Part 8

The horse was found.

'Why! I'm blessed if this bain't Squire Hamlyn's roan,' said the farmer. 'I ought to know 'n becos I reared 'n. Now this be reg'lar curious.'

Joyce had been unable to retire with her burden far into the wood. The hillside was steep, and she could not carry the unconscious load far up. She had attempted to do so, fearing lest she should be seen, but when she raised him he moaned with pain. She was like a cat playing with a dead bird, putting it down, then lifting it and carrying it away, then putting it down again.

It was not long before she was discovered and surrounded.

'Who is he? How comes he here? How did this happen? Why didn't you bring him to the farm?'

Questions were poured upon her. She looked about her angrily, suspiciously, as a cat would look when surrounded with those who, she thinks, will deprive her of her bird, or at least dispute her sole possession of it.

'He be mine. I found 'n. I saved 'n. Capt'n Sampson Tramplara would ha' killed 'n, but I pervented 'n.'

'But who is he?'

'He be the maister. He mended me when I were gone scatt. Nobody shan't so much as touch 'n. I've got 'n fast, and I'll care for 'n, that I will. There--you can go, and leave us alone here. What be you a bothering here for? I didn't call'y.'

'Nonsense. He must be taken into a house, and put to bed,' said Mrs. Facey. 'Poor soul! Dear alive!'

'He shan't go under no house. If he goes anywhere, he shall go home.'

'Where is his home?'

'Where should it be but West Wyke?'

'What! West Wyke in South Tawton?'

'Sure-ly. Where else should it be? It don't jump about, now here, now there, I reckon.'

After much difficulty with Joyce, who was unreasonable in her jealousy and suspicion, it was decided that the farmer should send a waggon well bedded with straw, and that Joyce should be conveyed in this, with the still insensible man in her arms, to West Wyke.

There was no medical man nearer than Okehampton, and West Wyke was not as distant from Okehampton as Coombow, the place where they were.

'I arn't got no money,' said Joyce, 'but I'll pay you for the waggon, sure enough.'

'I do not expect payment,' said Farmer Facey in a mildly deprecatory tone--a tone that implied he would yield the point if pressed. 'I dare say the gentleman, when he gets well, will remember me. And if he don't, well--he'll be sure to have relations as will do what be proper and respectable.'

'It be I,' said Joyce, defiantly, 'it be I as has to pay, and blast me blue if I don't.'

'Where will the money come from?' asked Facey, surveying her rags.

'I'll pay wi' thicky arms!' said Joyce, thrusting forth her hands. 'See! is there a man among you can work as I can? When the young maister be well, then, sure. I'll come and work for'y two months by the moon, I will, for the loan of the waggon to-day; and I'll ax for no meat nor no housing. I'll feed myself, and I'll sleep where I can, in the open air.'

'Her must be one of the Nymet savages, sure-ly,' said the farmer, in an undertone, to his wife.

Joyce's ears were keen, and she heard him.

'What if I be a savage?' she asked. 'I baint, like mun [them] to Nymet. Them be proper savages. Vaither be a head above they. He hev a got what he may call his own.'

The waggon was brought to the place, and two men lifted Herring into it. Joyce climbed in, and, after having seated herself in the straw, took him again in her arms.

'If the cart go over rough stones, it shall joggle me,' she said; 'I'll hold'y, maister dear, that you shan't feel it.'

'I say, maiden,' said Farmer Facey, looking over the rail of the waggon as they were about to start, 'when the young gentleman gets better, just tell him he was took home in Farmer Facey's waggon, with his team and horseman, Farmer Facey, to Coombow. He might like to know, you see, and, being a gentleman, as I take it, he won't forget.'

Just as the cart was off, he called to the driver, 'Stay a bit, Jim! I think I'll take a lift, too, as far as to Bridestowe, and I'll just up and see the Squire. I'll tell him what has happened to poor Major; and, as it chances, I've another horse out of the same mare, I can sell 'n--a tidy sort of a dark roan, you minds 'n, Jim. Mebbe we'll strike a bargain. I'll go wi' you now on the chance.'

At Bridestowe the waggon came to a long halt. Farmer Facey descended; the driver was thirsty. He had much to tell. A crowd gathered round the cart. Daniel, the hostler, climbed up the wheel to look into the face of Herring, and would have mounted the waggon had not Joyce beat him off with Sampson's whip.

'Sure it be he, poor young man,' said Daniel. 'I know by token he forgot to chuck me a sixpence last night. 'Tis he as went after the Squire's horse. How came this about? Do'y say as Major hev a foreleg broke? Well, now, Loramussy! how can that have happened? The young gent may come round, right enough, but the oss--he must be shot. 'Tis a thousand pities.'

'There be nothing happens but what be good for trade,' observed Farmer Facey.

'You're right there, maister!' answered Daniel. 'There's not a sparrer falls, nor an oss breaks his knees, nor gets spavined, but what it be good for them as is vetinaries, or has osses to sell. And it be the same wi' 'uman beings; them goes scatt at times, and it be for the good o' the doctors. So the Lord sends to every man his meat.'

'But how did it come about?' This was a question asked of Joyce repeatedly. But Joyce was uncommunicative. She kept her eyes fixed on the face of the injured man, and only now and then turned them with a sharp, defiant glance at any one who approached too near.

The hostess kindly brought her a hunch of bread. She tore and ate it much as an animal devours its food. She returned no thanks for it. She could think of nothing but him whom she held to her bosom, watching every change in his face, or fearing lest he should die in her arms.

The journey was long, but Joyce did not relax her hold nor relinquish her place for one moment.

'Won't'y get down and hev a drop o' cyder?' asked the driver, at every public house they passed. 'It be a faint day for the horses, and they need refreshing.'

Joyce shook her head in reply. But if Joyce would not assist in cooling the horses by drinking herself, the driver was more considerate.

Between each of these refreshment stations, the man endeavoured to open conversation with her. He was a young fellow, fresh in colour, and not bad looking. He had a sufficiently observant eye to see that Joyce was a fine girl, though a very rough one. But she would not answer him; she did not even look at him, unless he ventured too near her charge.

She was patient at the stoppages, which were many. They rested Herring. She saw in his face that he suffered with the motion and was easy when the motion ceased. That sufficed her.

In the midst of Sourton Down stands a very humble tavern, backed by a few stunted trees, twisted and turning from the west; and by the roadside is to be seen a tall granite cross, once a burial monument of a British chief, and bearing an inscription that was cut into and rendered illegible in medieval times, when the upright stone was converted into a wayside cross.

As the waggon halted before this little tavern, Joyce saw Herring's eyes open. He raised his arms and waved them in an unmeaning manner; then, looking intently upwards, as though he saw something far above him in the depths of the blue sky, he drew a deep sigh and murmured 'Mirelle!'

Then his eyes closed again, and his hands dropped.

'Right, right, maister!' said Joyce; 'it be the Whiteface you want and would seek. But why do'y look up there? Her be on earth, not in heaven. I be a nursing of'y, none for Joyce, nor for Miss Cicely, but for her you cries after and looks for up above.'

At Okehampton they met with no interruption, and were surrounded by no throng of inquisitive persons, and the reason was this. The parson of a neighbouring moorland parish had been summoned that day before the magistrates, on a charge of maltreating and starving a poor boy in his house, his wife's son by a former husband. The magistrates dismissed him with a reprimand and a caution; but the people were not disposed to treat the matter so lightly and the man so leniently. All the fluid portion of the populace had flowed out on the moor road after the retiring parson, with hoots, and clots of earth, and expressions of aversion. The rabble manifested an intimate acquaintance with his domestic arrangements, and taunted him with them. If the reverend gentleman could have commanded his temper, he might have speedily tired out his pursuers; but this he was unable to do, and unwise enough not to attempt. He was a remarkably ugly man, ill-made, short in leg and long in arm, with large hands and feet, and a lace with low brow and protruding jaws. He became mad with rage and humiliation, and turned savagely, whenever the crowd ventured near his heels, to charge them with his green gingham umbrella, and smite them furiously, uttering unclerical exclamations of abuse and contempt. His face was simian in its ugliness and malignity. The whalebones of his umbrella were dislocated, and the wires protruded. One boy was cut with the iron, and when this was perceived there rose a howl of indignation, and a moorstone whizzed through the air and knocked the parson's hat off his head. He was a poor man, and the injury done to his best hat and to his umbrella was more than he could endure. He ran as fast as his short legs could fly over the ground, and took refuge in a cottage, the door of which he barred; and then, escaping up the rude stair, he spat at his pursuers from the window.

Parson-baiting is not an every-day treat, and the luxury had emptied the streets of Okehampton. Consequently the waggon passed through almost unnoticed.

As the waggon crossed the bridge over the Taw, it encountered the two chaises with the party of serious speculators returning from Ophir. They had slept at Zeal. Mr. Flamank, as a director of the mine, had felt it incumbent on him to make a complete investigation into the method of working, and into the accounts. The men engaged on the mine had been examined by him, and he had overhauled the books in the office. Among these he had discovered a private book of the Tramplaras, which contained a register of the amount of gold expended in the salting, and the amount recovered after the washing. Those serious men whom the Reverend Israel had taken with him, in the hopes of inducing them to sink capital in Ophir, assisted him zealously in the detection of the imposture.

The transaction was humiliating to the little man, but he was a thoroughly conscientious person, and he did not shrink from that which he felt it was at once his duty and his interest to do, however galling it might be to his self-esteem. He carried away the books with him, and dismissed the workmen, warning them that they would be required to give evidence in the trial of the Tramplaras, which, as he supposed, would inevitably follow.

'I have been considering,' said Israel Flamank to those with him in the same carriage, 'that I have been very blind. Last night I was unable to sleep, and so I turned prophecy over in my head, and I saw clearly, at last, that the whole affair had been foretold. The name Trampleasure, if rightly estimated--that is, with a certain value given to each letter, and the capital letter _T_ being reckoned as double a small _t_, and the _ea_ in pleasure being turned into an _i_, Tramplisure instead of Trampleasure, which is the way in which some persons would pronounce the name, and the _e_ at the end of the name omitted as a mute--I say, thus valued, the name makes, when summed up, exactly six hundred and sixty-six, which is the number of the Beast, and which is also, we are distinctly told, the number of a man's name. Now this, I take it, is a very significant fact. The Beast, we are further informed, would deceive the very elect; and what else are we, I ask, but the very elect?'

'That is true,' responded all those in the chaise, and shook their heads affirmatively.

'And he spake great swelling words,' went on the Reverend Israel. 'Now old Mr. Trampleasure had a certain pomposity of manner about him that exactly tallies with the description given by the inspired penman.'

'Very true,' answered the carriage-load, and the heads all shook together again.

'It is remarkable also,' continued the minister, 'that in the sacred text the Beast Trampleasure is associated with the Woman, Babylon--that is, with Rome. For Babylon is Rome, as every schoolboy knows, ethnographically, entomologically, and enterically. Now, I ask you, is not a young Roman Catholic lady staying in Dolbeare with the family, and is not Miss Trampleasure about to be, or already, married to a Roman Catholic gentleman?'

'To be sure,' responded those in the chaise, and shook their heads knowingly.

'And, remember, the seer of Patmos saw two Beasts, and the little one derived his power from the elder, which was wounded, though not to death. That wound I take to be the failure of Polpluggan, from which old Trampleasure recovered. As to the little Beast, there can be no question about him--Sampson Trampleasure, junior.'

'That is certain!' exclaimed the chorus, and all the heads shook to the left.

'But, good heavens, what have we here!' cried Mr. Flamank.

The carriage stopped.

'What's the matter there?' inquired the driver of the chaise, as he drew up.

'Why, bless me!' said the minister, starting to his feet. 'As sure as I am alive that is Mr. John Herring. Stay, young man,' he called to the waggoner. 'How comes the gentleman in such a plight? Girl,' to Joyce, 'where did you find him? Is he alive? Is he badly hurt? How came this about?'

The little man jumped out of the carriage in a fever of excitement, and pity, and alarm. Joyce gave him no information, but he picked up something from the boy who drove, and learned that, in some way or other, Sampson Tramplara was involved.

'Bless my soul!' exclaimed Mr. Flamank. 'One cannot be too thankful for mercies. Actually John Herring made me--me run after this cut-throat murderer--and yet I remain unhurt; whereas John Herring, who takes up the chase, is killed. A really startling interposition of Providence.'

'He be not dead,' said Joyce, fiercely; 'I shan't let 'n die, I shan't.'

Then the waggon, moved on.

'Where be West Wyke to?' asked the driver.

'I'll tell'y where to stop,' answered Joyce. 'Go right on till I shout Wo!'

She allowed him to proceed past the turning over the turf leading to West Wyke, and then she suddenly gave the signal to halt.

'The road over the moor be too bad to travel wi' wheels,' said Joyce. 'You bide here, and I will fetch vaither, and he'll carry the maister home, along of I.'

Joyce was not long gone before she returned with old Cobbledick, carrying a hurdle. With the carter's help, Herring was lifted on to it; and then Joyce and her father departed over the moor, without another word to the man, conveying Herring between them.

'They be rum folk in these parts,' said Jim White, the waggoner, 'not to offer a fellow a glass of cyder, and the hosses all of a lather with the journey.'

*CHAPTER XXXII*

*DESTITUTE.*

Mr. Trampleasure's death, through the bursting of a blood-vessel on the brain, and the escape of Sampson, left the three women at Dolbeare without a head. Captain Trecarrel did not appear, except to make a formal call of condolence, or to offer his services in a manner that implied that this offer was not to be accepted.

'Lucky dog that I am,' said he to himself; 'saved at the last moment in a manner melodramatic. There is a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, and takes care of the fate of Trecarrel. By George! suppose I had been noosed and turned off before this terrible scandal came out, what should I have done? Now there lies before me one clear course of action. There is an opera company at this time performing in Exeter, and I am fond of music. I must positively go to the faithful city[1] by the next coach, and not return till the clouds have cleared somewhat. But before I go, there is one duty I must perform. I must let the directors of Ophir know of old Trampleasure's five thousand pounds lodged in the hands of John Herring.'

[1] The motto of Exeter is 'Semper fidelis.'

It is needless to say that the marriage had not taken place. It is needless also to say that Trecarrel did depart to Exeter to hear the opera company. It is also needless to say that he thoroughly enjoyed himself, liked the music, caught some of the airs, ate, drank, and smoked, and blessed his stars every day that he was a free man. He not only blessed his luck, but he flattered himself that he had extricated himself by his own shrewdness. 'And now,' said he, 'here am I in Exeter, enjoying myself. Had I remained at Trecarrel, I must have gone to bed, and one may have too much even of a good thing.'

The affairs of the Ophir Gold Company were wound up. All the directors met, except Arundell Golitho, of Trevorgan, Esquire, who did not appear. But that was hardly wonderful, as no one knew who Arundell Golitho, Esq. was, and as the letter addressed to him, stating the circumstances of the company, the death of Mr. Trampleasure, and the disappearance of Mr. Sampson with the funds of the company, was returned unopened. The post-office was unable to discover Trevorgan. When the affairs were wound up, it was discovered that there were liabilities, but no assets except the five thousand pounds held by Mr. Herring. The shareholders had lost everything they had embarked in the concern, except what little would come to them out of the five thousand pounds after the liabilities had been discharged, and the lawyers had sweated the little sum to a cipher.

Then it was that the Reverend Israel Flamank's character shone out. The man's vanity had received a crushing blow, he would never entirely recover from the ridicule that descended on him for his discovery of Ophir. He had lost his small capital sunk in the mine. He alone, however, had thought and compassion at this juncture for the orphan and the widow. He found that Orange and her mother were left absolutely destitute. The five thousand pounds known to be in Herring's hands would be absorbed and dissipated, and the furniture of Dolbeare sold. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, left, on which Mrs. Trampleasure and her daughter and Mirelle could live; for old Trampleasure had thrown Mirelle's money into the same venture, and it was gone past recovery.

Mr. Flamank exerted his powers of persuasion on the directors to induce them to propose to the shareholders a surrender of a small portion of the money that they were able to lay their hands on, for the maintenance of the widow and her daughter. But none are so remorseless as pious persons touched in pocket. He pleaded to deaf ears. The liabilities of the mine were considerable, and would eat into the little fund. The men's wages were in arrear. The builders had received only a trifle on account for the sheds they had erected. The company owed for the water-wheel, for the drum, for the stamping-mill, for the cradles, the buddles, and the whips and the whims. Nothing, in short, had been paid for. As for the receipts, they were nil, for nothing had been got out of Ophir but what had been put in. Old Tramplara, it was supposed, had sunk his own money in the concern, at least it appeared so; for he had drawn everything out of the bank, had sold all his investments except the Patagonians which were unsaleable. The gold employed in salting the mine had undoubtedly consumed a great deal, and what remained had gone, with the shareholders' money, into the pocket of Mr. Sampson. It was fortunate that only the first call had been made on the shareholders, and that few of the shares were fully paid up. Nevertheless the loss was considerable, so considerable as to sour the sincerest Christian among them, and make them indifferent to the woes of the arch scoundrel's widow and daughter.

When Mr. Flamank found that nothing was to be saved out of the wreck for the Trampleasures, he went about collecting contributions for them. But his credit was suffering eclipse, and exasperation against Tramplara too great for him to do much. He was unable to get together more than fifty pounds, given grudgingly, and not obtained without great personal effort and the endurance of many humiliations.

The five thousand pounds lodged with John Herring lay in the bank in his name. It was the only sum standing to his account. But when Herring was written to, no answer was returned. That was not greatly wondered at, for it was known that he had been found insensible on the road, and had been carried in the same condition to West Wyke.

The directors wrote him to the effect that the affairs of Mr. Trampleasure, deceased, were so involved in those of the Ophir Mining Company that it was necessary to settle both together. Mr. Trampleasure had died insolvent. His chief creditors were the directors of the company, and the administration of his effects had been granted to them. They were, therefore, empowered to call in all moneys due to the deceased, and, as such, they claimed the five thousand pounds which were to be repaid to Mr. Trampleasure in the event of the marriage of his daughter with Captain Trecarrel not taking place on a certain day. That marriage had not been solemnized at the time specified, nor was it probable that it would be within a reasonable period, therefore the money was due to them as a debt to the late Mr. Trampleasure.

The cheque did reach them after a time, written with a shaking hand, and the money was drawn. Herring could not have refused it. With the cheque came a letter offering to purchase the entire plant of Ophir, wheel, and stampers, and crushers, everything in fact, at a moderate valuation. The offer was too good to be refused. The directors closed with it by return of post. There was, consequently, no sale by auction at Ophir, but everything in Dolbeare was condemned to go by the hammer, except the personal effects of Mrs. and Miss Trampleasure, and of Mirelle. The house was to be cleared of everything, except the clock on the stairs, the crayon portraits, and the walking-sticks. The ladies could not remain for the auction. They would have had no home to go to, had not the Reverend Israel Flamank intervened and opened his doors to them. He did this in a gush of benevolence, and, unhappily, without first consulting Mrs. Flamank, who, when told what he had done, went into 'tantrums,' and made the house so unpleasant for the Reverend Israel that he spent the rest of the day in making pastoral calls and eating pastoral meals with his sheep.

By evening Mrs. Flamank became calmer, and, when her husband returned late, was so far subdued that she yielded a reluctant consent to giving the Trampleasures shelter for a month.

'You know, Betsy Delilah, dear saint,' said Israel, 'if we do not take them in, the poor creatures will be turned into the street, and that your tender heart would be unable to bear, sweet angel!'

'I'm sure, Izzy, we have lost enough by the Trampleasures already. However, I will not say nay, because it will look well, and people will say we practise what we preach. Only--I warn you, Izzy!' she held up her finger; 'mind yourself.'

What Mrs. Betsy Delilah meant by this warning, he understood perfectly. With his many excellent qualities, Mr. Flamank had a weakness: he was given to caress his female devotees.