Part 6

Moreover the wound in his head was sufficiently painful to make a further rest advisable. Sally set forth therefore alone, feeling tired and miserable enough. She was the most modest little creature in the world, and was filled with dismay at the notoriety she had so suddenly acquired. As the afternoon advanced she shrank more and more into her shell, for if the ill-will of the women had vexed and perturbed her, the boisterous admiration of the men annoyed her almost beyond endurance. The rough jests, the officious offers of aid, the loudly expressed praise were equally obnoxious to her. It was with unbounded relief that she saw the last waggon loaded, and prepared to depart from the field. She had shaken out her skirts, and was in the act of straightening her sunbonnet when she found herself suddenly seized from behind, and almost before she realised what was happening, was hauled by a dozen strong grimy hands on to the apex of the piled-up hay and there enthroned.

“Three cheers for the Queen o’ the Day!” shouted someone, and the cry was taken up by a score of lusty voices.

“Three cheers for the best wife in Riverton!”

“Let me down,” gasped Mrs Crumpler faintly; but an extra pair of horses had been harnessed to the waggon, and it was now rumbling forward at what seemed to her a dangerously rapid rate.

There sat the poor little woman on her sweet-smelling throne, the reluctant centre of all eyes, while the waggon went out of the field and down the village street surrounded by a shouting band of haymakers. Outraged matrons stood in the doorways raising indignant eyes to Heaven, delighted children ran after the convoy, adding their shrill voices to the chorus; last of all Jarge Crumpler himself, startled by the outcry, made his way to his own gate just as the triumphal procession drew up before it.

“Three cheers for the best wife in Riverton!” shouted Bill Frost; and “Hooray, hooray!” cried the bystanders.

Jarge himself, infected by the enthusiasm, shouted “Hooray” too, just as little Sally, very red in the face, came sliding down from the waggon.

As she heard him she stopped for a second, threw a reproachful glance at him, and then, bursting into smothered sobs, hurried into the house.

After a pause of bewilderment he hastened after her, while the haymakers, with a farewell cheer, continued their progress at a more leisurely pace, with a dozen children clinging to the tail-board of the waggon, and one or two of the more adventurous perched on the load itself.

Sally was crouching behind the door with her apron over her head, sobbing as if her heart would break.

“Missus!” said Jarge, becoming quite sober all at once, and seeing only the very distinct outline of one little sorrowful figure. “Missus!—little ’ooman!”

Sally jerked down her apron and gazed at him with eyes that were fierce through their tears.

“You did ought to be ashamed o’ yourself,” she cried brokenly.

Jarge looked down at her ruefully and drew a long breath.

“Well,” he said, “I d’ ’low I be!”

* * *

He repeated this statement on the following morning when he presented himself to Farmer Ellery, humbly petitioning that his fault might be overlooked, and promising to work an hour or two “extry” every day to make up for the time which had been lost.

“For I shouldn’t like my missus to come out a-workin’ any more,” he explained.

The farmer looked at him sharply, grunted, and finally agreed.

“I’ll give you another chance,” he said, “but I don’t know how long you’ll keep straight.”

“I be a-goin’ for to turn over a new leaf,” said Jarge firmly, and to everyone’s surprise he actually did.

ANN-CAR’LINE

LAMBING time is a very important epoch to farming folk, and particularly to farming folk in Dorset. The popular idea which associates the advent of these innocents with primroses and daffodils, budding hedges, and all the other adjuncts of spring does not obtain in this pre-eminently sheep-rearing county. It is in November when days are at their shortest, when the earth is at its barest, when cold rain falls, and not infrequently sleet or “snow-stuff,” as it is locally called, that the misguided younglings of the flock look their first upon a sodden and gloomy world. Midway in October their quarters are got in readiness, preferably in a corner of some upland field; the shepherd’s wheeled hut takes up its position in the midst of a sheltered space in the lewth of the hedge, straw-padded hurdles mark the enclosure, and sundry pens are made ready for the new arrivals and their dams. By day the shepherd himself may be seen, crook in hand and dog at heel, taking stock of his premises; and often at dusk the uncertain light of his lantern may be noted from afar.

On one particularly gloomy November evening young Timothy Kiddle, Farmer Hounsell’s new shepherd, made a careful inspection of his charges, lantern in hand; and after completing the tour of the fold sat down in an angle of the hurdle fence to smoke a quiet pipe. His hut had not yet been conveyed to its destined site, and till now he had slept at home; but one of the ewes seemed somewhat uneasy in her mind, and all things considered Timothy decided that it would be better to spend the night amid his charges.

He intended, of course, to watch, but having been exceptionally busy all day, soon dozed, and presently indeed fell into a sound sleep. This was no doubt highly reprehensible under the circumstances, particularly when one remembers that a lighted pipe was between his teeth, and that the whole place was strewn with straw.

He awoke with a start and a terrific throb of conscience, and was relieved to find himself in the dark; his pipe had dropped harmlessly into his lap, and the very lantern had burnt itself out. He rolled on to his knees, feeling cramped after his long sitting, and was about to stand upright when his attention was suddenly arrested by a curious sight.

At the further end of the long field, outlined against the hedge, and thrown into strong relief by the light of a lantern which stood on the ground beside her, was a girl, digging. He could see her distinctly, and could even note that she wore a white apron, that her sleeves were tucked up, and that she had no hat or covering of any kind on her head. She laboured with a will, but presently flung aside her spade, and, kneeling down, drew something from her bosom which she thrust into the hole she had made. As she bent over it, Timothy watching breathlessly from his post behind the hurdles saw and recognised her face. It was Ann-Car’line Bartlett, who lived in one of the cottages down in the dip yonder. Timothy had seen her several times, for she came regularly twice a day to buy milk at Hounsell’s farm. She had even seemed to him a nice, modest, quiet-spoken maid, and he wondered much at the nature of the task she was now accomplishing. Soon she was on her feet again, shovelling back the earth with feverish energy; then, taking up her lantern, she stepped towards the hedge, and stood there for a moment or two; but her back was turned towards Timothy, and, crane his neck as he might, he could not see what she was doing. Presently she turned about again, caught up her spade, and, squeezing herself through a gap in the hedge, walked away down the lane.

Timothy rose cautiously to his feet and looked after the bobbing lantern till it vanished from his sight, and then, feeling in his pocket for a fresh bit of candle, put it into his lantern, lit it, and ran to inspect the mysterious spot. First he examined the hedge, and after a minute scrutiny discovered a small cross cut deep into the bark of a stout holly sapling, which was evidently intended to serve as a landmark; next, carefully inspecting the ground in the neighbourhood, he came to the place where the earth had been recently disturbed. The field was a turnip field, and it would have been difficult on the morrow to distinguish the precise locality without some such precaution as the girl had taken; as Timothy knelt down to pursue his investigations he mentally commended her wisdom.

Depositing his lantern on the ground he scratched away the loose earth with his vigorous hands, and presently came to a little bundle. This, on being withdrawn and held to the light, proved to be a cheap printed cotton handkerchief which was carefully knotted about something hard and round. Timothy breathlessly removed this outer covering, and discovered to his astonishment a gold watch. A gentleman’s gold watch, as he said to himself, for it was a fairly large size, and there was a monogram on the lid, and two or three seals and charms—fallals Timothy dubbed them—appended to the ring.

Timothy sat back on his heels, opening eyes and mouth in astonishment.

“Well, I’m dalled!” he ejaculated under his breath. “That there nice, vitty little maid. Who’d ever think she’d be that artful. And that wicked!” he added severely.

After turning about the watch, and examining it on every side, he wrapped it up again, and restored it to its hiding-place.

“She must ha’ stole it,” he said to himself, as he threw in the earth again. “Certain sure, she must ha’ stole it. A poor maid like her doesn’t ha’ gold watches to throw about. If it was given to her she wouldn’t go and bury it in a field half a mile away from her home. No, ’tisn’t very likely. She stole it. That’s what she’s done, and she’ve a-hid it away here to keep it safe till she can pop it, or maybe sell it. Nobody ’ud ha’ knowed if I hadn’t chanced to look over the hurdle. It do really seem quite providential,” continued Timothy, who loved to use a long word, now and then, even in communion with himself, “to think I should ha’ falled asleep, and my lantern should ha’ went out like that, else the maid ’ud never ha’ dug so nigh to where I was sittin’.”

He rose to his feet now, stamping down the earth over the filled-in hole, and then loosening the surface with the toe of his big boot; as he turned away he laughed to himself.

“The maid little thinks as I do know her secret. I’ll watch—ah, sure, I’ll watch. I’m not wishful for to get her into trouble, but I’ll watch. When she comes to dig her treasure up again, I’ll ha’ summat for to say to her.”

With this resolution he made his way back to his charges; but throughout his oft broken slumbers that night he was haunted by the remembrance of Ann-Car’line’s secret; when he was not in fancy holding the watch in his hand or replacing it in its wrapper, he was sternly questioning the girl and receiving numerous and widely differing explanations of the mystery.

When he went about his work at early dawn he frequently glanced in the direction of the hiding place, and saw in imagination the little round packet lying snug at the bottom of its hole. A chance passer-by on the rough track on the other side of the hedge made him start—would he be likely to detect that the earth had been recently disturbed in that particular spot which Timothy knew of? Even when Mr Hounsell came up as usual to inspect the little flock, Timothy was careful to place himself immediately in front of him, whenever the farmer chanced to glance in the direction in question; so that his own burly form might serve as a screen to Ann-Car’line’s indiscretion.

“What be you a-turnin’ and a-turnin’ round me like that for?” enquired his master presently, with some sternness. “There you do make I quite giddy. You be jist same as a weathercock.”

Timothy had no answer ready on the moment; he looked up at the sky, and then at the distant horizon, and finally remarked that he didn’t think the wind was shiftin’ that much.

“I don’t say it be,” responded the farmer emphatically, “but I do say as you mid be a weathercock the way you do go on a-twistin’ and a-turnin’—there ye be again! What be the matter, man?”

Timothy set his hat more firmly on his head, cleared his throat, spat in his hands, and caught up a pitchfork, remarking that there was a deal to be seen to, and that weathercock or no weathercock, he ought to be shakin’ out the straw.

“There’s one o’ the ewes here as I don’t so very well like the looks on,” he said persuasively, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards a quarter which he felt to be perfectly safe.

Thereupon Mr Hounsell forgot to animadvert further on his underling’s oddities, and immediately became immersed in more practical matters.

By chance the shepherd was obliged to betake himself to the farm that day on some errand; and, as he was hurrying back to his charges, he encountered Ann-Car’line, leisurely driving a flock of ducks towards a wayside pond. She had slung her sun-bonnet on one arm, so that her pretty hair caught such pale sunshine as was available on that November afternoon; and in one hand she held a long elder switch with a few yellow leaves dandling at its extremity. She responded to Timothy’s greeting with perfect serenity, her placid blue eyes appearing more limpid even than usual as she returned his gaze. When he was a few paces away from her, picking his steps carefully among her waddling flock, he heard her trill out a song as suddenly and sweetly as a robin might have done.

“Well, that beats all!” commented the shepherd. “There she do look I in the face so innocent as a baby, and she do sing out like a—like a angel. I can’t make nothing of it—nay, I can’t indeed.”

His hut had now been put into position, and he occupied it that night, and might have slumbered peacefully enough, for his sheep were quiet; yet he could not rest for thinking of Ann-Car’line and her secret.

“She mid ha’ found that watch,” he said to himself, “or she midn’t ha’ knowed ’twas wrong to take it. There, to think of it a-layin’ out there so as anybody what liked mid just stretch out his hand and take it. What ’ud the poor maid do then? She’d ha’ no chance of giving it back, or anything.”

Impelled by these reflections, Timothy presently got up and made a second pilgrimage to Ann Car’line’s hiding-place. In a very few minutes he had withrawn the watch from its wrapper, dropped it into his own pocket, and replaced it by a round smooth stone. He chuckled to himself as he folded the handkerchief about this and laid it in the hole.

“’Twill be a rare treat to see the maid’s face,” he said.

For greater safety he continued to carry the watch about his person, carefully testing his pocket night and morning to make quite sure there was no suspicion of a hole.

The knowledge of this possession made him look quizzically at Ann-Car’line when next he came upon her; and strange to say he found himself obliged to pass her house on the following day. She was busily engaged in scrubbing the doorstep, and on hearing his footfall turned round; and perceiving that he smiled, though somewhat oddly, smiled back, gaily and innocently enough.

“Dear, to be sure!” exclaimed Timothy, pausing; “you do seem in very good spirits, my maid.”

“Why, so I be,” replied the girl. “I han’t got nothing to make me sad, have I?”

“I don’t suppose you have,” said Timothy. “You was a-singin’ yesterday so gay as a lark.”

“Oh, I’m often singin’,” replied she. “I’d sing all day if I was let; it do help to pass the time away.”

“You can’t sing and scrub, though, I shouldn’t think,” said Timothy, tentatively.

“Can’t I?” retorted Ann-Car’line, and immediately dipped her brush in the pail and simultaneously lifted that marvellous clear voice of hers. It was a marvellous voice—fresh and true and ringing; she could send it up, up, to the very limit of the gamut, as it seemed, yet never lose sweetness or roundness.

“Can’t I sing and scrub?” she repeated, pausing to take breath and to soap her brush afresh.

“I never heerd nothin’ like it!” replied Timothy, enthusiastically. “Says I to myself yesterday, ‘It mid be a angel singin’,’ I says.”

“Oh, and did you?” said Ann-Car’line, growing pink with pleasure as she vigorously polished the doorstep.

“Yes, I did indeed,” returned the shepherd earnestly. “I should think you was a angel—or very near,” he added hastily, for at that moment he chanced to thrust his hand into his pocket, and came in contact with something hard and round.

“Very near—or, perhaps—I mid say—”

“I mid ha’ been summat very like a angel,” replied Ann-Car’line, squatting back on her heels and looking at him seriously. “I mid ha’ been a fairy.”

Here she lowered her voice and looked round cautiously.

“What do you mean?” enquired Timothy, stooping over her and speaking in the same tone.

“Hush! It’s a secret. Don’t let mother hear ye!”

The shepherd straightened himself again. “Ah, you’ve got secrets,” he said dispassionately; “yes, young maids has secrets what they don’t like the wold folks to hear on. But secrets is dangerous, my girl.”

And thereupon Timothy fingered the watch once more.

“There, what be so long a-doin’ for?” called out a sharp female voice from within the cottage. “I could ha’ cleaned that doorstep forty times while thou’rt thinkin’ on it.”

Ann-Car’line gathered up pail and brush, and hastened indoors, leaving Timothy to meditate on her mysterious words as he made his way towards the fold.

He frowned as he walked along, and struck at the hedge savagely with his crook.

“Fairies is nonsense-folk!” he exclaimed aloud once and again; “I can’t think as thikky maid can be so artful as she do seem.”

On the following Sunday, by some accident, he found himself next her in church, and, perceiving that he had no hymn-book, Ann-Car’line was kind enough to permit him to share hers. She looked as fair and innocent as a flower, and sang with all her heart. Timothy was quite carried away. Artful indeed! There wasn’t her match in the whole county of Dorset for looks, and he’d go warrant she was as good as she seemed.

When they emerged from the church he asked her to walk with him, and before half an hour had passed had begun to court her in form. He actually forgot, for the time being, all about the watch and his suspicions connected with it, and it was not until Ann-Car’line had unexpectedly broken a somewhat long and contented silence by a fragment of some gay little song—not a hymn-tune—that he remembered the phrase which had so much puzzled him a few days before.

“What was that you was a-sayin’ about bein’ a fairy?” he enquired, abruptly.

Ann-Car’line’s little white teeth flashed out in a mischievous smile. “I was axed once if I’d like to be a fairy,” said she. “Don’t ye think I’d make a very good one?”

“There’s no such folks as fairies,” returned Timothy. “Nobody couldn’t ha’ axed ye such a thing.”

“They did though!” retorted Ann-Car’line. “Says they, ‘You be a pretty maid—you’d make a very good fairy. Would you like to be one?’”

“Now that’s a nonsense tale,” said the shepherd firmly. “I’ll not put up wi’ no such stories. If you and me be to walk out, and to—and to—carry on reg’lar same as we’ve a-made up our minds to do, you did ought to have more respect for I. So don’t ye be a-comin’ to I again wi’ such made-up tales.”

The girl laughed again in a queer, little secret way that annoyed him still more.

“There must be truth between us,” he said, almost harshly. “You must tell me the truth about everything.”

He broke off, looking at her oddly; he did not intend to let her know how much he had found out for himself. She must confess everything to him of her own accord, and then he would stand by her through thick and thin.

Ann-Car’line, however, did not seem in the least impressed; she went on singing to herself under her breath, glancing maliciously at Timothy from time to time.

“I can’t help it if you don’t believe me,” said she, “and there’s nothin’ more as I can tell ye.”

“Nothin’ at all?” enquired the shepherd sternly. He thought he saw her change colour, but she shook her head emphatically.

“That’ll do,” said Timothy fiercely. “We’ve made a mistake, my girl, and ’tis best to say so straight out. If ye can look I in the face and tell I they things, ye b’ain’t the maid for I. Ye can find somebody else to keep company wi’. I’d sooner live lonesome all my days nor have a wife as wasn’t to be trusted; so I’ll bid ye good-day. But there’s one thing,” he added, turning round suddenly, “ye may find yourself in trouble sooner than ye think for, and ye may be glad enough to own up then. I’ll not be your sweetheart no more, but if ever you’re in trouble and will own up I’ll stand by ye.”

She looked at him for a moment oddly, half-fearfully, but recovering herself, turned upon her heel, muttering something about a likely tale, coupled with certain ejaculations intended to prove her entire content with the actual condition of affairs, and her scorn of the recalcitrant lover.

Timothy went home in high dudgeon, and taking out the watch gave it a little indignant shake.

“I’ve a good mind to put thee back where I found thee,” said he. “Yes, it ’ud serve her right if I put thee back and took no more notice of either of ye.”

But after a moment’s fierce reflection he put the watch back in his pocket again, and decided to wait.

Days passed and became weeks; Timothy frequently met Ann-Car’line, greeting her with a surly word or two, to which she responded by a saucy nod; sometimes he would hear her singing in the lanes, and would pause to listen when he thought himself unnoticed; and on Sundays, though they no longer shared the same hymn-book, his eyes frequently wandered to her face, and he was forced to confess to himself that though he knew her to be an artful, untruthful little maid, she looked, as he had so often said, “like a angel.”

At last the long-expected actually came to pass. He woke up suddenly, very early, one morning, and saw a lantern glimmering at the further end of the field. He immediately rose, put on his coat, and opening the door of the hut a little wider peered out into the darkness. It was not yet five o’clock, and here in the open field all was still as at midnight. The weather had “taken up” lately; the keen crispness of frost was in the air, and the sky was full of stars. The bobbing light yonder seemed to blink like one at first, but presently became steady, and all at once he heard, or fancied he heard, a faint cry.

“She’s found the stone,” said Timothy, and grinned to himself.

Now the light began to waver again, and, as Timothy expected, approached the hut. As it drew near, Ann-Car’line’s voice was heard calling piteously, “Mr Kiddle! Timothy—Timothy!”

The shepherd winked to himself, and answered with a low and muffled roar, intended to indicate that he had just been aroused from profound slumber.

“Oh, Timothy Kiddle!” cried the voice, “please come out a minute, I don’t know what to do. Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“Hold hard a minute!” cried Timothy. “I’m coming!”

He lighted his lantern and sallied forth. There stood Ann-Car’line, pressing close against the hurdle fence, the light which she held up falling upon her white scared face, and upon the handkerchief in her hand.

“What be doin’ here, my maid, at this hour?” enquired the shepherd sternly. “You did ought to be at home and a-bed. ’Tisn’t respectable to be wanderin’ about in the fields in the dark.”

“Oh, don’t be so cross,” pleaded the girl. “I wouldn’t come if I could help it. Oh dear! Oh dear! I’m in such trouble. You said I was to call you if I was in trouble.”

“I said you was to own up,” said Timothy, grimly. “You must start wi’ that.”

“I thought you’d be a bit kinder,” moaned Ann-Car’line, and two big tears rolled down her cheeks. “I—I—I had summat as I didn’t want the folks at home to see—I haven’t got nothin’ what locks—so I made a little hole at the bottom of the field yon—and I buried it. An’—an’—somebody’s been an’ stole it away, an’ put a stone in its place.”

“That’s a queer tale,” said Timothy. “Very near as queer a tale as the one you did tell I about bein’ axed to be a fairy.”