'He saw t' woman wi t' fish's tail--'at's what he saw,' said Louie, shrilly.

Reuben took no notice. He was sunk in silent reverie poking at his pipe. In spite of his confidence in the Almighty's increased goodwill towards the present dispensation, he was not prepared to say for certain what 'Lias Dawson did or didn't see.

'n.o.bory should goo an meddle wi Satan,' he repeated slowly after an interval; and then opening the yard gate he went off on his usual Sunday walk over the moors to have a look at his more distant sheep.

Davy stood intently looking after him; so did Louie. She had clasped her hands behind her head, her eyes were wide, her look and att.i.tude all eagerness. She was putting two and two together--her uncle's promise and the mermaid story as the Manchester man had delivered it. You had but to see her and wish, and, according to the Manchester man and his book, you got your wish. The child's hatred of sermons and ministers had not touched her capacity for belief of this sort in the least. She believed feverishly, and was enraged with David for setting up a rival creed, and with her uncle for endorsing it.

David turned and walked towards the farmyard. Louie followed him, and tapped him peremptorily on the arm. 'I'm gooin up theer Easter Eve--Sat.u.r.day week'--and she pointed over her shoulder to the Scout.

'Gells conno be out neets,' said David firmly; 'if I goo I can tell yo.'

'Yo'll not goo without me--I'd tell Aunt Hannah!'

'Yo've naw moor sense nor rotten sticks!' said David, angrily.

'Yo'll get your death, an Aunt Hannah 'll be stick stock mad wi boath on us. If I goo she'll niver find out.'

Louie hesitated a moment. To provoke Aunt Hannah too much might, indeed, endanger the blue frock. But daring and curiosity triumphed.

'I doan't care!' she said, tossing her head; 'I'm gooin.'

David slammed the yard gate, and, hiding himself in a corner of the cowhouse, fell into moody meditations. It took all the tragic and mysterious edge off an adventure he had set his heart on that Louie should insist on going too. But there was no help for it. Next day they planned it together.

CHAPTER V

'Reuben, ha yo seen t' childer?' inquired Aunt Hannah, poking her head round the door, so as to be heard by her husband, who was sitting outside cobbling at a bit of broken harness.

'Noa; niver seed un since dinner.'

'They went down to Clough End, two o'clock about, for t' bread, an I've yerd nothin ov em since. Coom in to your tay, Reuben! I'll keep nothin waitin for them! They may goo empty if they conno keep time!'

Reuben went in. An hour later the husband and wife came out together, and stood looking down the steep road leading to the town.

'Just cast your eye on aw them stockins waitin to be mended,' said Hannah, angrily, turning back to the kitchen, and pointing to a chair piled with various garments. 'That's why she doon it, I spose.

I'll be even wi her! It's a poor soart of a supper she'll get this neet, or he noather. An her stomach aw she cares for!'

Reuben wandered down into the road, strolled up and down for nearly an hour, while the sun set and the light waned, went as far as the corner by Wigson's farm, asked a pa.s.ser-by, saw and heard nothing, and came back, shaking his head in answer to his wife's shrill interrogations.

'Wal, if I doan't gie Louie a good smackin,' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hannah, exasperated; and she was just going back into the house when an exclamation from Reuben stopped her; instead, she ran out to him, holding on her cap against the east wind.

'Look theer,' he said, pointing; 'what iver is them two up to?'

For suddenly he had noticed outside the gate leading into the field a basket lying on the ground against the wall. The two peered at it with amazement, for it was their own basket, and in it reposed the loaves David had been told to bring back from Clough End, while on the top lay a couple of cotton reels and a card of mending which Louie had been instructed to buy for her aunt.

After a moment Reuben looked up, his face working.

'I'm thinkin, Hannah, they'n roon away!'

It seemed to him as he spoke that such a possibility had been always in his mind. And during the past week there had been much bad blood between aunt and niece. Twice had the child gone to bed supperless, and yesterday, for some impertinence, Hannah had given her a blow, the marks of which on her cheek Reuben had watched guiltily all day. At night he had dreamed of Sandy. Since Mr.

Ancrum had set him thinking, and so stirred his conscience in various indirect and unforeseen ways, Sandy had been a terror to him; the dead man had gained a mysterious hold on the living.

'Roon away!' repeated Hannah scornfully; 'whar ud they roon to?

They're just at soom o' their divilments, 'at's what they are. An if yo doan't tak a stick to boath on them when they coom back, _I will_, soa theer, Reuben Grieve. Yo niver had no sperrit wi 'em--niver--and that's yan reason why they've grown up soa ramjam full o' wickedness.'

It relieved her to abuse her husband. Reuben said nothing, but hung over the wall, straining his eyes into the gathering darkness. The wooded sides of the great moor which enclosed the valley to the north were fading into dimness, and to the east, above the ridge of Kinder Low, a young moon was rising. The black steep wall of the Scout was swiftly taking to itself that majesty which all mountains win from the approach of night. Involuntarily, Reuben held his breath, listening, hungering for the sound of children's voices on the still air. Nothing--but a few intermittent bird notes and the eternal hurry of water from the moorland to the plain.

There was a step on the road, and a man pa.s.sed whistling.

'Jim Wigson!' shouted Hannah, 'is that yo, Jim?'

The man opened the yard gate, and came through to them. Jim was the eldest son of the neighbouring farmer, whose girls were Louie's only companions. He was a full-blooded swaggering youth, with whom David was generally on bad terms. David despised him for an oaf who could neither read nor write, and hated him for a bully.

He grinned when Hannah asked him questions about the truants.

'Why, they're gone to Edale, th' yoong rascots, I'll uphowd yo!

There's a parcel o' gipsies there tellin fortunes, an lots o' foak ha gone ower there to-day. You may mak your mind up they've gone to Edale. That Louie's a limb, she is. She's got s.p.u.n.k enough to waak to Lunnon if she'd a mind. Oh, they'll be back here soon enough, trust 'em.'

I shut _my_ door at nine o'clock,' said Hannah, grimly. 'Them as cooms after that, may sleep as they can.'

'Well, that'll be sharp wark for th' eyes if they're gone to Edale,'

said Jim, with a laugh. 'Its a good step fro here to Edale.'

'Aye, an soom o' 't bad ground,' said Reuben uneasily--'vara bad ground.'

'Aye, it's not good walkin, neets. If they conno see their way when they get to the top o' t' Downfall, they'll stay theer till it gets mornin, if they've ony sort o' gumption. But, bless yo, it bean't gooin to be a dark neet, '--and he pointed to the moon. 'They'll be here afore yoo goo to bed. An if yo want onybody to help yo gie Davy a bastin, just coo me, Mr. Grieve. Good neet to yo.'

Reuben fidgeted restlessly all the evening. Towards nine he went out on the pretext of seeing to a cow that had lately calved and was in a weakly state. He gave the animal her food and clean litter, doing everything more clumsily than usual. Then he went into the stable and groped about for a lantern that stood in the corner.

He found it, slipped through the farmyard into the lane, and then lit it out of sight of the house.

'It's bad ground top o' t' Downfall,' he said to himself, apologetically, as he guiltily opened the gate on to the moor--'varra bad ground.'

Hanna shut her door that night neither at nine nor at ten. For by the latter hour the master of the house was still absent, and nowhere to be found, in spite of repeated calls from the door and up the lane. Hannah guessed where he had gone without much difficulty; but her guess only raised her wrath to a white heat.

Troublesome brats Sandy's children had always been--Louie more especially--but they had never perpetrated any such overt act of rebellion as this before, and the dour, tyrannical woman was filled with a kind of silent frenzy as she thought of her husband going out to welcome the wanderers.

'It's a quare kind o' fatted calf they'll get when _I_ lay hands on 'em,' she thought to herself as she stood at the front door, in the cold darkness, listening.

Meanwhile David and Louie, high up on the side of Kinder Scout, were speculating with a fearful joy as to what might be happening at the farm. The manner of their escape had cost them much thought.

Should they slip out of the front door instead of going to bed? But the woodwork of the farm was old and creaking, and the bolts and bars heavy. They were generally secured before supper by Hannah herself, and, though they might be surrept.i.tiously oiled, the children despaired--considering how close the kitchen was to the front door--of getting out without rousing Hannah's sharp ears.

Other projects, in which windows and ropes played a part, were discussed. David held strongly that he alone could have managed any one of them, but he declined flatly to attempt them with a 'gell.'

In the same way he alone could have made his way up the Scout and over the river in the dark. But who'd try it with a 'gell'?

The boy's natural conviction of the uselessness of 'gells' was never more disagreeably expressed than on this occasion. But he could not shake Louie off. She pinched him when he enraged her beyond bounds, but she never wavered in her determination to go too.

Finally they decided to brave Aunt Hannah and take the consequences. They meant to be out all night in hiding, and in the morning they would come back and take their beatings. David comfortably reflected that Uncle Reuben couldn't do him much harm, and, though Louie could hardly flatter herself so far, her tone, also, in the matter was philosophical.