Chapter 2

It seemed to Dudley that Roy's face had got wonderfully white and small; and there was a weary worn look in his eyes, as he turned round to greet him.

"Now sit down and talk to him, but don't let him do the talking," was nurse's advice as she left the boys together.

Dudley sat down by the bed, and squeezed hold of the little hand held out to him.

"I'm so sorry, old chap," he said, nervously; "do you feel really better? I've been so miserable."

"I'm first-rate now," was the cheerful response; "it's awfully nice getting your breath back again; it's only made me feel a little tired, that's all!"

"It was all me!"

"Why that has been my comfort," said Roy, with shining eyes; "I felt when I was very bad, that if I died, I might have lived for something. It would have been lovely to die for you, Dudley--at least you know to have got myself ill from that reason; it's so very tame when I get bad from nothing at all; but I'm well again now, so I know God is letting me live to do something else!"

"I was the one that ought to have been made ill to punish me," blurted out Dudley, and then he was silent.

Roy's eyes rested on his flushed face with some wonder.

"It wasn't wicked of you to fall into the river; you couldn't help it."

A crimson flush crept over Dudley's face up to the very roots of his hair; he picked the fringe of the counterpane restlessly between his fingers, and kicked his heels against the legs of his chair. Silence again: Roy looked steadily at him; and then an expression of astonishment and bewilderment flitted across his face, followed by one of strange, conviction.

"Dudley, look at me."

Roy's tone was peremptory, but Dudley never moved, until the command was given in a sharper tone. Then he raised his head, but his blue eyes had a guilty harassed look in them, and he dropped them quickly again.

"It's no good; I've found you out. Did you tie up your feet like that yourself?"

After a minute, in a sepulchral tone, came the words, "Yes, when you weren't looking!"

Roy lay back on his pillows with a sigh.

A little disappointment mingled with his feelings which were somewhat mixed. After a pause, he said, "You _are_ a good fellow! To think of doing that for me! What would you have done if I hadn't jumped in to save you?"

Then Dudley raised his head:

"I knew you wouldn't fail me," he said, triumphantly; "I knew I could trust you!"

Roy put out his thin little arm and drew Dudley's bonny face down by the side of his on the pillow.

"I don't think," he whispered, "that even I could have been plucky enough to do that--not in sight of that old mill wheel!"

Neither spoke for a few minutes; then Dudley said,

"I should have been your murderer if you had died. That has been the worst of it. But you did like saving a drowning fellow, didn't you?"

"Ye-es, but it wasn't quite real--at least it isn't as if you really had tumbled in by accident."

"Well but I only did what you said we must do. I made an opportunity."

And after this remark Roy had nothing more to say; but neither he nor Dudley ever enlightened any one as to the true cause of the accident.

When Roy had quite recovered, the two boys set out one afternoon to visit their greatest friend in the village. This was the old man every one called "old Principle." He lived by himself in a curious three-cornered house at the extreme end of the village, and kept a little general shop where everything but eatables could be obtained.

"I keep every article that man, woman, or child can want for their use, for their homes, their work or their play; but food and drink I will not cater for. It's against my principles to sell perishable goods, and I will not be the one to minister to the very lowest animal wants of my fellow creatures."

This was his favorite speech, from which it may be judged he was somewhat of a character.

He had several hobbies, and was a well-read man and superior to those around him; and perhaps this was the cause of his holding himself aloof from most of the villagers. They termed him "cranky and cracked," but his goods were always acceptable, and he was thoroughly successful in his business. When his shop was closed he would go out on the hills, and there spend his time studying geology and botany. He knew the name of every plant and insect, and the strata of the earth for many miles round; and it was out of doors that the boys first made his acquaintance.

They found him on this afternoon seated behind his counter mending an eight-day clock.

"Well, old Principle, how are you?" said Roy, climbing up to the counter and sitting comfortably on it with his legs dangling in mid air; "we haven't seen you for ages."

"Are you going out this evening?" enquired Dudley, as he proceeded to follow Roy's example.

"To be sure, when my work is done," responded the old man pushing up his spectacles and regarding the boys with kindly eyes; "these light evenings are my delight, as you know. If you sit still till I have finished this clock, I will show you a treasure I found yesterday."

"Can you mend everything?" asked Roy, curiously; "I never knew you understood about clocks."

"I've learned to mend most things," was the answer; "it isn't given to every one to make, and I'm one of the menders in the world not the makers. There's one thing I can't mend--and that is broken hearts."

There was silence: Roy broke it at last by saying with knitted brow, "I'd rather be a maker than a mender, but lots of people aren't either."

"Quite right," nodded the old man; "most folk are breakers."

"I wish I was as clever as you," said Dudley; "you mend umbrellas, and kettles, and plates, and windows, and gates, and all sorts. How did you learn?"

"Well, I ain't ashamed of owning that my father was just a travelling tinker, and when I was a little fellow I used to go round with him and see him do most things. It was from travelling through the country I learned to love it so. And my father, he was a thoughtful man, and when I used to ask where the tin came from, and where the iron and where the lead, he took to learning of it up so that he could answer me; and then I came to find that most of our comforts come from underground, and so I fell to digging. Ah, youngsters, earth is a wonderful treasure house!"

The clock was done. Old Principle put it carefully by and then mounted on some wooden steps, and took down a tin saucepan. The boys knew the shelf well; as though apparently it was just a row of tinware for sale, many a pot and pan held treasures that geologists would have given a great deal to possess.

Now when old Principle held out a peculiar shaped stone with loving pride, Roy and Dudley pressed forward to look at it.

"I know, it's a Roman hammer," shouted out Dudley.

"It's a Saxon jug," suggested Roy.

"It's part of a jaw of a mammoth many thousands of years old, and there are two teeth in perfect preservation," old Principle said solemnly.

"Where did you find it?"

"Ah, you must come and see! In a cave that I have only just discovered, and which must originally have been by the side of a river. I'll take you there to-night if you can get permission to come."

Nothing delighted the boys more than an expedition with old Principle. They promised to be down at his shop punctually at half-past seven that evening, and then the conversation drifted into other channels.

"Old Principle, do you think we ought to make opportunities?" questioned Dudley, presently; "Roy thinks we ought, and I did make one the other day, but it didn't turn out well."

"Ay, Master Roy is always for making," said the old man with a smile; "he will try and cram his life with what will come fast enough naturally, if he only waits."

"But will it?" questioned Roy, flushing up with eagerness; "do you think it will? I'm longing to do something big and grand and good; I mayn't live to grow up you know, and I'm sure we're meant to do something when we're boys."

"We're trying to do good to all men as we have opportunity," said Dudley, gravely.

"Ay, stick to that, boys, and you'll succeed. There's none too small to be true philanthropists."

"What is a philanthropist?" asked Roy.

"A man who benefits his fellow creatures. 'Tis a good principle to keep in mind."

"But it's difficult for boys to do grown-up people good. They always do boys good."

"Now look here, Master Roy. I've lived and learned where you haven't, and I try and pass my principles on to you. That's how I do you good. You come to me and take what I give you and seeing you act out the advice I offers you does me good. You do me good too, every time you comes to see me; it's cheery to hear and see you."

"But that's very tame for us," said Roy, a little scornfully.

"Oh, well, if your own likes must come into the question, it's a different story! I didn't know it mattered about our feelings as long as the good is done! 'Tis a bad principle to try to please others only when it pleases ourselves."

Roy looked a little ashamed of himself. He said no more on the subject, and shortly after he and Dudley ran home to tea.

They were very disappointed when their aunt refused to let them go out again that evening.

"It is too damp a night for Jonathan to be wandering through wet grass and bog. You can go, David, if you like, but he must wait for another opportunity."

"I shan't go without Roy," said Dudley, sturdily.

"We'll come and make a cave in the attic," suggested Roy, trying to be cheerful.

And for the rest of that evening they were absorbed in making a great dust and racket amongst lumber boxes far away from their grandmother's hearing.

IV

AN AWKWARD VISIT

"And how do you know a river has been here?"

"By the soil and by the relics I have found. Look at this fossil. Do you see the outline of the fish? Fish don't live on dry ground."

"There might have been a fishman passing by who dropped one out of his cart."

Old Principle laughed at Dudley's sceptical notion, and went on shovelling out earth with great alacrity. It was Saturday afternoon: old Principle had shut up his shop and taken the boys up to the hills surrounding the little village, where in a ravine between two precipitous crags, in the midst of a green bower of ferns and moss, he was hard at work excavating an old cave that had been buried for many years out of sight.

Dudley and Roy were eagerly helping and chattering as only boys know how.

"This little ravine has been formed by a mountain stream rushing down," continued the old man, resting on his spade for a minute; "'tis a good principle, Master Dudley, to trust grown-up folks' knowledge better than your own."

"I wish," said Roy, reflectively, "that this cave was nearer home; it would be so lovely to come out whenever we wanted to, wouldn't it, Dudley? Perhaps some king has hidden away in it, or soldier when he was pursued by his enemies!"

"Hulloo," said Dudley, looking up the hill; "here is such a funny looking woman coming down with a donkey, her skirt is nearly up to her knees, and she has a man's boots on."

Old Principle paused in his work, and in a minute or two greeted the newcomer.

"Good-afternoon, Mrs. Cullen, how's your husband to-day?"

"Badly, very badly, but I's forced to leave he. I lock the door and put the key in me pocket, for I's bin up the hill yonner cuttin' peat sin seven o'clock this mornin'. He do get awfu' lonesome, he say, an' if me niece hadn't a married and gone to 'Merica, I should have kept she to tend him."

"Who is she?" asked Roy, as after a few more words the woman moved on.

"She lives at the bottom of the hill over there. Her husband has been ill of consumption these last two years, and she works to support them both. She's a hard-working woman, is Martha Cullen; she works in the fields harvesting just now; if I could feel I'd be welcome I would go to sit with her husband sometimes, but she's very queer, she won't let a neighbor come near him, I have tried more than once. It seems hard on him to be bedridden there day after day without a soul to speak to; or any one to give him a drink!"

Roy gazed thoughtfully after the retreating figure of the woman, and then turned his attention again to the cave.

When an hour later he and Dudley were walking home footsore, and rather dirty, but with little bundles of treasures from the cave in their grubby hands, he startled his cousin by saying--

"To-morrow we'll go and see Martha Cullen's husband. It's an opportunity for us."

"How shall we get in?" queried Dudley.

"Climb in at the window. She told old Principle she would be out all day at Farmer Stubbs. We'll go and do him good."

"How?"

"We'll wash his face, and make him a cup of tea, and sweep his room, and give him his medicine," responded Roy, readily; "that's what nurse does when she goes to visit any of Aunt Judy's sick people."

Dudley did not look as if he relished the prospect before him.

"That's girls' and women's work," he said; "boys needn't do that kind of thing."

Roy flushed up angrily.

"All right, if you don't want to come, stay at home. It is a week since we started to do good when the opportunity came, and we haven't done any good to any one. I'm not going to waste any more time."

Then after a pause he added, "Besides I think it will be rather fun breaking into a strange cottage; we may have to get down the chimney."

At this Dudley's face cleared.

"I'll come," he said; "we'll go directly after dinner."

"And we'll stow away a little of our pudding to take him--sick people always have puddings."

They had no difficulty in carrying out this plan. They always dined in the nursery, and if nurse wondered at the amount of pudding that her charges managed to consume that day, her old eyes were not sharp enough to detect the transfer from plates to pockets. She sent them out into the garden to play, and they soon were scampering out of the back gate and along the road toward the little cottage at the bottom of the hill.

It was a warm afternoon, and when they at length came near it they threw themselves down on the grass to rest.

"We mustn't frighten the old man," said Dudley, gazing at the thatched cottage with a critical eye. "I see the windows are tight shut in front, but there's one open at the side; we must creep up very quietly and get in before he sees us, and then we can explain who we are."

"And if the window won't do, we'll try the chimney, it looks a jolly big one."

Then after a pause--

"I suppose he'll be glad to see us?"

"Of course he will. He must be dreadfully dull all alone."

A few minutes after, they were holding a whispered consultation outside a small pantry window through which Roy was going to squeeze himself.

"I'll go first. It will be a tight fit for you, Dudley, but I'll give you a good pull through, and you must hold your breath well in."

"It's a kind of housebreaking," Dudley said, ripples of fun passing over his face; "I don't mind visiting sick people if we go in at their windows like this!"

But Roy's little face was full of anxious gravity and purpose, and he checked Dudley's inclination to laugh at once.

He accomplished his part successfully, and then poor Dudley was hauled and pulled at till purple in the face, and breathless with exertion, he exclaimed, "I'm being squashed to a jelly; let go, I can't do it!"

"Just one more try--now then--there, we've done it!"

But Roy's exclamation of delight was drowned in an awful crash, as Dudley swept off some shelves a bowl of milk, two plates, and a cup of soup, and fell to the ground himself in the midst of it all.

Immediately a man's voice called out, "Who's there! Hi! Help! Thieves! Help!"

Roy darted into the kitchen, and confronted a tall, hollow-cheeked man who had scrambled out of his bed in the chimney corner, and stood trembling from head to foot clutching hold of the bed-post, and coughing violently.

He did not seem at all appeased at the sight of the boys, but shook his fist at them in a paroxysm of fright and rage.

"Go away, you young blackguards--a robbin' honest folk, and a darin' to show yer impudent faces, and disturbin' a dyin' man, knowin' as he's too bad to give yer the hidin' ye desarve!"

Roy was quite taken aback.

"You're quite mistaken--let us explain--we've come to see you and do you good. Don't you know who we are? We live at the Manor. Look--get back into bed again, you'll take cold. We've brought you some pudding."

Here a parcel of currant pudding was taken out of his jacket pocket and held out temptingly.

"A' don't believe a word! Ye've been in the pantry a smashin' the missus' things, and a eatin' and a drinkin' all ye can lay hands on--begone, I tell ye!"

"That was me," put in Dudley, edging up to the irate invalid; "you see the door was locked and we had to come in at the window, and I'm rather fat about the shoulders, and Roy jerked me through too quick and I fell amongst some plates. But we really haven't stolen anything, we aren't robbers!"

"Begone, ye rascals!" repeated the old man, and then such a violent fit of coughing took possession of him that he sank back on his bed perfectly exhausted and helpless, waving them away and shaking his head at them when they tried to approach him.

Dudley looked doubtfully at Roy.

"I'm afraid we aren't doing him any good," he said, slowly. "He won't let us."

"No," was Roy's response, "we must go, I suppose. He is a foolish, stupid old man, or he would listen to us and let us explain."

Then advancing again to the sick man Roy said slowly and solemnly, "You'll be very sorry one day when you know how you've treated us, and we shall never, never try to see you again, or bring you pudding or comfort you, _never_! If you had let us, we should have washed your face and hands, and made you some gruel, and given you your medicine, and then sat down by your bed and talked nicely to you, but you won't let us do you good, so we shall leave you, and if you're lonely locked in here all day with no one to speak to, it's your own fault!"

Then holding his head up bravely, Roy marched out of the kitchen, and Dudley followed him with some misgivings as to his exit again by the pantry window. But Roy solved this difficulty.

"Look here, the key is in the back door; we will unlock it and get out properly. I'm sorry we've smashed those plates."

They walked home in the deepest dejection; as they went through the village there met them on the bridge the same man that had passed them when on the garden wall. He was much the worse for drink, and seemed inclined to be quarrelsome.

"Look 'ee here now, I'll just trouble 'ee to give me another sixpence, young gent, or I'll help myself, and no nonsense, for I'm the feller for fightin'!"

He stood barring their way, lurching from side to side, and brandishing a stick in his hand.

Neither of the boys were daunted. Dudley shouted out,

"Let us by at once, or we'll make you! You'd better look out how you cheek us!"

And Roy in a moment had his jacket off, and was rolling up his shirt sleeves.

"Come on, Dudley, we'll lick him into shape, if he dares to touch us!"

What might have befallen our two little heroes cannot be told, for at this critical juncture the rector came up, and in stern, commanding tones ordered the man on.

"That stamp of man is a pest in the place," he said; "he won't be influenced for good but hangs about the ale-houses and lives on the proceeds of his begging. If people only knew the harm they do in giving him money instead of a little honest work! Well, boys, run along home, it's a good thing I came up to stop a free fight. How do you think you two atoms could have got the better of a man like that? 'Discretion is the better part of valor' remember. Keep your fists for a good cause. And never entice a drunken man to fight. It is a degrading spectacle."

Saying which Mr. Selby passed on, and Roy and Dudley walked home without saying a word to each other.

By the time they had finished their tea, they recovered their spirits, and were in the midst of an exciting game of cricket in a field adjoining the house with the old coachman and the stable-boy, when a summons came to them from the house to come in at once to their aunt.

"What's up, I wonder!" exclaimed Dudley, as he raced Roy up to the front door; "Aunt Judy never sends for us at dinner time."

They found their aunt in the library. She was in her dinner dress and the dinner gong was sounding in the hall, but her face was puzzled as she turned from a woman talking to her, to the boys.

"My nephews are little gentlemen; you must be mistaken," she was saying.

Roy and Dudley recognized the woman immediately. It was Mrs. Cullen, and their hearts sank.

"Come here, boys," Miss Bertram said; "I have been hearing a strange story from Mrs. Cullen, of two boys breaking into her house while she was away this afternoon, frightening her dying husband so much that the doctor fears he won't outlive the night, and breaking, and stealing things from her pantry. She insists upon it that it was you; her husband told her so, but I cannot believe it. You would have no object in behaving so wickedly."

Dudley's cheeks were crimson, and he hung his head in shame. Roy, as usual, was not daunted.

"It's all a great mistake, Aunt Judy, we never stole a thing; we went to see him and take him some pudding and do him good. We had to get in at the pantry window because the doors were all locked, and we did spill some milk and some soup, and broke a few plates. We couldn't make him understand we weren't robbers, so we came away again--and we're very sorry."

Mrs. Cullen turned furiously upon them, and her language was so abusive, that Miss Bertram sent the boys away, and brought the poor woman to reason by quiet, persuasive words.

"I will enquire into the matter. I cannot quite understand their motive; boys are thoughtless, and perhaps their intentions were good. I know they will be extremely sorry at the result of their visit. If you come with me to the housekeeper she will give you some good, strong soup for your husband. I will come and see him myself the first thing to-morrow morning."

It was not till after she had dined with her mother, that Miss Bertram sent for her little nephews again, and then she gave them a severer scolding than they had received from her for a long time. They crept up to bed that night feeling very woe-begone.

"I'm sure we'd better give up these opportunities," said Dudley, disconsolately, as they paused at an old staircase window on their way to their rooms; "you see this is the third one, and they all turn out badly. There was that tramp who must have got drunk with your sixpence, and then there was saving me, and that made you so awfully ill, and now here's this old fellow that perhaps we shall make die. It all goes wrong, somehow."

Roy looked out of the window with knitted brow.

"I was thinking of that King--Bruce--who saw the spider try three times and then succeed. We must try again, that's all! I shan't give up yet. It is really a big opportunity I'm looking for!"

And Roy laid his head down on the pillow that night, steadfastly purposing to continue his rôle of benefiting the human race.

V

A LOST DONKEY

Fortunately for the boys, John Cullen got over his fright and took a turn for the better, but Miss Bertram began to exercise more control over their many spare hours. She took them out driving with her in the afternoon, or expeditions by foot; sometimes to some farmhouse to tea, sometimes to some neighboring squire who had young ones to entertain them. And Dudley in his happy, careless way soon put all thoughts of improved opportunities out of his head. He was ready enough to put into action any proposal of Roy's, but left alone he was perfectly content to enjoy himself in his own easy fashion; and Roy seemed to be willing to let the matter rest, as he never now alluded to it.