THE WEAVER’S SON

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 21, 23 November 1907, Page 40

THE WEAVER’S SON

By

PERCEVAL GIBBON

Author of "Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases," Etc.

THE loom filled more than half the one room of the cottage, and through its intricacy the weaver was seen as in a frame. An oil-lamp on the wall behind him served to light his task, but through the window and the open door the level sunset east a rude glow on his face. He did not pause when his son entered, but merely bent a brow on him, while the heavy shuttle clashed to and fro between his hands, deft with thirty years of use. Evan halted nervously as he came in, with a kind of appeal to the thin, pitiless man at his work. He was a big lad of some seventeen years, loosely knit and long in the limb, wnose gross work on the land had not yet bound his strength to clumsiness. There was an openness in his face that bespoke the recaptive faculty, a line nostril, a running curve of eyebrow, the hall-marks of the idealist. He stood shuffling, looking under the beam of the loom to the thin and inflexible ascetic whom he knew as father. “Y ou’ve no time to lose/’ said the weaver, over the clack of the uneasy shuttle. Bis voice was good and sonorous; his face, with its wisp of grizzled beard, was a mask moulded to serenity by convictions long since rooted and experience never amended by disaster. “Ay,” said Evan dully, and went to eat his food and clothe himself for the evening’s ordeal. He moved at -his affairs not without adroitness, eating while he washed and dressed, and passing to and fro between the bed ami the loom with a quick handiness. Krom the carved mantel a faded portrait of a woman in hideous Sunday clothes watched him; the shawl and bonnet did not quite eliminate a certain slenderness and potentiality of grace in figure and poise. It was his mother, the dead wife of the weaver, who had never quite achieved her husband's standard of seemly living and thinking, and had lasted just long enough to leave her limber quickness and the brown of her eyes to Evan. Clack! went the shuttle and thud! went the beam. The weaver knew no rest. His hands worked automatically and his feet on the pedal trod without thought from him. He watched the lad, his son, and his face gave no index to his thoughts. Five days a week, from soon after dawn till long after dark, his station was at the loom, reeling forth, inch by inch, the harsh grey flannel cloth. On the sixth he carried his product to Llanelly to sell, walking there and back, forty good miles of hard road; and on the seventh he gave himself to chapel and the relaxation of the forms of worship. For thirty years his life had revolved in no wide* cycle than this; and his wisdom was the iron wisdom of a man who has thought alone for long hours nd backed his conclusions unaided from the great quarry of universal truth. “I'm ready.” said Evan, at last. He stood up with his eap in his hand and fa.'-• 1 his father again. I he v eaver nodded, and a gleam came into his pah* and secret eye. His hands never halted to pass the shuttle. “XI the righteous, but sinners, to repent .Hive.’” he quoted, giving it out in strong, throaty \V»d>h. “Harden not your heart. Evan. S<»ek your salvation, and you’ll b - a good man yet.” rhe Loy stool with hanging head and gave no answer. “Well, what's the inaCler with you?” <L niandvd the weaver. “I don’t want to go,*’ said Evan, sullen with nrrvou-ness. “It isn't as if I’d bit'll drunk or swearing, like there was some that was.”

“You was dancing,’’ said the weaver, deliberately. The sun was down now, and the flying shuttle threw up gleams as it .raced to and fro under the lamp. “Dancing, in a wicked place, with music and woman.” “1 know 1 was,” answered Evan, with a desperate fling of the head. “I wasn’t denying it. When you asked me, I didn’t deny it. But to go to the Band of Hope and stand up to confess in front of everybody in the light—” A hot flush rose to his face as he visualised it. “What have they got to do with it?” he demanded. “You’re my father; I’ve answered to you. What do I want to go answering to Morgan Rhosegadder for—and Jones, Pentowy, and all that?” “You’ll be late if you’re not quick,” said the weaver. Evan started and put on his cap. “I’ve got to go, then?” he asked, pausing as he stepped to the door. “And home straight,” said the weaver, i mpertu rbabl y. Evan stared at him for a pair of moments, as much in wonder as in any protest or rebellion. There he sat at the loom, so still as to the drooping head, of so grave and unfired a countenance, that the fluttering hands and laborious feet seemed scarcely to be parts of him. The lad felt that he might as well appeal to the law of right and wrong. He passed out with a sigh, and closed the door of the cottage behind. The clack of the shuttle was in his ears as he went down the road. The way to Pentre Moria is and his sacrifice of expiation ran down through the flat marshes, where the river Morlais debouched into Carmarthen Bay between flats of mud and low banks of reedy sand. In that country, the soft breath of the sea is always in one’s nostrils; its sky line binds every landscape on the south; an<l the very soil is coarse and arid with brine. In ten minutes Evan walked in the heart of a mute solitude, a far-reaching melancholy of empty land and low clouds, and the slow breeze came up to bear him comfortable company. For him, with the inarticulate artist’s soul, the mighty openness was ever an address in his pulses; even now, for all his trouble, he threw up his head to take the wind full in his face and breathe in its salty exhilaration. Where the road snaked through the burrows by the sea. he stopped a minute or two to mark the lights of a ship oil the mouth or river. He could see nothing of her save the red and green lamps, but he noticed then that she seemed to be very close in for that deadly coast. He would gladly have stayed to watch, for the sea and its ships were the daily spice of his thoughts but he knew he must hurry on to the scourging that was due to.him. He thought for a moment th.it the landward breeze brought up vo; ; s to him; but there was no time to male-. sure. There was a full meeting of the Band of Hope that evening. The a flair of Evan Evans was every one’s affair. As the boy came up to the little hall, the group about its door made way for him with a sudden cessation of talk, and he went to his seat under a burden of curious and hostile eyes. ft was a small place, that hall, the house of indomitable activities in the way of religion, by the rigours of which the sanguine Welsh are wont to temper the fever of their impulses. A huddle of chairs and benches, a desk for the official Bible, ami a harmonium were all its furniture; farmers, labourers, weavers, and shopkeepers were its population: but its authority was the Almighty, its air was the air of the Upper Room.

By the desk sat Morgan of Rhosegadder, known as Morgan Rhosegadder, an elderly fanner in wnose cheerful face lived no sign of the severities to which he could rise. His eye caught Evan’s as the boy jostled in his seat, and his pleasant face took on a cast of gravity. Modgan Rhosegadder lived under the law and dealt the law, fearing it reverently, and fearing it too much to lighten it for himself or for others. Under his glasses Evan shrank as though from a whip, and was glad to sink into his seat and avail himself of its partial obscurity. To this hour he had looked forward with dread throughout the week; now that it was upon him, the dread played on his t..uc nerves as on tuned strings; he sat, tingting from head to foot, with his face set for the imminent horror of public humiliation. Morgan Rhosegadder rose at the desk and prescribed a hymn, reading it out in all its length. The harmonium gave the lead, and the congregation sang, spinning out the plaintive Welsh melody sensuously. Evan sang with them mechanically, and then cowered in his place while Jones Pentowy prayed aloud. It was commonly his wont to watch Jones when he prayed. The tall cobbler had a gift of rapt eloquence for which he was famous; he would lose himself in an ecstasy of superbly phrased fervour. But to-night the boy was glad to hide his face in his hands. “Amen,” droned Jones Pentowy at last, and the audience rustled and coughed itself back to its attitude of attention. It had come; this was the appointed moment. Through the storm of the racing blood in his ears Evan heard Morgan opening the court. He wrought with himself to master his fears and carry an outward calm. “My friends,” the farmer was saying, rolling his r’s like rocks on a hillside “there is a sad duty before us. A young man here is backslid from the strait an narrow way, and is been seen in the devil’s service, dancin’ in a dancing place in Carmarthen, with fiddles —an’ there was women there.” He paused, and his eyes travelled through the audience and picked Evan out. “Evan Evans,” he bade, hoarse with emotion, but never weakening, “stand forth.” In a horror of light, his eyes blurred and his heart a-flutter, Evan came to the front. He heard himself answer when Morgan asked if he had denied the charge. “Then is there anything you want to say, now?” asked Morgan. Evan lifted his burning face to the grave face of the farmer, but his voice was not at command. “Plenty of time,” said Morgan. He was conscious of an impulse to pity the lad, and throttled it as wrong. “If you’ve got anything to say, we will hear it, an' glad to.” His was the office of the priest, with none of its aptitude; conscience was unaided in Morgan by any inclination. No answer from Evan. With a sign, Morgan yielded place to Jones Pentowy. Jones stood up sharply, eager to in-

terrogate, to confound, to convict. With one hand on the desk, he leaned forward, attacking keenly like a weasel, “Evan Evans,” he said, his voice ringing like a shrill bell, “what put it in your mind to dance to fiddles?” He waited for the answer that did not come, and spoke again to tear this fruitless silence asunder. “How many times was you in that place before this time?” he demanded. “Never,” answered Evan, stung to coherence. “Never, indeed, indeed!” Jones Pentowy shook his head. “Then how did you know where it was, now?” Evan sighed hopelessly. “I was walkin’ past, an’ stopped to hear the fiddles an’ a girl came up to me,” he explained. He shook his head as he realised the uselessness of his own plea—that ths specious woman of the town had taken him by storm, that he had entered the dance hall and danced, and seen no evil there. “She asked me in, an’ 1 went in,” he concluded despondently. “What else did you do?” demanded Jones Pentowy. “I danced.” “And where did you le/rn how to daace?” “I never learnt,” replied Evan. “You" haven’t got to learn; when the music is playin’ it’s easy. You just dance, that's all, indeed.” From the audience about and behind, him rose a rustle of whispering. Jones Pentowy scowled. “You just; dance!” he repeated in withering seorn. : ■ Evan pulled himself together for an . effort; the artist within him was not wholly unconscious, else he had not ' been a Welshman. “There’s music,” he urged, “an’ music is a thing you can’t count on. Fiddles, now —they has a voice, like, same as a man or a woman, an’—an' ” —he smiled, slowly to himself as he recalled the erazy claim of those fiddles on his youth, and his blood —it’s a hand they put out to you.” “A hand!” echoed a ones Pentowy. “A hand!” Morgan Rhosegadder turned his face aside. “Yes.” Evan was his own man now. The ring was back in his voice, and some sense that he stood for an apostle, a redeemer, animated him. With head well up and a fire of faith in his woman's eyes, he gave the cobbler of Pentowy his answer: “Yes; it puts hands on you. When you go up to town once a year, ’tis not to look at the shops you want. No, man; lights, and the people movin’, and to think you’re doing something besides wait on the cattle and the crops—that's what you go up to town for. I was stopping, harkin’ to the fiddles, and the woman came up, and she says, ‘You’re young to be looking on,’ she says, and she laughed at me. Then the fiddle eried out again, and her face was before me, laughin', an'—an’—l put my arm to her waist and went in without a word.” He stopped, flushed and thrilled, and the young men and girls stared at him, half fascinated. Morgan Rhosegadder slipped to hit

knees, his face clenched, his lips moving in prayer. Jones Pentowy was aghast, ulpright and wordless. “There was no harm,” said Evan, lowering his voice. “No harm at all, indeed.” He looked round him severely. “I tell you,” he said deliberately, "I Sever felt so full of religion ns then, when I was dancing with the woman to the fiddles.” “Stop!” Morgan Rhosegadder leaped to his feet and thrust forth a rigid finger. His comfortable, stumpy figure, his honest, rosy face, were stripped of their homeliness. He stood there against the wall in the attitude of command, instinct and inspired with vital authority, a very Pope of his creed. "Stop!'” he said, and his voice bound all there to an instant stillness. He stood wordless for a long minute, rooting Evan t<; his place. “Go out,” he said at last, panting as he spoke. “Go out! Ido believe you are d-amned. We will not judge you, but neither will we have you of us. Go out of this place!” Evan stared for a ( moment, thought to answer him, but changed his mind. He took his hat and went slowly down the little aisle, and those who were by the door drew aside and made a passage for him. At the door he looked back. Morgan Rhosegadder was still pointing. Then he went out. He was excommunicated; it amounted to that. There was a dead-line drawn about him, which none would pass. He was marked now for what he was as plainly as though he had teen branded. It had no very poignant sting for him. The chief part of his life was not in the consideration of his fellows, but in his dreams, in what he saw and valued when he lifted his face to the salt wind and to seaward. As he went up the road now, between the dark houses of the village, he shrugged once or twice, as a dog shakes water from his coat. As he faced the longshore road that should take him home, he tried to put the whole matter from his mind. It was not quite easy, however; though it did pierce the armour of his preoccupations —now fear, now embarrassment—there dogged yet

the picture of Morgan springing from his prayers to champion his faith. The farmer’s strong face, dignified and chastened by the force of this purpose, would not leave his memory. He would {save been cast down in the end by this persistence of his recollections, but there came a material relief. At the bend of the road under the burrows, where it left the shore to follow the banks of the Morlais, he came suddenly through the sand-hills to the sight of a ship in the mouth of the river. Her riding-light drew his eyes first, and then the faint loom of her spars, only a little darker than the night, and he saw she was a square ; rigged vessel. She lay, it seemed, in a channel between flats of mud; and from one of them a dull gleam answered her lantern. Evan left the road and scrambled through ditches and bullrushes to come nearer to her. Schooner and hatches come this way rarely, larger craft never. It was imperative he should see what was to be seen. He stumbled on at his best pace, hardly dodging the occasional forlorn briars in his way, while the pensive night sky watched him broodingly. Into one of them he blundered bodily, with a crash of dry twigs, and forthwith from the lee of it rose a man who reached an arm across the bush and gripped him by the shoulder. “ You’re powerful hurried, by all seemin’, ” said the man, while Evan winced in his grip. “What’s amiss, mate?” “ I was coming to see the ship,” panted Evan, “Ah, you was, eh?” The man loosened his shoulder, but seemed to be staring through the dark at his face. “And what might you be wantin’ of the ship?” “ Onlv to see her,” replied Evan. “Ships like that —big ships—don’t come here. Is she aground? Do you belong to her?” “Ah!” The seaman, for such he seemed plainly to be, took his time to answer. “You’re a smart boy, ain’t you’ Well, sonny, she ain’t aground, but she’s goin’ to be. And who mnght you be?” Evan gave an account of himself. Tho seaman heard him anxiously. “ Well, now,” he said “ I’ll tell you

what to do. You go home and turn in, and then if you come down to-morrow you’ll have a good look at the ship. Ap‘ if you was to keep your mouth shut maybe you’d get something worth while. Mind, I said maybe. It ain’t every ship that puts into a mud-flat to heave down that wants to be the talk of the place. Savvy that?” “ Yes,” said Evan, “An’ here! ” pursued the sailor confidentially tapping the boy on his breast. “ There wouldn’t be anyone hereabouts with a likely pig to sell, would there? For sailormcn sets a lots of store by pigs.” “ There’s Morris of the Little House,” Answered Evan. “ He’s got pigs. A mile up the road his house is.” “ Ah, that’s tine,” said the sailor. “ Plenty of pigs, eh ? and maybe a rooster or two? Well, good night to you my lad. A mile up the road, you said?” “ Yes,” said Evan. “ Good night.” In the morning he had to face his father, who heard without surprise that he had been expelled from the Band of Hope. Evan gave his story briefly, in the barest form, while his father sat at the loom. The boy did not see how the weaver’s face flushed and then whitened at the recital. “ Ah, well,” said the weaver, when it was told. “It was Morgan Rhosegadder put you out?” “ Yes,” said Evan. “ Ah, well,” said the weaver, and stopped a shuttle to tie a broken yarn, while Evan went out. The vessel, a small wooden barque of perhaps four hundred tons, lay some fifty yards from the bank wit hher side to a mud-flat. She seemed to be in ballast, and three or four hands were aloft, unbending sail. Two more leaned on the rail aft and gave ear to an angry man ashore who bellowed at them across the muddy water. Evan recognised him as Morris of the Little House. “ I’ll learn you to come thievin’ pigs, da-amn you!” he was shouting. “Some of you’ll swell the inside of a gaol, whatever, or I’m a liar.” He turned and saw Evan. “ It’s you,”

lie said. “ There’s company for you. There’s nice people whatever! Thieves and robbers, all of them. They’ve stole illy black pig, and the marks of their feet is in my sty. Go an’ dance with them. They’ll fiddle you.” He made his way up the bank and into the sand hills, turning at the top to shake both fists at the ship. “Gaol! ”he yelled. “I’ll learn you to go stealin’ pigs! ” The grave company at the rail of the barquu saw him go and then one of them lifted up his voice and sent a hail across to Evan. “Is.it you?” he cried lucidly. “ Yes,” shouted Evan in reply. The man who had called promptly, stepped into the mizzen-chains, and seemed to let himself drop overside. There was a dingey in the water, though, out of sight behind the mud, and presently he came pulling across to Evan. He was a thick-set man of the middle* stature, with a hard, brown, hairless face and small blue eyes. “ Morning, mate,” he said, as he headed the dingey handily. “ This here’s a fort’nit meetin’. Did you hear that there farmer bellowin’? He’s got his suspicions, he has! I wouldn’t have a suspicious nature life him for a pub an’ a street of houses. He’ll lose customers, that man will. There’s others keeps pigs as well as him.” He nodded seriously to Evan. “ You come aboard, matey,” he said. “You come aboard and see the big ship. She’s been to India, that big ship has, an’ to Morocco and Madagascar. She ain’t no fool of a skip, and you can take your oath of that.” Evan stepped into the boat, and sat down. “ Did you steal the pig ? ” he asked, as the sailor shoved her off. The other took his seat and leisurely pulled into the stream. “ No,” he answered “It were another of ’em that stole the pig. A master hand he is with pigs, too. But if that ravin* bog-trotter had counted his roosters, he’d know what I stole.”

lie nodded to Evan and winked with great pleasantry. . He laid the boat alongside the worn flank of the barque, viid Evan went on board and found himself on a ship’s deck at last. The planks made his feet welcome; overhead Hie cordage wove a web of fascinating, and the simple gear about him — the capstan, the pumps, the rails thronged with belaying, pins and festooned with coiled ropes—addressed him intimately. His companion led him up the ladder to the little poop, arid brought him to the tall old man who looked at him venerably. “ Here’s the lad. s'r,” he said. “Boy, take off your hat to the captain.” There was a vague and mild quality of Courtesy, about the captain, something gentle and gallant, which easily touched Evan. He was over the common height, with a good and noticeable carriage and a fine reverend head. His white forked beard hung to his chest; his face was clear red; and as he spoke he had the air of condescending, of doing the graceful thing to an inferior. He welcomed Evan with a nod which passed for a bow. “ 1 am glad to see you on my poop,” he said. “My mate tells me you live hereabouts and can give me the information 1 require.” “ That’s me,” said the man who had brought Evan aboard. “ I'm his mate.” “ I’ll do my best,” said the boy. Another bow from the captain. “ Be seated,” he said, waving him to the ledge of the skylight. He leaned on the wheel himself, looking down at his visitor, while the mate itood with legs apart, looking on. Then, tn good, gracious speech, the captain commenced his., interrogation. He was inxious to know where the nearest railway station was, and learned with pleasure that it was twenty-five miles away. Coastguards" were unheard of here; that, too, gratified him. As for the police, there was a constable at Pentowy, but he was old and infirm, and infrequently Bober. “I thank you,” said the captain, when all his questions had been answered. He looked on Evan with trouble in-his face. “ It. is.natural,” ho went qn,._“ that y ou shbuld„wish to know why all-this is important to us. It looks, of course, as if ,we had some crime to conceal.” Evau'rose. “J, dqn’t'.care,”, he said, stoutly ; it isn’t miy business. ....The ptople doesn’t know what is. crimes what isn’t, indeed. - They think dancing is a crime.” ‘ “ And pig-stealing,” added the mate, indignantly. The captain smiled faintly. “There will be no more of that,”-he said, “Ibere is a small repair to be made to the bottom, and for that purpose we have put in to careen. We wish to be private for good sound reasons, and that-is all. He had a way, while sneaking, of letting his eyes wander to the shore, not as though seeing things, but as if his thoughts travelled easily from the subject. For some reason lie could not define, Evan found himself pitying this tall old man. (> “■ls there anything I can do — he said. , “Thank you; I thank you,” answered the captain, and he was dismissed. His work at the farm at which he was employed did not occur to him at all He had not intended to go there, anyhow. He spent the morning on the deck of the ship, busy and delighted, making himself familiar with the gear, and weaving his fancies interminably oyer the boats on their blocks and all the stuff of dreams of which a ship is compact. When the men came down to dinner, he was called to join. them. Roast pork was their food. He sat on the hatch with them, his eyes and ears open to their strangeness, between a magnificent Greek with gold rings in his ears and a little wizened no-nation veteran whose right eyelid was flat and motionless over an empty socket.' There were five of them altogether, besides the captain and mate, all sound men. harsh and wise with use of the sea and its customs, and they talked to him as only sailors ran talk to a boy. He was avid for incidents of colour and action, and they glutted him with talcs which were only half lies. “Ay. that was a son of a-gun of a v'yge," said the veteran, concluding a yarn. “A bit, like this v'yge it was.” “Where are you bound for, then?" demanded Evan. The Greek flashed a dazzling smile at him. "You don’ know?” lie said. ‘ All, well, We don* know a no more as you.”

'An English sailor opposite looked up from his plate with a growl. “Stow it,” he said. “Mind what you’re sayin’.” And the Greek shrugged and was silent'. The old man heard him, and looked away over his head. “I know nothing against it,” he made answer. “But you have parents, surely? Have you asked them?” Evan reddened. “There’s only my father,” he said, “an’ him an’ me’s not much friends.” The captain shook his fine head and mumbled into his beard. “You’d ship on anything. Perhaps it would be better on any craft but this; who is to say?” “Why, what’s the matter, with the ship?” asked Evan, in surprise. “Matter with the ship!” The old captain woke to a sort of liveliness. “Nothing is the matter with her—nothing her own crew can’t put right. I’ve commanded on this quarter-deck since before you were born, boy, and who but I should know?” He bent a formidable and gloomy brow on Evan. “God forbid I should slander the ship,” he said, with formal solemnity. “I was at the building of her. To her you might trust yourself. Yes, you’d be safe with my old barque. But—but tainty, and his pale eyes wandered again. “Please, sir, I’d like to ship with you,” said Evan, after waiting for him to go on. The captain seemed to hear him as a sleeper hears a sound at his window, with no understanding of its import. “She’s nobody’s if she isn’t mine,” he said absently. Evan felt a hand on his arm, and turned to face the mate. “Where's your manners?” demanded that officer. “Don’t you know better than to plague the skipper? Has he shipped you?” Evan shook his head. “He wants me to ask my father first.” “That’s funny,” said the mate, leading the boy.-for’ard. “Where d oes lie think sailors come from? But don’t you worry, sonny; I’ll fix it, You’re shipped, you are.” He slapped the, lad disconcertingly on the back. “Ship’s boy an’ cook’s mate—that’s you, barrin’ act of God j.h’ the Queen’s enemies. Get alqng down to the fo’c’sle; you’re shipped.” Evan went through the scuttle and down the ladder to the darksome little fo’c’sle up in the eyes of the barque, and the men received him with grins. “What did the old man say?” they inquired. “I’m shipped,” said Evan, with pride. The one-eyed veteran looked up sharply. “Shipped, eh!” he observed. “Well, then, you go and lay hands on a broom and sweep this yer deck up, boy, and when it’s dark you’ll go with the landin’party to trade with the natives.” “Pigs?” queried Evan, taking up the broom. “Anything,” answered the sailor carelessly. Of the raid that night there is no need to tell. They bereaved three farmers of many eatables. In the morning they set to discharging the gravel ballast, weary and dirty work. Evan had expected to see his father in search of him, but the weaver put in no appearance that day. It was the next day at noon that he saw the well-known and bowed figure at the water’s edge, looking over towards the barque. The mate, after considering the matter for a minute, hade him take the dinghey and go ashore to the old man. He was awkward with the oars, and beached the boat clumsily. His father came without a word and helped haul her bow heavily on the sand. Then they stood facing each other, the big flushed boy and the meagre, serious man. “Well, Evan,” said the weaver at last, “you've left me, then.” Evan nodded without speaking. “Well, well,” said the weaver. “It's done, then. You’ve gone, that’s all. So we can sit down a spell ail’ talk, can’t we—father and son, like us?” “Yes, we can talk,” answered Evan; and the pair crossed the narrow beach to the rough fringe of the burrows. The weaver lowered himself to a knoll with a sigh, and Evan squatted on his heels a few feet away, “I was hearing from .Tones Pentowy what you was fellin' them in the Band of Hope," said the weaver. His tone was weighted with no function of blame; he

seemed to speak conversationally. “But I don’t agree with you.” “You never did,” retorted Evan, resentfully. J “How d'you know that?” said the weaver. “An', evhe then, a man’s got a right to his opinions. You’ve got yours an’ I’ve got mine. An’ Jones is got his, for what it’s worth. If we was to think the same, all three., we’d be all weavers or cobblers or sailors, indeed, now.” He pushed back his hat and wiped his forehead. “Don’t you see?” he asked. Evan nodded. “I couldn’t be a weaver or a cobbler,” he answered. “No,” agreed the weaver. “It’s a disappointment to me, Evan. I was wantin’ you to be a good man. There’s only one way I know to be a good man, but you wouldn’t have it. So you must have your own way, and perhaps God’ll take it into account. So you’re going to sea, now?” “Yes,” answered Evan. “The captain wants me to get your permission.” “Well, you’ve got it. Shall I come over and tell it to him?” . “I’ll be thankful,” returned Evan, and they went down to the boat. Evan saw with some surprise that his father and the captain seemed immediately to recognise equals in one another. To the stately courtesy of the captain the weaver apposed a quiet purposefulness, a gravity and dignity, which were no less effectual. The little poop became a stage for a fine drama of manners. “My boy Evan is tailin’ me he’s wanting to work for you,” began the weaver. “So I’m here to tall you I’m willing.’" “Thank you,” :»eplied the captain, bending his splendid head. “Thank you." He looked the weaver up and down and sighed. “But there is something I ought to tell yon before I take your boy.” “I’ll listen,” was the weaver’s answer. The captain walked a pace or two, and came back. The fresh red of his face deepened a little. “I hope you’ll understand,” he said. “It's hard to be taken for a thief. But the God’s truth is, this is a stolen ship.” Evan saw his face clench on the word.. “I was at the building of her,” he went on, while the weaver leaned against the rail and listened to him gravely. “I drove an adze on her timbers, and went to sea with her when she was launched. I’ve been with her ever since—boy, man, officer, and master—while the pair of us grew ripe and old. I’ve sailed her and tinkered her and wofl:ed her till I just couldn’t quit. She’s more to me than a marriage-bed. When she was sold I went with her; she went into colliering and such-like dirt, but I stuck. She passed from a Scotch Jew to a nigger in Bombay, and from him to Swede, and from him to a Holland Dutchman; but they all took me along with her. And then, when we were trying for a timber charter from Portland, the Dutchman died, bankrupt, and I got my orders to bring her across to be broken up.” He paused. “There’s cruel,” said the weaver gently. “What sense is there in it?” cried the captain. “I brought her across, and one of my men made a plan for me. I was past planning. I just couldn’t make my mind fast to the old,notion of hacking the bowels out of my old barque. We was to put about for Chile ports, and cadge stores as we eould by the way. And then we’d sell her. They’ll h«y ships, those Chilo (fig»cs; li.nd they’re keen enough on having them commanded by Englishmen. We’d have made enough that way to pay the price of her as truck to the Dutchman’s folk, and there’d ha’ been a bit of something over for the hands. It might turn out honest in the end. But she wanted a bit of patching; so, as we were off the Channel I made up my mind. I put her up for this coast to careen.” He eyed the weaver timidly as he paused; that small, hard man was leaning against the rail listening frowningly like a judge. He shrugged his shoulders. “Well,” he said, “it's thieving, whatever. There's no good can come of blinding your eyes to the truth. Thieving is thieving. An’ is my l>oy to go along with you?” “He may come,” answered the captain. “Ah' you'll pay him out o’ the money you get for the ship?” “trf course,’’ said the captain. “Ay. but whose money?” The weaver turned to Evan. “You see,” he said. “Evan, fach, come back with me. We’ll

forget everything; we’ll begin again. Come back with me, now, anwyl.” "No,” said Evan. The outstretched hand of the weaver sank to his side at the tone of the word. “No, I won’t come back. Where’s the use of shamming good, when all of me is hungry to be away - and see the cities and know men and women? I Won’t come back.” “Well, now,” said the weaver, and sighed. “Morgan Rhbsegadder is made a mistake,” he went on, “and he’d better have the millstone tied about - his neck and be cast into the middle of the sea.” He turned to the captain. “And what is the name called of this stolen ship?” he demanded. “Sir,” said the captain, “this is the 'New Hope,’ of Rotterdam.” The weaver nodded, and presently Evan set him ashore again and watched him go up the sandy slope into the sunset. He shook hands with him ere be went, smothering resolutely some thrill of emotion that stirred him with the sense of a final parting. ! ■ Those were crowded days for him. He bore a willing hand at the task of heaving the little barque down; helped to carry out her anchors abreast.of her, to reeve the tackles between them and the mastheads, and heard for the .-first time the strain of a sea-shanty when the capstan was manned and the vessel laid over on her flank. A few people of the countryside would come down to watch from time to time, but most were afraid of the sailors. She was on an even keel again and sail was being bent before he had speech with his own folk once more. His father hailed from the beach, and with him was the stumpy figure of Morgan Rhosegadder. Evan shook hands' with his father, and glared at Morgan; The farmer’s face grew scarlet. 1 ; “Now, now, Evan,” remonstrated the weaver, “no use to look at Morgan like that, indeed now. ’Tisn’t for quarrelling he’s come; No, no; let him speak.”. ~ “He’d better be careful,” said Evan defiantly. “If I was to do what I’d like to do, I’d throw him in the water. It was him turned me out of the Band of Hope in front of everybody.” The farmer turned to him. “Evan, anybody can make a mistake,” he urged. There was some strong earnestness in his'- manner that made the boy wonder and. listen. He seemed to be holding in check some matter of passion. k ' “Well?” said Evan. C Morgan waved his hand to the bled, .sandhills. “Come and sit, down, he said, “and then’we can talk—justHM three';-, Evan—and let’s try to make it all right, "it’s more natural-like to talk sitting down.” “Ay, come and sit down, Evan,” urged the weaver, arid the boy yielded. They found a little hollow where the rushes grew- rank; and, nought but the sky was over them, with its great feathery clouds. “I paid for the pigs as was stole,” said the weaver abruptly, when they were seated. “Pigs is expensive. Well!” Morgan took oil his hat and wiped his brow. “Then,” continued the weaver, “there was the ship. Rhys Carmarthen, the lawyer, he found out who she belonged to by telegraphing. One telegram cost one pound five. So we bought the ship.” Evan gaped at him. He was talking away in his dry, even voice, with his hard, serious face, as though upon matters of every-day traffic. “Bought the ship!” exclaimed the boy. “Ay,” said the weaver, nodding. “Didn’t we, Morgan?” The farmer took off his hat and wiped his face, . “Ay, we bought her,- indeed,” ho said. “Evan, boy, we bought her, whatever. It was your father.; he come to me and told me all the - storv, 1 and I see then what I have done, intjged. Evan, try an’ forgive. That time. in,the Band of Hope, the devil was at myfjelbow, an’ he was saying all the time, Af thy right hand offend thee, cut .it off, 5 an’ he kept saying it. So I didn’t to think upon ‘Whoso shall offend against one of these little ones.’ Your father he came an' put me in mind of it. Ay. indeed.” ‘AVell,” said Evan, impatiently, “but what about the ship?” “The ship? Ay, now. that was easy. But you to lie driven to thievery' on the seas, and me to send you there—swinging day by day through sin to hell! Evan, my heart was torn in my bodv! So I says to your father. I says, ‘Au’ can I buy my work back?’ An' he says, ‘Between us, we'll bid for it.’ So we bid, to send you out to the life you’ve

chose, upright and fit to look chapel folk in the face. Neither haggling nor bargaining was there; it wasn’t for me to cheapen my spoken word and my own soul. I sold the top field and the long pasture and the plough-land, and your father sold his cottage and paid the money down handsome on the table to lighten the millstone from about my neck. Say you’ll forgive, now, Evan; that’s what I’m wanting.” His eyes were half closed in an agony of supplication; he spared himself no rowel of all his conscience. “Take him by the hand, Evan,” bade the weaver. “He’s a poor man to day.” Evan grasped the hand that groped for his. “God bless you!” said the fanner. “Surely you’ll be a fine sea-captain yet. -And I’m a free man. I’ll come down to see you sail, Evan.” “Come on board now,” said Evan. “Come and tell the captain, for we’ll be sailing day after to-morrow.” And they went on board together, the owners and the boy. (THE END.)