A SLEEP-WALKER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9479, 7 April 1894, Page 11 (Supplement)

A SLEEP-WALKER.

BY PAUL 11. QERRARD.

CHAPTER XV. —(Continued.)

Rupert having stated that his name was Bidebank, Tony at onco recognised him as the child Lady Bidebank had adopted and of whom Doctor Wrigley was so anxious to be rid. Who this child was, Tony did nob know, bub in his mind he connected him with the missing heir of Barth, about whom ho had told so many falsehoods at the doctor's order. As he walked on, drawing out Rupert about his family and friends, it occurred to Tony to try to connect the boy »vith the lost baby, and make capital by restoring him to his true home. Still Tony knew that several links in the chain of evidence were lacking, and he feared to array himself against Doctor Wrigley, whom he credited with diabolical acuteness and resolution. Holding this idea in abeyance, Tony began to discourse to Rupert on the joys of a wandering life. He depicted life as one long, care-free succession of sunny hours, birds, flowers, green hedges, flowing streams—all the romance and adventure that are ideals of the boy mind. Rupert listened, entranced.

"Ib may all be werry nice," said Mr. Pottigrew, waving his left arm in the air, as his right grasped the strap whereby his "scientific apparatus" was bound on hi» back—"werry nice to live in a 'ouse, to 'ave flunkeys to wait on yer, to live on the fab o' the land, not to mention roast duck an' furriti fruits; but wot is it, after all, to moving free and easy as your own master, cam pin' under hedges as merry as a grasshopper, and makin' friends with everyone as comes 'andy ? To ride on a litttle pony an' have a groom ridin' at yer 'eels—w'y, it's genteel; bub what is genteel compared along of freedum? A boy of your inches is truly free when he 'as no misses nor tutor to hanker arter 'im. When he can pub 'is bundle on the fur end o' a stick an' can tramp off whisblin' like a blackbird, then he knows wot freedum is. Yes, my noble little lord, mebbe I might 'ave been genteel, boo, and 've 'ad flunkeys an' nussmaids—"

" You interrupted Sir Rupert. You ! Were you rich ?"

"I said 'mebbe,' sir," responded Tony, sulkily, "I said 'mebbe', and when a man says ' mebbe,' w'y it means a mental reservation, it do, an' thab man at least ought ter be allowed to finish 'is sentence without bein' pitched into." Having given this amiable exhibition of the bland tempers of tramping freemen, Tony strode on, chewing a piece of straw. When he might hare relapsed into good humour cannot be bold, for at that moment a carriage drove up, and from it looked out Myra Barth. She and Lady Bidebank and the contessa were all driving by different roads to find the strays. Having given the swain who was helping the little girls a guinea and Tony a look which suggested recognition and prevented his entering the city by daylight, Myra gathered up her little renegades and ordered the coachman to hasten home.

"1 shall get you a governess forthwith," said Myra to her gentle god-child and namesake. " You are running quite wild." " My dearest angel," quoth the Contessa Idria to her only daughter, "you really must stop playing with that naughty little English coy. He is quite unlike his dear mamma, Lady Bidebank, and will surely lead you into great difficulties. I have had much trouble on his account already, and I feel sure 1 shall have much more."

Wherein the contessa forecast her future better than she knew, for deep indeed were the waters of trouble in which she and Natolie were destined to wade because of Sir Rupert. Lady Bidebank regarded her adopted son as a staid hen might regard a venturesome duckling which, having reared from the egg, she beholds taking surprisingly to the water.

" I shall send you to Eton next month, Rupert," she said. " Miss Barth has sent Doctor Wrigley's son there, and he is now first-form boy, and I shall ask him to be friendly to you. You are getting quite too reckless." That night Rupert looked moodily out of his window at the stars and thought how lovely it would be to be roaming gallantly about the country, pilgrim of the moon, like young Endymion, and with no Eton looming threateningly in the future. Mr. Tony Pettigrew having quailed under Miss Barth's keen look, when she took the children into her own charge,

deflected from the straight road to London, and stopping at sundown at a little hamlet, proceeded to give a scientific exhibition," the proceeds of which would presently be spent at the village inn for bed and board and brandy. When Tony had triumphantly wound up with the " death of Nelson and all his crew gathered about him," and was look ing about for applause, ho was suddenly confronted by a vigorous tramp woman, carrying on her back a huge but light load of wicker work, and supported by a sturdy little boy, who scintillated like a knight of old in an armour of shining tins, plates, cups, pans, ladles, hanging about him. "And is it you, Tony Pettigrew," cried the woman, "setting up for a man of science and making speeches up and down the country-side? Well it would be for you if your science taught you not to desert your natural wife and you lawful child! You sees in them there glasses, sez you, a flea as big as lobsters! And did you see anything of your wife in them same glasses tramping up and down with wicker-work for her daily bread? You sees King John, sez you, and Nelson as is a-dyin'. 'Pears to me, Tony Pettigrew, it would be nigher to the p'int if you saw yer own son, as is loaded down like a young elephant with tin pans !" At this pathetic introduction of himself, the boy thrust—not too near her eyes— pair 01 bands buried in pint measures, and began to bellow like a bull of Bashan. " Yes !" cried the woman to the gaping crowd, " yes, that science man, who sees cheese mites as big as beetles, he sez, though I don't believe it, he deserted his wife and child afore ever the child was born, and broke his bail, with a order of court on him, too." " Come, woman, hold up !" cried Tony, who had been too amazed to speak. " Stop your noise, and wind up that boy somehow. If it suits you and him any to come around the country along of me, why, I'm agreeable, and if you'll keep the peace, I'm not above buying a donkey and a cart, and you can load your wares in that." " That fair—come, now 1" cried the admiring group. Thus Tony Pettigrew, from being a "solitary traveller," suddenly became a caravan.

Tony's load might have looked mightily attractive to Sir Rupert, seen under the glamour of foolish fancy. It would also have been envied by Jasper Fitzroy and Sam, toiling l in hopeless captivity to Ibrahaim Ben Edin.

Month after month of that captivity wore away, while Tony I'ettigrew tramped, while Natolie and Mi studied, while Sir Rupert worked and boated and batted at Eton, and while Myra seemed unexpectedly to possess the touch of Midas and turn all things to gold ; for her fortunes grew in a way to turn Doctor Wrigley frantic with envy and greed, and to cause him to wish the heiress dead.

Jasper Fitzroy had been a year in slavery before he could properly locate himself or make any plans for his own rescue. Sam Porter was deeply chagrined to find that on the estates of Ibrahaim could be found neither daughter nor harem, so that all help of salvation from woman's pity was done away. The shrill and withered Ibrahaim and his like-minded servant Yusef lived only for one passiongain. At the end of the year Ibrahaim fell very ill. Taken suddenly in the night, he seemed likely to die on the spot, and Yusef woke Jasper with a furious shake, crying : " Dog of an Englishman, my master dies ! Come, heal him !" "I am no physician," replied Jasper. Bub Yusef holding him by one arm and Sam by the other, dragged them to the room where Ibrahaim lay groaning with fear and pain. " Send for a physician. I know nothing," said Jasper. " There is none near. You must know something; you infidels are wiser than Sheytan," retorted Yusef. "Cure my master, or I will how off your heads !" "Hew 'em off!" cried Sam, who had learned a little of the language, which he firmly believed had been invented in Hades. " Our heads are little comfort to us in your country. 1 ' " Eldest born of destruction," roared Yusef to Jasper, "cure my master, or you and this dog's head, your servant, shall be sent to Smyrna!" " Will you forward us to the British consul if I cure you ?" demanded Jasper of Ibrahaim.

"Yea, son of Shoytan, by the beard of the prophet!" "Don't do it," quoth Sam; "let him die. He'll lie if he gets well, for lying was bom in the beast. Let him die, and poison the other one if you can." "Fie," said Jasper; "you would be kinder than your words yourself, Sam. Humanity forces me to help him, and perhaps he will keep his word." Jasper accordingly began to use his common sense, and such simple remedies as that genius suggested. For twenty-four hours he worked over Ibrahaim as a man for a brother.

Then Ibrahaim was out of pain, out of danger, out of fear, and out of gratitude. For as Egypt's chief butler, being restored to liberty, no more remembered Joseph, bub forgot him, so this son of the prophet, as soon as he felt better, forgot all his vows and especially that there was a British consul at Smyrna. "I have cured you," said Jasper to his enemy, " and you promised to send me, with my servant, to the nearest consul." " Child of Hades !" cried Ibrahaim. " Far be ib from me to remember, in sound mind, the ravings of disease." " But I cured you, and gratitude should compel you to let me go." " Gratitude is a weakly herb, which only grows in the soil of infidel souls," said the Turk. "Bub you promised me liber by as the price of cure." "Perish the thought that) I should let you go !" Ibrahaim cried. "Suppose I fall ill again, what should I do? Moreover, it would be sinful in the extreme for me to let taose a man possessed of such diabolical lllill to cure English demons." " I told you so," said Sam. '* Why nob |»ve let him die ?" Shortly after the recovery of Ibrahaim, Jasper one day found a bird's wing feather, which he carefully preserved. Securing, some days after, a bit of brass wire, he rubbed it to a needle-like point, and pub ib in this quill for a pen-point. During Ibrahaim's illness Jasper had taken from his room a small, powerful magnifying glass. As lie and Sam were soon after working alone in a corner of the pomegranate orchard, Jasper told Sam to stand on guard and give notice if anyone came near. He then took from his bosom the long-hidden banknote, and spreading it smoothly on a stone, he cub a little gash in his wrist, and using the little pen which he had made, and taking his blood for ink, he wrote on the margin of the note :

"Jasper Fltzroy, of Fitzroy Towers, Middlesex, Rncland, captive to Ibrahaim Ben Edin on Q. of Adalia. Rescue, for God's sake 1"

This writing, done under the magnifying glass with the wire point, showed to the naked eye only irregular red lines along one edge of the paper. Waiting a few days longer, Jasper one morning coolly offered the note to Ibrahaim. "Oh, accursed of . Allah, what) is this morsel of infidel paper demanded the Turk. " It is worth five pieces of English gold," said Jasper, calmly. "Any ship's captain or merchant will give that for it. I desire you to use it to buy some clothes for myself and my servant." " Since when did the wise man become a fool?" said the Nubian in Jasper's ear. "He will bring you nothing for your money." " Alas, Mr. Fitzroy," lamented Sam, on the other side, now our hope is gone, and we have nothing to look to." But now Jasper felt that he had sent a messenger to England. A cry for help had sounded from him to the outer world. He counted the months when he might hope that) bib of paper would reach England. Then how soon would some curious person examine those faint red lines of blood. And then how long before that cry should be answered by rescue ! A year— Jasper —possibly within a year. But Ibrahaim was wary as a serpent, and he distrusted the freely-given English note. Two years that note lay ia the strong-box of that worshipper of the prophet, Ibrahaim Ben Edin.

CHAPTER XVI. SIR RUPERT STRIKES FOR FREEDOM.

One of the chief occupations of James Wrigley's life was to haunb the Barth and Fitzroy estates, searching every nook and corner, examining the buildings to see if there were any neglects, spying if any timber were cut down, and looking over the bailiff's

accounts, anxious to know whether leases disadvantageous to the next heir were being granted. . Wrigley began to tremble lest she should bar his expectations by summoning some eligible bachelor to come and marry her. Bub nothing was farther than marriage from Miss Barth's thoughts, when the first ebullitions of rage had subsided. "I have had a battle with my cousin Wrigley," she would say to her only -intimate friend, Lady Bidebank. "We fought furiously this morning, and now, having mutually withdrawn from the field, eying each other malignly, I am expecting Mrs. Wrigley in the character of a truce-maker, waving the white flag of her wearisome platitudes. Sometimes I wonder whether it would be any more degrading and vexatious to marry entirely without love, and, indeed, with reluctance, than it is to endure the continued interference of 'my cousin.' And, possibly, at this very moment Mrs. W. would appear, fat, gorgeously dressed, florid, with an uncertain, tremulous mouth, and pale-blue eyes, to tell Myra that she hoped to be forgiven for having allowed her daughter Jane to change her music-teacher without consulting her ; that she was very unhappy because Betty had bought a blue gown and Miss Barth did not admire light blue; and she hoped Mies Barbh approved of the dear boys making the acquaintance of Fred So-and-so.

The wife, with her fawning, was about as heavy on the heiress as the husband with his bullying. It chanced one day that Wrigley, pursuing his system of espionage, descried from far Miss Barth and Lady Bidebank sitting on a rustic bench in close conversation. Wrigley always trembled when be thought of the intercourse between these two, one of whom had in keeping Sir Rupert, and the other wanting to find him. Some intellectual spark might be struck out of their converse which would light up the mystery. He stole softly from tree to tree, by various detours coming closer to the two, until, unseen, he was within hearing. The gravity of the two faces had alarmed him ; the words which he heard were still more suggestive of danger. "I have not been deceived," said Lady Bidebank. "My death, sooner or later, will come suddenly, and it is as likely to come soon. My anxiety is for Rupert. The boy is very dear to me, and I tremble for him, left early without a mother's influence. Lord Bidebank's family have always been polite to him, but their feelings are tempered by the fact that he will inherit thirty thousand pounds of my private property, which else would have gone to them." " There is no need, dear friend," replied Myra, "that you should be troubled on account of Rupert. He is a fine boy. I love him better than any other living being. I have influence over him. If you are taken away while he is yet young I will receive him into my family and be a mother to him. You can appoint me, conjointly with Lord Bidebank, his guardian, and request that he shall remain at my house." " Thanks ! Thanks ! I will do so—but, Myra, I have not yet made my will." " That is leaving affairs in a dangerous condition," said Myra, anxiously. " It is superstition," said Lady Bidebank. "I dreamed once that just as 1 had signed my will I fell back dead, and I have foolishly shrunk from making a will. I will conquer that folly. But, however and whenever 1 die, you will take my Rupert) 1 into your own home ?' I " I will," said Myra, earnestly. " Not if I can hinder it I" whispered Doctor Wrigley. It had been to him significant of disaster that this boy had come to bo so familiar j with his own home, and that Lady Bide- j bank had had him baptized by the very i name which his own mother had given him. j That he should now become an inmate of his own house, and the ward of his sister, would prove the signal of ruin to Doctor Wrigley'a plans. He would never, he felt sure, be able to dispossess him. Rupert was now a lad of thirteen, and at Eton, doing himself credit. He would soon return home for the holidays. At this crisis Wrigley summoned Tony Pettigrew, and took counsel with him. Rupert had hardly returned from school when a stalwart umbrella-vendor—a keeneyed trampwith a slouched hat and a flaming red kerchief at his neck, began to haunt the neighbourhood. The lads of several estates had a cricketground on the road to the Reservoir, and about this place the umbrella-man might be seen watching the game. One day he leaned over and beckoned one of the lads.

" Which are young Bidebank ?" he asked, knowing well. " Yonder ; the black-eyed fellow with the curls."

" Eh ! Cur'ous 'bout him, ain't it, now?" " Whywhat is curious?" " His bein' a 'doption.an' all that there." " A what ?" "A 'doption— her ladyship's own, you know; 'dopted." " Bah ! That's not so." "Oh, yes, it are ! Why, I knew all 'bout it years ago. I thought you knew it. Never mind, d&n't tell." Then again another boy he interviewed. " Say, noble little sir, do young Bidebank know he are 'dopted? Do he ever speak o' it?" " Why, pshaw ! He's not." "Bless my eyes! You don'b know it? Ask young Wrigley ;he knows. But there ; don't mention of it. I don't like to talk of my betters." About this time the junior Wrigleys came also into possession of this secret, being the hearers of certain remarks made casually at table by their father, who clinched his observations with the words : "There ! It is no concern of ours if they are suited." Naturally, as this information was disseminated, there began to be looks askance, and suggestive hints, and curious questions, which by degrees stirred the mind of Rupert to a vague alarm and unrest. J use now he formed a new acquaintance — follow who lounged about the woods— full of the most wonderful knowledge of fishing and of rabbit snares, of bird-traps, of singular stories of dreams and signs, of goblins and adventures. Rupert fell in with him now and again. Insensibly he saw more and more of him. The man was respectful, and full of entertaining and incessant talk;

" And you like stylish life and servants and fine clothes and the big school and the 'ristocracy, eh ?" " Why shouldn't I2" said Rupert. " I've always known ib." " And you like ib better than the free and wandering life you might have had if so be you had been let alone ?" "How let alone asked Ruperb. " Why, my lad, if her ladyship hadn't 'dopted of you." "Adopted! I don'b know whab you mean."

"Come now," said the disguised' Tony, cutting carefully at an arrow for a crossbow ; "you don't mean to tell me that you ain't a 'dopted son ?" I'm not adopted; I'm her own," cried Rupert, hotly.

" Oh, well, think so if you likes. I don't care to tell all I know. But, mind you, I do know. Why, all the boys round here know-all bub you. But I sha'n't say nothink. For all I knows you might be one of those little genta as runs and tells everything to his mil."

" Tell me what you knowall you know. You shall speak. Come, I'll give you my best six-bladed, pearl-handled knife," cried Rupert, laying the treasure in question on Tony's knee. I don't repeat things. "Oh, what I know ain't nothin' pertic'lar, only you ain't her born child. She never had no child, 'cept some as died, and she 'dopted you ; —that's all." "Oh, it isn't so! It isn't so 1" cried Rupert, choking. " Vy, come, boy," said Tony, coolly ; " are you a nat'ral? How long 'as Lord Bidebank beenjjdead? Vy, sixteen years, and yon ain't fourteen —Lord ! And don't own children inherit the property ? Well, now, who is goin' to inherit Bidebank Hall? You?"

No," said Rupert, slowly. "This Lord Bidebank's son." " Oh! And this Lord Bidekank ain't the last one's son. No, he's a cousin. If you was the son, sez I, vy, you'd get the estate. Will you be Lord Bidebank 1" "I don't know— s'pose so." "If you was to be that, you'd be that now. Didn't you never see luds your age No—no— 'cause you're 'dopted. Vy, I knows all about you." "Then you know what sort of a family I came from ?" cried poor Rupert, madly. "So I does. As the books say—poor bub decenb parentsvy, folks like me— " I can't believe it. I won't believe it," be cried.

" Then, don'tonly it's so," said Tony, shaping a second arrow. " What's the need o' taking it to heart ? Sure enough, her ladyship may get tired of you. I a'poae she has, and that's why she sent you off to school. She got you when you was little for a plaything, an' you've got too big for that. Stands to reason, she may begin to feel somewhat ashamed of your poor parents, and you can't ask a lady to love adoption like her own. You ought to be werry grateful as she don't clear you out— Rupert sprang up and rushed away. But the dagger was fastened in his soul. Each hour the pain and horror of the situation grew greater. In love and mistaken judgment, Lady Bidebank had withheld from Rupert the story of his infancy. She intended, when manlier wisdom came to him, to tell him that he was not her own child but dearly loved, and the joy and comfort of her life.

[To be continued.