III
He had looked like a ghost when we went to school after the races; he looked like a hale, hearty man when we got home from the holidays at Michaelmas and to eat the goose. Of course he had had pretty near eight weeks’ spell of idleness and country air at Caramel Cottage. To say the truth, we felt surprised at his being there still.
“Well, it is longer than I meant to stay,” Mr. Reste admitted, when Tod said something of this, “The air has done wonders for me.”
“Why longer? The law courts do not open yet.”
“I had thoughts of going abroad. However, that can stay over for next year.”
“Have you had any shooting?”
“No. I don’t possess a licence.”
It was on the tip of Tod’s tongue, as I could well see, to ask why he did not take out a licence, but he checked it. This little colloquy was held at the Manor gate on Saturday, the day after our return. Miss Barbary was leaving Lena at the usual time, and he had come strolling across the field to meet her. They went away together.
“What did I tell you, Johnny?” said Tod, turning to me, as soon as they were out of hearing. “It is a regular case of over-head-and-ears: cut and dried and pickled.”
“I don’t see what you judge by, Tod.”
“Don’t you! You’ll be a muff to the end, lad. Fancy a fine young fellow like Reste, a man of the world, staying on at that pokey little place of Barbary’s unless he had some strong motive to keep him there! I dare say he pays Barbary well for the accommodation.”
“I dare say Barbary could not afford to entertain him unless he did.”
“He stops there to make love to her. It must be a poor look-out, though, for Katrine, pretty little dimpled girl! As much chance of a wedding, I should say, as of a blue moon.”
“Why not?”
“Why not! Want of funds. I’d start for London, if I were you, Johnny, and set the Thames on fire. A man must be uncommonly hard up when he lets all the birds go beside him for want of taking out a licence.”
They were walking onwards slowly, Mr. Reste bending to talk to her. And of course it will be understood that a good deal of that which I have said, and am about to say, is only related from what came to my knowledge later on.
“Is it true that you had meant to go abroad this year?” Katrine was asking him.
“Yes, I once thought of it,” he answered. “I have friends living at Dieppe, and they wanted me to go to them. But I have stayed on here instead. Another week of it, ten days perhaps, and then I must leave Worcestershire and you, Katrine.”
“But why?”
“Why, to work, my dear little girl. That is getting in arrears shamefully. We are told that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; but all play and no work would have worse results for Jack than dullness. Ah, Katrine, what a world this might be if we could only do as we like in it!”
“When shall you come again?”
“Perhaps never,” he answered, incautiously.
“Never!” she repeated, her face turning white before she could hide it from him. It was a great shock.
“Katrine, my dear,” he said with some emotion, his tones low and earnest, “I could stay at Caramel Cottage for my whole life and never wish to quit it, unless I carried somebody else away from it with me. But there are things which a poor man, a man without money in the present or prospect of it in the future, may not as much as glance at: he must put the temptation from him and hold it at arm’s length. I had a dream the other night,” he added, after a pause: “I thought I was a Q.C. and stood in my silk, haranguing a full bench of judges at Westminster—who listened to me with attentive suavity. When I awoke I burst out laughing.”
“At the contrast it presented to reality?” she breathed.
“Just at that. If I were only making enough to set up a snug little nest of a home, though ever so small, it would be—something: but I am not. And so, Katrine, you see that many things I would do I cannot do; cannot even think of. And there it lies, and there it ends.”
“Yes, I see, Edgar,” she answered, softly sighing.
“Shall you miss me when I am gone?”
Some queer feeling took her throat; she could not speak. Mr. Reste stopped to pick a little pale blue-bell that grew under the hedge.
“I do not know how I shall bear with the loneliness then,” she said in answer, seemingly more to herself than to him, or to the blue sky right before her, on which her eyes were fixed. “And I shall be more afraid when you are no longer in the house.”
“Afraid!” he exclaimed, turning to her in blank surprise. “What are you afraid of, Katrine?”
“It—it is all so solitary for me.... Old Joan is too deaf to be talked to much; and papa is either at work in the garden or shut up in the gun-room, busy with his things. Please don’t laugh at my childishness!”
She had paused, just to get over her embarrassment, the avowal having slipped from her unwittingly. The fact was, poor Katrine Barbary had been rudely awakened from her state of innocent security. Some days back, when in the cottage hut of Mary Standish, for Katrine liked to go about and make friends with the people, that ill-doing husband of Mary’s, Jim, chanced to be at home. Jim had just been had up before the magistrates at Alcester on some suspicion connected with snares and gins, but there was no certain proof forthcoming, and he had to be discharged. Katrine remarked that if she were Jim she should leave off poaching, which must be a very dreadful thing, and frightfully hazardous. Mr. Jim replied that it was not a dreadful thing, nor hazardous either, for them that knew what they were about, and he referred her to her father for confirmation of this assertion. One word led to another. Jim Standish, his ideas loose and lawless, never thought to hurt the young lady by what he disclosed, for he was kind enough when he had no motive to be the contrary, but when Katrine left the hut, she carried with her the terrible knowledge that her father was as fond of poaching as the worst of them. Since then she had lived in a state of chronic terror.
“Yes, it must be very solitary for you,” assented Mr. Reste in a grave tone, and he had no idea that her answer was an evasive one, or its lightness put on; “but I cannot help you, Katrine. Should you ever need counsel, or—or protection in any way, apply for it to your friends at Dyke Manor. They seem kind, good people, and would be strong to aid.”
Turning in at the little side gate as he spoke, they saw Mr. Barbary at work in the garden. He was digging up a plot of ground some seven or eight feet square under the branches of the summer-apple tree, which grew at this upper end of the garden, nearly close to the yard.
“What is he going to plant there, I wonder?” listlessly spoke Mr. Reste, glancing at the freshness of the turned-up mould.
“Winter cabbages, perhaps; but I am sure I don’t know,” returned Katrine. “I do not understand the seasons for planting vegetables as papa does.”
This, as I have just said, was on Saturday. We saw Mr. Reste and Katrine at church the next day: a place Barbary did not often trouble with his presence; and walked with them, on coming out, as far as the two ways lay. Our people liked the look of Edgar Reste, but had not put themselves forward to make much acquaintance with him, on account of Barbary. One Tuesday, when the Squire was driving to Alcester, he had overtaken Mr. Reste walking thither to have a look at the market, and he invited him to a seat in the carriage. They drove in and drove back together, and had between the times a snack of bread and cheese at the Angel. The Squire took quite a fancy to the young barrister, and openly said to him he wished he was staying anywhere but at Caramel Cottage.
“You are thinking of leaving soon, I hear,” said the Squire, as we halted in a group when parting, on this same walk from church.
“In about a week,” replied Mr. Reste. “I may go on Saturday next; certainly not later than the following Monday.”
“Shall you like a drive to Evesham between this and then?” went on the Squire. “I am going over there one of these days.”
“I shall like it very much indeed.”
“Then I will let you know which day I go. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” answered Mr. Reste, lifting his hat in salute to us all, as he walked on with Katrine.
Am I lingering over these various trifling details? I suppose it will seem so. But the truth is, a dreadful part of the story is coming on (as poor Katrine said of the poaching) and my pen holds back from it.
A day or two had gone on. It was Tuesday morning, warm and bright with sunshine. Katrine sat in the parlour at Caramel Cottage, pouring out the coffee at the breakfast-table.
“Will you take some ham, Katrine?”
“No, thank you, papa; I have no appetite.”
“No appetite! nonsense!” and Mr. Barbary put a slice of ham on her plate. “Do you feel inclined for a walk as far as Church Leet this morning, Edgar?”
“I don’t mind,” said Mr. Reste. “About three miles, is it not?”
“Three miles across the fields as straight as the crow flies. I want to see a man who lives there. He—why, that’s Pettipher coming here!—the postman,” broke off Mr. Barbary. Letters were not written every day then, and very few found their way to Caramel Cottage.
Old Joan went to the door, and then came in. She was like a picture. A dark-blue linsey gown down to her ancles, neat black stockings and low, tied shoes, a check apron, and a bow of black ribbon perched in front behind the flapping border of her white muslin mob-cap.
“Pettipher says ’tis for the gentleman,” said Joan, putting the letter, a thick one, on the table by Mr. Reste.
“Why, it is from Amphlett!” he exclaimed, as he took it up, looking at the great sprawling writing. “What on earth has he got to say?”
Opening the letter, a roll of bank-notes fell out. Mr. Reste stared at them with intense curiosity.
“Is it your ship come in?” asked Katrine gaily: for he was wont to say he would do this or that when “his ship came home.”
“No, Katrine; not much chance of that. Let me see what he says.”
“‘Dear Reste,—I enclose you my debt at last. The other side have come to their senses, and given in, and paid over to me instalment the first. Thank you, old friend; you are a good fellow never to have bothered me. Let me know your movements when you write back; I ask it particularly. Ever yours, W. A.’
“Well, I never expected that,” cried Mr. Reste, as he read the words aloud.
“Money lent by you, Edgar?” asked Mr. Barbary.
“Yes; three or four years ago. I had given it up as a bad job. Never thought he would gain his cause.”
“What cause? Who is he?”
“Captain Amphlett, of the Artillery, and an old friend of mine. As to the cause, it was some injustice that his avaricious relatives involved him in, and he had no resource but to bring an action. I am glad he has gained it; he is an honest fellow, no match for them in cunning.”
Mr. Reste was counting the notes while he spoke; six of them for ten pounds each. Katrine happened to look at her father, and was startled at the expression of his face—at the grasping, covetous, evil regard he had fixed upon the notes. She felt frightened, half sick, with some vague apprehension. Mr. Reste smoothed the notes out one by one, and laid them open on the breakfast cloth in a little stack. While doing this, he caught Mr. Barbary’s covetous look.
“You’d like such a windfall yourself,” he said laughingly to his host.
“I should. For that a man might be tempted to smother his grandmother.”
Katrine instinctively shuddered, though the avowal was given in a half jesting tone. A prevision of evil seized her.
CARAMEL COTTAGE
II.—DISAPPEARANCE
I
October was setting in beautifully. Some people say it is the most lovely month in the year when the skies are blue and genial.
Seated at the breakfast-table at Caramel Cottage that Tuesday morning, with the window thrown open to the warm, pleasant air, the small party of three might have enjoyed that air, but for being preoccupied with their own reflections. Edgar Reste was thinking of the bank-notes which the postman had just brought him in Captain Amphlett’s letter; Katrine Barbary sat shrinking from the vague fear imparted to her by the curious avowal her father had made in language not too choice, as his covetous eyes rested on the money: “For that, a man might be tempted to smother his grandmother.” While Mr. Barbary had started instantly up and flung the window higher, as if in the silence that followed the words, they had struck back upon himself unpleasantly, and he sought to divert attention from them.
“A grand day for the outlying crops,” he remarked, his lithe, slender form, his pale, perfect features showing out well in the light of the brilliant morning. “But most of the grain is in, I think. We shall have a charming walk to Church Leet, Edgar.”
“Yes,” assented Mr. Reste, as he folded the notes together and placed them in his pocket-book. There were six of them for £10 each.
Breakfast over, Katrine set off for Dyke Manor that morning as usual, to talk to Lena in French, and teach her to read it. She stayed luncheon with us. Chancing to say that her father and his guest were gone to Church Leet, Mrs. Todhetley kept her.
At four o’clock, when Katrine went home, she found they had returned, and were then shut up in the gun-room. Katrine could hear the hum of their voices, with now and again a burst of merry laughter from Edgar Reste.
“Have they had dinner?” she enquired of Joan.
“Ay, sure they have, Miss Katrine. They got back at two o’clock, and I prepared the dinner at once.”
I had lent Katrine that afternoon the “Vicar of Wakefield,”—which she said she had never read; one could hardly believe such a thing of an English girl, but I suppose it was through her having lived over in France. Taking it into the back garden, she sat down on a rustic bench, one or two of which stood about. By-and-by Edgar Reste came out and sat down beside her.
“Had you a nice walk to-day?” she asked.
“Very,” he answered. “What a quaint little village Church Leet is! Hardly to be called a village, though. Leet Hall is a fine old place.”
“Yes, I have heard so. I have not seen it.”
“Not seen it! Do you mean to say, Katrine, that you have never been to Church Leet?”
“Not yet. Nobody has ever invited me to go, and I cannot walk all that way by myself, you know.”
He was sitting sideways, his left arm leaning on the elbow of the bench, his kindly, luminous brown eyes fixed on her fair pretty face, all blushes and dimples. Ah, if fortune had but smiled upon him!—if he might but have whispered to this young girl, who had become so dear to him, of the love that filled his whole heart!
“Suppose you walk over with me one of these fine days before I leave?” he continued. “It won’t be too far for you, will it?”
“Oh no. I should like to go.”
“There is the prettiest churchyard you ever saw, to rest in. And such a quaint little church, covered with ivy. The Rectory, standing by, is quite a grand mansion in comparison with the church.”
“And the church has a history, I believe.”
“Ay, as connected with the people of the Hall and the Rectory; and with its own chimes, that never played, I hear, but disaster followed. We will go then, Katrine, some afternoon between now and Saturday.”
Her face fell; she turned it from him. “Must you leave on Saturday, Edgar?”
“My dear little cousin, yes. Cousins in name, you know we are, though not in reality.”
“You did say you might stay until Monday.”
“Ay, my will would be good to stay till Monday, and many a Monday after it: but you see, Katrine, I have neglected my work too long, and I cannot break into another week. So you must please make the most of me until Saturday,” he added playfully, “when I shall take the evening train.”
“You English do not care to travel on a Sunday, I notice.”
“We English! Allow me to remind Mademoiselle that she is just as much English as are the rest of us.”
Katrine smiled.
“My good mother instilled all kinds of old-world notions into me, Katrine. Amongst them was that of never doing week-day work on a Sunday unless compelled by necessity.”
“Do you never work on a Sunday—at your reviews and writings, and all that?”
“Never. I am sure it would not bring me luck if I did. Suppose we fix Thursday for walking to Church Leet?”
“That will do nicely. Unless—Squire Todhetley invited you to go with him to Evesham one day, you know,” broke off Katrine. “He may just fix upon Thursday.”
“In that case we will take our walk on Friday.”
A silence ensued. Their hearts were very full, and that makes speech reticent. Katrine glanced now and again at the pages of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” which lay in her lap, but she did not read it. As to the barrister, he was looking at her; at the face that had become so dear to him. They might never meet again, nothing on earth might come of the present intimacy and the sweet burning longings, but he knew that he should remember her to the end of time. A verse of one of Moore’s melodies passed through his mind: unconsciously he began to hum it:
“O, that hallowed form is ne’er forgot
Which first love traced;
Still it, lingering, haunts the greenest spot
On memory’s waste.”
“Here comes Joan to say tea is ready,” interrupted Katrine.
They strolled indoors slowly, side by side. The tea-tray waited in the parlour. Mr. Barbary came in from the gun-room, and they all sat down to the table.
After tea he went back to the gun-room, Mr. Reste with him, leaving Katrine alone. She had the candles lighted and began to mend a piece of Mrs. Todhetley’s valuable old lace. Presently Joan came in to ask a question.
“Miss Katrine, is it the brace of partridges or the pheasants that are to be cooked for supper? Do you know?”
“No, that I don’t,” said Katrine. “But I can ask.”
Putting down her work, she went to the gun-room and gently opened the door. Upon which, she heard these remarkable words from Mr. Reste:
“I wouldn’t hesitate at all if it were not for the moon.”
“The moon makes it all the safer,” contended Mr. Barbary. “Foes can’t rush upon one unawares when the moon’s shining. I tell you this will be one of the best possible nights for you.”
“Papa, papa,” hurriedly broke in Katrine, speaking through the dusk of twilight, “is Joan to cook the pheasants or the partridges?”
“The pheasants,” he answered sharply. “Shut the door.”
So the pheasants were dressed for supper, and very nice they proved with their bread-sauce and rich gravy. Mr. Barbary especially seemed to enjoy them; his daughter did not.
Poor Katrine’s senses were painfully alert that night, as she lay listening after getting to bed. The words she had overheard in the gun-room seemed to her to bear but one meaning—that not only was her father going abroad into the wilds of danger, but Edgar Reste also. They had gone to their respective rooms early, soon after she went to hers; but that might be meant as a blind and told nothing.
By-and-by, she caught a sound as of the stairs creaking. Mr. Reste and her father were both creeping down them. Katrine flew to her window and peeped behind the blind.
They went out together by the back door. The bright moonbeams lay full upon the yard. Mr. Reste seemed to be attired like her father, in high leggings and a large old shooting-coat, no doubt borrowed plumes. Each of them carried a gun, and they stole cautiously out at the little side gate.
“Oh,” moaned the unhappy Katrine, “if papa would but take better care of himself! If he would but leave off doing this most dreadful and dangerous thing!”
Whether Katrine fell asleep after that, or not, she could never decide: it appeared as though but a short time had elapsed, when she was startled by a sharp sound outside, close to the house. It might have been the report of a gun, but she was not sure. This was followed by some stir in the yard and covert talking.
“They are bringing in the game they have shot,” thought Katrine, “but oh, I am thankful they have got back safely!” And she put the pillow over her head and ears, and lay shivering.
Squire Todhetley was as good and lenient a man at heart as could be found in our two counties, Warwickshire and Worcestershire; fonder of forgiving sins and sinners than of bringing them to book, and you have not read of him all these years without learning it. But there was one offence that stirred his anger up to bubbling point, especially when committed against himself. And that was poaching.
So that, when we got downstairs to breakfast at Dyke Manor on the following morning, Wednesday, and were greeted with the news that some poachers had been out on our land in the night, and had shot at the keepers, it was no wonder the Squire went into a state of commotion, and that the rest of us partook of it.
“Johnny, tell Mack to fetch Jones; to bring him here instantly,” fumed he. “Those Standishes have been in this work!”
I went to carry the orders to Mack in the yard. In passing back, after giving them, I saw that the dog-kennel was empty and the chain lying loose.
“Where’s Don?” I asked. “Who has taken him out?”
“Guess he have strayed out of hisself, Master Johnny,” was Mack’s answer. “He was gone when I come on this morning, sir, and the gate were standing wide open.”
“Gone then?—and the gate open? Where’s Giles?”
But, even as I put the question, I caught sight of Giles at the stable pump, plunging his head and face into a pail of water. So I knew what had been the matter with him. Giles was a first-rate groom and a good servant, and it was very seldom indeed that he took more than was good for him, but it did happen at intervals.
Old Jones arrived in obedience to the summons, and stood on his fat gouty legs in the hall while the Squire talked to him. The faith he put in that old constable was surprising, whose skill and discernment were about suited to the year One.
His tale of the night’s doings, as confirmed by other tales, was not very clear. At least, much satisfaction could not be got out of it. Some poachers congregated on a plot of land called Dyke’s Neck—why it should have been so named nobody understood—were surprised by the keepers early in the night. A few stray shots were interchanged, no damage being done on either side, and the poachers made off, escaping not only scot-free but unrecognised. This last fact bore the keenest sting of all, and the Squire paced the hall in a fury.
“You must unearth them,” he said to Jones: “don’t tell me. They can’t have buried themselves, the villains!”
“No need to look far for ’em, Squire,” protested Jones. “It’s them jail-birds, the three Standishes. If it’s not, I’ll eat my head.”
“Then why have you not taken up the three Standishes?” retorted the Squire. “Of course it is the Standishes.”
“Well, your honour, because I can’t get at ’em,” said Jones helplessly. “Jim, he is off somewhere; and Dick, he swears through thick and thin that he was never out of his bed last night; and t’other, Tom, ain’t apperiently at home at all just now. I looked in at their kitchen on my way here, and that was all I could get out of Mary.”
It was at this juncture that Katrine arrived, preparatory to her morning’s work with Lena. Old Jones and the Squire, still in the hall, were chanting a duet upon the poachers’ iniquity, and she halted by me to listen. I was sitting on the elbow of the carved-oak settle. Katrine looked pale as a sheet.
Girls, thought I, do not like to hear of these things. For I knew nothing then of her fears that the offenders had been her father and Mr. Reste.
“If the poachers had been taken, sir—what then?” she said tremblingly to the Squire, in a temporary lull of the voices.
“What then, Miss Barbary? Why then they would have been lodged in gaol, and the neighbourhood well rid of them,” was the impulsive answer.
“Snug and safe, miss,” put in old Jones, shuffling on his gouty legs in his thick white stockings, “a-waiting to stand their trial next spring assizes at Worcester. Which it would be transportation for ’em, I hope—a using o’ their guns indeed!”
“Were they known at all?” gasped Katrine. “And might not the gamekeepers have shot them? Perhaps have killed them?”
“Killed ’em or wounded ’em, like enough,” assented Jones, “and it would be a good riddance of such varmint, as his worship says, miss. And a misfortin it is that they be not known. Which is an odd thing to my mind, sir, considering the lightness o’ the night: and I’d like to find out whether them there keepers did their duty, or didn’t do it.”
“I can’t see the dog anywhere, father,” interrupted Tod, dashing in at this moment in a white heat, for he had been racing about in search of Don.
“What, is the dog off?” exclaimed old Jones.
“Yes, he is,” said Tod. “And if those poachers have stolen him, I’ll try and get them hanged.”
Leaving us to our commotion, Katrine Barbary passed on to the nursery with Lena, where the lessons were taken. This straying away of Don made one of the small calamities of the day. Giles, put to the torture of confession, admitted that he remembered unchaining Don the past night as usual, but could not remember whether or not he locked the gate. Of course the probability was that he left it wide open, Mack having found it so in the morning. So that Mr. Don, finding himself at liberty, might have gone out promenading as early in the night as he pleased. Giles was ready to hang himself with vexation. The dog was a valuable animal; a prize for any tramp or poacher, for he could be sold at a high price.
We turned out on our different quests; old Jones after the poachers, I and Tod after Don: and the morning wore on.
Katrine went home at midday. This news of the night encounter between the keepers and the poachers had thrown her into a state of anxious pain—though of course the reader fully understands that I am, so far, writing of what I knew nothing about until later. That her father and Edgar Reste had been the poachers of the past night she could not doubt, and a dread of the discovery which might ensue lay upon her with a sick fear. The Standishes might have been included in the party; more than likely they were; Ben Gibbon also. Mr. Jim Standish had contrived to let Katrine believe that they were all birds of a feather, tarred with the same brush. But how could Edgar Reste have allowed himself to be drawn into it even for one night? She could not understand that.
Entering Caramel Cottage by its side gate, Katrine found Joan seated in the kitchen, slicing kidney beans for dinner. Her father was in his favourite den, the gun-room, Mr. Reste was out. When she left in the morning, neither of them had quitted his respective chamber, an entirely unusual thing.
“How late you are with those beans, Joan!” listlessly observed Katrine.
“The master sent me to the Silver Bear for a bottle of the best brandy, and it hindered me,” explained Joan. “They were having a fine noise together when I got back,” she added, dropping her voice.
“Who were?” quickly cried Katrine.
“The master and Mr. Reste. Talking sharply at one another, they were, like two savages. I could hear ’em through my deafness. Ben Gibbon was here when I went out, but he’d gone when I came in with the brandy.”
What with one thing and another, Katrine felt more uncomfortable than an oyster out of its shell. Mr. Reste came in at dinner-time, and she saw nothing amiss then, except that he and her father were both unusually silent.
Afterwards they went out together, and Katrine hoped that the unpleasantness between them was at an end.
She was standing at the front gate late in the afternoon, looking up and down the solitary road, which was no better than a wide field path, when Tod and I shot out of the dark grove by Caramel’s Farm, and made up to her.
“You look hot and tired,” she said to us.
“So would you, Miss Barbary, if you had been scouring the fields in search of Don, as we have,” answered Tod, who was in a desperate mood.
At that moment Mr. Barbary came swinging round the corner of the short lane that led to the high-road, his guest following him. They nodded to us and went in at the gate.
“You do not happen to have seen anything of our Newfoundland dog to-day, I suppose, Mr. Barbary?” questioned Tod.
“No, I have not,” he answered. “My daughter mentioned to me that he had strayed away.”
“Strayed away or been stolen,” corrected Tod. “The dog was a favourite, and it has put my father out more than you’d believe. He thinks the Standishes may have got him: especially if it is they who were out in the night.”
“Shouldn’t wonder but they have,” said Mr. Barbary.
Standing by in silence, I had been wondering what had come to Mr. Reste. He leaned against the porch, listening to this, arms folded, brow lowering, face dark, not a bit like his own pleasant self.
“I am about the neighbourhood a good deal; I’ll not fail to keep a look-out,” said Mr. Barbary, as we were turning away. “He was a fine dog, and might prove a temptation to the Standishes; but I should be inclined to think it more likely that he has strayed to a distance than that they have captured him. They might find a difficulty in concealing a large, powerful dog such as he is.”
“Not they; they are deep enough for any wicked action,” concluded Tod, as we went onwards.
It was tea-time then at Caramel Cottage, and they sat down to take it. Mr. Barbary was sociable and talked of this and that; Edgar Reste spoke hardly a word; Katrine busied herself with the teapot and cups. At dusk Ben Gibbon came in, and Katrine was sent to bear Joan company in the kitchen. Brandy and whisky were put upon the table, Joan being called to bring in hot and cold water. They sat drinking, as Katrine supposed, and talking together in covert tones for two hours, when Gibbon left; upon which Katrine was graciously told by her father she might return to the parlour. Her head ached badly, she felt ill at ease, and when supper was over went up to bed. But she could not get to sleep.
About eleven o’clock, as she judged it to be, loud and angry sounds arose. Her father and Mr. Reste had renewed their dispute—whatever its cause might be. By-and-by, when it was at its height, she heard Mr. Reste dash out at the back door; she heard her father dash after him. In the yard there seemed to be a scuffle, more hot words, and then a sudden silence. Katrine rose and stole to the window to look.