707

Avonhoe.

CHAPTER V.

UP HILL.

T

HE whole scene had come and gone

like a bad dream. No one alluded

to it in that stern and silent household. Cecily did not even know whether her father had seen her distress, or suspected who the dead man was, and Rupert kept the strange story in his heart, and never uttered a word. Grief, when it does not melt and improve, makes a nature bitterer and harder, and Cecily seemed to grow both: the strongest wines are said to make the sharpest vinegar.

The boy, sternly treated and repressed at home, was beginning to feel the pleasure of inspiring the fear and sense of hatred which he himself endured. No master is so

cruel as the fag who has been unmercifully bullied; the slave who is kicked and beaten delights in nothing so much as being able to pass on the kicks and blows. Rupert was nearly fifteen, and the bad spirits were fast winning the battle in him.

One evening he was leaning over a gate, through which the cows were to be driven home; there was a glorious array of gold and crimson clouds, but it was not the beautiful sunset (on which he was turning his back) that made him pause, but only the feeling of evening: the sensation-not the idea of rest-was upon him. The cows had strayed up "Ave Lane." Roads there were scarcely any in the district; but the track wound along, with a magnificent margin of green turf on both sides: capital galloping ground, arched over by tall elms and ash, with here and there a great oak standing out upon the grass. "Ave Lane" led to the "Bedeswell." The Catholicism of so many hundred years crops up like the boulders left of some destroyed strata of rock. It is only wonderful indeed that remains of it are not oftener found in the tenacious memory of the people, when one considers the strong hold it possessed for so many hundred years over every event in life.

The cows were passing in and out of the patches of bright light and green shadow which lay across the path, the day had been excessively hot, and they had taken refuge in the shady lane from the glare of the sunshine. At the well stood a very little girl, trying to dip a small can into the lowered water: the light fell on her bright hair and striped blueand-white petticoat, and Rupert watched her in the idle way with which one's eyes receive pictures of things that do not concern them. In our Northern nations, the sense of beauty is the result of cultivation; it does not often grow naturally among the uneducated.

Suddenly a very inoffensive cow, whose affections had been wounded by the loss of her calf, uplifted her voice lugubriously, and lowered her horas at the child, who took refuge in the greatest possible fright by Rupert's side, and seized hold of his hand, still clinging closely to her He looked down surprised at the small trusting thing beside him; the habit of feeling and inspiring fear and dislike had become so strong in him that the sense of being appealed to for help and protection seemed strange. She kept close to him as he slowly drove back

can.

his cows.

"Where do ye come from?" said he to her at last.

"Father and mother's come to live at Old Moor. Father was old Mrs. Blizard's nevvy." Rupert knew that fresh tenants had just arrived at the farm nearest to Hawkshill. "The well's gone dry in the house, and mother can't abide the water in the yard, so I'm fetching this along o' her tea. Won't you set me across the field where there's the big bull?"

Rupert went moodily and unwillingly on with the child, hardly speaking till they reached the farmyard gate, where the father was standing with a pitchfork in his hand looking out for her.

"What, ye was afeard o' the dun cow, wer ye? I know her were bawling for her cauf all the night through, that's where 'twas," said the farmer, turning to Rupert, with a tender smile at his child, the apple of his eye. "And so the little maid have a coaxed ye to bring of her home, have she? She's a big little coward, that's what she is." He was a great burly man, with a voice like a trumpet, but a quiet temper, and a nature like one of his own immense sleek cart-horses.

You

"So you're Pangbourne's grandson, up at Hawkshill? I was a coming for to see him about that broken fence into the lane after sundown. go and speak to mother: she's uncommon lassid to-night, what wi' the heat and the bad water-it tastes so it does, agin the churn-house, says she, as she can't drink it, and there were nobody but the little wench to for a can to the spring."

go

Rupert followed unwillingly into the house. There is a certain point where it is easier for shyness and awkwardness to go on than to turn back. 66 Oh, if I had but run away at first," he muttered to himself as little Mary dragged him into the front kitchen.

"Eh, my ducky," cried her mother as they came in, "why, I've been

quite put out and chastised wi' thinking of ye, ye were so long and the bull so mischiefful."

Mrs. Blizard was a good woman and a good housewife, but her appearance belied her. Gentility was her stumbling-block and rock of offence. It was gentility under difficulties, for she hardly ever saw any one beyond the precincts of her own house and at church throughout the year; but the fine words which she used right and left were such a source of enjoyment to her that no one could grudge her the satisfaction. She was a perfect mistress of the language, and "not a word, however far out of hearing, but came at her command; and as she spoke the dialect of the county in great perfection, it added to the effect. She wore long dangling curls, and had a generally lackadaisical, affected air, which in that secluded place was curiously inappropriate.

"And how do you do, Mr. Pangbourne?" said she, languidly. "I really suffer such inability with the heat as I could scarce get through the butter; and butter, Mr. P., is a thing that yer know it won't come right, not by no means."

"The cow run at me, mother, and he brought me in," said Mary.

"Well, 'tis a mercy, child, as yer found any one about, I'm sure. It's particular lonesome and tiresome here. I've been accustomed to good company like, where we was before, t'other side county, and it seems here as there ain't nothink but the cows to speak to (which I'm sure there's enough o' them," she added, parenthetically; "seventy has the master, and forty on 'em in milk). I just straggled down the garden but now the perfumerie of the clove pinks is re'ly beautiful, but was so shattered with the butter as I could hardly go; and then the smell of them clats, which I ain't used to, seemed just to terrify me so as I'm all in a muzz."

But before Mrs. Blizard had nearly finished her complaints, as she all the while went on setting the tea-things, Rupert had torn away his hand from Mary and escaped at a run.

A day or two after, he had been driven into a furious passion by his grandfather's taunts. "We ayn't used to no such ways at Hawkshill," said he, "rakin' o' oats o' that fashion all of a ruck, and I won't ha' it done." Rupert flung himself behind a stack in the field, where he lay throwing the loose straw angrily about him, when a little hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Have you hurted yourself, poor boy?" said Mary, tenderly.

"Go away, I don't want you," he answered, in a savage tone. The child remained sitting silently by him; they were both quite still. "What are you waiting for? said he―a little less wrathfully, however, this time. "Nothing," replied she. He raised his head: she was kneeling in the grass watching him; he turned away again. "Ruby, I think I saw the hedgepig run but now into that deep hole in the bank where yo telled me the rabbits had their burries."

It is a great art to be able to administer the right consolation at the