The Squire's Daughter. Hocking Silas Kitto

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СКАЧАТЬ shook his head dubiously, and for several minutes they tramped along side by side in silence.

      Then David spoke again.

      "It is farewell to-day, my boy. We shall toil in these fields no more."

      "That fact by itself does not trouble me," Ralph said.

      "You do not like farming," his father answered. "You never did; and sometimes I have felt sorry to keep you here, and yet I could not spare you. You have done the work of two, and you have done it for your bare keep."

      "I have done it for the squire," Ralph answered, with a cynical laugh.

      "Ah, well, it is over now, my boy, and we know the worst. In a few years nothing will matter, for we shall all be asleep."

      Ralph glanced suddenly at his father, but quickly withdrew his eyes. There was a look upon his face that hurt him – a look as of some hunted creature that was appealing piteously for life.

      For weeks past Ralph had wished that his father would get angry. If he would only storm and rave at fortune generally, and at the squire in particular, he believed that it would do him good. Such calm and quiet resignation did not seem natural or healthy. Ralph sometimes wondered if what his father predicted had come true – that the loss had broken his heart.

      They reached the outer edge of the farm at length, and David paused in the shadow of a tree.

      "Come here, my boy," he said. And Ralph went and stood by his side. "You see the parlour chimney?" David questioned.

      "Yes."

      "Well, now draw a straight line from this tree to the parlour chimney, and what do you strike?"

      "Well, nothing except a gatepost over there in Stone Close."

      "That's just it. It was while I was digging a pit to sink that post in that I struck the back of the lode."

      "And you say it's rich in tin?"

      "Very. It intersects the big Helvin lode at that point, and the junction makes for wealth. There'll be a fortune made out of this little farm some day – not out of what grows on the surface, but out of what is dug up from underground."

      "And in which direction does the lode run?"

      "Due east and west. We are standing on it now, and it passes under the house."

      "Then it passes under Peter Ladock's farm also?" Ralph questioned. And he turned and looked over the boundary hedge across their neighbour's farm.

      "Ay; but the lode's no use out there," David said.

      "Why?"

      "Well, you see, 'tisn't mineral-bearing strata, that's all. I dug a pit just where you are standing, and came upon the lode two feet below the surface. But there's no tin in it here scarcely. It's the same lode that the spring comes out of down in the delf, and I've sampled it there. But all along that high ridge where it cuts through the Helvin it's richer than anything I know in this part of the county."

      "But the tin might give out as you sink."

      "It might, but it would be something unheard of, if it did. If I know anything about mining – and I think I know a bit – that lode will be twenty per cent. richer a hundred fathoms down than it is at the surface."

      "Oh, well!" Ralph said, with a sigh, "rich or poor, it can make no difference to us."

      "Perhaps not – perhaps not," David said wistfully. "But it may be valuable to somebody some day. I have passed the secret to you. Some day you may pass it on to another. The future is with God," and he drew a long breath, and turned his face toward home, which in a few hours would be his home no more.

      Ralph turned his face in another direction.

      "I think I will go on to St. Goram," he said, "and see how they are getting on with the cottage. You see we have to move into it to-morrow."

      "As you will," David answered, and he strode away across the stubble.

      Ralph struck across the fields into Dingley Bottom, and then up the gentle slant toward Treliskey Plantation. When he reached the stile he rested for several minutes, and recalled the meeting and conversation between Dorothy Hamblyn and himself. How long ago it seemed, and how much had happened since then.

      Though he loathed the very name of Hamblyn, he was, nevertheless, thankful that the squire's daughter was getting slowly better. She had been seen once or twice in St. Goram in a bath-chair, drawn by a donkey. "Looking very pale and so much older," the villagers said.

      By all the rules of logic and common sense, Ralph felt that he ought not only to hate the squire, but everybody belonging to him. Sir John was the tyrant of the parish, the oppressor of the poor, the obstructor of everything that was for the good of the people, and no doubt his daughter had inherited his temper and disposition; while as for the son, people said that he gave promise of being worse than his father.

      But for some reason Ralph was never able to work up any angry feeling against Dorothy. He hardly knew why. She had given evidence of being as imperious and dictatorial as any autocrat could desire. She had spoken to him as if he were her stable boy.

      And yet —

      He recalled how he had rested her fair head upon his lap, how he had carried her in his arms and felt her heart beating feebly against his, how he had given her to drink down in the hollow, and when he lifted her up again she clasped her arms feebly about his neck, and he felt her cheek almost close to his.

      It is true he did not know then that she was the squire's daughter, and so he let his sympathies go out to her unawares. But the curious thing was he had not been able to recall his sympathy, though he had discovered directly after that she was the daughter of the man he hated above all others.

      As he made his way across the broad and billowy common towards the high road, he found himself wondering what Lord Probus was like. By all the laws and considerations of self-interest, he ought to have been wondering how he and his father were to earn their living – for, as yet, that was a problem that neither of them had solved. But for a moment it was a relief to forget the sorrowful side of life, and think of something else. And, as he had carried Dorothy Hamblyn in his arms every step of the way down the high road, it was the most natural thing in the world that his thoughts should turn in her direction, and from her to the man she had promised to marry.

      For some reason or other he felt a little thrill of satisfaction that the wedding had not taken place, and that there was no prospect of its taking place for several months to come.

      Not that it could possibly make any difference to him; only he did not see why the rich and strong should always have their heart's desire, while others, who had as much right to live as they had, were cheated all along the line.

      Who Lord Probus was Ralph had not the slightest idea. He was a comparatively new importation. He had bought Rostrevor Castle from the Penwarricks, who had fallen upon evil times, and had restored it at great expense. But beyond that Ralph knew nothing.

      That he was a young man Ralph took for granted. An elderly bachelor would not want to marry, and a young girl like Dorothy Hamblyn would never dream of marrying an elderly man.

      To Ralph Penlogan it seemed almost a sin that a mere child, as Dorothy seemed to be, should think of marriage at all. But since she was going to СКАЧАТЬ