with kings and queens, warriors and poets,
putting them one and all superbly to rights. Yet so subtle were the old
man's wits, and so bright his fancy, even in derangement, that he
preserved through it all a considerable measure of dramatic fitness. He
gave his puppets a certain freedom; he let them state their case; and
threw almost as much ingenuity into the pleading of it as into the
refuting of it. Of late, since he had made friends with Davy Grieve, he
had contracted a curious habit of weaving the boy into his visions.
'Davy, what's your opinion o' that?' or, 'Davy, my lad, did yo iver hear
sich clit-clat i' your life?' or again, 'Davy, yo'll not be misled, surely, by
sich a piece o' speshul-pleadin as that?'
So the appeals would run, and the boy, at first bewildered, and even
irritated by them, as by something which threw hindrances in the way
of the only dramatic entertainment the High Peak was likely to afford
him, had learnt at last to join in them with relish. Many meetings with
'Lias on the moorside, which the old seer made alive for both of
them--the plundering of 'Lias's books, whence he had drawn the brown
'Josephus' in his pocket--these had done more than anything else to
stock the boy's head with its present strange jumble of knowledge and
ideas. Knowledge, indeed, it scarcely was, but rather the materials for a
certain kind of excitement.
'Wal, Davy, did yo hear that?' said 'Lias, presently, looking round on
the boy with a doubtful countenance, after Cromwell had given an
unctuous and highly Biblical account of the slaughter at Drogheda and
its reasons.
'How mony did lie say he killed at that place?' asked the boy sharply.
'Thoosands,' said Dawson, solemnly. 'Theer was naw mercy asked nor
gi'en. And those wha escaped knockin on t' yead were aw sold as
slaves--every mon jock o' them!'
A strong light of anger showed itself in David's face.
'Then he wor a cantin murderer! Yo mun tell him so! If I'd my way,
he'd hang for 't!'
'Eh, laddie, they were nowt but rebels an Papists,' said the old man,
complacently.
'Don't yo becall Papists!' cried David, fiercely, facing round upon him.
'My mither wor a Papist.'
A curious change of expression appeared on 'Lias's face. He put his
hand behind his ear that he might hear better, turned a pair of cunning
eyes on David, while his lips pressed themselves together.
'Your mither wor a Papist? an your feyther wor Sandy Grieve. Ay,
ay--I've yeerd tell strange things o' Sandy Grieve's wife,' he said slowly.
Suddenly Louie, who had been lying full length on her back in the sun,
with her hat over her face, apparently asleep, sat bolt upright.
'Tell us what about her,' she said imperiously.
'Noa--noa,' said the old man, shaking his head, while a sort of film
seemed to gather over the eyes, and the face and features relaxed--fell,
as it were, into their natural expression of weak senility, which so long
as he was under the stress of his favourite illusions was hardly apparent.
'But it's true--it's varra true--I've yeerd tell strange things about Sandy
Grieve's wife.'
And still aimlessly shaking his head, he sat staring at the opposite side
of the ravine, the lower jaw dropping a little.
'He knows nowt about it,' said David, roughly, the light of a sombre,
half-reluctant curiosity, which had arisen in his look, dying down.
He threw himself on the grass by the dogs, and began teasing and
playing with them. Meanwhile Louie sat studying 'Lias with a frowning
hostility, making faces at him now and then by way of amusement. To
disappoint the impetuous will embodied in that small frame was to
commit an offence of the first order.
But one might as well make faces at a stone post as at old 'Lias when
his wandering fit was on him. When the entertainment palled, Louie
got up with a yawn, meaning to lounge back to the farm and investigate
the nearness of dinner. But, as she turned, something caught her
attention. It was the gleam of a pool, far away beyond the Downfall, on
a projecting spur of the moor.
'What d' yo coe that bit watter?' she asked David, suddenly pointing to
it.
David rolled himself round on his face, and took a look at the bluish
patch on the heather.
'It hasna got naw name,' he said, at a venture.
'Then yo're a stoopid, for it has,' replied Louie, triumphantly. 'It's t'
Mermaid Pool. Theer wor a Manchester mon at Wigsons' last week,
telling aw maks o' tales. Theer's a mermaid lives in 't--a woman, I tell
tha, wi' a fish's tail--it's in a book, an he read it out,
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