Her answer was a sullen smile.
“Open the gate this instant!” bawled Milly.
“Well, I won’t.”
I expected that Milly would have flown into a frenzy at this direct defiance, but she looked instead puzzled and curious — the girls’ unexpected audacity bewildered her.
“Why, you fool, I could get over the paling as soon as look at you, but I won’t. What’s come over you? Open the gate, I say, or I’ll make you.”
“Do let her alone, dear,” I entreated, fearing a mutual assault. “She has been ordered, may be, not to open it. Is it so, my good girl?”
“Well, thou’rt not the biggest fool o’ the two,” she observed, commendatively, “thou’st hit it, lass.”
“And who ordered you?” exclaimed Milly.
“Father.”
“Old Pegtop. Well, that’s summat to laugh at, it is — our servant a-shutting us out of our own grounds.”
“No servant o’ yourn!”
“Come, lass, what do you mean?”
“He be old Silas’s miller, and what’s that to thee?”
With these words the girl made a spring on the hasp of the padlock, and then got easily over the gate.
“Can’t you do that, cousin?” whispered Milly to me, with an impatient nudge. “I wish you’d try.”
“No, dear — come away, Milly,” and I began to withdraw.
“Lookee, lass, ’twill be an ill day’s work for thee when I tell the Governor,” said Milly, addressing the girl, who stood on a log of timber at the other side, regarding us with a sullen composure.
“We’ll be over in spite o’ you,” cried Milly.
“You lie!” answered she.
“And why not, huzzy?” demanded my cousin, who was less incensed at the affront than I expected. All this time I was urging Milly in vain to come away.
“Yon lass is no wild cat, like thee — that’s why,” said the sturdy portress.
“If I cross, I’ll give you a knock,” said Milly.
“And I’ll gi’ thee another,” she answered, with a vicious wag of the head.
“Come, Milly, I’ll go if you don’t,” I said.
“But we must not be beat,” whispered she, vehemently, catching my arm; “and ye shall get over, and see what I will gi’ her!”
“I’ll not get over.”
“Then I’ll break the door, for ye shall come through,” exclaimed Milly, kicking the stout paling with her ponderous boot.
“Purr it, purr it, purr it,” cried the lass in the red petticoat with a grin.
“Do you know who this lady is?” cried Milly, suddenly.
“She is a prettier lass than thou,” answered Beauty.
“She’s my cousin Maud — Miss Ruthyn of Knowl — and she’s a deal richer than the Queen; and the Governor’s taking care of her; and he’ll make old Pegtop bring you to a reason.”
The girl eyed me with a sulky listlessness, a little inquisitively, I thought.
“See if he don’t,” threatened Milly.
“You positively must come,” I said, drawing her away with me.
“Well, shall we come in?” cried Milly, trying a last summons.
“You’ll not come in that much,” she answered, surlily, measuring an infinitesimal distance on her finger with her thumb, which she pinched against it, the gesture ending with a snap of defiance, and a smile that showed her fine teeth.
“I’ve a mind to shy a stone at you,” shouted Milly.
“Faire away; I’ll shy wi’ ye as long as ye like, lass; take heed o’ yerself;” and Beauty picked up a round stone as large as a cricket ball.
With difficulty I got Milly away without an exchange of missiles, and much disgusted at my want of zeal and agility.
“Well, come along, cousin. I know an easy way by the river, when it’s low,” answered Milly. “She’s a brute — is not she?”
As we receded, we saw the girl slowly wending her way towards the old thatched cottage, which showed its gable from the side of a little rugged eminence embowered in spreading trees, and dangling and twirling from its string on the end of her finger the key for which a battle had so nearly been fought.
The stream was low enough to make our flank movement round the end of the paling next it quite easy, and so we pursued our way, and Milly’s equanimity returned, and our ramble grew very pleasant again.
Our path lay by the river bank, and as we proceeded, the dwarf timber was succeeded by grander trees, which crowded closer and taller, and, at last, the scenery deepened into solemn forest, and a sudden sweep in the river revealed the beautiful ruin of a steep old bridge, with the fragments of a gate-house on the farther side.
“Oh, Milly darling!” I exclaimed, “what a beautiful drawing this would make! I should so like to make a sketch of it.”
“So it would. Make a picture — do! — here’s a stone that’s pure and flat to sit upon, and you look very tired. Do make it, and I’ll sit by you.”
“Yes, Milly, I am tired, a little, and I will sit down; but we must wait for another day to make the picture, for we have neither pencil nor paper. But it is much too pretty to be lost; so let us come again to-morrow.”
“To-morrow be hanged! you’ll do it to-day, bury-me-wick, but you shall; I’m wearying to see you make a picture, and I’ll fetch your conundrums out o’ your drawer, for do’t you shall.”
Chapter 34.
Zamiel
IT WAS ALL vain my remonstrating. She vowed that by crossing the stepping-stones close by she could, by a short cut, reach the house, and return with my pencils and block-book in a quarter of an hour. Away then, with many a jump and fling, scampered Milly’s queer white stockings and navvy boots across the irregular and precarious stepping-stones, over which I dared not follow her; so I was fain to return to the stone so “pure and flat,” on which I sat, enjoying the grand sylvan solitude, the dark background and the grey bridge mid-way, so tall and slim, across whose ruins a sunbeam glimmered, and the gigantic forest trees that slumbered round, opening here and there in dusky vistas, and breaking in front into detached and solemn groups. It was the setting of a dream of romance.
It would have been the very spot in which to read a volume of German folk-lore, and the darkening colonnades and silent nooks of the forest seemed already haunted with the voices and shadows of those charming elves and goblins.
As I sat here enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing, and saw a squat broad figure in a stained and tattered military coat, and loose short trousers, one limb of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His face was rugged and wrinkled, and tanned to the tint of old oak; his eyes black, beadlike, and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under his battered wide-awake nearly to his shoulders. This forbidding-looking person came stumping and jerking along toward me, whisking his stick now and then viciously in the air, and giving his fell of hair a short shake, like a wild bull preparing to attack.
I stood up involuntarily with a sense of