A Perilous Secret | Page 2

broken-hearted and poor,
impoverished by the doctors, and pauperized by the undertaker. Then
his crushed heart had but one desire--to fly from the home that had lost
its sunshine, and the very country which had been calamitous to him.
He had one stanch friend, who had lately returned rich from New
Zealand, and had offered to send him out as his agent, and to lend him
money in the colony. Hope had declined, and his friend had taken the
huff, and had not written to him since. But Hope knew he was settled in
Hull, and too good-hearted at bottom to go from his word in his friend's
present sad condition. So William Hope paid every debt he owed in
Liverpool, took his child to her mother's tombstone, and prayed by it,
and started to cross the island, and then leave it for many a long day.
He had a bundle with one brush, one comb, a piece of yellow soap, and
two changes of linen, one for himself, and one for his little Grace--item,

his fiddle, and a reaping hook; for it was a late harvest in the north, and
he foresaw he should have to work his way and play his way, or else
beg, and he was too much of a man for that. His child's face won her
many a ride in a wagon, and many a cup of milk from humble women
standing at their cottage doors.
Now and then he got a day's work in the fields, and the farmer's wife
took care of little Grace, and washed her linen, and gave them both
clean straw in the barn to lie on, and a blanket to cover them. Once he
fell in with a harvest-home, and his fiddle earned him ten shillings, all
in sixpences. But on unlucky days he had to take his fiddle under his
arm, and carry his girl on his back: these unlucky days came so often
that still as he travelled his small pittance dwindled. Yet half-way on
this journey fortune smiled on him suddenly. It was in Derbyshire. He
went a little out of his way to visit his native place--he had left it at ten
years old. Here an old maid, his first cousin, received Grace with
rapture, and Hope pottered about all day, reviving his boyish
recollections of people and places. He had left the village ignorant; he
returned full of various knowledge; and so it was that in a certain
despised field, all thistles and docks and every known weed, which
field the tenant had condemned as a sour clay unfit for cultivation,
William Hope found certain strata and other signs which, thanks to his
mineralogical studies and practical knowledge, sent a sudden thrill all
through his frame. "Here's luck at last!" said he. "My child! my child!
our fortune is made."
The proprietor of this land, and indeed of the whole parish, was a
retired warrior, Colonel Clifford. Hope knew that very well, and
hurried to Clifford Hall, all on fire with his discovery.
He obtained an interview without any difficulty. Colonel Clifford,
though proud as Lucifer, was accessible and stiffly civil to humble folk.
He was gracious enough to Hope; but, when the poor fellow let him
know he had found signs of coal on his land, he froze directly; told him
that two gentlemen in that neighborhood had wasted their money
groping the bowels of the earth for coal, because of delusive indications
on the surface of the soil; and that for his part, even if he was sure of
success, he would not dirty his fingers with coal. "I believe," said he,
"the northern nobility descend to this sort of thing; but then they have
not smelled powder, and seen glory, and served her Majesty. I have."

Hope tried to reason with him, tried to get round him. But he was
unassailable as Gibraltar, and soon cut the whole thing short by saying:
"There, that's enough. I am much obliged to you, sir, for bringing me
information you think valuable. You are travelling--on foot--short of
funds perhaps. Please accept this trifle, and--and--good-morning." He
retreated at marching pace, and the hot blood burned his visitor's face.
An alms!
But on second thoughts he said: "Well, I have offered him a fortune,
and he gives me ten shillings. One good turn deserves another." So he
pocketed the half-sovereign, and bought his little Grace a
neck-handkerchief, blue with white spots; and so this unlucky man and
his child fought their way from west to east, till they reached that place
where we introduced them to the reader.
That was an era in their painful journey, because until then Hope's only
anxiety was to find food and some little comfort for his child. But this
morning little