"So much the better for a first lesson. If you are really going yourself, do take me with you."
In two minutes Matilda was ready, laughing at the appearance she made with her head swathed in a shawl, and the rest of her person in a cloak, to save the annoyance which her usual out-of-doors dress would have been in a high wind. Clinging to her husband, making many a false step, and invariably laughing as she recovered her footing, she gained the ridge of the cliff, and stood amidst all the sublimity of a gusty night on the wild sea-shore. The blast took away her breath, as fast as she gained it, and her husband's voice was almost lost in the roar and dash from beneath, while the lightest of her shriller tones made itself heard through the commotion.
"Now show me how to look for a signal," she said. "They do not surely light fires on the headlands?"
"If they wished it, they must ask leave of the wind," replied her husband, "as well as of us; and they know they will have no leave of the one or the other, to-night. No: they make their fires in the clefts and caverns, and----" "I see one! I see one!" cried Matilda, eagerly pointing to a gleam which came and went, like a bright speck on the horizon.
"That, my love!" cried her husband, laughing. "They must be bold smugglers who would run in to such a light as that. That is the light on Belltoot, made to look distant by the fog. You should turn eastwards; and seek rather for indications of a light, than for the light itself.
If you see a dull red streak, or the least glimmer upon the passing fog, show it me. It will tell that there is a fire in a chalk pit or a cavern."
After looking for some time in vain, Matilda inquired whether there was reason to suppose that the smugglers were particularly busy this night.
Not knowing who might be near in the darkness, her husband pressed her arm in token that questions of this nature would be better answered at home.
They walked on till they fell in with one of the sentinels, who was of opinion that nothing out of the common way would be done to-night, as the storm was rising to such a height as would make it too hazardous for even the most daring smugglers to run in at Birling Gap, or at any other place on the neighbouring coast.
"You hear, Matilda," said the Lieutenant. "Now, have you seen all that you wish to see?"
"By no means," she replied, laughing: "but it does not seem likely that we should gain anything by staying; so you had better go down and finish your wine, and we can come again to-morrow night."
The sudden calm and quiet of the little parlour made the Lieutenant rub his hands under the sense of comfort, while Matilda put back her lank hair from over her eyes, and prepared to tell the story of the morning.
The Lieutenant had however already heard it. Matilda was glad of this, and went on to ask if any harm could possibly arise from telling her husband every thing that happened to her, and all that she observed. No harm in the world, but possibly a great deal of good. It might put her on her guard against doing and saying things which were perfectly innocent and amiable in themselves, but which might be imprudent under certain circumstances;--such as showing herself indignant on seeing a gipsy boy ducked, when the neighbours were already quite angry enough on his account. The Lieutenant loved to see her ardour in such causes; but he was sorry to say it did not consist with the prudence necessary to be observed by any one connected with him, in his present office. This was enough to make Matilda vituperate the office, till she remembered that by its means her husband was detained by her side, instead of being dispatched to the other end of the world. It required this and many other comforting considerations to reconcile the Lieutenant himself to this service, uncongenial as it was to the spirit of an active and enterprising officer, who had no particular pleasure in playing the spy on a grand scale, and who found it galling to a kindly temper to live among a host of enemies. He had hesitated long about accepting the appointment, entertaining, in addition to his disinclination, a fear that it would be an effectual bar to further promotion. If it had not been that his mother and sister depended mainly on him for support, and that, having waited till forty, he wished to marry, he would hardly have bartered the hope of professional eminence for pecuniary advantage; but, circumstanced as he was, he thought it right to accept an appointment which allowed him to enjoy the fruits of former service while gaining more by present duty. Though satisfied that he had done right, and fully sensible of the blessing of having a home always about him, he had no objection to hear the Preventive Service found fault with in a quiet way by his own fireside, and foreign service exalted at its expense.
"What could put it into your head, Matilda, that harm could come of your telling me every thing? The prudence I speak of relates to your reserve with our neighbours, not with me. What could have put such an idea into your head?"
"Elizabeth thought that I had better not tell you every thing. But if I really have a difficult part to act, I shall be miserable without your help. I never could act for myself in my life."
"Never?" asked her husband, with a smile, "I think you can boast of one act of remarkable decision, my love."
"Half the merit, at least, was yours," replied Matilda, laughing. "And as for guiding myself without you, it is out of the question. So I must tell you all that happens, and you must teach me how to behave to our neighbours."
Her husband paused for a moment to reflect what a pity it was that, when Matilda's natural behaviour was all that was charming, she should be put under restraint by the position she filled. It was a hard task to have to teach her to suspect her neighbours, and to frame her conduct by her suspicions.
"_You_ have no reason for trying to manage me by reserves," said he.
"Elizabeth has, no doubt, her own little mysteries."
Matilda looked up surprised. She had never before heard the Lieutenant speak of his sister but with fondness and confidence.
"I mean no reproach," he continued. "Elizabeth is a good creature, and the best of sisters to me. I only mean that she has her womanish tastes, which, like other women, she must gratify; and she knows it is the properest and kindest thing to let me know nothing of her confidential visits to the fishermen's wives. I cannot prevent her doing what every body else does; and it is better that I should not be obliged to take any notice."
"What _do_ you mean?" cried Matilda. "Is it possible that Elizabeth has anything to do with smugglers? that----" "Ah, now you have started upon a new scent, my dear; and let us see what you can make of it before you get home again.--Now you are fancying Elizabeth out at sea at night in the lugger we are looking for, or helping to land the goods; and the first day that passes without your seeing her, you will fancy she has taken a trip to Guernsey. Do not you begin to see how a thousand little mysterious circumstances are now explained? Cannot you account for----" Matilda held up her hand as petitioning to be heard, while her fond husband delighted himself with her signs of impatience under his raillery.--She protested that she knew perfectly well what his charge against Elizabeth amounted to; that she contrived to buy articles of dress better and cheaper by the seaside than these could be procured in shops. She only wished to say, that she desired to acquit Elizabeth as far as her testimony would go. She had no reason to suppose, from anything that she had seen, that Elizabeth was given to such practices.
"It may be some time before she takes you into her confidence in these matters, my dear. Meantime, do not let us talk of 'charge' and 'acquittal,' as if Elizabeth had committed a crime. If I thought so, I would not have credited the fact on any testimony whatever."
"How then can you be what you are?" exclaimed Matilda. "If you think smuggling is no crime, why do you engage to spend your days in suspicion, and your nights in watching, and even to spill human blood, if necessary, to prevent contraband trading?"
"My office springs out of a set of arbitrary regulations which may possibly be necessary to the general good of society. At any rate, they subsist, and they must be maintained as long as the nation does not decide that they shall be abolished. This is all we Preventive officers have any concern with. It does not follow that we must condemn a lady for preferring one sort of lace or silk stockings to another, or for trying to get them, when she knows government has failed in the attempt to keep them out of the country."
"You say this just because Elizabeth is in question," replied Matilda.
"Suppose I were to report it to the Admiralty, or the Board of Trade--how would it look upon paper?"
"I dare say you would not find a man at the Admiralty, or any where else,--a sensible man,--who would declare a taste for foreign commodities,--for as large a variety of commodities as possible, of the best kinds, to be anything but a good. No man of sense wishes the society in which he lives to be in that state of apathy which does not desire what is best, but only to be saved trouble. Neither does he recommend that the desire of that which is best should be gratified at the greatest possible expense and trouble."
"Certainly, one would rather see one's neighbours wishing for French silks, than being content with skins of beasts; and, if they must have silks, one would rather get the material from Italy and India than have establishments for silkworms at home at a vast expense."
"To be sure. And we might as well at once wish for English beet-root sugar, or for claret made from hot-house grapes, as condemn Elizabeth for desiring to have foreign lace. As for our countrymen liking to have tobacco duty-free, when the duty amounts to a thousand per cent. on the prime cost,--there is nothing to be wondered at in that. Moreover, the desire of foreign commodities is the cause of a great saving. These goods are not permanently desired because they are foreign. Their having acquired a reputation as foreign must arise from their being better or cheaper than our own. Our own productions of the same kind are either improved through the competition thus caused, or they give way in favour of other productions which we can in turn offer to foreigners better and cheaper than their own. If nobody cared for claret and tobacco, thousands of our people, who are busy in preparing that which is given in exchange for these articles, would be idle; and if we were bent upon growing our own tobacco, and forcing vines instead of buying of our neighbours, the expense would be tremendous, and would answer no good purpose on earth that I can see. So Elizabeth is as much at liberty to wish for Brussels lace, if she prefers it to Honiton, as I feel myself to fill my glass with this good Port in preference to my mother's gooseberry."
"I should think nobody doubts all this about wine, and sugar, and tobacco," said Matilda. "But when it comes to the question of manufactures that really can maintain a rivalship,--then is the time, I suppose, when it is said to be wrong to wish for foreign goods. As long as really good silks, and really beautiful laces are made in England, at a moderate price, is there any occasion to buy of foreigners?"
"Whether there is occasion, is soon proved by the fact of our looking or not looking abroad. As I said before, if these articles are to be had as good at home, we shall not look abroad; if not, it is a waste of money and trouble to be making them, when we might be making something which foreigners would be glad to take in exchange for their laces and silks.
If the rival manufactures are a match for each other, let them fight it out, and the nations will be sure not to be charged more than is necessary for their purchases. If they are not a match for each other, it is sheer waste to uphold the weakest; and the taste for foreign goods is of use as it points out infallibly when the weakness lies at home."
"I have heard all this allowed as to necessary articles; such as brandy and sugar, which are never made in England. But I have had many a lecture against buying luxuries anywhere but at home; and really it seems a very small sacrifice to be content with home-made luxuries instead of foreign."
"Those who so lectured you, love, were more intent upon fitting you to be the wife of a Preventive officer, than upon teaching you plain sense.
They did not tell you that this is a sort of sacrifice which (like many other arbitrary sacrifices) hurts all parties. They did not point out to you that every purchase of a foreign luxury presupposes something made at home with which the purchase is effected. The French fan you played with so prettily the first time----" "O, do you remember that fan? that evening?"
"Remember the first ball at which I danced with you, love! It would be strange if I forgot it."
And the Lieutenant lost the thread of his argument for a while.
"Well!" said Matilda, at length; "what clumsy, home-made thing do you think I gave for that fan?"
"_You_ probably gave nothing more clumsy than a bright golden guinea, or a flimsy banknote: but, having got to the bottom of the money exchanges, we should find that some yards of cotton, or a few pairs of scissors had been exchanged for that fan, with a profit to the manufacturer of either article that it might happen to be. Thus, every purchase of a foreign article, be it a necessary or a luxury, presupposes some domestic production for which we thereby obtain a sale."
"And the same must be the case with the French fan-makers. They, or their neighbours, procure cotton gowns or scissors for their wives which they must have paid more for at home. So there is an advantage to each, unless my fan could have been as well made in England."
"In which case, there would have been a fan made instead of so many pairs of scissors; that is all; and you would have been just as well pleased with an English fan."
"Would you?" inquired Matilda, smiling.
"I never saw a fan I liked so well," replied the Lieutenant: "but there is no saying what I might have thought of any other fan under the same circumstances."
"Well, I shall tell Elizabeth, if she lets me into her confidence, that she may come here dressed in French fabrics, without any fear of displeasing you?"
"I shall not take upon myself to be displeased about the matter, while those who have more concern in it than I are not strict. If French silks rustle in the royal presence, and bandanas are flourished by law-makers in full assembly, I do not see why the officers of government should embarrass themselves with scruples. My business is to prevent contraband goods from being landed hereabouts, and not to find out who has the benefit of them when they are once on shore."
This reminded the Lieutenant to look out again, and Matilda remained musing at the fire for a few moments. It seemed to her that our native manufacturers were very ill-used, being deprived of the stimulus to improvement which is caused by free and fair competition, while they were undersold in their own market, with the connivance of those who mocked them with the semblance of protection. She thought the dwellers on the coast ill-used; their duty to the government being placed, by arbitrary means, in direct opposition to their interests, and their punishment being severe and, from its nature, capricious, in proportion as temptation was made too strong for them. Her husband's shout of "Holloa, there!" to some person without brought her to the window, where she saw against the dim sky the outline of one who appeared motionless and dumb.
It was not for a considerable time that any explanation could be elicited. At last a melancholy, gruff voice said, "I thought I might chance to see my lady. I was only looking about for my lady."
"And where did you expect to find me, Nicholas?" asked Matilda, looking out over her husband's shoulder. "You may have seen me sit on yonder gun, or lean over the fence sometimes; but I do not choose such an hour or such weather as this."
Nicholas only knew that he could have no rest till he had apologized for not having answered when he was spoken to in the morning. He wished to say that he must not speak while on watch; but, as to being disrespectful to the lady---- The lady acquitted him of any such enormity, and would have sent him away happy with the assurance that she did not now conclude him stony-hearted for laughing when Uriah Faa was ducked. The Lieutenant had, however, a word to say to him about the state of things on the beach. No alarm had been given, Nicholas reported, though he would not, for his part, swear that the expected vessel might not be near. He had not seen that vessel, nor any other; for, as the Lieutenant might have observed, it was too dark to see anything: but he would not swear that it might not be to be seen, if it was now daylight. This being all that could be got out of him, Nicholas was permitted to depart to his rest; rest which he wanted not a little, for he had lingered about for more than an hour at the close of his watch, in the vague hope of seeing Matilda, without taking any measures to do so. He stretched his tired limbs before the fire, thinking (though he was nearly a quarter of a mile from the big stone on the beach) that he was a happy man, as everybody was very kind to him.
CHAPTER V.
MORNING WALKS.
The next dawn broke bright and clear, to the surprise of every body who was learned in the weather, and greatly to the disappointment of certain parties who had an interest in the continuance of the fog.
On a steep slope among the cliffs of Beachy Head, at the foot of a lofty wall of chalk, and sheltered by it, was collected a party of men, women, and children, who had little appearance of having just risen from their beds. The men, for the most part, were stretched at length, drinking, or looking out languidly to sea. The two women, one young, the other middle aged, and brown, weather-worn, and in sordid apparel, with lank hair hanging about her ears, were smoking, and busying themselves in the feminine employment of making a clearance. That is, they were stowing certain packages in the bottom of huge panniers, destined for the backs of three asses, which were looking up from the beach in vain longing for the inaccessible, scanty herbage of the slope. Two girls, as brown as the elder woman, were amusing themselves with picking up the balls of foam which had been thrown in by the fierce tide, and sending them trembling down the wind. Uriah Faa, in apparent forgetfulness of the disgraces of the preceding day, sat dangling his heels from a projecting piece of the cliff, aiming fragments of chalk at the auks and wills which flapped past him, or swept out to sea in long lines below. One man was seen apart from the group, who did not appear to belong to the place, the persons, or the hour. He stood leaning at the mouth of a cleft in the chalk precipice, sometimes yawning, sometimes buttoning his great coat closer, as the morning breeze passed him, and then glancing up apprehensively at one point after another of the cliffs overhead, as if he expected to see there the peeping face of a spy. Next, he looked at his watch, and seemed growing so restless and uncomfortable, that the younger of the women took upon herself to comfort him by giving notice that the sloop was expected every moment to arrive for its cargo of chalk, and that all would be safe before the spies could see so far off as a furlong.
"But the division is not made yet," objected the agent. "My bandanas are stowed away with some of Solomon's packages; and you know Alexander makes over to me his venture of ribbons and lace, this time."
"What put that into your head?" growled Alexander, half raising himself, and looking surlily at the agent. "Do you think I have risked running in in a fog, and wrought since midnight, to give over my share to anybody?
You may take your chance next time. You'll find the matter well worth staying for."
"But, you know, Alexander, we settled that I was to have the first batch that was landed;--for a consideration, you remember--for a fair consideration. One night suits you as well as another, living on the spot."
"By no means; when one batch is safe ashore, and the other still at sea."
"But, consider, I cannot spare two days. They want me at Brighton every hour, and I promised Breme that he should have the goods----" Alexander seemed to think that all this was nothing to him, while he had his package safe under his elbow. He applied himself to a fresh dram of Hollands, and appeared to have done listening.
"Try Solomon," advised Mrs. Draper. "He is liberal, and likes to accommodate. He will take the chance of another night, if you make it worth his while."
"Here comes Solomon himself," cried several voices, as a well-known whistle announced the approach of some one; and Mr. Pim appeared from a side path, (if path it might be called,) his hands crossed behind him, and his merry face shining through the dusk.
"I thought you would take your morning's walk this way," observed Mrs.
Draper, as she handed him a mug, and pointed to the right keg.
"It is time we were parting instead of meeting," said Pim. "We shall have a bright morning upon us full soon enough."
"Father," shouted Uriah, "the fog is drawing off, and here is the sloop coming in below."
"Trinity, bring the ass to yon point," cried Mrs. Draper to her little daughter, who was scrambling on all fours up the steepest part of the slope.
"Here, Lussha, my beauty," said old Faa to his grandchild, "help me to fill up the panniers, my bird."
Uriah came to help, and a respectable load of chalk was presently heaped upon the packages in the panniers, which were forthwith carried down, and hung upon the shaggy asses. Old Faa then helped to set each bare-legged child astride on the beasts, and commended them to each other's care. Slowly and surely the animals took their way along the ribbed chalk which here constituted the beach, while the children looked back to hear what Pim was saying to them.
"Trinity Draper, I hope you don't forget your catechism, my child. There is a lady coming to the school in a day or two, and it will be the worse for you if you cannot say your Catechism. Uriah and Lussha, you hear what I say. Remember your catechism."
Their Saturday's train of associations being awakened by this warning, the children began involuntarily to gabble altogether, and their confusion of tongues made itself heard as they wound out of sight, till a stumble of Trinity's steed caused Uriah's gallantry to prevail over his scholarship, and occupied him in belabouring her ass with true gipsy grace and strength.
A pale yellow ray shot up from the horizon full into the cleft, beside which the unshaven and weary agent stood, making his bargain with Pim.
This first break of sunshine was a signal not to be neglected. The laziest of the party sprang to their feet, and hastened to deposit their kegs and bales under the chalk which formed the apparent cargo of the sloop that pitched below in the light grey waters. As the fog disclosed more and more of the expanse, two or three of the men fixed their glasses from behind different projections, anxious to be assured that the lugger, which had approached under cover of the darkness, was scudding away before the light. She was just visible when the whole horizon became clear, making all speed towards her native coast. Though there was reason to hope that all was safe, as far as she was concerned, there was danger that the smuggling party might be surprised by the apparition of the revenue cutter from the east or the west, before all needful precautions were taken; and there was a prodigious stir among the more active and the more timid of the party. Within half an hour the fire was put out, and the embers scattered to the winds; the men wandered off in different directions, and nobody remained amidst the wild scene but Mr. Pim, who looked about him and whistled to the sea-birds, and Mrs. Draper, who lingered behind the rest of the gipsy party, to seek satisfaction to her maternal and friendly solicitudes about the progress of her child and the Faas at the school.
By dint of many questions, she learned that the young people were likely to be excellent Christians, as they were very ready at the Bible; highly moral, as they were always whipped when they did wrong; as patriotic as if they had not belonged to a foreign tribe, since they lost no opportunity of insulting the Preventive men; and finally, very scholastic, as they had learned to sit still by the half hour together, which had at first appeared a point impossible of achievement. The mother's heart was so elated with this report, and Pim found it so much pleasanter to walk and whistle in the wintry sunshine than to play the pedagogue, that the discourse was prolonged far beyond the hour when his duties ought to begin; he comforting himself with the assurance that Rebecca would take care that the little things had something to do.
In the midst of his holiday mood, he was disturbed by a voice calling him from overhead, and, looking up, he perceived Rebecca herself, earnestly gesticulating at the summit of the cliff. She shouted, she beckoned, incessantly, and seemed in such a fever of impatience that her father concluded that some disaster must have happened.
"Hi, hi, Beck!" resounded his mighty voice, in answer, from the face of the cliff, as he began to scramble up the track by which he had descended. "What, is the house on fire, girl, or do the spies want to get hold of me?" he asked, with prodigious tranquillity; "or," and at the thought he quickened his scramble into a kind of kangaroo leap, "or has any harm come to some of the brats?"
"The ladies are come! the ladies! and nobody at home but I and the dame," cried Rebecca; and her news seemed to be received with nearly as much vexation by her father as it was related with agony by herself.
"They will dodge the brats, and put them out," he growled in his deepest tone: "after all the pains I meant to take to-day, the little things will be out in their Bibles, though they can say it all with me. The Faas and Draper will not be there, however; only the soberer sort of children."
He was mistaken. The gipsy pupils were present with the rest, and formed a part of the class which Matilda had collected around her, and whom she was now engaged in examining.
"Think of your running away yourself!" muttered Pim to his daughter.
"Why could not you have sent the dame? There would have been no harm in her knowing where I was."
"She would hardly have hobbled there and back before dinner," replied Rebecca. "We have been very quick, and the ladies can't have got far."
They had got far enough to see that though the children had (in their own phrase) "got into the Bible," they had not (to use their master's) "got through it" with the understanding, whether or not they had with the tongue. The children Matilda was conversing with were all between ten and fifteen years of age, and therefore capable of giving intelligent answers about the patriarchal tale they had been reading, if about any part of the Bible whatever.
"What did they do next," she asked, "after determining where they should settle?"
"They pitched their tents before it grew dark."
"Do you know how a tent is pitched?"
"Yes, my lady; it is daubed all over with tar."
Uriah Faa, well-informed on this matter, set the mistake right.
"When they saluted each other, what did they do? What is it to salute?"
"They scolded each other right well."
"If they had wished to scold one another, there would hardly have been such handsome presents given;--so many sheep and oxen, and asses and camels. What is a camel?"
"A sow."
"But they _had_ been angry with one another," observed a child.
"Yes; but they were now going to be friends, though they thought each other in fault. Should we be sorry or angry when others are in fault?"
"Angry."
"Why?"
"Because they have no business to do wrong."
"And if others are angry with us, what should we do?"
"Give them as good as they bring."
Matilda began now to despair of the much-vaunted morals of Mr. Pim's pupils; but, to give them a fair trial, she turned to the New Testament, and questioned them about a story that their master allowed they knew perfectly well.
"When the Apostle had neither silver nor gold, what did he give to the lame man?"
"Halfpence."
The explanation on the subject of halfpence led to a commentary on the story of the poor widow, and her gift to the treasury.
"Now, little boy," said Matilda to one of the youngest, who had been playing stealthily with the end of her fur tippet, "what was the widow's mite? What is a mite?"
"A flea."
"He knows most about the Old Testament," observed his master, anxious to shift his ground again.
"Yes," replied Matilda, "he told me about Esau and Jacob, and the mess of pottage. What is a mess, children?"
"Ashes,"--"Dirt,"--"Rubbish,"--cried they.
"And what is pottage?"
"Sheep's head and taters."
Matilda thought she would try them with the Commandments. "Is it right to covet?"
"Yes."
"Why so?"
"Because it makes us comfortable to have things."
As a last experiment, she turned back to the first page of the Bible, and found they could tell that the world was made in six days; upon hearing which Mr. Pim began to rally his spirits.
"What were the two great lights which were made to rule the day and the night?"
"Dungeness and the North Foreland."
Matilda rose, and the schoolmaster put the class to flight in a trice, with a box on the ear to one, a shake to a second, and a kick to a third. Matilda's remonstrances were lost amidst the tumult of shrieks and yells which now arose. At the first moment that Pim could spare from correcting his pupils, he informed the lady that they had got on badly lately from the impossibility of getting the parents to send them regularly. When there was any work in hand, someway up the beach---- "Towards Birling Gap," suggested Matilda. "But that sort of work is done in the night, is it not?"
"Yes; but the little things have enough to do the next day in making a clearance; and, at such times, up they start, and away, the first minute I turn my back."
"You turn your back to go after the same business, I am afraid, Mr. Pim.
If you like whistling among the cliffs, and driving bargains in the clefts better than keeping to your desk, how can you expect the children not to take the liberty of indulging the same taste when you give them opportunity?"
Mr. Pim looked about him to ascertain what o'clock it was, and would fain have made out that it was time for the children to go home; but Mrs. Storey would not let him off so easily. She convinced him that it was not yet eleven, and declared that she wished far more to see how matters ordinarily went on than to usurp the office of interrogator.
When the children had recovered their spirits, and their master his composure, business was resumed; and Matilda was as much surprised at the cleverness with which some things were taught as she had been shocked at the deficiencies of the kind of learning in which Mr. Pim was the least versed. She now envied him his power over the children's minds, and the effect which he knew how to produce by a timely joke, or a familiar illustration, or an appeal to facts with which his pupils were already familiar. She only wished that he would pique himself rather less upon his morals while making the very most of the opposition of interests in the society about him. He could not speak of any virtue without pointing out that his friends had it, and the Preventive men not; and, even in the presence of the Lieutenant's wife, it seemed difficult to restrain the expressions of hatred which were on the lips of him who taught and of those who answered.
The ladies did not leave the school till it was emptied of the children, whom they followed, to see how some dropped into their several homes, and whither others betook themselves. The last who was left to trip along by herself was Trinity Draper, who cast a glance behind her at almost every step, as if not liking to have her return accompanied by strangers. They had no intention, however, of losing sight of her, as they were disposed for a walk, and found their curiosity excited by the mingled barbarism and civilization in the air of the children of this wandering tribe.
They began, after a time, to suspect that the little girl did not mean to let them see her place of abode, so manifold were her turns and windings from the beach to the fields, and then upon the downs, and again to the beach. When she had led them through a long circuit, she finally struck up the country, and proceeded towards an unfrequented hollow way, where high banks excluded the view on either side, a rugged soil wearied the feet of the walker, and nothing was to be seen at the end of the lane but the grey sea, at the moment undiversified by a single sail.
"I wonder you are not afraid to set foot in this dreary place, so alarmed as you were by these very people yesterday," observed Matilda to her companion, as they arrived in sight of a gipsy tent, spread on a patch of grass under shelter of the eastern bank. "I have been speculating all the way on when you would propose to turn back."
Elizabeth replied that she had visited the encampment before, without fear, knowing that the men were absent at this time of day, and that there was nothing to fear from the women and children.
"They assemble at meal times, I fancy," replied Mrs. Storey; "and there is the smoke of their cookery, you see."
The thin blue smoke was curling up around the trunk of a tree, in the hollow formed by whose roots was kindled the fire, which Trinity now hastened to feed with sticks from the hedges. She peeped into the pot, which steamed from under the three poles that supported it, and proceeded to stir the mess with a forked stick, affording glimpses to her visiters of a sort of meat whose shape and colour were new to them.
On their inquiring what the stew was made of, Trinity pointed to a skin which lay in the ditch, and which was undeniably that of a brown dog.
Matilda expressed her horror, and the child looked up surprised, observing, "Baba says the same hand made the dog and the sheep."
"Who is Baba?"
"Her father," replied Elizabeth. "Baba means Father. Where did you get this dog, Trinity? I hope it is not stolen."
Trinity believed Uriah had found it under the hedge. She took up the head, which was left with the skin, and showed by the teeth that the animal must have been very old.
"Dear me! I suppose you pick up all the dead animals that lie about the country," cried Elizabeth.
"Bebee says that beasts that have died by the hand of God are better than those that have died by the hand of man," replied Trinity.
A low moan issued from the tent at this moment, which seemed to strike