Julia and Her Romeo: A Chronicle of Castle Barfield | Page 9

scratchings.
That's gay and fine. I never had as many as I should like afore. Mother
says they're too rich, but that's all rubbish.'
He made oily feast in the dark, with the sacks heaped about him. With
Master Richard to help him, he began to swim in adventure, and the
pair were so fascinated and absorbed that one of the farm-servants went
bawling 'Master Richard' about the outlying buildings for two or three
minutes before they heard him. When at last the call reached their ears
they had to wait until it died away again before the surreptitious host
dare leave the barn, lest his being seen should draw attention to the
place.
Then Joe, who had been hunting wild beasts of all sorts with the
greatest possible gusto, began in turn to be hunted by them. The
rattlesnake, hitherto unknown to Castle Barfield, became a common
object; the lion and the polar bear met on common ground in the
menagerie of Joe's imagination. Whatever poor blessings and hopes he
had, and whatever schoolboy wealth he owned, he would have
surrendered all of them to be in the brewhouse of the Mountain Farm,
even though he were there to take his shirt off But the empty,
impassable, awful night stood between him and any refuge, and he
must need stay where he was, and sweat with terror under his sacks,
through all the prodigious tracts of time which lay between the evening
and the morning. He was to have been up and afoot for Liverpool
before dawn, but tired nature chose the time he had fixed for starting to
send him to sleep, and when Master Richard stole into the barn with
intent to disperse the sacks and clear away any sign of Joe's occupancy,
he found him slumbering soundly, with a tear-stained cheek resting on
a dirty brown hand.
There had been the wildest sort of hubbub and disorder at the Mountain
Farm all night. Mrs. Mountain had wept and wrung her hands, and
rocking herself to and fro, had poured forth doleful prophecy. Samson,
who had begun with bluster, had fallen into anxiety, and had himself

traced the course of the brook for a full mile by lanthorn-light. The
farm hands had been sent abroad, and had tracked every road without
result. Of course the one place where nobody so much as thought of
making inquiry was the house of the hereditary foe, but pretty early, in
the course of the morning, the news of Joe Mountain's disappearance,
and something of the reasons for it, reached Perry Hall. Everybody at
Perry Hall knew already what a terrible personage Samson Mountain
was, and his behaviour on this occasion was the theme of scathing
comment.
Master Richard was guilty at heart, but exultant. Being a boy of lively
imagination, he took to a secrecy so profound, and became so strikingly
stealthy, as to excite observation and remark. He was watched and
tracked to the barn, and then the discovery came about as a matter of
course. The Reddys made much of Joe--they had no quarrel with an
innocent persecuted child--but their kindness and commiseration were
simply darts to throw at Samson.
It was noon when Reddy put the trembling adventurer into his trap, and
with his own hands drove him home. The two enemies met and
glowered at each other.
'I've found your lad and brought him home,' said Reddy; 'though I
doubt it's a cruel kindness to him.'
Samson, with all the gall in his nature burning at his heart, lifted Joe
from the trap and set him on the ground in silence. Reddy, in silence,
turned his horse's head, touched him with the whip, and drove away.
Joe was welcomed home by a thrashing, which he remembers in old
age.
The episode bore fruit in several ways. To begin with, Master Joe was
packed off to a distant school, far from that to which young Reddy was
sent. But the boys found each other out in the holidays, and became
firm friends on the sly, and Joe was so loyal and admiring that he never
ceased to talk to his one confidante of the courage, the friendliness, the
generosity, the agility, and skill of his secret hero. The confidante was
his sister Julia, to whom the young hereditary enemy became a

synonym for whatever is lovely and of good report. She used to look at
him in church--she had little other opportunity of observing him--and
would think in her childish innocent mind how handsome and noble he
looked. He did not speak like the Barfield boys, or look like them, or
walk like them. He was a young prince, heir to vast estates, and a royal
title in fairyland. If story-books were few and far between, the
sentimental foolish