The Lone Hand E-Book

Harold Bindloss

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Mark was an engineer and is currently out of work. The landscape was colorless and dreary, but Mark was young, and after the pulsating workshop he liked the space and tranquility. The Croziers owned the soil they cultivated on the hills. They held tenaciously everything that belongs to them

Leseprobe

Contents

I. Sea Fog

II. The Spring Tide

III. The Millhouse

IV. Isaac Hesitates

V. Useful Friends

VI. Mark Follows His Bent

VII. The Flood

VIII. An Amateur Fireman

IX. Mark Finishes His Job

X. The Dominant Partner

XI. Mark Sees His Line

XII. Tranquillity

XIII. The Sawmill

XIV. Miss Wellwin Investigates

XV. The Burst Tube

XVI. Pictures of the Woods

XVII. Mark Goes North

XVIII. The Woods

XIX. Mark Finds His Man

XX. Turnbull's Story

XXI. Mark Follows the Clue

XXII. Isaac's Soft Spot

XXIII. Isaac's Luck Turns

XXIV. A Daleswoman

XXV. Reaction

XXVI. Flora Meddles

XXVII. The Breaking Strain

XXVIII. A Modern Stoic

XXIX. The Last Interview

XXX. The Head of the House

XXXI. Mark's Inheritance

CHAPTER I

SEA FOG

Dusk had begun to fall, but for February the evening was mild. A gentle southwest wind blew across the Solway flats, and Mark Crozier’s long rubber boots, thick clothes, and fishing mackintosh embarrassed him. The road was soft and he carried a heavy gun, cartridges, some sandwiches, a vacuum flask, and pajamas in his waterproof game-bag. Moreover, if the lag geese were on the marshes, he might carry his load all night. If not, he hoped to reach an inn he knew before the landlord went to bed. In the morning, he must look over the Howbarrow sheep.

The flock was his uncle’s, Isaac Crozier’s; Mark himself was an engineer, and at present out of a job. All the same, he sprang from yeoman stock and Howbarrow, twenty miles off, was for long his father’s. The old house occupied a hollow in the bleak Border hills, where even the hardy black-faced sheep got thin in winter, and Mark had engaged to see how the flock had thriven on the salt-marsh grass.

Two or three miles off, dark woods cut the long flats rolling back to the Scottish hills; in front, the plain was level as the sea and melted into the blurred horizon. Water glimmered in the flooded ditch along the road, the sky was gray, and a gray trail of smoke floated across the boggy field from a stack of burning thorns. The landscape was colorless and dreary, but Mark was young, and after the throbbing workshop, he liked the spaciousness and calm. Then, he carried a good gun, and loneliness and gloom do not bother a dalesman.

The Croziers owned the soil they cultivated in the uplands where Northumbria and Scotland join, but they were not gentlemen farmers. The eldest son took Howbarrow; the younger sons got a small sum, and as a rule, prospered in the market towns. It was typical that they engaged in trade and carried scriptural names. They were shopkeepers, auctioneers, cattle-salesmen, and so forth, and although they went to good schools, none was remarkably cultivated.

For the most part, the Croziers were strongly built, stubborn, laborious, and frugal. None was keen to dispute, but they did not forgive an injury, and they held tenaciously all that was theirs. In the towns they used colloquial English; in the hills their talk was marked by words Danish and Frisian pirates had carried across the North Sea. After a thousand years, the Border dalesmen are frankly Vikings.

By contrast with his relations’ sober frugality, Mark’s father, Thomas Crozier, was characterized by a humorous extravagance that his elder son inherited. Both were dead, and Thomas’s half-brother, Isaac, now ruled at Howbarrow. Mark had got three or four hundred pounds, which had melted during his apprenticeship at a Newcastle foundry. Now the foundry was shut and he looked about for a post.

In the meantime, he hoped to shoot a goose, and when he passed a cluster of white houses he pulled out his watch. Six o’clock, and the night was going to be dark! Well, if he did not find the geese in two or three hours, he must come back to the inn, where a fire burned cheerfully behind the curtains.

The village melted in the gloom, the light wind touched the naked branches in a wood, and Mark, pushing on, threw back the gate at the end of a muddy lane. In front, as far as he could see, level grass, pierced by a wide river-channel, rolled back into the growing dark. In the distance, he heard plover and black-backed gulls call.

For a time he plowed through belts of rushes, and then splashed across the short salt-grass. Sheep, with draggled wool, scattered before his advance, and flitting redshanks screamed. The grass was boggy, and one could not go straight, because a salt marsh is drained by miry creeks, and their tributary runners loop and twist. Some were spanned by rude, sod-covered bridges, but since two converging rivers bordered the green flat, Mark’s plan was, as far as possible, to keep the watershed.

At length, by a pool, he saw feathers and the marks of broad webbed feet. The geese had fed there recently and might come back, and the bank of a neighboring creek was a good spot to hide. Mark took a square of oilcloth from his bag, and pulling a turf from the bank, sat down; the gun on his knee, and his rubber boots in the mud. If his luck were good, he might get a shot, but he might wait for daybreak and not see a goose. Indeed, since the moon was new, he must rather use his ears than his eyes. The gray lag is a noisy bird and the creak of its broad wings carries far.

For a time, all was quiet. Thin vapor, moving from the southwest, floated across the sky, and Mark saw the flats got blurred. Fog might be awkward, but when the tide flowed across the sands a breeze ought to spring up and the night would clear. He lighted his pipe and began to muse.

On a February night ten years since, his father and a herd went out to move some sheep. A snowstorm raged across the moors, but Crozier had long fronted the hardest weather England knows. Although he was forced to cross a flooded burn and was entangled in the drifts, he saved most of his flock, and crawling home half-frozen in the bitter morning, died two days afterwards. When his widow died, Mark went to the Newcastle foundry, and Jim took the farm. Jim was by five years the older son, but he was young for the load he carried. Although they had thought their father prosperous, he had speculated rashly in cattle and owed his half-brother, Isaac, much.

Jim, however, was hopeful, and since Isaac promised he would not embarrass him, engaged to put all straight. For the most part, Mark was at Newcastle, but Isaac and his wife were much at Howbarrow. He declared that he was not a hard creditor, but his nephew was young, and he wanted, if possible, to get his money back. So far as Mark knew, where Isaac meddled the line he indicated was economically sound, but it began to look as if the job Jim had undertaken was harder than he thought.

Four years since, Jim one February evening started across the moor to shoot ducks at Blackshaw tarn. At nine o’clock he called at the Packhorse Inn, and admitted he had not got a shot and was cramped and cold. He got some hot drink; the landlord declared he could not state how much, and Turnbull, the Howbarrow cowman, did not remember, although he reckoned Mr. Crozier had had enough. At the bottom of Mark’s trunk was a market town newspaper, in which the report of the inquest occupied a column.

Jim refused to wait for Turnbull, who had driven some cattle up the dale. He set off in the fog across the moor, and in the morning a herd found him, broken by the fall, in a limestone quarry half a mile from Howbarrow.

It looked as if that was all anybody knew, and the coroner was satisfied, but somehow Mark was not. For one thing, of the three or four men at the Packhorse only Turnbull thought his master had perhaps used too much liquor. Well, Jim was not altogether abstemious, but Mark had not known him drunk. Then, Isaac and his wife were at the farm, and when the coroner inquired why he waited for morning, he replied, as if unwillingly, that his nephew sometimes was away at night.

Mark doubted. When Jim was not at Howbarrow everybody knew he was at the cattle sales in the market town and he stopped at the George. Yet the replies accounted for the accident and for his lying where he fell until daybreak. When the trustees investigated, Mark got a fresh knock. The debt Jim inherited had got larger, and they agreed for Isaac to take the farm. Their lawyer imagined one could not dispute his claim and advised Mark to take the small sum he offered. Mark did not like his uncle’s tight-lipped, parsimonious wife; but when he got a holiday Howbarrow was home. Anyhow, it was done with four years since, and he must concentrate on getting a job.

Curlew called. The flock was flying low and fast; one heard the fanning wings, but when Mark jumped up they circled and were gone. Now he was on his feet, he saw the mist got thicker. All was very quiet, but in the distance something throbbed like a train on a bridge. Mark pulled out his watch and rubbed a match. He imagined the southwest wind blew fresh in the Irish Sea and pushed the surf across the Solway shoals, seven or eight miles off. For him to hear the tide’s advance was ominous, and in about two hours it would reach the marsh. Solway tides flow savagely, the moon was new, and when the current ran up the creeks he must not be on the marsh. Sometimes, before a gale reached the firth, the water rose several feet above its calculated level.

For a few minutes he pondered. He was on the watershed, and nearer an inn on the north shore than the village he had passed. His plan was to find the river on the north side of the marsh, and since he fronted west, he must follow the first large creek running down on his right hand.

After five or ten minutes, he plunged from a rotten bank and found a creek before he thought. The sticky mud held his boots, and, snapping the cartridges from his gun, he used the butt to help him up the slope. He began to doubt if he would get a shot, but if he did so, a clot of mud at the muzzle might tear the barrel. Crawling out, rather shaken and breathing hard, he followed the creek, although every hundred yards he was forced to circle round a crooked tributary.

At length, he reached the marsh-top and looked down on a belt of sand. He had thought to see water shine, but he did not. The mist flowed past him and since the wind was in his face, he fronted southwest. He, however, ought to have fronted north. Baffled by the fog, instead of crossing the marsh, he had come back to the side from which he started. He might follow the bank to the end of the peninsula, and then keep the other side, but he thought the end two or three miles off, the creeks were numerous, and where they crossed the sands the bottom was treacherous. Besides, the wind was freshening.

Mark swore. The moon was new, and the wind helped the tide. By and by the current would flow across the lower belts of marsh. Well, when the salt-grass melted in the flood he must not be there; and, trying to keep the wind on his left shoulder, he steered north. For a time, the ground was firm and level; and then he stopped by a gully three or four feet deep. It looked as if he had reached the head of another creek and the creek went north. The trouble was, if he tried to follow it to the sands, he must cross the network of runners that fed the main channel. All the same, he must not stop and ponder. The throb too of the advancing tide had got ominously loud, and February was not a lucky month for the Croziers.

He jumped two or three runners; and then a rotten bank broke and, sliding down a steep incline, he plunged into a foot of water and holding mud. When he scrambled up the other side he was frankly anxious. He was now entangled among the creek’s numerous forks, but since it went to the north sands, he must push across its basin. Jumping, and wading where he was forced, he savagely plowed ahead. His thick clothes embarrassed him and his skin was wet by sweat, but speed was important, and when he reached firm ground he began to run.

After a few minutes, his advanced foot got no support, and he plunged down into the dark. When he stopped with an awkward jolt, water splashed, and since he could not reach the top, he knew he was in the main creek’s channel. The mud, however, was not remarkably soft, and he had stuck to his gun. He doubted if he could get up the bank, and he kept the channel. By and by the marsh rolled back and wet sand shone in front.

Mark had crossed the peninsula, but that was all he knew, and he must yet cross the creek. Although he doubted if the water was a foot deep, the sand the current flowed across was treacherous, and sometimes cattle were mired. For a hundred yards, he followed the water; and then set his mouth and pushed across. His long boots sank in the yielding bottom, his legs got cold, and he knew the water had run over the top of one boot. Then his other leg got cold, and although he floundered savagely, the quicksand held his feet. If he stopped a few moments longer, he might stop for good, and, leaning forward, he pushed down the gun. The flat heel-plate gave him some support; he pulled his boots from the clinging stuff, found firmer bottom, and splashed ahead. When he stopped, on hard, ribbed sand, his heart thumped and to get his breath hurt.

The wind was strong and the fog rolled across the flats in waves, but Mark saw a belt of sky. He heard geese; a gaggle was flying up the firth. Then oyster-catchers screamed, redshanks whistled, and wings beat in the dark. Something had disturbed the feeding birds, and two or three hundred yards off a gun exploded. Mark heard two quick shots and then another. If the sportsman had tried to stop a cripple, he would not get a third shot. Somebody on the sands was lost, and signaled for help.

Mark shouted, and after a time an indistinct object loomed in the fog. The queer thing was, now he knew the fog baffled another, his anxiety began to go.

“Hallo!” said the stranger. “To hear a shout was some relief. I want to make the waterfoot. Am I heading right?”

“On the whole, I think not,” Mark replied. “I imagine you are steering down the firth for Scotland.”

“Then, you know where you are?”

“To some extent, although I would not bet on it,” said Mark. “Anyhow, the waterfoot inn’s my object, and if you are a stranger–”

“I certainly am; I’m stopping at the inn, and when a shepherd fellow reckoned the geese were about, the landlord loaned me a gun. Back home, I’ve hunted brant geese on the sloos. Well, I started across the sands and the fog swallowed me.”

Mark knew the other was young and thought him American.

“Oh, well,” he said, “I know where the marsh-top is and hope before very long to reach firm ground.”

For the most part, they kept the marsh-top, although they were forced to flounder through some creeks. The wind was getting stronger, the fog got thin, and at length a misty flickering beam pierced the gloom.

“A motor-bus,” said Mark and felt the rushes under his feet. “We ought soon to see a fence.”

The fence was on the other side of a wide ditch where tall reeds grew, but Mark knew where he was and found a plank bridge. They crossed some fields in the melting fog, and when they reached a wet lane a motor’s lights flashed behind the trees not far ahead.

CHAPTER II

THE SPRING TIDE

A waitress carried off the plates and Mark went to an easy-chair. A cheerful fire snapped in the old-fashioned grate, and across the hearth-rug the stranger he had met on the sands rolled a cigarette. Red curtains covered the windows, and the furniture was old, for the inn was built when mail-coaches and post-chaises took the road for Scotland along the Solway shore. Now swift road-borne traffic again rolled by its gate. Mark heard wheels and a motor-bus’s horn.

Since he had satisfied his appetite, he studied his companion. The other was an athletic young fellow, tall but not heavily built, and his glance was alert and frank. Mark thought his boots and clothes American. Mark had not a change of clothes, but he had borrowed the landlord’s slippers, and he stretched his legs to the fire. After a strenuous evening, he was entitled to go slack.

“Will you take a ready-made cigarette?” he asked. “No, thanks,” said the other. “When I was in the woods I rolled all I used, and the habit sticks.” He balanced the neatly rolled cigarette. “Pretty good! Can you beat it?”

“I could not,” Mark admitted. “You’re American?”

The young fellow gave him a twinkling glance.

“The next thing. I’m Canadian; although you might not spot it, there’s a difference. Anyhow, reserve is not our habit, and if I had not met up with you, I might have roamed about the sands until the tide got me. I guess I have a card–”

He found a card, and Mark read:

Robert WellwinDuquesne Lumber CompanyExport Products

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m Mark Crozier, until recently of Newcastle, but now at Howbarrow, about twenty miles off. Are you in this country for business?”

Wellwin studied him. Crozier was large, but he was not, like some large men, slow; Wellwin had crossed the treacherous sands with him. His look was calm, and when he fronted one he tilted his head a little and squarely met one’s glance. But for his twinkle, Wellwin might have thought him dull. He talked in a quiet voice. Not a Canadian type; but somehow Wellwin knew him a good sort.

“When I pulled out from Glasgow my business was put across, and the old man cabled I might take a holiday. He’s the Duquesne Company’s president. When I graduated at Toronto I went to the woods, and studied slashing and hauling logs at the winter camps. Then I was at the mill, where we rip the stuff for lumber, and now I’m working through the salesman gang. Well, my mother’s folk were Borderers, and I thought I’d see the Solway and the Roman wall. The country’s interesting, although it’s surely wet. Anyhow, I mustn’t bore you. Are you a farmer?”

“Not long since I was an engineer’s draughtsman, but the foundry shut down and the heavy machinery trade is bad. I’d thought about starting a car repair-shop; but I don’t yet know. One needs some capital and money is hard to get.”

“Sure thing!” Wellwin agreed. “But have you thought about the Dominion? If you have not, you might. So long as you are willing to sweat, it’s a pretty good country.”

“I’ll wait,” said Mark. “On the English Border, we are not an impulsive lot, and I doubt if the Scots are very rash.”

For a few minutes they smoked. The river brawled and they heard the wind in the trees. A motor-lorry clanged across a bridge, and when the roll of wheels got faint a fresh noise throbbed about the inn. Wellwin went to the window and pushed the casement back. A dull rumble, something like a roll of drums, pulsated in the dark.

“An aeroplane? Or a big express freight laboring up-grade?”

“The Solway tide, pushed up the firth by a western gale! Sometimes it advances in a breaking wave two or three feet high.”

Wellwin fastened the window and stretched his legs to the fire.

“I’m content to be where I am. When you heard my gun I was lucky. But there is no gale.”

“The gale will arrive by morning and lift the tide three or four feet. In fact, after breakfast I must see that the herds move my uncle’s sheep. I don’t know if you would be interested, but our dogs are clever.”

“So long as the job is on dry ground, I’d like to watch; I’m not going on the sands,” said Wellwin, firmly.

For a time they smoked and talked. Although their types were different, each was conscious of a queer attraction. For the most part, youth is trustful and friendship springs fast.

“When I know the sheep are safe, I must get back to Howbarrow,” Mark said by and by. “Hadrian’s wall is not far off, and if you’d like the excursion, we might visit a spot where the Picts broke through, and a famous camp. Then I could show you an older rampart that puzzles the antiquaries. The bogs, however, are numerous, and the inns are not remarkably good.”

Wellwin laughed and got up.

“When you have lived at a loggers’ camp and mushed along the river trails in the melting snow, you’re not fastidious. We’ll fix things in the morning. I guess it’s time for bed.”

Breakfast was served at daybreak, and soon afterwards Mark and Wellwin left the inn and plowed across the wet fields. The morning was gray, the light was dim, and a savage wind drove low-flying scud across the sky. When Mark pulled out his watch behind a battered hedge, it was nine o’clock, but two or three miles off all was indistinct.

The marsh, a tapering, sage-green peninsula, pierced the vague sands. The sands were colorless, but in some places their wet surface glimmered with faint reflected light. Whistling curlew sped inland before the gale. A flock of clamorous gulls got up from a pool, circled on wings that for a moment were white and distinct, and then melted in the gloom. About a mile in front, patches of dingy color dotted the marsh. The patches moved, and in the background Mark saw two or three speeding objects.

“The herds have got to work,” he said. “Since the sheep are down on the low end, the men have rather an awkward job. Our lot’s about two hundred, but I imagine there’s a thousand on the marsh. However, the tide will not reach the sands for two hours, and I dare say we can help.”

“How much is a sheep worth?” Wellwin inquired.

“Round about two pounds, for the small hill sorts.”

Wellwin calculated. “Two thousand dollars. A useful wad, and straight reckoning! Pounds, shillings, and pence; hundredweights, quarters, and pounds, and then some, leave a Canadian to guess. At Glasgow I was forced to buy me a schooboy’s arithmetic book–But I expect you want to get busy.”

They crossed the low marsh, and stopped where two men sheltered from the wind behind a broken bank. The herds were big, lean fellows and their clothes had faded to the color of dry soil. One, like Mark, was frankly Saxon; the other, although his eyes were gray, was the old, thin-faced Cumbrian type. His pointed chin and long head were perhaps inherited from the Picts. The herds looked at Mark inquiringly, and he told them who he was.

In front, three or four hundred small sheep slowly followed the bank of a circling creek. The wind blew back their stained fleeces, and where the clean wool showed it looked as if they were flayed. The flock was compact, for a dog turned back stragglers. Other sheep were scattered about the marsh, and at one spot a number plunged into a hollow by a creek and vanished. A dog jumped on some broken turf and fronted the herds, as if it waited for an order.

“Get away back, Nell!” one shouted, and the dog went off at top speed.

“You are gathering them up,” said Mark.

“T’ black-faces ho’d togedder; yan can han’le them. T’ d–Herdwicks are as wild as hawks.”

“How many were there in the bunch that took the creek?”

“A score and tyan, I doot they’ll scatter,” the herd replied. He whistled and shouted: “Fetch on, Nell!”

“I’d have guessed a dozen. They were over the bank like a flash,” Wellwin remarked.

A dog barked and the sheep leaped from a gully. The other herd waved his arms, and two dogs sped across the grass and vanished in broken ground. By and by they reappeared, circling round a straggling gray-faced flock. The herd began to count, and Wellwin looked up with surprise.

“You are pretty obviously British, but for all I can distinguish, the fellow might calculate in Chinese,” he said to Mark.

“We reckon by scores. I believe the numerals are Scandinavian.”

“But who in thunder taught you to count like that?”

“Hakon, King of Norway, or perhaps Hardicanute,” Mark replied with a laugh. “At all events, the first Herdwicks were Viking sheep.”

“You are a queer crowd,” Wellwin remarked. “You stay put for a thousand years!”

“Oh, well,” said Mark, “your gotten and I’ll get me were Elizabethan English. Then in some American towns I believe the mayor is a reeve.”

The gray-faced Herdwicks jointed the larger flock, but did not mix, and Mark and Wellwin took posts to hold them in the bow of the creek. The herds went the other way, and for a time barking dogs and speeding groups of sheep scoured the marsh. Wellwin remarked that the groups got larger, until at length a compact mass, pushed on by the herds and flanked by circling dogs, rolled into the loop. Mark pulled out his watch.

“Ten o’clock! We must be across the hollow spot in an hour.”

“Just that,” the herd agreed, and whistled. “Gan forrad, Bob! Fetch on, Beauty!”

Six hundred sheep rolled along the watershed, where the ground was firmest and the creeks were small; the black-faces together, the Herdwicks straggling on their flank. Splashing in pools and jumping channels, the men directed their advance, and the dogs stopped the groups that tried to break away. So far, all went smoothly, but sometimes Mark turned his head and looked about.

All he saw behind the marsh-top was the dreary sands, through which a river-channel curved. The water broke in angry waves and foam like soapsuds blew along the bank. The current yet went down the firth, but the tide was not far off, and Mark imagined the savage gale drowned the noise of its advance. Moreover, in front the ground sloped to a hollow where the river at one time had pierced the marsh. A large creek, opening to the sands at both ends, drained the hollow, and although the creek was bridged, tributary channels curved about the slopes. When the party reached the top, gray scum in the grass indicated that the tide had recently swept the basin. The channels bothered the sheep. Buffeted by the gale, they stopped, and rolling together in a bleating mass, fronted the dogs. Then a herd in advance of the groups signaled by tossing arms, and began to run.

“Tide’s broken low bridge,” said the other. “We must shift them to north end and there’s nut much time.”

The sheep were frightened and stubborn, and the Herdwicks broke.

“Can ye hold black-faces?” the herd inquired.

“I don’t know,” said Mark. “So long as they’re afraid to cross the creek, we’ll try.”

Wellwin touched him and he looked round. The river-channel in the sands was smooth, as if the current now ran with the wind; but not far off a white-topped wave stretched from bank to bank. The wave rolled up the channel, and where it passed, the sands melted in a surging flood. Before long the flood would sweep the hollow, and Isaac’s sheep were yet scattered about the marsh.

Mark sent Wellwin where he thought he ought to go. The creek the animals dared not cross was behind the compact black-faced flock; for the most part, the sheep were quiet, but now and then a number surged irresolutely about. In the meantime, the herds were occupied, and when for a few moments Wellwin could watch the dogs, he thought the swift animals reasoned like men. A whistle and sometimes a signal from a lifted arm was all the command they got, but the clusters of sheep got larger. The scores soon were fifties and the fifties hundreds, and at length a solid mass of woolly bodies rolled back tumultuously to the other flock.

The sands, however, had vanished and the tide went up the creek. The low marsh would soon be an island, and the island would melt. The north bridge was a mile off, and Mark doubted if they could get there before the flood. Yet, with the deep creek on one side, the sheep, in order to break away, must pass the row of men; and pushed by the dogs, the flock began to surge along the bank.

One dared not stop for the tributaries; where one could not jump, men and draggled animals plowed through the mud. Wellwin’s face was red and his breath was labored. Mark’s skin was wet by sweat, and when he dared he glanced at the creek. The current leaped up the bank, and where but a few minutes since the flock had passed water shone in the grass. Dogs barked, one heard the surf beat the marsh-top and mud-crusted fleeces shake. After a time, a herd signed Mark.

“Ye’ll get in front and turn them t’other side o’ brig. Maybe we’ll win over.”

Mark called Wellwin, and, circling widely round the flock, they came back to the creek. The north bridge stood; but the flood was nearly level with the small birch trunks, there was not a rail, and the turfs that covered the poles were trampled to sticky slime. Mark and Wellwin took their posts a dozen yards behind the bridge, and for a few moments the flock stopped. Then the Herdwicks saw their line across, and by scores and fifties started down the slope.

“Let them gan!” shouted a herd.

The leaders leaped across the bridge, and Mark got his breath. The black-faces were starting, and where one went all would go. But there was the trouble. The bridge was about five feet wide, and six or seven hundred sheep rolled down the incline on a twenty-yard front. The flock charged for the bridge and all could not get across. Moreover, a sheep swims but poorly.

Shouting for Wellwin, Mark jumped into the creek. The current reached his waist, and he thought it would pull his legs from under him. Wellwin, two or three yards off, took the plunge and gave Mark a smile.

“Nothing very fresh, partner; I have handled logs in the rivers of the North. But watch out. We are for it.”

The sheep spilled from the crowded bridge and went up the creek with the flood. None must pass, for the bank farther on was steep; but in front a muddy incline dipped to the water. The swimming animals steered for the spot. Some were carried by, and more fell from the bridge. Struggling stupidly, they collided with Mark, who seized their wool and pushed them across. Fresh sheep, urged by the press behind, took the water, and the herds plunged in. The creek was blocked by struggling animals, held back, as yet, from destruction by four tired men. Three, however, were six-foot Cumbrians, and Wellwin had steered crashing logs down Canadian rapids.

All were savage and breathless. The bottom was treacherous and the flood rose fast. Braced against the current, they somehow kept their feet, shoved back the drifting sheep, and dragged the brutes across. Sometimes the thin-faced herd pulled one from the water, and with a swing of his big shoulders tossed it on the others’ backs.

When Mark imagined they were beaten, two cowmen from a farm across the flats arrived. Six men were now in the water, and where live-stock must be controlled four were experts. By degrees the pressure slackened and the flock got thin. The bridge would carry the sheep, and since the most part were on the other side, Mark floundered across. Wellwin pulled him onto the mud and when they climbed the bank the flock streamed up the sage-green slope.

Half an hour afterward, the group stopped where prickly whinns dotted rising ground.

“We’ll mannish noo,” a herd remarked, and studied the gloomy sky. “The tide is by the top, and if wind drops, she’ll be doon three-fit to-neet. Weel but for the Greenrigg lads, I thowt we were beat at brig.”

Wellwin looked back. The hollow was a lake, and all he saw of the low marsh was a small island, washed by angry surf.

“I reckon I have had enough, and I want a bath,” he said. “My hands are gummed up by sticky grease and my slicker coat smells like–perhaps a tannery is the nearest thing. Anyhow, your relation is two thousand dollars’ worth of mutton to the good.”

Mark smiled. “One likes to be modest, but I imagine our help tipped the beam and my uncle owes me something. However, I have not much grounds to hope he will meet the bill, and in the meantime we’ll steer for the inn.”

CHAPTER III

THE MILLHOUSE

Where a limestone block broke the keen wind Wellwin threw his mackintosh in the heath, and, sitting down, lighted a cigarette. Since they lunched by a lonely tarn he and Mark had plowed across the high watershed from which the rivers run to the Solway and the North Sea. Now the sun was low, Wellwin was satisfied to rest and looked about.

As far as one could see, the moors rolled east, and the sunset touched their tops with pale gold and silver-gray. In the keen spring evening, the landscape struck the note of austerity one senses in the North. In front, a narrow valley pierced the hills, and where the heath and bent-grass rolled down the long slope the brown and gray melted into elusive purple. In the dale the light was blue, and the silver birch-trunks and a long limewashed house by the glimmering river were not altogether white. By contrast with the yellow reflections on the moor-tops, the dim blue hollow was strangely beautiful.

For three days, Wellwin, steered by Mark across moors and bogs, had studied the Emperor Hadrian’s wall, and a rampart the Picts had supposititiously built. Looking down from a huge earth fort, he had watched the rain slant across a valley through which for two hundred years the Scots invasions had flowed and ebbed. He had seen the legions’ mile-castles, broken hypocausts, and gate-tower pavements scored by chariot wheels.

Bob was interested. He liked the Old Country, and began to revise his views about the inhabitants. It looked as if they were not the back numbers he had at one time thought. Their methods were not the methods one used in North America, but after a few transactions with the Glasgow Scots, he admitted they got results. Then he liked the big, quiet English Borderers. Where a Canadian boosted his town and his possessions, they apologized. It looked as if they would sooner listen than talk, but sometimes their slow smile was illuminating. To move them might be hard, but when they got going Bob imagined they went all the way. Mark Crozier was perhaps a good example.

Although Mark was franker than some, Bob sensed a sort of solidity of character; perhaps he meant steadfastness. One felt that his word went and as a rule was not rashly given. Yet sometimes he was humorous and the twinkle in his gray eyes was like the sudden sparkle of a calm pool. In fact, Mark was a regular fellow and Bob would be sorry to let him go. Well, he was entitled to take a holiday and for a few days he might stop at the Packhorse Inn.

By and by Mark pulled out his watch and got up.

“Your inn is three or four miles off, but we’ll stop at the Millhouse. If the doctor is not about, the girls will give us tea.”

“Perhaps I ought not to bother your friends,” said Bob.

“They will not be bothered,” Mark rejoined. “In winter, at all events, strangers are not numerous, and to meet a Canadian will be something fresh.”

They went down across dry bents and bright-green mossy belts, but at the top of a long scree Mark braced his legs and pushed off. The sharp stones flowed in noisy waves about his feet, and where the pitch was steepest he dragged his stick for a brake. Wellwin, following awkwardly, sat down in the stones, rolled across a mossy slab, and when another brought him up crawled to firmer ground. Forty yards below, Mark looked up with a twinkle.

“I expected you to keep the heather,” he remarked.

“Oh, well, you went down,” said Bob. “I expect you see the implication?”

Mark laughed. “The first time, I went down on my stomach, and I have plowed a channel with my head. On the whole, I think your luck was good.”

“I wonder–” said Bob. “The stones are sharp, my clothes were not made in England, and I cannot see my back. Since we are visiting with your friends, you might inspect–”

“You are not notably the worse for wear,” Mark reported. “Anyhow, we are not dining at the Frontenac, and if it’s some comfort, we are rather a frugal than a fashionable lot. A dalesman reckons his clothes should last for three or four years.”

“In Canada, we’d think him dippy,” Wellwin rejoined, and studied the steep slope. “Looks impossible; but you shot the grade all standing, and although I did not, I did come down. Since the important thing’s to arrive in one piece, how d’you judge the pitch?”

“Where stones will lie an active man may go; but before you start you ought to find out if they are held up by the top of a precipice. However, we’ll shove on for the Millhouse.”

Brushing through dead fern, they reached a fence, and crossed a mossy pasture to the road. Behind a dry-stone wall and naked alders, a river brawled; and then silver birches clustered round the white Millhouse. The flagged roof was stained ochre, gray, and green by moss and house-leeks, and for a background the thin, purple birch-twigs cut the sky. The big wheel was gone, but water splashed across the top of the broken weir. Wellwin smelt burning wood and heard sheep bleat. Where he had gone in Canada, all that man had made was new; in the Border dale he felt that time was put back two hundred years.