A Little Wizard

  Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive

  Transcriber's Notes:

  1. Page scan source: https://www.archive.org/details/littlewizard00weymiala

  2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

  3. Table of Contents added by Transcriber.

  A LITTLE WIZARD

  STANLEY J. WEYMAN]

  A LITTLE WIZARD

  BY STANLEY J. WEYMAN AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "FRANCIS CLUDDE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE," ETC., ETC.

  NEW YORK R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 9 and 11 EAST 16th STREET

  COPYRIGHT, 1895. R. F. FENNO & COMPANY.

  _A Little Wizard_

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. Pattenhall.

  II. Malham High Moors.

  III. Langdale's Horse.

  IV. The Meal Chest

  V. Treasure Trove.

  VI. Dead Sea Apples.

  VII. The Wooden Cross.

  VIII. A Strange Trial.

  IX. His Excellency's Judgment.

  A LITTLE WIZARD

  CHAPTER I.

  PATTENHALL.

  When the agent of General Skippon, to whom the estate of Pattenhall byRipon fell, as part of his reward after the battle of Naseby, wentdown to take possession, he found a little boy sitting on a heap ofstones a few paces from the entrance gate. The old house (which hassince been pulled down) lay a quarter of a mile from the road andsomewhat in a hollow; but its many casements, blushing and sparklingin the glow of the evening sun, caught the rider's eye, and led himinto the comfortable belief that he had reached his destination. Hehad come from Ripon, however, and the village lies on the farther sideof the house from that town; consequently he had seen no one whom hecould question, and he hailed the boy's presence with relief, checkinghis horse, and calling to him to know if this was Pattenhall.

  The lad crouching on the stones, and nervously plucking the grassbeside him, looked up at the four stern men sitting squarely in theirsaddles. But he did not answer. He might have been deaf.

  "Come!" Agent Hoby said, repeating his question roughly. "You have gota tongue, my lad. Is this old squire Patten's?"

  The boy shook his head mutely. He looked about twelve years old.

  "Is it farther on?"

  "Yes, farther on," the lad muttered, scarcely moving his lips.

  "Where?"

  Still keeping his eyes, which were large and brown, on his questioner,the boy pointed towards the tower of the church, a quarter of a mileaway.

  The agent stifled an exclamation, such as in other times would havebeen an oath. "Umph! I thought we were there!" he muttered. "However,it is but a step. Come up, mare."

  The boy watched the four riders plod on along the road until thetrees, which were in the full glory of their summer foliage, andalmost met across the dusty way, hid them from his eyes. Then he rose,and shaking his fist with passionate vehemence in the direction inwhich they had gone, turned towards the gateway as if he would go upto the house. Before he had taken three steps, however, he changed hismind, and coming slowly back to the heap of stones, sat down in thesame place and posture as before. The movement to retreat and thereturn were alike characteristic. In frame the boy was altogetherchildish, being puny and slight, and somewhat stunted; but his smallface, browned by wind and sun, expressed both will and sensibility. Ashe sat waiting for the travellers to return, there was a sparkle, andnot of tears only, in his eyes. His mouth took an ugly shape, and hissmall hand found and clutched one of the stones on which he sat.

  Agent Hoby had never been more astonished in his life than when hereturned hot and angry and found him still there. It was the lastthing he had expected. "You little villain!" he cried, shortening hiswhip in his hand, and spurring his horse on to the strip of turf,which then, as now, bordered the road--"how dare you tell lies to theCommons' Commissioners?"

  He turned and rode in.--Page 9.]

  There was a slender gap in the wall behind the heap of stones, and thelad fell back into this, still clutching his missile in his hand. "Itold no lies!" he said, looking defiantly at the angry man. "You askedme for Squire Patten, and I sent you to him--to the churchyard!"

  One of the men behind Hoby chuckled grimly; and Hoby himself, who hadridden with Cromwell at Naseby, and looked the Robber Prince in theeyes, held his hand. "You little whelp!" he said, half in anger andhalf in admiration. "It is easy to see what brood you come of! I havehalf a mind to lash your back for you! Be off to your mammy, and bidher whip you! My hand is too heavy."

  With that, taking no further notice of the boy, he turned and rode inthrough the gate. The aspect of the house, the quality of the herbage,the size of the timber, the lack of stock, all claimed at once hisagent's eye, and rendered it easy for him to forget the incident. Hegrumbled at the sagacity of the Roundhead troopers, who had lain anight at Pattenhall before Marston Moor, and swept it as bare as aboard. He had a grunt of sympathy to spare for Squire Patten, who,sore wounded in the same fight, had ridden home to die three dayslater. He gave a thought even to young Patten, who had forfeited thelast chance of saving his sequestrated estate by breaking his parole,and again appearing in arms against the Parliament. But of the ladcrawling slowly along the path behind him he thought nothing. And theboy, young as he was, felt this and resented it.

  When the party presently reached the house, and the few servants whoremained came out obsequiously to receive them, the boy felt hisloneliness and sudden insignificance still more keenly. He sawstirrups held, and heard terms of honor passing; and he crept away tothe hayloft to give vent to the tears he was too proud to shed inpublic. Safe in this refuge, he flung himself down on the hay andshowed himself all child; now sobbing as if his heart was broken, andnow clenching his little fists and beating the air in impotentpassion.

  The solitude to which he was left showed that he had good cause forhis grief. No one asked for him, no one sought him, who had latelybeen the most important person in the place. The loft grew dark, thewindows changed to mere patches of grey in the midst of blackness. Atany other time, and under any other circumstances, the child wouldhave been afraid to remain there alone. But grief and indignationswallow up fear, and in the darkness he called on his dead father andmother, and felt them nearer than in the day. Young as he was, thechild could remember a time when his absence for half an hour wouldhave set the house by the ears, and started a dozen pairs of legs insearch of him; when loving voices, silent now forever, would havecried his name through yard and paddock, and a score of servants, whomdeath and dearth had not yet scattered, would have rushed to gratifyhis smallest need.

  No wonder that at the thought of those days, and of the loving careand gentle hands which had guarded him from hour to hour, the solitarychild crouching in the hay and darkness cried long and passionately.He knew little of the quarrel between King and Commons, and nothing ofLaud or Strafford, Pym or Hampden, Ship-money or the New Model. But hecould suffer. He was old enough to remember and feel, and compare pastthings with present; and understanding that today his father's housewas passing into the hands of strangers, he experienced all the terrorand anguish which a sense of homelessness combined with helplessnesscan inflict. Lonely and neglected he had been for some time now; buthe had felt his loneliness little (comparatively speaking) untilto-day. r />
  Agent Hoby had finished his supper. Stretching his legs before theempty hearth in the attitude of one who had done a day's work, he wasin the act of admonishing Gridley the butler on his duty to his newmaster, when he became aware of a slight movement in the direction ofthe door. The panelled walls of the parlor in which he sat swallowedup the light, and the candles stood in his way. He had to raise oneabove his head and peer below it before he could make out anything.When he did, and the face of the lad he had seen by the gate grew asit were out of the panel, his first feeling was one of alarm. Hestarted and muttered an exclamation, thinking that he saw amiss; andthat either the October he had drunk was stronger than ordinary, orthere was something uncanny in the house. When a second look, however,persuaded him that the boy was there in the flesh, he gave way toanger.

  "Gridley!" he said, knitting his brows, "who is this, and how does hecome to be here? Is he one of your brats, man?"

  "One of mine?" the butler answered stupidly.

  "Ay, one of yours! Or how comes he to be here?" the agent answeredquerulously, sitting forward with a hand on each arm of his chair, andfrowning at the boy, who returned his gaze with interest.

  The butler looked at the lad as if he were considering him in some newlight, and hesitated before he answered. "It is the young master," hesaid at last.

  "The young what?" the agent exclaimed, leaning still farther forward,and putting into the words as much surprise as possible.

  "It is the young master," Gridley repeated sullenly. "And he is herein season, for I want to know what I am to do with him."

  "Do you mean that he is a Patten?" Hoby muttered, staring at the ladas if he were bewitched.

  "To be sure," Gridley answered, looking also at the boy.

  "But your master had only one son? Those were my instructions."

  "Two," said the butler. "Master Francis--"

  "Who is with Duke Hamilton in Scotland, and if caught in arms inEngland will hang," rejoined the agent, sternly. "Well?"

  "And this one."

  Hoby glared at the boy as if he would eat him. To find that theestate, which he had considered free from embarrassing claims, wasburdened with a child, annoyed him beyond measure. The warrants underwhich he acted overrode, of course, all rights and all privileges; inthe eye of the law the boy before him had no more to do with the oldhouse and the wide acres than the meanest peasant who had a hovel onthe land. But the agent was a humane man, and in his way a just one;and though he had been well content to ignore the malignant youngreprobate whom he had hitherto considered the only claimant, he wasvexed to find there was another, more innocent and more helpless.

  "He must have relations," he said at last, after rubbing his closelycropped head with an air of much perplexity. "He must go to them."

  "He has none alive that I know of," the butler answered stolidly. Hewas a high-shouldered, fat-faced man, with sly eyes.

  "There are no other Pattens?" quoth Hoby.

  "Not so much as an old maid."

  "Then he must go to his mother's people."

  "She was Cornish," Gridley answered, with a slight grin. "Her familywere out with Sir Ralph Hopton, and are now in Holland, I hear."

  Repulsed on all sides, the agent rose from his chair. "Well, bring himto me in the morning," he said irritably, "and I will see what can bedone. His matter can wait. For yourself, however, make up your mind,my man; go or stay as you please. But if you stay it can only be uponmy conditions. You understand that?" he added with some asperity.

  Gridley assented with a corresponding smack of sullenness in his tone,and taking the hint, bore off the boy to bed. Soon the few lights,which still shone in the great house that had so quietly changedmasters, died out one by one; until all lay black and silent, exceptone small room, low-ceiled, musty, and dark-panelled, which lay to theright of the hall, but a step or two below its level. This room wasthe butler's pantry and sleeping-chamber. The plate which had onceglittered on its shelves, the silver flagons and Sheffield cups, thespice bowls and sugar-basins, were gone, devoted these five years pastto the melting-pot and the Royal cause. The club and blunderbuss whichshould have guarded them remained, however, in their slings beside thebed; along with some show of dingy pewter and dingier blackjacks, andas many empty bottles as served at once to litter the gloomy littledungeon and prove that the old squire's cellar was not yet empty.

  In the midst of this disorder, and in no way incommoded by the closeatmosphere of the room, which reeked of beer and stale liquors, thebutler sat thinking far into the night. On the table beside him, whichhad been cleared to make room for it, lay an open Bible; but as henever consulted its pages or even looked towards it, we may assumethat it lay there rather for show than use, and possibly had beenarranged for the express purpose of catching the eye of Master Hobyshould he push his inquiries as far as this apartment.

  Heedless or forgetful of it, Gridley now sat staring into vacancy,with a dark expression on his face. Now and again he bit hisfinger-nails as if some problem of more than ordinary importanceoccupied his thoughts. His aspect too was changed in sympathy with thedark hours of the night. Tear and anticipation, greed and cunning,peered from behind the mask of sly composure which he had worn in theparlor. He had now the air of a man who would and dare not, and thenagain who would not shrink at risks. At last he rose with his mindmade up, and creeping to the door secured it. With a stealthy glanceround, he next extinguished the light, plunging the room intodarkness. After that he was still to be heard shuffling about for sometime, but of his actions or the business on which he was bent nothingcould be known for certain. Only once a rich ringing sound as of metalon metal surprised the silence, and hanging on the air--for aneternity as it seemed to his alarmed ear--died reluctantly in thehollows of the pewter flagons on the shelf. It was nothing, it was themerest tinkle, it could scarcely have awakened the suspicions of themost critical listener. But the man who made the sound and heard thesound was a coward with an evil conscience; and for a full minuteafter the last echo had whispered itself away, he crouched on thefloor, with the cold dew on his brow and his hand shaking. After that,silence.

  Little Jack Patten, awaking suddenly as the first glimmer of dawnentered his room, found the butler standing by his side. The boy wouldhave cried out, not knowing him in the half light, but Gridleymuttered his name, and enjoining silence with a finger on his lip, satdown on the pallet by the lad's side.

  "What is it?" Jack said, sitting up. The man's cautious andapprehensive air, no less than the gloom which still filled the roomand rendered objects indistinct, scared him.

  "Hush!" the butler answered in a low voice, "and listen to me, Jack. Ihave been thinking about you. You know this house is not yours anylonger. It will be shut up, and there will be none but Roundheadedsoldiers here, and the man below will be master. You don't want tostay here and eat his bread?"

  The boy shook his head. But, even as he shook it, the tears rose tohis eyes. For where was he to go? Yesterday's events, hisfriendlessness and helplessness, recurred to his mind in a rush ofbitter memories.

  "Would you like to come away with me?" Gridley muttered, keenlywatching the effect of his words.

  Jack peered at him doubtfully. The butler had not been so kind to himof late as to give this proposal an air of complete naturalness. Themanner and the tone of it were strange even in the child's judgment."Where are you going?" he asked cautiously.

  "To my home," said the butler, licking his lips, as if they were dry.

  "It is on the moors, is it not?"

  The butler nodded. "Above Pateley?"

  "It is many a mile above Pateley--up, up, up; ay, miles above it."

  The child's eyes glistened at that. The moors were his fairyland. Hehad passed many and many a happy hour in dreaming of the marvellousthings which lay beyond the purple hills to westward; the ruggedbroken line behind which the sun went down each day in a glory ofcrimson or orange. That line, he knew, was the beginning of the moors.The blue distance beyond it he had
peopled with his own visions ofgiants and dwarfs, and witches and warlocks, and added besides all thetales which passed current in Pattenhall and the low country of doings_in t' moors_. He knew the moor people kept to themselves and werewild and savage, inhabiting hills a mile high and valleys miles indepth; and he longed to visit them and see these things for himself.His eyes dried quickly as he listened to Gridley, and eagerly asked,"Above Pateley?" which was the boundary of his known world, "miles andmiles above Pateley, Gridley?"

  "Ay, up Skipton way."

  "Is that in the heart of the moors, Gridley?"

  "There is no other heart," the butler answered gruffly, "unless,maybe, it is Settle. And it is Settle side of Skipton."

  "Are you going now?" the lad said impulsively, standing up straight inhis bed, with his brown eyes staring and his fair cheeks glowing withanticipation and excitement.

  "This very minute."

  "I'll come with you! You will let me dress, Gridley?"

  "Ay, dress quickly. We must be away before any one is awake."

  "I'll be quick!" Jack answered.

  He was too young to see anything strange in the hurry and secrecy ofsuch a departure. The troubles of the times had made him familiar withabrupt comings and goings. He trembled, it is true, as he stole downthe dark staircase on tiptoe and clinging to the butler's hand; but itwas with excitement, not fear. He felt no surprise at finding one ofthe great plough-horses standing saddled in its stall; nor did thesize of the wallets which he saw behind the saddle arouse any doubt orsuspicion in his mind. Gridley's haste to be gone, the trembling whichseized the butler as they crossed the farmyard, the frequent glanceshe cast behind him until the road was fairly gained, seemed to the boynatural enough. All Jack knew was that he was leaving his enemiesbehind him. They had killed his father and exiled his brother.Naturally he feared and hated them. He was too young to understandthat he stood in no peril himself, but that on the contrary his properdisposal had caused Master Hoby the loss of at least an hour's sleep.

  Before it was fairly light the fugitives were already a mile away. Theboy rode behind Gridley, clinging to a strap passed round the latter'swaist; and the two jogged along comfortably enough as far as the bodywas concerned, though it was evident that Gridley's anxiety was littleif at all allayed. They shunned the highway, and went by hedge pathsand bridle-roads, which avoided houses and villages. When the sun rosethe two were already five or six miles from Pattenhall, in a countrynew to the lad, though sufficiently like his own to whet his curiosityinstead of satisfying it.

  "How far are we from the moors, Gridley?" he asked as often as hedared, for the butler's temper seemed uncertain. "Shall we be there tobreakfast?"

  "Ay, we'll be there to breakfast," was the usual answer.

  And presently, to the boy's delight, the country began to trendupwards, the path grew steeper. The coppices and hedgerows, the clumpsof elms and oaks and beeches, which had hidden the higher prospectsfrom his eyes, and almost persuaded him that he was making noprogress, began to grow more sparse; until at last they failedaltogether, and he saw before him a rising slope of marsh andmoorland, swelling here and there into rocky ridges, between which thesycamores and ashes grew in stunted bunches. Above he raised his eyesto a heaven wider and more open than that to which he was accustomed;while lark beyond lark, soaring each higher than the other, seemedstriving which should celebrate most fitly the balmy air and warmsunshine which flooded all.

  "Are these the moors, Gridley?" the boy asked with delight.

  "These, the moors?" the man answered, with the first smile he hadallowed himself that morning. "You wait a bit, and you'll see!"

  His tone was not encouraging, but as he hastened to give the lad hisbreakfast and a drink of beer, Jack passed over the change of manner,and rocking himself from side to side, as far as the strap would lethim, went merrily upwards, munching as he rode. Over Pateley Bridgeand Pateley moors they went, and upwards still to Bewerley Fell,whence they saw the Riding stretched like a picture behind them. Jackfancied, but that was, impossible, that he could see the chimneys andthe great oak at Pattenhall. Leaving Bewerley they skirted Hebdon Mooron the north side, rising here so high that Jack could see nothing oneither hand but horrid crags, and ridges of grey limestone and vastslopes of grey rock. Here, too, there was little turf and no heather,but only stone-crop and saxifrages, with cruel quagmires and bogs inthe hollows. The very sky seemed changed. It grew dark and overcast,and clouds and mist gathered round the travellers, hiding the path,yet disclosing from time to time the huge brow of Ingleborough or theflat head of Penighent. The wind moaned across the grey steeps, and asmall rain began to fall and quickly wet them to the skin.

  The boy shuddered. "Are these the moors?" he asked.

  "Ay, these are the moors!" his companion answered grimly. "Andmoorland weather. Yon's the High Moors and Malham Tarn. Your eyes areyoung. Do you see a grey spot in the nook to the right, yonder, twomiles away! That is Little Howe, and we are bound for it."

  "Who lives there?" Jack answered, as he looked drearily over thedesolate upland.

  "My brother," the butler answered, with a touch of ferocity in histone. "Simon Gridley, he is called, and you will know him soonenough."