The Witchs Head | Page 7

be a fisher-lad
and earn my bread. If it hadn't been for her," pointing to his sister, who
was sitting aghast at his outburst, "and for Nails, I'd have gone long ago,
I can tell you. At any rate, I should not be a dog then. I should be
earning my living, and have no one to thank for it. Let me go, I say,
where I shan't be mocked at if I do my fair day's work. I'm strong
enough; let me go. There! I've spoken my mind now;" and the lad
broke out into a storm of tears, and, turning, tramped out of the room.
As he went, all Mr. Cardus's wrath seemed to leave him.
"I did not think he had so much spirit in him," he said aloud. "Well, let
us have our dinner."
At dinner the conversation flagged, the scene that preceded it having
presumably left a painful impression; and Ernest, who was an
observant youth, fell to watching little Dorothy doing the honours of
the table; cutting up her crazed old grandfather's food for him, seeing
that everybody had what he wanted, and generally making herself
unobtrusively useful. In due course the meal came to an end, and Mr.
Cardus and old Atterleigh went back to the office, leaving Dorothy
alone with Ernest. Presently the former began to talk.
"I hope that your eye is not painful," she said. "Jeremy hits very hard."
"O no, it's all right. I'm used to it. When I was at school in London I
often used to fight. I'm sorry for him, though--your brother, I mean."
"Jeremy! O yes, he is always in trouble, and now I suppose that it will
be worse than ever. I do all I can to keep things smooth, but it is no
good. If he won't go to Mr. Halford's, I am sure I don't know what will
happen;" and the little lady sighed deeply.

"O, I daresay that he will go. Let's go and look for him, and try and
persuade him."
"We might try," she said, doubtfully. "Stop a minute, and I will put on
my hat, and then if you will take that nasty thing off your eye, we
might walk on to Kesterwick. I want to take a book, out of which I
have been teaching myself French, back to the cottage where old Miss
Ceswick lives, you know."
"All right," said Ernest.
Presently Dorothy returned, and they went out by the back way to a
little room near the coach-house, where Jeremy stuffed birds and kept
his collection of eggs and butterflies; but he was not there. On inquiring
of Sampson, the old Scotch gardener who looked after Mr. Cardus's
orchid-houses, she discovered that Jeremy had gone out to shoot snipe,
having borrowed Sampson's gun for that purpose.
"That is just like Jeremy," she sighed. "He is always going out shooting
instead of attending to things."
"Can he hit birds flying, then?" asked Ernest.
"Hit them!" she answered, with a touch of pride; "I don't think he ever
misses them. I wish he could do other things as well."
Jeremy at once went up at least fifty per cent. in Ernest's estimation.
On their way back to the house they peeped in through the office
window, and Ernest saw "Hard-riding Atterleigh" at his work, copying
deeds.
"He's your grandfather, isn't he?"
"Yes."
"Does he know you?"
"In a sort of way; but he is quite mad. He thinks that Reginald is the

devil, whom he must serve for a certain number of years. He has got a
stick with numbers of notches on it, and he cuts out a notch every
month. It is all very sad. I think it is a very sad world;" and she sighed
again.
"Why does he wear hunting-clothes?" asked Ernest.
"Because he always used to ride a good deal. He loves a horse now.
Sometimes you will see him get up from his writing table, and the tears
come into his eyes if anybody comes into the yard on horseback. Once
he came out and tried to get on to a horse and ride off, but they stopped
him."
"Why don't they let him ride?"
"O, he would soon kill himself. Old Jack Tares, who lives at
Kesterwick, and gets his living by rats and ferrets, used to be whip to
grandfather's hounds when he had them, and says that he always was a
little mad about riding. One moonlight night he and grandfather went
out to hunt a stag that had strayed here out of some park. They put the
stag out of a little grove at a place called Claffton, five miles away, and
he took them round by Starton and Ashleigh, and then came down the
flats to the sea,