STARVE GROW FARM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12968, 11 September 1905, Page 3

STARVE GROW FARM.

[PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARBANGEMBNT.J

BY STANLEY J. WEYUAN, Anther. of " The House of the : Wolf,'' " A Gentleman of France." ".Under the • > Robe," " Memoirs of a Minister 'of France." "The Red Cockade," "In Kine's By-ways," ■ etc.. etc. [COPYRIGHT. SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHATTERS I. and ll.The ' story is laid in the North of England during the period of domestic unrest which ' followed the , battle of Waterloo, Henrietta Damer, who is betrothed to Captain Clyne, elopes from her brother's house with a wan who calls himself Stewart. They stop at an inn near Lake Windermere. :,. Henrietta asks to m placed in the landlady's charge, and : finds • Mrs. Gilson a lady with a sharp tongue anl unpleasantly inquisitive. Another inmate of the' hotel is an important-looking personage in a red waistcoat, evidently connected With the law, who gives mysterious hints about the importance of hi* nil** •ion in these usually quiet parts. t CHAPTER 11. (Continued.) / Meanwhile Mrs. Gilson hud returned to her snuggery, wearing a face that, had the lemons and other comforts about her included cream, must have turned it sourt, The snuggery, it may be, still exists in the older part of the Low Wood Inn. In that event it should have a value. For to it Mr. Samuel Rogers, the London banker, would sometimes condescend from his apartments in the south gable ; and with him Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharp, a particular gen-' tleman who sniffed a ,little, at therum; or Sir James Mackintosh, who, rumour had it, enjoyed some reputation in London as a writer. , At times, too, Mr. Southey, Poet Laureate elsewhere, but, here Squire of Greta Hall, would stop on his way to visit his neighbour at Storrs — no such Shorthorns in the world as Mr. Bolton's at Storrs; and not seldom he brought with him a London gentleman, Mr. Brougham, whose vanity in opposing the Lowther interest at the, late election had almost petrified Mrs. Gilson. Mr. Brougham called himself a Whig, but Mrs. Gilson held him little better than a Radical—a kind of cattle seldom seen in those days outside the dock of an assize court. Or sometimes the visitor was that queer, half-moithered Mr. Wordsworth at. Rydal; or Mr. Wilson of Elleray, with his great voice and his homespun jacket. He had a sort of name too, but if he did anything better than he fished, the head ostler was a Dutchman! -

The visits of these great people, however—not that Mrs. Gilson blenched before them, she blenched before nobody short of Lord Lonsdale —had place in the summer. Tonight the landlady's sanctum, instead of its complement of favourite guests gathered to stare at Mr.. Southey's last order for "Horses on!" boasted but a single tenant. - Even he sat where the landlady did not at once see him and it was not until she had .cast a log on the dogs with a violence which betrayed her feelings that he announced his presence by a cough. ; -

" There's the sign of a good house," he said with approval. " Never unprepared!— unprepared ! Come late, come early coach, chaise, or gig—it is all one to a good house." , . " \ ■ ■■ " Umph <" ... - -

"It is a pleasure to sit by"—lie waved his pipe with unction"and to see a thing done properly !'' ~" Ah, it's a pleasure to many, to sit by" the landlady answered with withering sarcasm. "It's an easy way of making a living—especially when you aa'e waiting for what doesn't come.' Put a red waistcoat on old Sam the postboy, and he'd sit by and see as well as another The man in the red waistcoat chuckled. ■* " I'm glad they don't take you into council at Bow-street, ma'am!" he said. •" "They might do wofse." They might do better,'' he rejoined. "They might take'you into the force! I warrant"with a look of respectful admiration— if they did there's little would escape you. Now that young lady?" He indicated the upper regions with his pipe. " Postboys say she came from Lancaster. But from where before that?" * "Wherever she's from, she did not tell me!" Mrs. Gilson snapped. ' "Ah!" "And what is more, if she had, I shouldn't tell you!" " Oh, come, come, ma'am!" Mr. Bishop was mildly shocked. " Oh, come, ma'am ! That is not- like you. Think of the King and his royal prerogative !" " Fiddlesticks Mr. Bishop looked quite staggered. You don't mean it," he said v "you don't indeed. You would not have the Radicals - and Jacobins ramping over the country, shooting honest men in their shops and burning and ravaging, and—and generally playing the devil?" "I suppose you think it is you that stops them?" ' • V|,

" No, ma'am, no," with a modest smile. " I don't stop them. I. leave that to the yeomanryold England's bulwark and their country's pride! But when the yeomanry 'ave done their part, I take them, and the law passes upon them. And when they have been hung or transported and an example made, , then you sleep comfortably in your beds. That is what Ido And I think I may say that next to Mr. Nadir, of Manchester, who is the greatest man in our line out of London, I have done as much in that way as another."

Mrs. Gilson sniffed contemptuously.

"Well," she said, "if you have never done more than you've done since you've been here it's a wonder the roof's on! Though what you expected to do,.except keep a whole skin, passes me! There's the Chronicle in to-day, and such talks of riots at Glasgow and Paisley, and such meetings here and alarms there, it is a wonder to me"—with sarcasm— "they can do without you! To judge by what I hear, Lancashire way is just a kettle of troubles and boiling over, and bread that price ; everybody is wanting to take the old King's crown; off his head.'' , " And his head off his body, ma'am !" Mr. Bishop added solemnly. " So that it's little good you and your' yeomanry seem to have done at Manchester, except get yourselves abused . , /

"Ma'am, the King's crown is on his . head," Mr. Bishop retorted, "and his head is on his body!" " XVell 1 Not that his head is much good to him, poor mad gentleman!" " And King Louis, ma'am, years ago— of him?' The King of France, ma'am? Crown gone, head gone gone ! And why ? Because there was « not * a good blow struck in time, ma'am! Because, poor foolish foreigner, , he had no yeomanry and no Bow-street, ma'am! But the Government, the British Government, is wiser. They are brave menbrave noblemen, I should say," Mr. Bishop amended with respect" but with treason and misprision of treason stalking the land, with the lower orders, that should behave; themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters, turned ramping, roaring Jacobins seeking whom' they may devour, and: whose machine they may break, my lords would not sleep in their beds—no, not they, brave men as they are— if it were not for the yeomanry and the runners." He had to pause for breath.

Mrs. Gilson coughed drily. Leather's a fine thing," she said, "if you believe the cobbler." "Well," Mr. Bishop answered, nodding his head confidently, "it's so far true you'd do ill without it.'' •But Mrs. Gilson was equal to the situation. '

" Ay, underfoot," she said. " But everything in its place. My man, he be mad upon tod-hunting; but I never ,knew him go to Manchester 'Change to seek one." "No V' Mr. Bishop held his pipe at arm's length, and smiled at it mysteriously. " Yet I've seen one there," he continued, "or in such another place." ,

"Where V'

" Common Garden, London.' , " It was in a box, then.'' "It was, ma'am," Mr. Bishop replied, with smiling emphaais. "It was in a box'safe bind, safe find,' ma'am. That's the motto of my line, and that was it precisely! More by token it's not outside the bounds of possibility you may see"—-he glanced towards the door as he knocked his pipe against his top-boot—"one of my tods in a box before morning."

Mrs. Gilson shot out her underlip and looked at him darkly. She never stooped to express surprise; but she was surprised. There was no mistaking the ring of triumph in the runner's tone; yet of all the unlikely things within the landlady's range none seemed more unlikely than that he should flush , his game there. She had asked herself more than once why he was there; and why no coach stopped, no chaise changed "horses, no rider passed or bagman halted, without running the gauntlet of his eye. For in that country of lake and. mountain were neither riots nor meetings; and though. Lancashire lay near the echoes of strike sounded but weakly and fitfully across Cartmel Sands.' Mills might be' burning in Cheadle and Preston, men might be drilling in Bolland and Whitewell, sedition might be preaching in Manchester, all England might be in a flame with dear bread and no work, Cobbett's Twopenny Register, and Orator Hunt's declamations—but neither the glare nor the noise,had much effect on Windermere. Mr. Bishop's; presence therefore seemed superfluous; seemed But before she" could come to the end of her logic, her staid waiting-maid appeared, de-

manding four pennyworth of old Geneva for the gentleman in Mr. Rogers' room; and when she was serving, Mrs. Gilson took refuge in incredulity. " A man must talk if he can't do,"' she said"if he's to*live."

Mr. Bishop smiled, and pulled his buckskin breeches with confidence. " You'll believe, ma'am," he said, " when you see him walk into the coach with the handcuffs on his wrists."

"Ay, I shall!"

The innuendo in the landlady's tone was so plain that her husband, who had entered while she was rinsing the noggin in which she bad 'measured the gin, chuckled audibly. She turned an awful stare on him, and he collapsed. The Bow-street runner was less amenable to discipline.

"'You sent the lad, Tom he asked.

The landlord nodded, with an apprehensive eye oh his wife.

"He should be back"—Mr. Bishop consulted a huge silver watch—" by eleven." . ■

"Ay, sure."

' Where has he gone?'' Mrs, Gilson asked, with an ominous face.

She seldom interfered in stable matters, but if she chose it was understoodl that no department was outside her survev.

"Only to Kendal with a message for me," Bishop answered. "At this time of the night?" "Ma'am"—Mr. Bishop rose and tapped his red waistcoat with meaning, almost with dignity—" the King has need of him. The KingGod bless and restore him to health will pay, and handsomely. For the why and the wherefore he has gone, His Majesty's gracious prerogative is .to say nothing"— a smile. " That is the rule in Bow-street, and for this time we'll make it the rule under Bow Fell, if you please. Moreover, what he took I wrote, ma'am, and as lie cannot read and I sent it to one who will give it to another, His Majesty will enjoy his prerogative as he should!'' There was a spark in Mrs. Gilson's eye. Fortunately the runner saw it, and before she could speak he slipped out, leaving the storm to break about her husband's head. Some who had known Mr. Gilson in old days wondered how he bore his life, and why he did -hang himself— Mrs. Gilson's tongue was so famous. .And more said he had reason to hang himself. Only a few, and they the wisest, noted that he who had once been Long Tom Gilson grew fat. and rosy, and these quoted a proverb about the wind and the shorn lamb. One—it was Bishop himself, but. he had known them no more than , three weeks—said nothing when the question was raised, but tapped his nose and winked, and looked at Long Tom as if he did not pity him overmuch. 11 (To be continued.;