HE was a platelayer, and the baptismal register described him as James Redfern, though the Woffendale folk knew him simply as the Man (or, to be precise, the Chap,) from Stalybridge. He was grave of demeanour and slow of speech, but his few words were forcible and his arguments convincing, being backed by a fist about whose size and weight there could be no possible doubt. He was also a good workman and a boon companion. When he got drunk, his Norse blood showed itself by his manner of bursting into reasonable coherent song, usually oratorio with which he was tolerably familiar. Saturday night the senior curate of Saint Barnabas's met an inebriated giant staggering jovially along and roaring out at the full pitch of a powerful baritone, The Lord is a Man of War! The senior curate was shocked; he was new to the place.

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The Man from Stalybridge harmonised with his surroundings; perhaps it would be more correct to say he dominated them. The smoke and dirt and grime of Woffendale: the throbbing engines gliding hither and thither on those shining lines that crossed and recrossed each other in bewildering tangle at the junction (sudden and awful death within a few feet of him well-nigh every minute of the day), the sinister gloom that, like the shadow of the Destroying Angel, hovered over the city as twilight fell, lit by the fierce red of furnace flames,-all these but seemed to emphasise the figure of the man as he went to and fro in the midst. Never for a moment was he obscured

by either light or darkness. Always he stood out clearly, whether at work or rest, drunk or sober. Whether the swift engine-lights flashed over him standing motionless amid the crossing metals, or whether the yellow gas-lamps revealed him rolling home singing songs of David, or the smoke-dimmed morning sunshine fell on him going to his work, he was always strong, capable, decisive.

He lodged in one of a dozen or so of shabby little houses beside the railway, called Station Row. The Row was hardly an ideal place of residence, though the sturdy Lancashire folk liked it well enough. Broad daylight showed it at its worst ; at night the outlook was better, sometimes even picturesque, because one saw less and imagined more. Only a narrow footpath separated the doorsteps of Station Row from the railway. As this path was usually full of children, the Man from Stalybridge often walked to and from his work along the line. Thus passing, whether by line or path, most of the idle gossip of the place reached his ears; and thus he became aware that a slatternly woman who lived about four doors off had got a lodger; a fact that disposed some of her neighbours to envy her, till a rumour spread abroad that the lodger found difficulty in paying the rent; whereupon public opinion veered round and regarded the lodger in the light of a judgment upon an unpopular member of the community. As time went on it became known also that the lodger was a woman, a lady, young and ill, and that a doctor was reported to

time in the protracted campaigns of the seventeenth century, the same forces contended against each other at Great Torrington, the occasion being also a night attack, when the Royalists were so hopelessly crushed that the last army of the King never made another stand. In this affair there was no room for a surprise, but Cromwell's tactics may without doubt be recognised.

Traditions of the Great Civil War are so rare in Devonshire that it is strange to find so many encrusted on the incident of the Surprise of Bovey Tracy. Most of these give, as traditions are apt to do, an entirely delusive if not ridiculous colouring to the historical facts. The story related by John Rushworth, only two days after the alleged occurrence, and confirmed by Sprigge, that the Royalist officers, who were gambling at cards when surprised, threw their stakes ("handfuls of silver") out of the window among the Parliamentary the Parliamentary soldiers, thus gaining time for escape during the scramble, is not one likely

to have been invented and is probably true. It has been derided however as, oddly enough, a Puritan scandal, and as having done previous duty elsewhere. On the other hand we may, with a clear conscience, discard the firm local traditions that Oliver Cromwell in disguise visited Bovey Tracy, on the night before the attack, to discover the military dispositions of the Royalists; that on the fateful evening there was a sound of revelry in the little bucolic town where beauty and chivalry met, and that the Royalist officers, hurriedly changing their dancing-shoes, went out at daybreak to fight the battle on Heathfield (which never took place); that breastworks thrown up by the Royalist troopers on the open waste, already plentifully scarred by Nature's breastworks, are still to be seen there; and that they were gallantly led on the occasion by the neighbouring Knight of Forde, who had been laid to rest in the chancel of Wolborough church a dozen years before.

HE was a plate layer, and the baptismal register described him as James Redfern, though the Woffendale folk knew him simply as the Man (or, to be precise, the Chap,) from Stalybridge. He was grave of demeanour and slow of speech, but his few words were forcible and his arguments convincing, being backed by a fist about whose size and weight there could be no possible doubt. He was also a good workman and a boon companion. When he got drunk, his Norse blood showed itself by his manner of bursting into reasonable coherent song, usually oratorio with which he was tolerably familiar. Saturday night the senior curate of Saint Barnabas's met an inebriated giant staggering jovially along and roaring out at the full pitch of a powerful baritone, The Lord is a Man of War! The senior curate was shocked; he was new to the place.

One

The Man from Stalybridge harmonised with his surroundings; perhaps it would be more correct to say he dominated them. The smoke and dirt and grime of Woffendale: the throbbing engines gliding hither and thither on those shining lines that crossed and recrossed each other in bewildering tangle at the junction (sudden and awful death within a few feet of him well-nigh every minute of the day), the sinister gloom that, like the shadow of the Destroying Angel, hovered over the city as twilight fell, lit by the fierce red of furnace flames, all these but seemed to emphasise the figure of the man as he went to and fro in the midst. Never for a moment was he obscured

by either light or darkness. Always he stood out clearly, whether at work or rest, drunk or sober. Whether the swift engine-lights flashed over him standing motionless amid the crossing metals, or whether the yellow gas-lamps revealed him rolling home singing songs of David, or the smoke-dimmed morning sunshine fell on him going to his work, he was always strong, capable, decisive.

He lodged in one of a dozen or so of shabby little houses beside the railway, called Station Row. The Row was hardly an ideal place of residence, though the sturdy Lancashire folk liked it well enough. Broad daylight showed it at its worst ; at night the outlook was better, sometimes even picturesque, because one saw less and imagined more. Only a narrow footpath separated the doorsteps of Station Row from the railway. As this path was usually full of children, the Man from Stalybridge often walked to and from his work along the line. Thus pass

ing, whether by line or path, most of the idle gossip of the place reached his ears; and thus he became aware that a slatternly woman who lived about four doors off had got a lodger; a fact that disposed some of her neighbours to envy her, till a rumour spread abroad that the lodger found difficulty in paying the rent; whereupon public opinion veered round and regarded the lodger in the light of a judgment upon an unpopular member of the community. As time went on it became known also that the lodger was a woman, a lady, young and ill, and that a doctor was reported to

have seen her and to have said the case was hopeless. The news caused a pleasant excitement in Station Row, and came, with the rest, in due time, to the ears of the Man from Stalybridge.

One afternoon in early April he chanced to return from work by the footpath. The day had been rainy, but now at five o'clock the clouds parted, drifting away eastward in dusky masses; and a burst of pale sunshine lit the gleaming puddles, the dripping eaves, the wet shining metals. In the path stood a barrow full of dark wallflowers, their scent filling the fresh damp air. There was the sound of an opening window, and the Man from Stalybridge, glancing up at the woman who leaned out, looked into a face of almost perfect beauty, such beauty as he had never seen, never imagined. The features were perhaps a little sharpened by illness, the temples a trifle sunken, the colour on the cheeks too bright; yet there was the beauty, and the man stared upward with dazzled eyes, unconscious that he was so staring.

"Throw a bunch up!" she cried to the flower-seller, flinging some pennies into the barrow; and her voice was sweet as a blackbird's whistle. The movement of her arm in its close sleeve of rough blue serge, seemed to awaken the man from his trance, for he slowly turned and went on his way. When he reached his lodgings he dropped heavily into a chair and wiped his forehead with his arm. His landlady, bustling about with his tea, observed that the weather was warm for the time of year, to which proposition he assented mechanically. Later, he spent an hilarious evening at the Seven Stars, a highly popular hostelry known more familiarly as the Dusthole. The beer was mixed, and so were his ideas, with the result

that strains from Samson floated on the murky air somewhere between eleven and twelve that night.

Some three weeks later the spring swung back to winter, and the April days were filled with bitter winds and driving sleet; and the Man from Stalybridge, coming home in a hailstorm, heard the high-pitched voice of the woman who owned the lodger. Apparently the latter's rent was owing, and the landlady's opinion of the situation was sufficiently loudly expressed, as the front door stood ajar, to reach the ears of the platelayer. He stopped and waited. Presently the woman came down and saw him standing outside in the pelting hail.

"What dost want?" she demanded. "How much do she owe?" he inquired with calm directness, drawing a handful of silver and copper from his pocket.

The woman looked astonished, then derisive.

Art thou going to pay it? Eh well, a fool an' his money is soon parted, an' the brass'll do as well i' my pocket as i' the beerhouse. Theer's two week owing. An' she's a nice sort o' lady! I know a' about her, an' so do other folks. She run off fro' her husband wi' another chap."

"Wheer's the chap?" asked the Man from Stalybridge, slowly counting his money.

"He's run off too," replied the woman with a laugh, adding, "They mostly do."

The man finished counting. "Theer's thy brass," he said, dropping a pile of small coins in the woman's outstretched hand. "Now dunnot let me hear thee carrying on i' that gait again."

"I reckon thou'd carry on if thou couldna get paid."

"Dunnot let me hear thee," he repeated with a certain massive insistence that seemed to close in upon

and repress the woman's volubility, as the quiet, heavy snow of the drift hushes the chattering life of the village. She became silent, and the Man from Stalybridge passed on. The next afternoon he was stopped as he went past the house.

"She wants to see thee,” said the woman on the doorstep. "I reckon she wants to thank thee fur paying the rent."

"Fur why did thou tell her owt about it?" he inquired, as he followed the woman upstairs.

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woman

She knocked at the door, a voice replied, "Come in "; the went away, and the man, entering, saw again the beauty that had so dazzled him. The room was poor and bare. Perhaps its poverty and bareness made the beauty of its inmate more remarkable; or perhaps here was beauty that was independent of any accessories, poor or splendid. She was sitting in an old armchair covered with red Turkey twill, and wore the same rough blue serge gown he had seen before.

"You are the man who has paid my rent?" she said, looking at him. "I wished to thank you. I did not know I had a friend in the world."

"It wur nowt," responded the Man from Stalybridge. He seemed to fill the room. His head was not far off the ceiling, and his shoulders left little space between the fireplace and the door.

"It was a great deal to me," she went on, "for I am quite alone, penniless, and dying. The doctor says I shall not live, and I am glad, for I am tired of life-tired of everything! And I am only twenty."

""Tis young," he said, and thoughtfully rubbed his nose.

"Only twenty," she repeated, "and dying here. Were it not for you, I should not have even this shelter."

There came a mellow sound of peal

ing bells across the rattle and noise of the trains.

"Theer's the bells," said the Man from Stalybridge diffidently, with a vague idea of religious consolation.

"The bells? Oh, yes, they are sweet. I suppose I shall be buried in that churchyard. Is there grass there?" "Oh, ay, grass enow, an' green. The church stands high, an' theer's sun an' rain."

She turned her head restlessly. "But of course they will put me in a pauper's grave."

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'Nay," said the Man from Stalybridge, "I'll see to that. Dunnot fret thyself. I'll see to it myself." "You?" She looked at him halfincredulously. "I really believe you will! Though why should you? It is not fair that your earnings should go for a stranger."

"It willna break me; an' if it did it wouldna matter. Theer's nobody belonging to me."

"I am afraid that funerals cost a great deal."

"Not so much," he responded earnestly. "I buried my feyther awhile back, an' it wurna the burying as took most o' the brass, but the meat an' drink fur the folks as coom to it."

"No folks will come to mine," she said with a hard little laugh. Then she smiled and held out her hand.

"Thank you. I believe you will do it, and I am grateful. There is no one else who would."

She spoke truly. She was grateful, -not only for what he promised, but for the assurance the promise gave her that her empire had not wholly departed. Here still, despite disgrace and poverty, could be found a man willing to spend all that he had rather than she should be disturbed by the thought of what grave she would lie in. There was a touch of coquetry in smile and gesture as she held out her