CHAPTER SEVENTH. A START IN LIFE. "Yet ah ! why should they know their fate, GRAY'S Eton College. Ir was a pretty group the setting sun shone upon one evening in a mossy dell hard by old Piert's Rest. Of course, had it been otherwise, the sunbeams would have lingered just as long among the bolls of the old trees; yet one could not but fancy they took a pleasure in gilding the fair hair of the little child laid to sleep upon the bed of jackets, and that it ungrudgingly lent a part of its glory to make bright the landscape to the eyes of the two tired boys who lay stretched upon the grass beside her, and the little store of treasures over which one sleeping hand still kept guard-the plover's eggs, the deserted nest, the corn and poppies, gathered in the day's ramble. The lads were talking in a subdued tone, waiting till the awakening of their little charge should permit them to return. "You wouldn't say so, if you was me, though," said the elder; "you dunno' what it is to be like me! I've no peace of my life at home, and I shan't stop, I've made up my mind. See, I'm no better dressed than a beggar-boy. Father gives her enough of money, but it all goes so He put his hand to his mouth, tossing back his head, to imitate the act of drinking. "Yes, I shall go to sea; I shall be all right there; and when I'm gone, they won't be having words about me, that's a comfort!" "I'm sorry you're going, Will. I like you best of any in the village." "We've been good friends, Phil, haven't we? Though we did fight at first. We shan't fight again, eh?" "No, Will!" (There was a pause.) Presently. "Suppose-only suppose, you know-that I was to come back in a many years, with lots of money, from India, or America, and you was a man, and Rose was a young lady, and suppose-if she didn't mind-she was to be my wife, and we was all to live together with your mother; and that my mother was dead-eh, Phil?" "Yes: but what makes you go to sea instead of anything else?" "Why what else is there a man can do? See in the towns there, where they go to the warehouses and the mills, what a wretched life it is. Look at Dick Morse, a fine chap as he was, when his uncle took him to his mill at Bolton, and see now-why you wouldn't think he was half my age, to look at him, so thin and little; and he's two years older than me. Oh I like the free air and the sky, I do Phil, and the sunshine I couldn't breathe shut up in a shop! Ah! when I used to go out fishing with grandfather in his big boat-that was fine! Ah, Phil, if I'd known you then!" here is he now ?" A BOY'S SORROW. 95 "Oh, he's dead, poor fellow! He died just before mother; he was her father, and his was the last boat as fished hereabouts at all. A man at Liverpool bought it; and I mean to buy it again, as soon as I've got money enough. Grandfather could remember the smugglers; and he used to tell me about Piert and his man. It was him told me about the lady as was murdered at Birdiethorn; and about the groaning" "Hush!" said Philip, raising his hand-" Rose is waking." With a toss of her arm, and a sigh ending in a laugh, the little fairy awoke, and sat up; rubbed her two eyes, looked at her two guardians, and laughed again. "I fought I was in bed, my Phil," she said, as he came to her side. "Well, so you was in a bed, I think," he replied, lifting her to her feet, and taking up the friendly jackets, &c., while Rose gathered her treasures; and all prepared to start. Here a little difficulty occurred. Rose's foot was asleep, and Will volunteered to carry her, but the child peremptorily refused. Then, her brother most willingly accepting the office, the collected curiosities must perforce be consigned to his companion, who gladly took charge of them, and carried them tenderly; while little Rose watched him, over her brother's shoulder, with jealous anxiety, and availed herself of the first opportunity to take to her feet and some part of her riches again. At the gate of Birdiethorn, Will Darby left them; with a heartier good-bye and shake of the hand than boys are wont to part with: and even little Rose, for a wonder, gave him her hand, though with a hasty gesture. She was within the house when the lad turned his head at the top of the lane, and took a last look at the cottage. “I wonder if I shall ever see them again ?" he half said, half thought to himself. "Mother!" said Philip, as he sat by her side that evening, when little Rose had danced and played herself to sleep and to bed, "mother, what do you think? Will Darby says that once a great smuggler lived here, and he had a cave in the rock, where he used to hide up heaps and heaps of things, and once he took a ship with a beautiful lady in it; and everybody was killed but the lady, and he brought her here; and took away her beautiful chains and gold things; and then he shut her up, and starved her, and she pined away, and moaned, and cried; and at last she was almost dead, and they brought her out on the rock, and she saw the dead body of her husband that the sea had washed up, and she got away from them and threw herself into the water, and they got her out and then they fought; and one of them stabbed her, and threw her into the sea; and she was drowned; but she was thrown up again by the waves, mother, and laid in among those bramble-thorns; and there she was for a long while dead; till the winds and the waves washed her away: and her white clothes and her long hair were left sticking in the thorns; oh! for a long long while-and-wasn't it horrid, mother?" "If it were true; but I do not think it is." "Will says his grandfather told him and this was called something else, mother; I forget-not Birdiethorn." "Oh, my dear, your own sense may tell you the reason of that name; it could hardly have a better. Hark at them now, Philip; pretty creatures!" "Yes, mother; but he says that when there is going to be anybody die here, there is always a moaning in the cave somewhere under here; and people say it's the lady—' "I thought you said the lady was dead." "Yes, mother." "Then how could she moan, or make any other sound? Use your own sense, my boy, and pray do not listen to any of these foolish stories. I hope you will not let your little sister hear anything so absurd: she is so young: it might frighten a baby, indeed." Philip coloured; he was conscious of not having very comfortable in his own mind. " No, mother; felt I would not let Rosey hear it." "And the less you talk to a boy who tells such tales the better. Our sweet quiet home, does it seem as if anything dreadful had ever happened here, Philip ?" No, mother; but Will Darby did not mean to do wrong; and he'll not tell me any more tales, for he's going to sea." "Yes, mother; he is so miserable at home, he can't stay any longer." "Indeed! And what does his mother say ?" "Oh, it's all through her! She is not his own mother, and she is unkind to him; his father gives for clothes, she mother-in drink!" No. 7. and all the money spends in drink H |