LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 219, 20 February 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE NIGHT AFTER THE FAIR.

( Concluded.)

‘ Well, well, my daughter,’ sighed Brown. ‘ If nothing woi’se come of it, well well ’

‘ Worse’ll come of it, ’ said Hannah, going to the door and looking out, ‘ If Harry come home and find thee here. Do go, father,’ she said entreatingly, ‘ and lock up Dick as soon as you get home. ’

‘ Ay, that’s easier said than done,’grumbled Brown, getting upon his feet and preparing to depart; ‘there’s ne’er a lock in my house’ll hold him. Good-night, love.’

As soon as her father had gone, Hannah set to work to get everything ready for her husband’s return. She undressed the boy in readiness for bed, she hung the huge kettle on the rack over the blazing fire, she brought out a cold pie from the pantry, and set out the jug in readiness for the master’s ale. All this forethought would not save her, she knew, from her husband’s fierce wrath : but she -would care for nothing if Harry came back in appearance sober, able to go out with his gun and watch the covers. For anything to happen, and Harry to be found drunk and incapable, would be ruin to the household. Her work done, Hannah sat down on a low stool in front of the fire to think. There was a glorious fire of wood, blaxing and flicking, lighting up the room with a ruddy glow. The kettle sung a solemn bass, a light falsetto breaking in now and then; the cat purred in front of the fire.

Tommy was restless, and cried sadly for his dada ; Hannah took him out of his crib and placed him in front of the fire, where he soon became appeased and began to play with the cat —a one-sided game in which the cat took little part. A gun sounded close to the house, and Tommy, frightened, ran crying to his mother. Hannah began to trembly all over whilst she tried to pacify the child. Another shot followed, and another. A regular fusillade. The poachers must be in great force to be at work so early and so boldlj. ‘lf Harry should come among them now, what would become of him ?’ Next moment the door was thrown violently open, and Harry rushed in—without hat, his clothes torn, his hands covered with blood. He hastily closed the door and barricaded it.

‘ Put the fire out, woman, can’t ye ?’ he shouted angrily, and next moment he emptied a pail of water over it, and the fire was extinguished with a violent hiss and smother of smoke and steam.

All was darkness now but for a ray of moonlight that shone through a narrow window, which was a mere slit in the thick stone wall.

Harry took down the rifle that hung on the wall—an old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifle —loaded it, ramming the bullet home with deliberate eagerness. ‘Now I’ll let daylight into some of ’em,’ he muttered. ‘ Keep the child quiet, can’t ye?’ to his wife, for Tommy was now screaming violently. ‘ Don’t, for God’s sake, lire!’ cried Hannah, as she saw her husband carefully take aim through the window. ‘ Don’t lire at them; perhaps Dick’s among them!’ Harry turned upon her a tierce bloodshot eye. ‘ What, you d—d baggage, this is your doing, is it? You’re their bonnet and their spy, are you, Avith that canting old scoundrel your father?’ Harry struck her violently, and threw her away from him. She sank fainting on the floor, Avhilst Tommy plucked at her skirts and screamed violently. ‘I knoAV the scoundrel by his white blouse,’muttered Harry; and next moment he brought the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The cottage thrilled with the report, and next moment a loud shrill cry sounded on the night air. Then followed an awful stillness. There was a quick scamper of feet next heard. The poachers were dispersing. Harry, Avith an exulting shout, threAV open the door and strode forth, disappearing into outer darkness. When Hannah come to herself she was in bed, and the village doctor and her father were standing close by. ‘ It’s a sad business, my dear,’ said her father, his voice choking Avith emotion ; ‘but the Lord’s Avill be done. ’

‘ Then Dick is killed !’ cried Hannah ‘O my God, and he did it!’ * That we cannot say now,’ said Ebenezer, shaking his head gravely ; ‘ let us hope it was an accident. The poor misguided boy was shot through the heart by rifle bullet, and thy husband —’ ‘Yes; what of him-—what have they done to him—to Tommy’s father ?’ ‘ My child, he was shot on the same night. I am thankful to say that none of our people are answerable for his blood. His murderer was a gipsy-fellow who has fled the country, but the police are on his track.’ The police, however, never found out who shot poor Harry Smith. His widow went back to her father’s house with little Tommy and after a proper interval of grief and loneliness, married a decent minister of her father’s persuasion, and has been tolerably happy in her union, But Tommy takes after his father a good deal, and promises to be a thorn in the side of his mother’s pious husband. CICELY. I had been travelling pretty hard all day. What I mean by ‘ travelling pretty hard ’ is going along at an expense to the muscular and nervous system quite out of proportion with the number of miles accomplished, I and my driver were seated in a ‘buggy’ of exceedingly light build and of very ancient manufacture, if one might judge (as we always do judge of age in mechanical _ structures, human or otherwise) by what it had lost. The varnish had faded like the young complexion from a child a hundred years old. Spokes had in one or two two instances disappeared, or been broken like well-worn teeth. Springs exhibited symptons of rheumatic weakness. The shafts were spliced like badly-set legs. Yet it was a serviceable vehicle. An English trap so damaged would straightway have gone to pieces. But it was a law of this buggy’s nature —impressed upon it by its capital Boston builder two or three and twenty years ago —to stick together. And it did stick together spite of corduroy roads, ruts, stones, and a pair of handsome, vigorous horses which moved along as if there was nothing behind them. Up and down, side and swing, sometimes over a bit of corduroy, with a jerk, jerk, jerk that put my neck in imminent peril, and shook the driver s false

teeth into the road half-a-dozen times at least during the day. He was very philosophical about it. Firmly compressing his lips over the vacant cavern and handing me the reins, he would jump down and cautiously peer into the crannies of the log-work until the coral and composition gums and grinders flashed upon his vision, when, wiping them with his hand, he would restore them to their warm berth, and again resume his dreary conversation. Oh, I shall remember Joe Curtis as long as I have jaws and a memory ! The surroundings of the road, as it was called, were dreary enough. Now it stretched through ranges of swampy land, with pillared pines and tamaracks on either side, bearing up their gloomy and gloom-creating tops, and there the road was bridged with corduroy in every phase of commotion ; now it led over miles of hard rock, with reaches of hilly lands, very lightly wooded, and piled with enormous boulders ; now through a light sandy soil, well rutted; and now through the forests of maple and hickory and birch, in zigzag lines, just as the original tracks of the first settlers had been picked out.

We had left G in the early morning, and appeared to me to be now getting not merely to the confines of civilisation, but of any human habitation at all. Ten miles it had been of horrible discomfort since we passed the last side road leading to ‘ Simpson’s Clearing,’ and my companion informed me we had three miles to go before we could reach that of Donald Kerr.

‘ You see,’ remarked my friend, by way of making one of those obvious remarks which aggravate a sensitive man, and wherewith he abounded, ‘ there ain’t as many houses about here as you have in London.’ And then, because I permitted this futile obserservation to pass without response, he added, ‘Eh?’

‘ No,’l replied sulkily. I was tired, and absorbed. 1 was thinking of my mission out in that strange place and wondering whether I should succeed.

‘You’re right,’said Mr Curtis again, as though his original remark had been volunteered by me. ‘ You’re right, sir. Yes, sir. You can count all the folks between here and the North Pole on your lingers —if you take a bee-line. ’ ‘ Hum?’ said I.

‘ You know what a ‘bee-line’ is, I suppose. You’re not very smart in our

phrases. ’

‘ Yes : it’s a straight line, I believe. ‘No sir. It’s straighter than that, or I’d have called it a straight line. It’s the line a bee would take in steering for the North Pole. ’

‘But a bee wouldn’t steer to the North Pole,’ said I desperately, feeling that any diversion, however imbecile, was worth trying for. At the moment when he opened his lips to reply, a tremendous jolt threw his teeth out of position again, and we pulled up to recover them. Curtis threw the reins on the dashboard and jumped down. He had scarcely touched the ground, when the horses either disgusted with the frequency of these stoppages or scenting the prospects of food not very distant, started off at a gallop. I heard my friend’s shout as with grim determination the animals, with the reins all their own, stretched out for Coney Place, the clearing of Mr Kerr, which was the homestead next in order and was in truth my destination ; but towards which, anxious as I was to reach it, I never desired to speed in the way I was now doing. I seized the small iron that constituted the top rail of the buggy, in either hand, set my feet firmly against the foot-rest, and prepared for anything that might happen. A pretty position for a London solicitor ! I was a young man, and energetic ; but I confess that dm - ing the few minutes that elapsed, I recalled the fact that I had not made my will, and then and there in my mind hastily draughted one. The vehicle may have weighted 4001bs. The horses were strong and lively, and as they tore along, the spider-like machine behind them did not run—it flew. Now and then it touched some obstruction and went up with a mighty bound, but I stuck to it and it stuck to the horses. An hour seemed to pass. I believe it was not four minutes while we travelled those three miles. The animals w T ere in capital humour. It was a frolic to them and they were racing for a feed. They could afford to keep the road. Whiff—up Hew the buggy over a stump, and 1 escaped a toss out by a mere miracle. My hands were bleeding with the strain upon those Boston rods. Ha ! there is a break in the woods to the right, and a man is standing there waving his hat like a manaic. Enough? The horses caught sight of the waving hat—heard a voice, swerved, and in a moment dashed the wheel against a noble maple. I learnt afterwards I was thrown twenty feet, with my head (a pretty strong one I should judge) and shoulder against a tree. Fortunately the head rather grazed the side, and the shoulder bore the brunt of the collision. The collar-bone was broken. The horses, set free by the ruin, took possession of the shed. To l)e continued.