THE STORYTELLER.

Waikato Times, Volume XL, Issue 3260, 20 May 1893, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE STORYTELLER.

TWO LADS AND II LASS, Tiv Florence Wapdkx. CHAPTER 11. A NIGHT ERRAND, Now it is a fine thing to have carried off the best match in the neighbourhood; to know that you will be looked at with envy by all the other girls in the parish, and that yon have secured a partner for life who, in no way objectionable to you himself, can provide you with a good home and a silk frock for Sundays. But, conscious as she was of all these present and future dignities, Rachel Wade fell neither quite happy nor quite satisfied with herself, That haggard face, those burning, yearning eyes of C'oultas Storm's haunted her. Of course lie was not to be compared, this poor, thriftless, ill-tempered lover of hers, to his sunny-tempered well-to-do rival. One cannot help being influenced more or less by the opinion of one's neighbours, and Rachel knew well how much more consideration she would receive as the wife of a prosperous smackowner than would ever be hers if she married a poor fisherman like Coultas. Yet—heart or conscience, or some little demon of unrest, disturbed her. Wiieh Jack Meim%aflcr spinning out the walk across thVlields with her, brought her at last to her grand mother's door, he could not fail to notice that a change had come gradually over his betrothed. Her replies had giown shorter, her manner more absent.. And it was with something like dismay that Jack found himself, after n long kiss at the garden gate, to which she had submitted without apparent reluctance, left outside the door instead of being asked, as he expected, to come in to tea.

Rachel did indeed murmur something about granny's temper, and it didn't do to take her by surprise: but Jack felt, not unnaturally, that all such considerations should have been as nothing compared with the pleasure of enjoying his society a little longer, anil the pride oF presenting such a man as himself as her future husband.

liachcl, to whom Jack Mcimcl had always appeared as the sweetesttempered of mortals, would have been astonished if she could have seen the vindictive look on his face as he walked away. She entered the cottage willi slow steps and a grave face, Her grandmother, a sharpeyed old woman whose temper the girl had not maligned, looked up at her steadily, her bony lingers still busy with the blue fisherman's jersey she was knitting. "Ye'ro late, Rachel," grumbled the old woman. " Ay, granny, I'm a bit late, I know. Here's the yarn." She opened her basket and covered the white tablecloth, spread for ten, with piles of blue and brown worsted , yarn. There was no light in the room but that which came from the flickering fire, which threw shadows on the butter-coloured walls, and danced among the rafters overhead, where the bacon hung. But granny, although she used spectacle?, could see without much light. " Who was yon ye brought homo wi ye?" she asked drily, to the accompaniment of the click-click of her knitting needles. " Jack Menncl," answered Rachel simply. The old woman grunted. " And what call has he to be seein' yowhoam?" " We're to be asked in church next Sunday, him and me." There Was a pause, and the knitting needles slopped. Rachel had not expected congratulntions from her grandmother, Old Mrs. Wade was a lady who took nothing cheerfully, and who suffered from an over-present consciousness of the tremendous inferiority of the present generation to that of which she was now one of the surviving representatives, Still, she need uot have received this announcement in quite such funereal silence, Rachel thought,

Somewhat nettled, the girl went on briskly: (( ' Twill be a bit of a rise in life, won't it, granny, from llachcl Wade, the poor stocking-knitter, to Mrs, John Mennel, wi' a house of her own an' a husband so well up in the world as Jack?"

The exasperating old lady, how-

ever, took another view of the matter; of course the Inst one she would have been expected to take.

" An' what," she asked abruptly < will Coultas Storm say?"

Now if there was one. sentiment which old Mrs. Wade had expressed more freely and more frequently than another, it was disapprobation of Coultas Storm as a suitor for her grand-daughter. If llachcl's conscience had been easier, she might have laughed; but feeling guilty and sore on this subject, she answered rather pettishly, " He's no call to say anything one way or another." " Ay, ay, but he will though, an' it'll happen be a say as some folic won't care to hear. An' they're free wi' their knives, are them Storms, when they've been served shabbylike."

Instantly Eachel shot up ereel

"Shabby-like! Who's treated him shabby? Not me, as always told him he wur free to go his own way when he mindod, How do you reckon that was shabby, granny?"

"Yon chap loved ye, lass—lovod ye honost; an' when a mon Earos to care for a lass as he did ye, it's not treating him fair to turn liim off sudden,"

Rachel's hurst of indignation was over. She began, in a rather subdued way, to mako tho tea. " I couldn't fare to turn him off, for I never took him on," she said, in quito an apologotic voico,Jas she cut the broad'and butter.

There was a long silence, and both women listened to tho rising wind. Their cottage, being so noar tho shore, was a plaything of every gale that blew; and long before tbo townspeople knew that a storm was brewing the two women in their lonely home had felt the first blasts, and had seen out of their windows the white horses riding on tho brown waves.

On this occasion it was with some anxiety in her eyes that Rachel listened to tho fierce gusts of wind which were beginning to beat about

the cottage. " It's going to be a rough night, granny, and tho boats go out at eleven. They'll be out for ten days, they say, and Jabk said he'd bo up here again before they started, if he could, for to say good-bye." " Why didn't he come in wi' ye, if so be ye'ro goin' to bo axed next Sunday ?" asked Mrs. Wade, su> piciously. "Cos I didn't aslc him," answered Rachel, so abruptly that the old woman gave her a keen glance, but forbore to make any comment, The evening seemed long. Both women as soon as they had finished their toa, returned without delay to

the knitting on which, poorly paid as the work was, their living chiefly depended. Neither spoke much, though they oxchanged a furtive glance from time to time, each conscious that the great event of the day constituted a source of danger as well as of pride. "Click click," went the needles through the hum of tho rising storm; the fire burned gustily, and the wind, entering by unknown chinks and corners, whistled in the rafters. Suddenly there was a loud tapping at the door. Rachel started up and, with a little cry of amazemont, admitted not Jack, but Coultas

;orm. He slouched in hang-dog

fashion, his coat buttoned up to his ears and his cap pulled over his eyes. Closing the door after him, ho advanced into the circle of firelight by which, frugal of candles,

ho women had been doing their tvork. As he seomed in no hurry to announce' his errand, Eachel, ivith forced cheerfulness, asked what brought him. Old Mrs.

Wade, without pausing in her niitting, kept her eyes fixed upon he young man with a straight-for-ivard intensity which ho noticed, for he cast in her direction from Limo to time uneasy aud furtive

glances. "I've come from Jack Mennel," said he. " He's had a accident."

"An accident!" repeated Rachel, half-incredulously. " Ay," said Coultas, in the same dogged tone as before, and still without looking at her. "Ho wanted to say good-bye t' ye, and -time wur runnin' short, so lie ran his smack out and brought her oop here, mcauin' to wait here for t' others. But she run aground on t' beach here nigh t' Toint, and Jack's hurt hisself tryin' to get her off."

All this Coultas uttered in the

same sing-song tone, as if he had got it by rote. In the course of his story lie never once looked in the girl's face, llachol listened very quietly, standing by the table with a

■esolute expression on her handsome 'ace. At his next words a little miile of intelligence flickered round the corners of her month.

"Ho want's to know," Coviltas rent on, "if so be as you'll coom lown to t' beach an' speak to him." A sharp exclamation of mingled ncredulity and refusal burst at this joint from the lips of the old woman.

Hut Eachel raised her head an inch or two higher, and turned to the corner where her shawl hung. " I'll come," she said simply. " Are ye daft, lass ?" demanded her grandmother's shrill voice. " It's all a lie—a madc-oop talc, wi' ne'er a word o' truth in it!" quavered she. "He'll be doin' ye a mischief, wi' his sullen face an' his black looks!, Get onto' t' place, Coultas Storm, and doan't be after troubling yer head u!<out a lass as has given ye yer answer." Hut in the meantime Eachel had wrapped her shawl tightly about her head an J shoulders, and was standing in a proudly defiant attitude, with her hand upon the latch.

" Come on, Coultas Storm," cried she, while the flickering smile still kept its place about her handsome mouth. "Let's get on; I'm not afraid of you,"

Though quite prepared, apparently, to accept his story as true, she asked uo further questions about the cause or nature of the alleged accident, Coultas stole at her a look which made the watchful grandmother shudder. In his fierce black eyes a score of conflicting passions seemed to burn. But- before the old woman's warning voice could be raised again, t'.ie girl had quickly opened the door, and was beckoning to Coultas to follow her. This he did with alacrity, closing the door after him. She was already through the garden gate and battling with the wind on the rough waste ground in front of the cottage.

He followed her in silence, not even attempting to walk by her side, until slie, a little more uneasy than she pretended to be at hearing the tramp-tramp of his footsteps

always close behind hor, turned abruptly with a gesture signifying that he was to keep abreast of her. She, however, made no attempt to manufacture conversation, and the only thing which broke the silence was the quavering cry of the old grandmother, " Come back 1 Come back!" which came like a wail to their ears over the sandy waste. They were getting near enough to the shore now for the sound of the waves to drown the last notes of the old woman's reiterated cry. Ooultas laughed hoarsely. "Your grandmother's afraid of me," he said grimly. " Happen you are yourself, too?" Eachel turned to him superbly.

"Do I look like it?" she said coolly. And springing away from him, she ran up the last little tongue of grass-grown land which lay between them and the beach. Ooultas followed slowly, and stood a little way from her without speaking. " Well," said Rachel, " now where's the smack? And where's JackMonnelf

A waste of level white sand lay before her, and beyond that the dark sea, broken by little tumbling waver edged with foam. The wind swept past them, driving the sand, and making it hard for them to keep their feet, Not another living creature was in sight but a grey sea-bird that flew low above their heads.

Then for ono moment Rachel Wade's stout heart quailed, as Coultas Storm, with a savage laugh, pushed back his cap, and let her see his livid face.

" There ain't no boat, and there ain't no Jack," said he, in a fierce whisper, as he came a step nearer to her. " You've broke my heart, Rachel, and you've drove me mad. And it's wi' a madman you've got to reckon,"

And she saw his lew fingers twitching in the dim light as, with a sort of growl, he sprang at her throat,

(To h continual),