Chapter III: Part I: We spend our years as a tale that is told (2)

'This was the great gateway,' I said, with a child's eagerness to teach anybody a great deal older than himself. 'There used to be a draw-bridge here once.'

'Dear, dear!' said my grandmother not understanding the least, 'was there indeed?'

'And yonder's the keep. They kept all their stores in there, you know, grandmother.'

'Well, to be sure!'

'And the dungeons are underneath, where the prisoners used to be.'

'Lawk a' mercy, poor things!'

'And grandmother, you've heard of the Queen's Tower?'

'No, my dear, I know nothing at all about it.'

'But you'll have to tell the people when they come to see it,' I said anxiously. 'Mother always did.'

'I can't, my dear. I know nothing of the place.'

'But you'll learn, won't you? I will teach you.'

'My dear, I am a great deal too old to learn.'

She looked quite frightened and confused. I shook my head and said no more. I did not see how she was to get on at all, and I thought how very different people's mothers could be from one another.

Years afterwards I understood good old Granny better. When she was very old and feeble she used to tell me--Granny was always fond of talking--about the little home she had left to come and keep house for her son in his time of trouble.

'It was a nice clean little place, Willie,' she would say, twirling her thumbs and looking round her with eyes that had grown very dim, 'clean and very cheerful--just half way down the street, my dear, where you could see everything that was going on. It was a tidy street; we all kept our doorsteps so clean, you could have eaten your dinner off them. We took a pride in it, you see, Willie. We were very sociable and friendly among ourselves. I could always pop on my pattens and run in next door, or next door but one, may be, for a word of chat and a dish of tea. I had lived there a long time, and we were very comfortable, you see, Willie. It seemed a bit lonesome just at first, when Stephen brought me here. But it's all for the best, my dear, all for the best, for sure.'

I could understand then, what I used to wonder at as a child. It must have been a change from the busy county town, with its orderly trimness and sociable ways, to the wild silent ruins on the hill-side. But she had come away willingly from her cosy home, at her son's bidding, and I am sure she died without ever thinking that the sacrifice so simply made was anything good in her.

By degrees I got used to seeing the bent figure trotting about, where my mother used to move; doing her work--not filling her place--keeping the house beautifully clean and tidy, but for the rest--ah, it would always seem empty and blank. There would always be the sense of something wanting.

Granny won my heart, though, by one thing. She was always kind to Cuthbert, just as kind as she was to me. I believe she took him as a matter of course. We were both strangers to her, he not much more than her own grandson. Besides, Cuthbert's bright face and ways won her heart. 'The boy has such a pretty tongue,' she used to say. He welcomed her more readily than I did, for he could not compare her, as I was for ever doing, with my mother.

I told Hildred one day how good Granny was to Cuthbert.

'Perhaps she likes him best,' Hildred said, throwing an apple up into the air and catching it.

'Oh, do you think so?'

It was a new thought to me. I pondered over it a great deal when I was alone.

Very likely most people would like Cuthbert best. My mother of course, would always have cared for me the most, but now it was different and I should not be first any longer.

Cuthbert wondered why I went up to him that evening and put my arm over his shoulder. He was hard at work mending a net for our cherry-tree, so he only just looked up and nodded.

No wonder everybody liked that happy face of his. In truth, I think there could not have been happier children than we were.

As the quick months and years passed over our heads, the trouble that never could be cured kept gliding away, further and further back into some very far-off past, until at last it seemed to me that it was not I who had lived here with my mother, but another boy, a much smaller, graver boy--a better boy, too, perhaps--but very different from what I was now. I looked back at him half wonderingly, half regretfully, through a sort of mist of brightness and light. It must have been so easy for him to be good alone with his mother, and hearing nothing day by day but her good words. What would she have done with the big rough fellow that had grown by degrees into her little boy's place? Would he have been quiet and gentle enough for her, if she had lived? Yes, all the time I felt a sort of certainty that she would have loved me, nay, that she did love me still. And I should like to have let her know, that though of course I had got into a harder life--a life in most things far unlike what it used to be when she was with me--yet that I still often remembered and wished to obey her words, that I should try to be good without her always. But these thoughts I never spoke, even to Cuthbert.

I was a child when Cuthbert came, I was a boy now, and he had helped to make me one. From the first time I saw him climb the outside of the Queen's Tower, swinging himself upwards from branch to branch of the old ivy, he became my pattern: I resolved to follow him, and if it made Granny scream to see us, why, so much the better.

The Castle ruins were the best play-ground that children ever had. On half-holidays the whole school used to troop up there directly they were let out, and the old walls rang with shouts and laughter. Cuthbert and Hildred were always glad to see them, but I liked it best when we had it all to ourselves.

There was a hole in the wall, through which we used to creep, a steep bit of cliff to climb down, and then the stream. Across it such woods, green, tangled, thick with brambles and underwood, full of wild strawberries, blackberry bushes, rabbits, and birds'-nests built up in the huge trees that stood knee-deep in king-fern.

Wherever Cuthbert and I went, and we went everywhere, little Hildred tried to follow us. It was clearly understood that she was never to be in the way. 'Girls always were,' Cuthbert said loftily; 'but still'----It would have been hard to leave her at home because she was a girl, for she would so fain have been a boy. She might come, if she would scramble through the brambles, without caring how much she scratched her arms and legs, and tore her frock. She must be ready to cross the stream, even if the rains had swollen it, and it was sparkling away ankle-deep over the stepping-stones.

She must not scream, however high a branch one of us fell off when we were birds'-nesting. She must share in all our scrapes, and never tell. She must stifle her terror of robbers in the wood, or adders in the long grass, and her pinafore must be always ready to hold birds' nests, eggs, young squirrels, or any prizes that we could not stuff into our own pockets.

Hildred was well content to come on any terms, and ready for the roughest expedition--readier often than I was, for in hot weather, when the ruins were sunny and silent, I liked better to lie on the grass reading, than even to go ratting with Cuthbert and our dog Trusty.

I was half ashamed of being fond of reading. No other boy was, and Cuthbert could not understand it at all.

'He's wonderful fond of his book is Willie,' Granny used to say. 'He'll get to reading to himself by the hour together.'

Cuthbert shook his head with a kind of wondering sorrow. He never cared much to go anywhere by himself. So there was nothing for it but to throw the book into the window of the keep, and go off wherever Cuthbert had made up his mind to take me. And there was Trusty too, with tail upright and eager eyes, waiting for a start. It would have been hard to disappoint Trusty.

He was a dog indeed, was our Trusty, commonly called Rusty, because the wear and tear of life had made his black coat very shabby and brown in these latter days. He was not a model dog, not brave, and calm, and wise, like the dogs one reads about in books. Rusty had his foibles. He was vain, touchy, and changeable. His temper, too, was apt to be short at times, yet how true-hearted and faithful he was to those he really loved! Oh, dear old Rusty, laid to rest now, for nearly fifty years, under the green grass, I have never seen anything like you since!

Who so quick to guess your mood as Rusty? Who so ready as he for a bit of fun? Who so willing to deceive himself and you, and to growl savagely or bark shrilly at the mere mention of a rat, that he knew quite well did not exist? Who so sober and wiselike as Trusty, if you were in trouble; but who so quick to mark the first lifting of the cloud, and to know the minute when it would do to break in with a wag of the tail and a short sharp bark inclining to cheerfulness?

'Come, old fellow, things are not so bad after all,' he has often said to me; 'don't worry, but come and see after that rabbit under the Castle wall.'

To say that everybody was fond of Rusty would not be true, for the worst parts of his character came out with strangers. He was uncertain to them, uncertain and ungrateful. I have known him form friendships one day and be ashamed of them the next. He sometimes went so far as to receive kindnesses from strangers, and then to fly at their legs if he saw one of his own people coming. But to those who lived with him he was just perfectly loveable. I don't think I can say more than that. He and we loved one another.

So Rusty shared all our fun, and all our troubles too--such as they were--for we had our troubles of course; who hasn't? For instance, we hated school, at least Cuthbert and Hildred did, and I, wishing to be like them, said, and I believe thought, that I hated it too.

But I don't think I did; no, I am sure I did not, except when the sun streamed hotly in at the half-open door, and leaves tapped against the diamond-paned windows, and bees hummed past out in the warm air, and the boys were rebellious, and the girls sleepy and cross. Of course no one could like it then. Nor on a grey day just made for fishing, with cool shadows lying on the water. Cuthbert began grumbling, on such mornings, before his eyes were well open, at the hardships of having to be shut up in school all day. It was rather hard certainly to think of the river swirling along through the green rushes, eddying round the stepping-stones under the Castle cliff, or dreaming lazily over the shallows where the trout lay. I never looked up from my slate on a day like that, without expecting to see Cuthbert's place empty, and his cap gone from its peg near the door.

It was no good giving him advice--no good begging him to be industrious: he always promised, and always meant to keep his word.

All the seasons were alike. Long before I had had time to rejoice at birds'-nesting being over, the fishing had begun. Then came summer, with its long hot days--the hay-making and the bathing in the cool stream. Every bright hour was a temptation. After that the harvest seemed to come upon us quickly. The holidays began, and I had peace.

But winter was almost the worst of all. How Cuthbert loved the frosty weather, and the snow and ice! The Castle looked marvellously solemn and grey, rising out of the snow; and we had to dig paths for ourselves across the ruins. When we were building a snow man in the Castle court, and there was sliding and skating going on at the mere, half a mile away, and the red sun set over the hills at four o'clock in the afternoon, how was any one, said Cuthbert, to find time for school? 'When the thaw comes, Will, I'll never miss again,' he promised. But the snow melted, and there came a cloudy day with a southerly wind, and Cuthbert was off half-a-dozen miles away to see the hounds meet, and to follow them from covert to heath, and from field to common, all across the country.

Those lawless doings of Cuthbert's disturbed me very much. I always felt as if he were in my charge and I had to answer for him.

Our schoolmaster used to frown, and tell Cuthbert he must take the consequences; and the consequences Cuthbert took, with a great show of not caring, laughing at Hildred because she could not help crying, and comforting me as if I had been the one in trouble.

Now and then my father spoke a few rough words, but they did not weigh much, for Cuthbert said: 'It's not as if he heeded whether I got any learning or not. It's all one to him. I can see that plain enough.' And when my father had done speaking he would go off whistling carelessly. I have seen the tears in his eyes, though, for all his whistling.

If mother had only lived it would have been different. Some of her kind grave words would have set everything straight. What could poor old Granny do beyond holding up her hands at him, with her favourite 'Dear, dear!' and then giving him a double share of dumpling at supper to cheer him up?

'Boys ought to like school, Cuthbert,' she told him.

'But you see I don't, Granny. I hate it.'

'But good boys are fond of their book. Look at Willie.'

'As if I should ever be like Will,' he answered, with a look as if he were proud of me.

'Master Caleb thinks all the world of our Willie,' Granny went on. 'Why, you might go a-walking out with him if you were good, like Willie does.'

Cuthbert made a wry face. 'I'd much sooner not, Granny, thank you.'

From the time I was a little child I had known Master Caleb Morton well--he came so often to the Castle. It was he who had told my mother all the stories she knew about the place. He loved it almost better than we did, and--we were very proud of that--he had written a book about it, a real printed book. He gave it to mother, and it stood on our book-shelf, between 'Pilgrim's Progress' and the 'History of Jack the Giant-killer'--a thin red book, with a woodcut of Wyncliffe Castle on the title page.

Cuthbert and I believed that a stone could scarcely fall from the crumbling walls without his finding it out. He used to stand for hours with his hands behind his back, gazing up at the grey towers.

Poor dear Master Caleb! He was much too good for us at Wyncliffe; for he was very clever, very learned, very hard-working, and understood everything under the sun, except village boys and girls.

They baffled him, for he expected them to like learning, and never could make out why one and all treated him as an enemy when he wanted to teach them their lessons.

Years ago he had come a very young man, to be schoolmaster at Wyncliffe, full of grand plans, and thinking to make good scholars of at least some among his pupils. He might well have found out, long since, what a hopeless task it was; but when I went to school, he was working away, still eager, still hopeful, forever being disappointed, but never quite losing heart.

However, if he did not know how to keep order in the school--and some people said he did not--I verily believe he knew everything else in the world.

He was an Antiquary, I have often heard Mrs. Janet say, and a Botanist, and a Geologist, and an Astronomer. The words sounded so very grand as Mrs. Janet rolled them slowly out, that I recollected them all, though I had not the least idea what any of them meant.

'He's too book-learned for us, that's where it is,' the great men of the parish sometimes said, shaking their heads wisely. Yet they were fond of him and proud of him all the same.

Mrs. Janet shook her head too. She would fain have ruled Master Caleb's scholars for him, as when he was a little boy she used to rule himself. It was pain and grief to her to sit idle in the parlour, and know that 'the boy' was letting things go their own way too much in the school.

Not that he always did so by any means. The boys said they never knew what he would be at, for they found themselves brought to justice now and then when they were least looking for it. There was a boyish corner in his own heart, staid, quaint, and learned as he was, that gave him a secret fellow-feeling for Cuthbert's love of roaming, and I guessed that he was oftentimes the hardest upon him when he was most tempted to let him off altogether.

With the youngest class of all--a helpless cluster of tiny boys and girls, who were only sent to school because they were in the way at home, he was at all events tireless and gentle. Very tenderly he guided the fat forefingers to point along the lines, helped the lisping baby tongues over the hard words, and never lost patience with the blue, wondering, foolish eyes that could see no difference between A and Z.

It was when he turned back to the first class, great boys who could learn and wouldn't learn, that the puzzled, worried look we all knew well came across his face. I think the reason he was so good to me was that I really liked to learn.

So he lent me books, and took me for long walks across the hills. Wonderful walks they were--very different from the headlong way Cuthbert went across the country. Master Caleb carried a hammer with him to chip off bits of rock, and a trowel to dig up out-of-the-way plants, and a big basket to carry what he called his specimens. He loved the beautiful earth with a great reverent love.

I think Master Caleb must have been very lonely, or he would never have made a friend of such a boy as I was; but for all his learning he was just as simple-hearted as a child.

Even I knew more of the world than he did, at least of the world as it was at Wyncliffe. He came at last to treat me as if I was nearly his own age, and to talk to me of the things that he was thinking most about.

For Mrs. Janet, proud of him as she was, rather disapproved of his learning. She could not well say what harm she expected it to do him, but she was clear in her own mind that Caleb went too far. He knew so much and saw so many sides to everything that he got mazed, she said.

'But there is more than one side to most questions, isn't there?' he sometimes asked.

'Yes, Caleb. There's a right side and a wrong, and that's enough for me.'

'Well, my dear,' I remember her saying eagerly to him one day, when it was so hot that everything and everybody had gone wrong in school, and the sound of a scuffle had reached her from afar; 'Well, brother, I trust you haven't spared the rod to-day.'

'Why, Janet,'--he pushed back the hair from his forehead,--'it's very hot, and everybody feels cross. I'm sure I do.'

'Caleb!' in an awful voice.

'Don't you believe in atmospheric influences?' asked Master Caleb, who was rather fond of bringing out a hard word now and then.

'Atmospheric nonsense,' said Mrs. Janet, knitting furiously.

He stood at the open door watching the great thunder-clouds that came marching across the sky to the battle. Cuthbert and I had not gone home to dinner because of the coming storm, the first heavy rain-drops of which were beginning to fall sullenly.

'To talk of such-like heathenish things,' burst out Mrs. Janet presently, 'before your scholars too.'

'Heathenish things--electricity. I will prove to you----'

'Boys,' she went on unheeding, 'the weather is always good weather, and no one ought to feel different in hot weather or in cold, or whether it rains or the sun shines. No, Caleb, I don't care what your books say.'

For Master Caleb had brought a big heavy book from the shelf, and after rubbing the dust off the leaves with loving care, was laying it open on the table before her.

The mere sight of it scattered his enemies quicker than any of his arguments could have done; Cuthbert seized his cap, and was through the door out into the rain in the twinkling of an eye.

Mrs. Janet suddenly remembered that the pudding needed her instant presence in the kitchen. Master Caleb and I were left alone.

'It's all in here,' he said, looking up at me with a baffled face.

'What is, sir?'

'The Laws of Electricity. It's no good talking to women--to most women, that is to say. See how clearly he puts it.'

I don't know whether it was the thunder-storm; it may have been the atmospheric influences (what hard words) that made me feel so stupid. I looked at the big book with a sigh. 'Did one man write all that, sir?'

'Ay, that, and a vast deal more. It was written, Willie, by Professor Bruce.'

No wonder he spoke the name in an impressive under-tone. It was one very familiar to all Master Caleb's friends. Professor Bruce was his hero. Professor Bruce was seldom out of his mouth. According to him, Professor Bruce had written something to prove everything that could be proved. Master Caleb's one boast and source of pride was that he knew the great man well. Several years ago Professor Bruce--now growing old--had left London, where he had passed most of his life, writing books and lecturing, and to the everlasting glory of our quiet old town, Morechester, he had lived there ever since.

It was the greatest honour Master Caleb could bestow on me, the only one of his many kindnesses that he ever thought deserved my gratitude, that a time came when he deemed me worthy to see Professor Bruce. It was on the day of the thunder-storm that I knew my good fortune first.

'You're a hard-working boy, Willie, and the sight of a great man like that will do you good. I'll take you into Morechester.'

'To Morechester, Master Caleb! will you really? I've never seen a town before.'

'You will see Professor Bruce,' he answered sternly.

'Oh yes,' I said hurriedly. 'Professor Bruce of course. I meant that. Thank you, sir.'

So it was settled.

Master Caleb, good man, need not have been so sharp on me for wishing to see Morechester. It was not only to visit Professor Bruce, as I found out afterwards, that he cared so much for going there himself.

'Cuthbert, I wish you were going too,' I said just before we started.

'I should like well enough to go to Morechester,' he answered, stretching himself, 'but I'd rather not see any more schoolmasters.'

Market day at Morechester! The busiest and most stirring scene I had ever beheld.

A long sunny street stretching up a hill, built of irregular houses,--old and new, tall and short, brown and grey and red,--high houses with square windows and green shutters,--short houses, having high-pitched roofs, carved wooden balconies, and queer-shaped windows overhanging the roof; here and there a gilt weathercock flashing in the sun; oaken pillars supporting the jutting-out upper storey of some quaint old house; shop windows full of gorgeous coloured stuffs; the grey town hall, rich with ancient sculpture, standing back within its own railings; bright light, and black shadows lying across the uneven pavement. This, then, was a town.

Further on, the street widened into a sunlit market-place, and there an ever-shifting crowd came and went, bought and sold and bargained, round the old market cross.

What a noise there was! Farmers were riding up the street in twos and threes; their scarlet-cloaked wives jogged along laden with baskets of eggs and fresh butter; clattering carts, horses for sale were being trotted up and down, loud voices talking all at once.

Above all this there floated suddenly the music of airy chimes, followed by three slow deep strokes.

'Three by the Minster clock,' said Master Caleb.

The house we stopped at was close to the great towered church, which seemed to overshadow it and push it into the corner. It was a little low house, with dormer windows in a thatched roof, standing further back than its neighbours, and quite out of the reach of any stray sunbeams that found their way over the Minster roof.

Master Caleb rang a jangling bell, and as we stood waiting, whispered hurriedly, 'Make your bow, Willie, and don't speak unless you are spoken to.'

We were inside in a narrow passage; then a door opened.

'Hush,' said Master Caleb.

I never saw any room at all like the Professor's study. Coming into it out of the sunshine it was at first too dark to see anything distinctly. The only window looked out upon a blank wall. Inside, the walls of the room seemed to be made of books, and there were piles of them besides, heaped up on the chairs and on the floor.

What wonderful things there were crowded on to the tables and mantel-shelf, and filling the half-open cupboards. Wonderful things? frightening things rather. I am not going to describe them, seeing that I know not what any of them were. 'Chemical apparatus' is the name Master Caleb gave them afterwards, whatever that may be. But such a number of queer-shaped jars and glasses, and saucers and tubes, such odd glass spoons and ladles, such strange liquids and powders, and bits of metal as were lying about, I should think no one else ever gathered round them before or since.

My first thought was, whatever Granny would say if Cuthbert and I made her clean kitchen at home half so untidy-looking as this.

Then I saw the great man himself sitting at the table holding an open letter in one hand and an oddly-shaped bottle in the other, an old man with a keen wrinkled face, who seemed to me at first sight to be all black and white; for white eyebrows shaded his piercing black eyes, and he wore a black velvet cap over his white hair, and a black dressing-gown, against which his long thin hands looked wonderfully white.

He seemed too eager over his letter and his bottle to have much time to spare for greeting Master Caleb. He began directly, speaking fast and loud. To my surprise Master Caleb immediately got excited too, and stood listening with a rapt face while the Professor poured out a torrent of hard words. I don't think it was English that he talked, or I should have understood it. After that I did not need to be told what a great man he was. I had heard it for myself.

My best bow was not needed. No one noticed me. I sat down, as Master Caleb had bidden me, in a corner, on the edge of a chair that was piled up with big books, and listened with respectful wonder. But the hard words I did not understand went on for a long time, and the room was hot, and full of odd sleepy smells. I much fear that I fell asleep in Professor Bruce's study. Once I woke up for a minute with a great start, and saw Master Caleb on his knees, pouring something into a saucer, while the Professor shouted directions at the top of his voice, and there was a fizzing noise and an odder smell than ever.

Then I dozed again, but was roused by Master Caleb's jumping up suddenly, and turning back the sleeves of his coat in a great hurry. The Professor looked up impatiently. 'What's the matter?'

'I think somebody is coming,' said my master. The Professor listened for a minute. 'Why, it's only Dolly,' and went on with the reading of his letter.

A door behind his chair opened quietly, and there came in a small, lame girl in a grey gown.

This was 'Dolly,' then, and that was what I thought her at first, just a small lame girl in a grey gown. 'Dolly' came in slowly, and Master Caleb turned round and made her a beautiful low bow. He tried to go and meet her, but the Professor had got his hand upon his arm, and was pointing to him with the glass tube, and evidently had just come to the very pith of his discourse.

Dolly--Mistress Dorothy, as I called her later--leant over the back of her father's chair, and smiled at Master Caleb. Watching her from my dark corner, I presently saw how good she looked and how her eyes lighted up her pale face when she smiled--nice soft eyes they were; just as grey as her gown.

Professor Bruce never found out that his listener was not as attentive as before; but I saw more--his thoughts had wandered away from the wonderful saucer since the young lady came into the room.

I was getting tired of sitting so very still on the edge of the big books. I wanted to hear Mistress Dorothy speak. She saw me too, for she looked full into my corner, and then glanced at Master Caleb with another of her pleasant little smiles.

We waited until the Professor folded up the letter, and turning round in his chair so as to look up in his daughter's face, said, 'So we have got it all right at last, Dolly.'

She said heartily, 'I am so glad, father,' and then everybody moved.

The Professor pushed back his chair and stood up.

'Caleb Morton was in luck,' he said with a pleased look, 'to come in just as I was reading that letter. It makes it clear, Caleb, doesn't it.'

'Indeed it does, Professor. Mistress Dorothy,' and he went a step or two near to her and spoke low. I just caught the words, 'ventured,' 'my best boy,' and 'Wyncliffe Castle.'

She came to me with her hand stretched out. I made the bow that had been waiting for so long and at the first word from her clear voice I felt as if we were friends.

We had tea before we went away, in Mistress Dorothy's parlour, which looked out upon the Minster, and was so near to it that when the bells chimed the quarters it sounded as if they were ringing in the room itself. It was because this was a town, I supposed, that there was no sunshine, and everything in the room looked brown or drab or dark grey.

Mistress Dorothy looked very happy, notwithstanding, and not at all as if she thought the room dull. She took me to the window, where her chair and the table with her work-basket stood, and showed me how she could see through one of the side windows of the Minster, to where another great painted window facing the west was blazing in the sunset.

'Is it not beautiful?' she said.

There was a shimmer of gold, and red and blue, but so far off.

I wished she could have seen Farmer Foster's field of sainfoin as it was just now, a glittering rose-coloured sea, that looked in the evening light as if some of the sunset clouds had floated down to earth.

Mrs. Dorothy could not even see the sunset; the Minster towered between her and the red-gold west. Poor little Mistress Dorothy! and yet she looked so happy, so cordial and contented.

By-and-by she began to ask me questions about home. The Professor had gone back to his study, and Master Caleb stood in the window opposite her chair.

'Have you got a father and mother?'

'No; he has lost his mother,' Master Caleb answered for me; and then rather abruptly he began to tell her about my mother's life and death. He told it in beautiful words, that made me listen as if it were a story about some one I had never known.

Mistress Dorothy clasped my hand closer in her own as he went on, and looked down to hide, I think, the tears that were in her eyes.

'And so she died,' ended Master Caleb, 'and the boy was left to grow up as best he could.'

There was something in his voice that made me look up at him--something I could not understand.

Mistress Dorothy must have known better what he meant, for she answered softly--

'And yet it was best so.'

Master Caleb bowed his head gravely. 'No doubt you are right, Mistress Dorothy. Only it has often struck me as a strange answer to the promise that whoever gives a cup of water shall in no wise lose his reward. The boy did his best, and where is his reward?'

'We do not know yet,' she said, 'but it will surely come. Master Caleb, you are a schoolmaster; do you always give your best rewards in schooltime? Don't you often keep them to the end, when your scholars are leaving school to go home? Perhaps Willie will wait for his reward even until then.'

'You are speaking of the next world, Mistress Dorothy,' he said.

'Yes,' and she turned to me. 'You will be content to wait, Willie?'

I answered 'Yes' then, because I thought she expected it of me.

With my whole heart I say it now.

* * * * *

'Well, Willie,' said Master Caleb, when he had walked a long way on the road home without saying a word, 'so you have seen him.'

'Yes, sir; it was very surprising to hear him talk.'

'Ah! he's a wonderful man.' He spoke as if he scarcely knew what he was saying; and then, waking up again, 'a very wonderful man.'

'And oh! sir! don't you like Mistress Dorothy?'

'Like Mistress Dorothy--I should never think of such a thing--don't talk of it--like her, no.'

'Oh, I thought you did.'

'I am surprised at you, Willie,' he said, and would not talk any more; so we went home silently, through sunset and twilight and moonshine.

I went a long way across the hills next day, in search of a certain fern that only grew in one place. It was a very rare one, Master Caleb had told me, a soft feathery thing, that I fancied might please Mistress Dorothy. I carried it home and waited anxiously, hoping that Master Caleb would take me with him again to Morechester. But he went alone, and Mrs. Janet said she could not think what ailed him that he was always on the tramp.

My turn came again at last, and I carried my fern to offer to Mistress Dorothy. She looked quite bright and pleased as she took it from my hands.

'I should never have thought of bringing it to you,' said Master Caleb.

He did not add what he had told me on the road, when it was too late to turn back, that it was not near good enough to give to her.

But I think she liked it. She took me into the parlour to see her water it, and made me tell her about the steep bank where it had grown, under waving trees and among primrose tufts.

'Pretty place,' she said smiling.

'Won't you come and see it some day, Mistress Dorothy?'

'Father cannot get away, and I never leave him.'

'Couldn't he spare you?'

She shook her head. 'Oh no, never.'

'But supposing you married and went away?' I asked.

I do not know what set me on thinking of marrying just then.

She coloured and smiled.

'That will never be. I could not leave him; and besides, no one will ever want to marry a little lame thing like me.'

'Won't they?'

She shook her head again and laughed.

That evening, as we walked down the street, Master Caleb said suddenly, 'She likes you, Willie; she says you are to come again.'

'Does she? Oh, Master Caleb, shouldn't you like to have her there at home, and let her see the Castle and all?'

He put his hand on my shoulder, and said in a low, changed voice, 'If it could be, Willie, if it could. But it never can be--never.'

'She says she cannot leave her father.'

'It isn't only for that; I could never ask her. Look you, Willie; she is just as high above me as the stars.'

That was how I came to know Master Caleb's secret.

* * * * *

It was a heavy secret to him, poor fellow, though he tried hard to put it away, and to live as if he had not got it on his mind. He told no one, not even Mrs. Janet, and only sometimes, when we were out on the hills, he talked a little of it to me. Certainly I was a very odd person for him to have chosen to hear the story of his love. But he had lived a solitary life, and perhaps his telling me had been an accident at first. Once told, no one in the world could have felt more honoured than I did, or have listened and looked on with more reverential awe.

'You're not quite like a boy in some things, you know, Willie,' he once said to me. 'Besides, she likes you.'

And he never did things just as other people did. I suppose that was another reason.

Mistress Dorothy and I became firm friends. I did not wonder the least at Master Caleb, for there was no one at all like her in the world. To go to Morechester and see her, I gave up willingly the best cricket match of that summer; and what boy can do more than that?

The game, played on a certain sunny half holiday, was just beginning, when Master Caleb and I set off for Morechester. I remember looking back wistfully at the ground, and seeing how smooth and inviting it looked in the sunshine. The players were just crossing the field for an 'over,' and Cuthbert was walking by himself rather sulkily, for he and I had quarrelled that morning about my going so often with Master Caleb.

He said that I did not care for cricket any more, or for him, or for anything but poking about after the schoolmaster. His injustice stung me deeply; for, to tell the truth, long walks with Master Caleb were not the same things now-a-days that they had once been. He had taken to stalking along in a brown study, with his hands behind his back, and I, carrying the basket, had to follow silently behind. I would fain have been somewhere at home with Cuthbert, only I could not tell Master Caleb so.

'If you only knew all,' I said rather grandly to Cuthbert, and then stopped short, afraid of letting out the secret. Cuthbert laughed scornfully, and I walked another way. So we had quarrelled.

The little house in Minster-yard became quite familiar to me. I almost wondered why Master Caleb cared to go there so often. His visits must have given him more pain than pleasure, for he generally left me to talk to Mistress Dorothy in the parlour, while he shut himself up in the study with the Professor. Anxious as he was about the safe-keeping of his secret, from no one did he guard it more carefully than from Dorothy herself. He was always fancying--most needlessly--that she was on the point of finding it out. And then of course she would never speak to him again. So he rarely said much to her, but listened with strained attention to her father's discourse, when he would have given the world only just to sit still and look at her.

Then, when he had scarcely allowed himself a look or a smile, he went home with a heavy heart to his hard work, and tried to throw himself with all his might into spelling-books and the multiplication table.

It was an odd life that Professor Bruce's little daughter lived, in the dark rooms among the books. She rarely saw anybody except now and then some old friend of her father's--some one just as learned as himself, who came to Morechester for the day, to talk over a scientific question with him, and who paid Mistress Dorothy grandly-worded, old-world compliments about her 'sweet eyes,' and her 'dishes of good tea.'

But in general she and her father were alone. He adored her, and left her to herself. If 'Dolly' was not within call to give her ready help and attention the moment he needed it, the Professor was impatient and disconcerted. Yet even she was not suffered to interrupt him in his work. She read his books, talked to him on his favourite subjects, guarded him jealously from being disturbed, and kept her own thoughts to herself. The world of dreams she lived in, full of noble thoughts, and lofty hopes, and brave self-conquest, he did not know much about.

He was contented if she were near him, always bright, quiet, and helpful, with the quick eyes and the ready wit that never knew weariness in his service. Her father did not know, and she herself scarcely guessed, how entirely he had grown to lean on her.

This was something of what Master Caleb told me about her, when, very rarely, he broke the silence of reverence with which he held her in his heart.

Why it was that I never saw her without wishing to be braver and better, I did not understand myself. But so it was. How the stories she sometimes told me, with the light in her eyes and a thrill in her quiet voice, made my heart beat with a great longing to do some great thing; how some of her words, simple and quiet as they were, have been with me to strengthen me in all the battles of my life--nay, how they are with me still, it would not be easy to explain.

'I can't think what you talk to her about,' said poor Master Caleb, almost angrily, sometimes. 'I can never find anything that seems good enough to say to her.'

It was but too true that he did not shine in her presence. Even I, used to his odd ways, and satisfied that all he did must be right, often wondered at his long silences and awkward speeches.

It seemed so easy to talk to her, nay, so impossible not to be drawn on by some magic in her way of listening. Voice, laugh, her changing face, the quick answering smile, her very attitude, all showed her ready interest.

All this time the Professor worked on happily at his chemistry and experiments, took up more of Master Caleb's attention each time that he went to visit him, good-naturedly called him his promising disciple and fellow-worker, and never found out how the disciple's interest flagged sometimes, and how difficult he found it to give his full attention.

Nevertheless, his admiration and devotion were just as great as ever, and Master Caleb would have been covered with remorse and shame at the mere notion of finding any hour long that was spent in the Professor's study.

By-and-by also, there came a certain happy time when he began to feel that he was really making himself useful. A new book of Professor Bruce's was going through the press.

There were few prouder men than Master Caleb, as he helped to gather together the scattered sheets, to go over calculations, and to get the pages ready for the printers. Dorothy, too, to make the work doubly pleasant, was always in her father's study, writing from his words, finding, as nobody else could, the papers he was for ever losing, and helping heart and hand at the finishing of the work.

'My last book, Dolly,' said the old man, putting his hand fondly on the head that was bending so intently over some of his crabbed writing. 'I shall never write another.'

Dorothy looked up at him quickly, and tried to make a cheerful answer, that did not seem to come readily.

'No,' he went on, rather as if he was thinking aloud; 'no, I shall never write another. Perhaps already I have writ too much. But I am glad of this one, because it is well sold, and will help to make Dolly comfortable when I am gone. I've never done enough for her heretofore.'

Dorothy looked up again, and laid her hand softly on his arm, glancing from him to Master Caleb, who was frowning over what looked like a long sum, and then at me, as I stood near the door waiting for some papers I was to carry to the post.

By-and-by she brought them to me, and followed me out into the passage, shutting the door behind her.

'Is this all, Mistress Dorothy?' I asked, as she looked thoughtful.

She turned round quickly. 'Thank you, Willie; yes, that's all. I don't see you often now,' she went on with a smile, 'but he likes me to be always with him; and do you know, I can't bear to be ever away from him. I cannot quite tell why.'

'Dolly,' called her father's voice, with the softness all gone out of it, sharp, short, and impatient. 'Dolly, who has touched the index? I can't find it.'

She ran back into the study, with a nod and smile to me.

So as no one wanted me at Morechester, I did not go there for a while, but stayed at home with Cuthbert, and mended up the old quarrel of a year ago, that he had never quite forgotten. We played at cricket in the glowing June evenings, until the long shadows faded quite away, and the blue of the sky darkened into purple.

People are rather apt to lose count of time in the days of hay-making. Everybody is so busy. We did not go to school then. Early and late Cuthbert and I were in the fields at Furzy Nook. Farmer Foster wanted to have all his hay carried by the last days of June. 'And after that there'll be school beginning again,' said Cuthbert, with his old disconsolate look.

We were leaning over the stile on Sunday evening, looking at the half-cut hay-fields, with their cocks of sweet-smelling hay. 'By-the-by, Will,' went on Cuthbert, 'what made Master Caleb look so solemn to-day? He went hobbling away through the churchyard as if he had been a hundred.'

'Did he?' My heart rather smote me. It was so long since I had seen him or thought of him, and to-day I had followed Farmer Foster out of church by the door that led across the meadows to Furzy Nook. 'He's been away at Morechester but I'll run over now, and ask after him.'

Master Caleb was not under his cherry-tree watching the sunset as usual. He was indoors, sitting with his back to the window, holding a book open in his hands. Mrs Janet, with a thorough look of Sunday leisure all about her, sat very upright at the table, reading also.

'I thought you were at Morechester, Master Caleb,' I said, as he looked up and held out his hand.

'Oh no. I came home a week since. Well, Willie, how's the hay-making getting on?'

'Pretty fair, sir, if the rain keeps off;' and I looked anxiously out of the window. I knew that there was not the shadow of a cloud to be found anywhere, and no chance of rain; but Farmer Foster always scanned the clouds when he was asked after the hay; so it was probably the right thing to do. Master Caleb nodded absently.

'Is the Professor's book done yet, Master Caleb?'

'Here it is.' He held the book he had been reading towards me.

'Printed and all!' I turned admiringly over the pages, some of which I must have carried to the post myself when they went to be printed. 'Did he give it to you?'

'She did.'

His hand trembled as he took it back. Cuthbert had been right in saying that he looked worn and ill. It seemed a trouble to him to answer questions, and I, having the fear of Mrs. Janet somewhat before my eyes, could not think of anything to talk about.

'Master Caleb,' I said, after standing near him for a few minutes, hoping he would speak, 'when you see Mrs. Dorothy again, will you tell her, with my respects----'

He interrupted me. 'You can tell her yourself, Willie, when you go to bid her good-bye. Ah, you haven't heard. They are leaving Morechester.'

'Mistress Dorothy? But not for long?'

'I mean that they are going away altogether.'

'Going away! where to?'

'To live in Scotland.' His voice sank a little.

'Oh, Master Caleb!'

He looked across at his sister, and half smiled.

Great rough boy as I was, I nearly burst out crying. I stammered, began to say I was sorry, and had to stop short.

He put his hand kindly on my shoulder, and presently he said, 'There is just a chance of their not going, Willie. It was not finally settled--just a chance.'

'It's quite as good as settled,' observed Mrs. Janet, without looking up.

'I know it is.'

'Why, why do they?' I asked, finding my voice at last, but with a sort of crack in it.

'Because they want him to be Professor of Chemistry at some place in Scotland, if you must know everything,' said Mrs. Janet, answering again, to my surprise. 'That book you have there is very much thought of, and he is Scotch, and so he wants to go--There!'

'But Mistress Dorothy?'

'She is sorry,' said my master, in a low voice.

And then the silence came down upon us again. Mrs. Janet cleared her throat, and held up her book so as to catch the remaining light, and Master Caleb leant his head upon his hand. I durst ask no more questions. But when I went away, he came out with me into the garden, over which the twilight was beginning to gather.

'I am very sorry, Master Caleb,' I took courage to say then.

'I know that you are, Willie.'

Quiet as he was, he spoke with a sort of effort, as if each word gave him pain.

'Scotland seems so far off.'

'Yes,--we shall see her face no more.'

'Is she very sorry? I am sure she does not want to go.'

'She said she had been happy here, God bless her. But I hope--I think--that such an one as she is must always be peaceful and happy. May He keep her so.'

'But Master Caleb, what will you do?'

He did not answer for a minute.

'I am thankful to have known her. My star of light. She has been to me----'

That sentence he never finished.

The following day ended the week that Professor Bruce had taken to consider whether he should accept the appointment offered to him or not. Master Caleb could not rest without going to Morechester to learn his determination, and in obedience to a message from Mistress Dorothy that she would like to see me again, he took me with him.

On the way to Morechester we talked ourselves into a hope that the Professor would have decided not to go away. The cool bright touches of morning air, full of the song of birds and of the smell of dewy flowers and freshly cut hay, made us feel hopeful. We remembered how Professor Bruce had said that he should write no more books, because he was growing an old man, and this new work would be harder still than book-writing. Master Caleb felt sure that Dorothy was afraid of it for her father.

'Depend upon it,' he said, 'we shall find that he has listened to his daughter, and will rest content with having had this great honour offered to him.'