CHAPTER I.

HEARD AT MIDNIGHT.

The village, in which the first scenes of this history are laid, was called Trennach; and the land about it was bleak and bare and dreary enough, though situated in the grand old county of Cornwall. For mines lay around, with all the signs and features of miners' work about them; yawning pit mouths, leading down to rich beds of minerals--some of the mines in all the bustle of full operation, some worked out and abandoned. Again, in the neighbourhood of these, might be seen miners' huts and other dwelling-places, and the counting-houses attached to the shafts. The little village of Trennach skirted this tract of labour; for, while the mining district extended for some miles on one side the hamlet; on the other side, half-an-hour's quiet walking brought you to a different country altogether--to spreading trees and rich pasture land and luxuriant vegetation.

The village street chiefly consisted of shops. Very humble shops, most of them; but the miners and the other inhabitants, out of reach of better, found them sufficiently good for their purposes. Most of the shops dealt in mixed articles, and might be called general shops. The linendraper added brushes and brooms to his cottons and stuffs; the grocer sold saucepans and gridirons; the baker did a thriving trade in home-made pickles. On a dark night, the most cheerful-looking shop was the druggist's: the coloured globes displayed in its windows sending forth their reflections into the thoroughfare. This shop had also added another branch to its legitimate trade--that of general literature: for the one solitary doctor of the place dispensed his own medicines, and the sale of drugs was not great. The shop boasted a small circulating library; the miners and the miners' wives, like their betters, being fond of sensational fiction. The books consisted entirely of cheap volumes, issued at a shilling or two shillings each; some indeed at sixpence. The proprietor of this mart, Edmund Float, chemist and druggist, was almost a confirmed invalid, and would often be laid up for a week at a time. The doctor told him that if he would devote less of his time to that noted hostelry, the Golden Shaft, he might escape these attacks of illness. At these times the business of the shop, both as to drugs and books, was transacted by a young native of Falmouth; one Blase Pellet, who had served his apprenticeship in it and remained on as assistant.

The doctor's name was Raynor. He wrote himself Hugh Raynor, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Physicians. That he, a man of fair ability in his profession and a gentleman as well, should be contented to live in this obscure place, in all the drudgery of a general practitioner and apothecary, may seem a matter of surprise--but his history shall be given further on. His house stood in the middle of the village, somewhat back from the street: a low, square, detached building, a bow window on each side its entrance, and three windows above. On the door, which always stood open in the daytime, was a brass plate, bearing the name, "Dr. Raynor." The bow window to the left was screened by a brown wire blind, displaying the word "Surgery" in large white letters. Above the blind Dr. Raynor's white head, or the younger head of his handsome nephew, might occasionally be seen by the passers-by, or by Mr. Blase Pellet over the way. For the doctor's house and the druggist's shop faced each other; and Mr. Pellet, being of an inquisitive disposition, seemed never tired of peeping and peering into his neighbours' doings generally, and especially into any that might take place at Dr. Raynor's. At either end of this rather straggling street were seated respectively the parish church and the Wesleyan meeting-house. The latter was the better attended; for most of the miners followed their fathers' faith--that of the Wesleyan Methodists.

It was Monday morning, and a cold clear day in March. The wind came sweeping down the wide street; the dust whirled in the air; overhead, the sun was shining brightly. Dr. Raynor stood near the fire in his surgery, looking over his day-book, in which a summary of the cases under treatment was entered. He was dressed in black. A tall, grand-looking, elderly man, very quiet in manner, with a pale, placid face, and carefully-trimmed thin white whiskers. It was eight o'clock, and he had just entered the surgery: his nephew had already been in it half-an-hour. Never a more active man in his work than Dr. Raynor, but latterly his energy had strangely failed him.

"Has any message come in this morning from Pollock's wife, Frank?" he asked.

"No, sir."

"Then I suppose she's better," remarked the doctor, closing the book as he spoke, and moving towards the window.

A square table stood at the end of the room, facing the window. Behind it was Frank Raynor, making up mixtures, the ingredients for which he took from some of the various bottles ranged upon the shelves behind him. He was a slender, gentlemanly young fellow of four-and-twenty, rather above the middle height, and wore this morning a suit of grey clothes. The thought that passed through a stranger's minds on first seeing Frank Raynor was, How good-looking he is! It was not, however, so much in physical beauty that the good looks consisted, as in the bright expression of his well-featured face, and the sunny, laughing blue eyes. The face wanted one thing--firmness. In the delicate mouth, very sweet and pleasant in form though it was, might be traced his want of stability. He could not say No to a petition, let it be what it might: he was swayed as easily as the wind. Most lovable was Frank Raynor; but he would be almost sure to be his own enemy as he went through life. You could not help liking him; every one did that--with the exception of Mr. Blase Pellet across the road. Frank's hair was golden brown, curling slightly, and worn rather long. His face, like his uncle's, was close-shaved, excepting that he too wore whiskers, which were of the same colour as the hair.

"What a number of men are standing about!" exclaimed Dr. Raynor, looking over the blind. "More even than usual on a Monday morning. One might think they were not at work."

"They are not at work," replied Frank. "As I hear.

"No! what's that for?"

Frank's lips parted with a smile. An amused look sat in his blue eyes as he answered.

"Through some superstition, I fancy, Uncle Hugh. They say the Seven Whistlers were heard in the night."

Dr. Raynor turned quickly towards his nephew. "The Seven Whistlers;" he repeated. "Why, who says that?"

"Ross told me. He came in for some laudanum for his neuralgia. As there is to be no work done to-day, the overseer thought he might as well lie up and doctor himself. A rare temper he is in."

"Can't he get the men to work?"

"Not one of them. Threats and promises alike fail. There's safe to be an accident if they go down to-day, say the men; and they won't risk it. Bell had better not come in Ross's way whilst his present temper lasts," added Frank, as he began to screw a cork into a bottle. "I think Ross would knock him down."

"Why Bell in particular?"

"Because it is Bell who professes to have heard the Whistlers."

"And none of the others?" cried the doctor.

"I fancy not. Uncle Hugh, what _is_ the superstition?" added Frank. "What does it mean? I don't understand: and Ross, when I asked him, he turned away instead of answering me. Is it something especially ridiculous?"

Dr. Raynor briefly replied. This superstition of the Seven Whistlers arose from certain sounds in the air. They were supposed by the miners, when heard--which was very rarely, indeed, in this neighbourhood--to foretell ill luck. Accident, death, all sorts of calamities, in fact, might be expected, according to the popular superstition, by those who had the misfortune to hear the sounds.

Frank Raynor listened to the doctor's short explanation, a glow of amusement on his face. It sounded to him like a bit of absurd fun.

"You don't believe in such nonsense, surely, Uncle Hugh!"

Dr. Raynor had returned to the fire, and was gazing into it; some speculation, or perhaps recollection, or it might be doubt, in his grey eyes.

"All my experience in regard to the Seven Whistlers is this, Frank--and you may make the most of it. Many years ago, when I was staying amongst the collieries in North Warwickshire, there arose a commotion one morning. The men did not want to go down the pits that day, giving as a reason that the Seven Whistlers had passed over the place during the night, and had been heard by many of them. I naturally inquired what the Seven Whistlers meant, never having heard of them, and received in reply the explanation I have now given you. But workmen were not so independent in those days, Frank, as they are in these; and the men were forced to go down the pits as usual."

"And what came of it?" asked Frank.

"Of the going down? This. An accident took place in the pit that same morning--through fire-damp, I think; and many of them never came up again alive."

"How dreadful! But that could not have been the fault of the Seven Whistlers?" debated Frank.

"My second and only other experience was at Trennach," continued Dr. Raynor, passing over Frank's comment. "About six years ago, some of the miners professed to have heard these sounds. That same day, as they were descending one of the shafts after dinner, an accident occurred to the machinery----"

"And did damage," interrupted Frank, with increasing interest.

"Yes. Three of the men fell to the bottom of the mine, and were killed; and several others were injured more or less badly. I attended them. You ask me if I place faith in the superstition, Frank. No: I do not. I am sufficiently enlightened not to do so. But the experiences that I have told you of are facts. I look upon them as mere coincidences."

A pause. Frank was going on with his work.

"Are the sounds all fancy, Uncle Hugh?"

"Oh no. The sounds are real enough."

"What do they proceed from? What causes them?"

"It is said that they proceed from certain night-birds," replied Dr. Raynor. "Flocks of birds, in their nocturnal passage across the country, making plaintive sounds; and when these sounds are heard, they are superstitiously supposed to predict evil to those who hear them. Ignorant men are always credulous. That is all I know about it, Frank."

"Did you ever hear the sounds yourself, Uncle Hugh?"

"Never. This is only the third occasion that I have been in any place at the time they have been heard--or said to have been heard--and I have not myself been one of the hearers. There's Bell!" added Dr. Raynor, seeing a man leave the chemist's and cross the street in the direction of his house. "He seems to be coming here."

"And Float the miner's following him," observed Frank.

Two men entered through the doctor's open front-door, and thence to the surgery. The one was a little, middle-aged man, who carried a stout stick and walked somewhat lame. His countenance, not very pleasing at the best of times, just now wore a grey tinge that was rather remarkable. This was Josiah Bell. The one who followed him in was a tall, burly man, with a pleasant face, as fresh as a farm-labourer's; his voice was soft, and his manner meek and retiring. The little man's voice, on the contrary, was loud and self-asserting. Bell was given to quarrel with every one who would quarrel with him; scarcely a day passed but he, to use his own words, "had it out" with some one. Andrew Float had never quarrelled in his life; not even with his quarrelsome friend Bell; but was one of the most peaceable and easy-natured of men. Though only a common miner, he was brother to the chemist, and also brother to John Float, landlord of the Golden Shaft. The three brothers were usually distinguished in the place as Float the druggist, Float the miner, and Float the publican.

"I've brought Float over to ask you just to look at this arm of his, doctor, if you'll be so good," began Bell. "It strikes me his brother is not doing what's right by it."

There was a refinement in the man's accent, a readiness of speech, an independence of tone, not at all in keeping with what might be expected from one of a gang of miners. The fact was, Josiah Bell had originally held a far better position in life. He had begun that life as a clerk in the office of some large colliery works in Staffordshire; but, partly owing to unsteady habits, partly to an accident which had for many months laid him low and lamed him for life, he had sunk down in the world to what he now was--a workman in a Cornish mine.

"Won't the burn heal?" observed Dr. Raynor. "Let me see it, Float."

"If you'd please to be so kind, sir," replied the big man, with deprecation, as he took off his coat and prepared to display his arm. It had been badly burned some time ago; and it seemed to get worse instead of better, in spite of the doctoring of his brother the chemist, and of Mr. Blase Pellet.

"I have asked you more than once to let me look to your arm, you know, Float," remarked Mr. Frank Raynor.

"But I didn't like to trouble you, Master Raynor. I thought Ned and his salves could do for it, sir."

"And so you men are not at work to-day, Bell!" began the doctor, as he examined the arm. "What's this absurd story I hear about the Seven Whistlers?"

Bell's aspect changed at the question. The pallor on his face seemed to become greyer. It was a greyness that attracted Dr. Raynor's attention: he had never seen it in the man's face before.

"They passed over Trennach at midnight," said Bell, in low tones, from which all independence had gone out. "I heard them myself."

"And who else heard them?"

"I don't know. Nobody--that I can as yet find out. The men were all indoors, they say, long before midnight. The Golden Shaft shuts at ten on a Sunday night."

"You stayed out later?"

"I came on to Float the druggist's when the public-house closed, and smoked a pipe with him and Pellet, and sat there, talking. It was in going home that I heard the Whistlers."

"You may have been mistaken, in thinking you heard them."

"No," dissented Bell. "It was in the middle of the Bare Plain. I was stepping along quietly----"

"And soberly?" interposed Frank, with a twinkling eye, and a tone that might be taken either for jest or earnest.

"And soberly," asserted Bell, resentfully. "As sober as you are now, Mr. Frank Raynor. I was stepping along quietly, I say, when the church clock began to strike. I stood to count it, not believing it could be twelve--not thinking I had stayed all that time at the druggist's. It was twelve, however, and I was still standing after the last stroke had died away, wondering how the time could have passed, when those other sounds broke out high in the air above me. Seven of them: I counted them as I had counted the clock. The saddest sound of a wail I've ever heard--save once before. It seemed to freeze me up."

"Did you hear more?" asked Dr. Raynor.

"No. And the last two sounds of the seven were so faint, I should not have heard them if I had not been listening. The cries had broken out right above where I was standing: they seemed to die away gradually in the distance."

"I say that you may have been mistaken, Bell," persisted Dr. Raynor. "The sounds you heard may not have been the Seven Whistlers at all."

Bell shook his head, His manner and voice this morning were more subdued than usual. "I can't be mistaken in _them_. No man can be who has once heard them, Dr. Raynor."

"Is it this that has turned your face so grey?" questioned Frank, alluding to the pallor noticed by his uncle; but which the elder and experienced man had refrained from remarking upon.

"I didn't know it was grey," rejoined Bell, his resentful tones cropping up again.

"It's as grey as this powder," persisted Frank, holding forth a delectable compound he was preparing for some unfortunate patient.

"And so, on the strength of this night adventure of yours, Bell, all you men are making holiday to-day!" resumed the doctor.

But Bell, who did not seem to approve of Frank's remarks on his complexion, possibly taking them as ridicule--though he might have known Frank Raynor better--stood in dudgeon, and vouchsafed no reply. Andrew Float took up the retort in his humble, hesitating fashion.

"There ain't one of us, Dr. Raynor, that would venture down to-day after this. When Bell come up to the pit this morning, where us men was collecting to go down, and said the Seven Whistlers had passed over last night at midnight, it took us all aback. Not one of us would hazard it after that. Ross, he stormed and raged, but he couldn't force us down, sir."

"And the Golden Shaft will have the benefit of you instead!" said the doctor.

"Our lives are dear to us all, sir," was the deprecating reply of Float, not attempting to answer the remark. "And I thank ye kindly, sir, for it feels more comfortable like already. They burns be nasty things."

"They are apt to be so when not properly attended to. Your brother should not have allowed it to get into this state."

"Well, you see, Dr. Raynor, some days he's been bad abed, and I didn't trouble him with it then; and young Pellet don't seem to know much about they bad places."

"You should have come to me. Bell, how is your wife to-day?"

"Pretty much as usual," said surly Bell. "If she's worse, it's through the Seven Whistlers. She don't like to hear tell of them."

"Why did you tell her?"

Josiah Bell lifted his cold light eyes in wonder. "Could I keep such a thing as that to myself, Dr. Raynor? It comes as a warning, and must be guarded against. That is, as far as we can guard against it."

"Has the sickness returned?"

"For the matter of that, she always feels sick. I should just give her some good strong doses of mustard-and-water to make her so in earnest, were I you, doctor, and then perhaps the feeling would go off."

"Ah," remarked the doctor, a faint smile parting his lips, "we are all apt to think we know other people's business best, Bell. Float," added he, as the two men were about to leave, "don't you go in for a bout of drinking to-day; it would do your arm no good."

"Thank ye, sir; I'll take care to be mod'rate," replied Float, backing out.

"The Golden Shaft will have a good deal of his company to-day, in spite of your warning, sir; and of Bell's too," observed Frank, as the surgery-door closed on the men. "How grey and queer Bell's face looks! Did you notice it, Uncle Hugh?"

"Yes."

"He looks just like a man who has had a shock. The Seven Whistlers gave it him, I suppose. I could not have believed Bell was so silly."

"I hope it is only the shock that has done it," said the doctor.

"Done what, Uncle Hugh?"

"Turned his face that peculiar colour." And Frank looked up to his uncle as if scarcely understanding him. But Dr. Raynor said no more.

At that moment the door again opened, and a young lady glanced in. Seeing no stranger present, she came forward.

"Papa! do you know how late it is getting? Breakfast has been waiting ever so long."

The voice was very sweet and gentle; a patient voice, that somehow gave one the idea that its owner had known sorrow. She was the doctor's only child: and to call her a _young_ lady may be regarded as a figure of speech, for she was past thirty. A calm, sensible, gentle girl she had ever been, of great practical sense. Her pale face was rather plain than handsome: but it was a face pleasant to look upon, with its expression of sincere earnestness, and its steadfast, truthful dark eyes. Her dark brown hair, smooth and bright, was simply braided in front and plaited behind on the well-shaped head. She was of middle height, light and graceful; and she wore this morning a violet merino dress, with embroidered cuffs and collar of her own work. Such was Edina Raynor.

"You may pour out the coffee, my dear," said her father. "We are coming now."

Edina disappeared, and the doctor followed her. Frank stayed a minute or two longer to make an end of his physic. He then adjusted his coat-cuffs, which had been turned up, pulled his wristbands down, and also passed out of the surgery. The sun was shining into the passage through the open entrance-door; and Frank, as if he would sun himself for an instant, or else wishing for a wider view of the street, and of the miners loitering about it, stepped outside. The men had collected chiefly in groups, and were talking idly, in slouching attitudes, hands in pockets; some were smoking. A little to the left, as Frank stood, on the other side of the way, was that much-frequented hostelry, the Golden Shaft: it was evidently the point of attraction to-day.

Mr. Blase Pellet chanced to be standing at his shop-door, rubbing his hands on his white apron. He was an awkward-looking, under-sized, unfortunately-plain man, with very red-brown eyes, and rough reddish hair that stood up in bristles. When he caught sight of Frank, he backed into the shop, went behind the counter, and peeped out at him between two of the glass globes.

"I wonder what he's come out to look at now?" debated Mr. Blase with himself. "_She_ can't be in the street! What a proud wretch he looks this morning!--with his fine curls, and that ring upon his finger!"

"Twenty of them, at least, ready to go in!" mentally spoke Frank, his eyes fixed on the miners standing about the Golden Shaft. "And some of them will never come out all day."

Frank went in to breakfast. The meal was laid in a small parlour, behind the best sitting-room, which was on the side of the passage opposite to the surgery, and faced the street. This back-room looked down on a square yard, and the bare open country beyond: to the mines and to the miners' dwelling-places. They lay to the right, as you looked out. To the left stretched a barren tract of land, called the Bare Plain--perhaps from its dreary aspect--which we shall come to by-and-by.

Edina sat at the breakfast-table, her back to the window; Dr. Raynor sat opposite to her. Frank took his usual place between them, facing the cheerful fire.

"If your coffee's cold, Frank, it is your own fault," said Edina, handing his cup to him. "I poured it out as soon as papa came in."

"All right, Edina: it is sure to be warm enough for me," was the answer, as he took it and thanked her. He was the least selfish, the least self-indulgent mortal in the world; the most easily satisfied.

"What a pity it is about the men:" exclaimed Edina to Frank: for this report of the Seven Whistlers had become generally known, and the doctor's maid-servant had imparted the news to Miss Raynor. "They will make it an excuse for two or three days' drinking."

"As a matter of course," replied Frank.

"It seems altogether so ridiculous. I have been saying to papa that I thought Josiah Bell had better sense. He may have taken more than was good for him last night; and fancied he heard the sounds."

"Oh, I think he heard them," said the doctor. "Bell rarely drinks enough to cloud his faculties, And he is certainly not fanciful."

"But how, Uncle Hugh," put in Frank, "you cannot seriously think that there's anything in it!"

"Anything in what?"

"In this superstition. Of course one can readily understand that a flock of birds may fly over a place by night, as well as by day; and that they may give out sounds and cries on the way. But that these cries should forebode evil to those who may hear them, is not to be credited for a moment."

Dr. Raynor nodded. He was languidly eating an egg. For some time past, appetite had failed him.

"I say, Uncle Hugh, that you cannot believe in such nonsense. You admitted that the incidents you gave just now were mere coincidences."

"Frank," returned the doctor, in his quiet tone, that latterly had seemed to tell of pain, "I have already said so. But when you shall have lived to my age, experience will have taught you that there are some things in this world that cannot be fathomed or explained. We must be content to leave them. I told you that I did not myself place faith in this popular belief of the miners: but I related to you at the same time my own experiences in regard to it. I don't judge: but I cannot explain."

Frank turned a laughing look on his cousin.

"Suppose we go out on the Bare Plain to-night and listen for the Seven Whistlers ourselves; you and I, Edina?"

"A watched pot never boils," said Edina, quaintly, quoting a homely proverb. "The Whistlers would be sure not to come, Frank, if we listened for them."