them by continuing to call to them, and took their hands to lead them to the track. But they were now drenched through with the rain, and shivered with cold and fear. David, with a stout heart endeavoured to cheer them. He told them the track was close by, and that they would soon be at home. But though the track was not ten yards off, somehow they did not find it. Bushes and projecting rocks turned them out of their course; and owing to the confusion caused by the wind, the darkness, and their terror, they searched in vain for the track. Sometimes they thought they had found it, and went on a few paces, only to stumble over loose stones, or get entangled in the bushes.

It was now absolutely becoming night. Their terrors increased greatly. They shouted and cried aloud, in the hope of making their parents hear them. They felt sure that both father and mother must be come home; and as sure that they would be hunting for them. But they did not reflect that their parents could not tell in what direction they had gone. Both father and mother were come home, and the mother had instantly rushed out to try to find them, on perceiving that they were not in the house. She had hurried to and fro, and called—not at first supposing they would be far. But when she heard nothing of them, she ran in, and begged of her husband to join in the search. But at first David Dunster would do nothing. He was angry at them for going away from the house, and said he was too tired to go on a wild-goose chase through the plantations after them. ‘They are i’ th’ plantations,’ said he; ‘they are sheltering there somewhere. Let them alone, and they’ll come home, with a good long tail behind them.’

With this piece of a child’s song of sheep, David sat down to his supper, and Betty Dunster hurried up the valley, shouting—‘Children, where are you? David! Jane! Nancy! where are you?’

When she heard nothing of them, she hurried still more wildly up the hill towards the village. When she arrived there—the distance of a mile—she inquired from house to house, but no one had seen anything of them. It was clear they had not been in that direction. An alarm was thus created in the village; and several young men set out to join Mrs. Dunster in the quest. They again descended the valley towards Dunster’s house, shouting every now and then, and listening. The night was pitch dark, and the rain fell heavily; but the wind had considerably abated, and once they thought they heard a faint cry in answer to their call, far down the valley. They were right; the children had heard the shouting, and had replied to it. But they were far off. The young men shouted again, but there was no answer; and after shouting once more without success, they hastened on. When they reached David Dunster’s house, they found the door open, and no one within. They knew that David had set off in quest of the children himself, and they determined to descend the valley. The distracted mother went with them, crying silently to herself, and praying inwardly, and every now and then trying to shout. But the young men raised their strong voices above hers, and made the cliffs echo with their appeals.

Anon a voice answered them down the valley. They ran on as well as the darkness would let them, and soon found that it was David Dunster, who had been in the plantations on the other side of the valley; but hearing nothing of the lost children, now joined them. He said he had heard the cry from the hill side farther down, that answered to their shouts; and he was sure that it was his boy David’s voice. But he had shouted again, and there had been no answer but a wild scream as of terror, that made his blood run cold.

‘O God!’ exclaimed the distracted mother, ‘what can it be? David! David! Jane! Nancy!’

There was no answer. The young men bade Betty Dunster to contain herself, and they would find the children before they went home again. All held on down the valley, and in the direction whence the voice came. Many times did the young men and the now strongly agitated father shout and listen. At length they seemed to hear voices of weeping and moaning. They listened—they were sure they heard a lamenting—it could only be the children. But why then did they not answer? On struggled the men, and Mrs. Dunster followed wildly after. Now, again, they stood and shouted, and a kind of terrified scream followed the shout.

‘God in heaven!’ exclaimed the mother; ‘what is it? There is something dreadful. My children! my children! where are you?’

‘Be silent, pray do, Mrs. Dunster,’ said one of the young men, ‘or we cannot catch the sounds so as to follow them.’ They again listened, and the wailings of the children were plainly heard. The whole party pushed forward over stock and stone up the hill. They called again, and there was a cry of ‘Here! here! fayther! mother! where are you?’

In a few moments more the whole party had reached the children, who stood drenched with rain, and trembling violently, under a cliff that gave no shelter, but was exposed especially to the wind and rain.

‘O Christ! My children!’ cried the mother wildly, struggling forwards and clasping one in her arms. ‘Nancy! Jane! But where is David? David! David! Oh, where is David? Where is your brother?’

The whole party was startled at not seeing the boy, and joined in a simultaneous ‘Where is he? Where is your brother?’

The two children only wept and trembled more violently, and burst into loud crying.