LITMIR.BIZ

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drinker to the seaman and said, "Are you standing tick for they?"

      "I'll pay for their drink and they'll help me along the road with the baby," said the sailor.

      The landlady shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, and asked, "If

      I may be so bold, what's her name?"

      "What's whose name?"

      "The baby's."

      "Ha'n't got none," said the seaman.

      "What, ain't she been christened yet?"

      "No, I reckon not," answered the father. Then he proceeded to explain. "You see my poor wife she was down in lodgings and hadn't no friends nor relations no'ther nigh her, and she took ill and never got over the birth of this here babe, and so it couldn't be done. But the kid's aunt'll see to all that right enough when I've got her there."

      "What! you're trapsing about the country hugging a babe along under your arm and slung over your shoulder and feeding her o' blackberries and chucking her in among fly poison, and not a Christian yet! My! What a world it is!".

      "All in good time, missus."

      "That's what Betsy Cole said o' her pork and 'ams when the pig wor killed and her hadn't salt nor saltpetre. She'd see to it some day. Meanwhile the maggots came and spiled the lot."

      "It shall all be made right in a day or two."

      "Ah! but what if it be too late? Then where will you go to some day? How can you say but that the child wi' being hung topsy-turvy and swinging like a pendiddlum may die of the apoplexy, or the blackberries turn sour in her blessed stomach and she go off in convulsions, or that she may ha' put out the end o' her tongue and sucked some o' that there fly paper? Then where will you be?"

      "I hope I shall be on board ship just before that comes to pass," said the sailor.

      "Do you know what happens if a child dies and ha'n't been christened? It becomes a wanderer."

      "What do you mean?"

      "It ain't a Christian, so it can't go to heaven. It ain't done no evil, so it can't go to hell; and so the poor spirit wanders about in the wind and never has no rest. You can hear them piping in the trees and sobbin' at the winder. I've heard 'm scores of times. How will you like that when at sea to have your own child sighing and sobbin' up in the rigging of the vessel, eh?"

      "I hope it will not come to that," said the sailor.

      "That's what Susan Bay said when she put a darnin' needle into the armchair cushion, and I sed, said I, 'twas a ticklesome thing and might do hurt. She did it once too often. Her old man sat down on it."

      She brought some more ale at the request of the seaman, and as she set down the tankard said:

      "I won't be so bold as to say it's in Scriptur', but it's in the Psalm-book I dare swear. Mother, she were a tip-top tearin' religious woman, and she used to say it to me when I was younger than I be now: —

      "'They flies in clouds and flap their shrouds

      When full the moon doth shine;

      In dead of night when lacketh light,

      We here 'em pipe and pine.

      "'And many a soul wi' hoot and howl

      Do rattle at the door,

      Or rave and rout, and dance about

      All on a barren moor.'

      "And it goes on somehow like this. You can think on it as you go over Hind Head in the dark:

      "'Or at the winder wail and weep,

      Yet never venture nigher;

      In snow and sleet, within to creep

      To warm 'em at the fire.'"

      The child began to cry in the adjoining room.

      "There," said the landlady, "'tis awake she is, poor mite without a name, and not as much Christianity as could make a cat sneeze. If that there child were to die afore you got to Portsmouth and had her baptized, sure as my name is Susanna Verstage, I'd never forgive myself, and I'd hear her for sure and certainty at the winder. I'm a motherly sort of a woman, and there's a lot o' them poor wanderers comes piping about the panes of an evening. But I can do nothing for them."

      "Now then, lads, let's be moving," said the mariner.

      The three men at the table rose; and when standing exposed more of their raggedness and the incongruity of their apparel than was shown when they were seated.

      The landlady reluctantly surrendered the child.

      "A babe," said she, "mustn't be shaken after feeding;" then, "a babe mustn't be allowed to get its little feet cold, or gripes comes;" then, "you must mind and carry it with the head to your shoulder, and away from the wind." Presently another item occurred to the good woman, as the men left their places at the table: "You must hold the child on your arm, between the wrist and the elbow-jint."

      As they went to the door she called, "And never be without a drop o' dill water: it's comforting to babies."

      As they made their exit – "And when nussin', mind, no green meat nor fruit."

      When all had departed the landlady turned to the man by the fire, who still wore his sarcastic smirk, and said "Bideabout! What do you think of they?"

      "I think," answered the Broom-Squire, "that I never saw three such cut-throat rascals as those who have gone off with the sailor; and as for him – I take he's softish."

      "I thought him a bit of a natural."

      "He must be so to start on one of the lonesomest roads in England, at fall of night, with such a parcel of jailbirds."

      "Well, dear life!" exclaimed the good woman. "I hope nothing will hap' to the poor child."

      "Mother," said the boy, timidly, "it's not true is it about the spirits of babies in the wind?"

      "Of course it is. Where would you have them go? and they bain't Christians. Hark! I won't say there be none flying about now. I fancy I hear a sort of a kind o' whistling."

      "Your boy Iver, he's coming with me to the Punch-Bowl," said the Broom-Squire; "but I'll not go for half-an-hour, becos I don't want to overtake that lanky, black-jawed chap as they call Lonegon. He ain't got much love for me, and might try to repay that blow on his wrist, and sprawl on the floor I gave him."

      "What is Iver going to the Punch-Bowl for?" asked the landlady, and looked at the boy, her son.

      "It's a snipe's feather Bideabout has promised me," answered the lad.

      "And what do you want a snipe's feather for at this time o' night?"

      "Mother, it's to make a paint brush of. Bideabout ain't at home much by day. I've been over the road scores o' times."

      "A paint brush! What do you want paint brushes for? Have you cleaned out the pig-stye lately?"

      "Yes, mother, but the pig lies abroad now; it's warm in the stye."

      "Well, you may go. Dear life! I wish I could see that blessed babe again, safe and sound. Oh, my!"

      The good-hearted woman was destined to have her wish answered more speedily than she could have anticipated.

      CHAPTER III

      THE PUNCH-BOWL

      The Broom-Squire and the boy were on their way up the hill that led towards the habitation of the former; or, to be more exact, it led to the summit of the hill whence the Squire would have to diverge at a sharp angle to the right to reach his home.

      The evening had closed in. But that mattered not to them, for they knew their way, and had not far to go.

      The road mounted continuously, first at a slight incline, over sand sprinkled with Scotch pines, and then more rapidly to the range of hills that culminates in Hind Head, and breaks into the singular cones entitled The Devil's Jumps.

      This is one of the loveliest parts of fair England. The pine and the oak and the Spanish chestnut luxuriate

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