The Black Tor: A Tale of the Reign of James the First by George Manville Fenn (best romance books of all time .txt) 📖

would not have grasped the fact that the reason for the boy’s wild dash was, that he was overcharged with vitality, and that energy which makes a lad exert himself in that natural spontaneous effort to get rid of some of the vital gas, flashing along his nerves and bubbling through his veins.

“What a day!” he cried aloud. “How blue the sky is. Hallo! there they go.”

He stopped suddenly to watch a cavernous hole in the cliff, from which half-a-dozen blue rock-pigeons had darted out, and as he watched, others swooped by, and darted in.

The next minute he went on, followed the path, and turned a buttress-like corner, which took him to the other side of the great chine of limestone, which was here quite as precipitous, but clothed with trees, which softened the asperities of nature, and hung from shelf, crack, and chasm, to cast shadows down and down, right to where the river flashed and sparkled in its rapid flow, or formed deep dark pools, which reflected the face of the cliff in picture after picture.

“One never gets tired of this place,” muttered the lad, as he began to descend a zigzag path, worn in the face of the cliff, starting the powdered-headed jackdaws from their breeding shelves and holes, and sending the blackbirds chinking from out of the bushes which clung to the grey precipice.

“That’s where the brown owl’s nest was,” muttered the lad. “Bound to say there’s one this year. S’pose I’m getting too old for birds’-nesting and climbing. Don’t see why I should be, though.”

He reached the river’s bank at last, and after walking for a few yards, trampling down the white blossoms of the broad-leaved garlic, which here grew in profusion, and suggested salad, he reached a rippling shallow, stepped down into the river, and waded across, the water only reaching to his ankles.

As he stepped out on the other side, and kicked and stamped to get rid of the water, he gazed along the winding dale at as glorious a bit of English scenery as England can produce; and on that bright May morning, as he breathed in the sweet almond-like odour of the fully-blown hawthorn blossom, he muttered: “Linkeham’s nice enough, but the lads would never believe how beautiful it is here. Hallo! there he goes. I wonder where they are building this year.”

He shaded his eyes as he looked up at a great blackbird, winging its way high up above the top of the great cliff which hung over the river, and watched till it disappeared, when, in a low melodious voice, he began singing softly another snatch of an old English song, something about three ravens that sat upon a tree, with a chorus of: “Down, a-down, a-down,” which he repeated again and again, as if it helped him to reflect.

“Wonder where they are building this year,” he said to himself again. “I should like a couple of little ones to bring up. Get them young, and they’d be as tame as tame.”

He went on wondering where the ravens, which frequented the neighbourhood of the river and its mountainous cliffs, built their nests; but wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping down beneath the stones.

A little farther on, where a hawthorn whitened the bank with its fragrant wreaths, there was a quick, fluttering rush, a glimpse of a speckle-breasted thrush, and a little examination showed the neat nest, plastered inside smoothly with clay, like a cup, to hold four beautiful blue eggs, finely-spotted at the ends.

“Sitting, and nearly hatched,” said the lad. “Might wait for them, and bring them up. I dunno, though. Sing best in the trees. Wouldn’t hop about the courtyard and cliffs like the young ravens. Wonder where they build?”

He went on, to stop and watch the trout and grayling, which kept darting away, as he approached the riverside, gleaming through the sunlit water, and hiding in the depths, or beneath some mass of rock or tree-root on the other side.

“Rather stupid for me, getting to be a man, to think so much about birds’ nests; but I don’t know: perhaps it isn’t childish. Old Rayburn is always watching for them, and picking flowers, and chipping bits of stone. Why, he has books full of pressed grasses and plants; and boxes full of bits of ore and spar, and stony shells out of the caves and mines.—Well now, isn’t that strange?”

He stopped short, laughing to himself, as he suddenly caught sight of a droll-looking figure, standing knee-deep in the river, busy with rod and line, gently throwing a worm-baited hook into the deep black water, under the projecting rocks at the foot of the cliff.

The figure, cut off, as it were, at the knees, looked particularly short and stout, humped like a camel, by the creel swung behind to be out of the way. His dress was a rusty brown doublet, with puffed-out breeches beneath, descending half-way down the thigh, and then all was bare. A steeple-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, from beneath which hung an abundance of slightly-curling silvery hair, completed the figure at which Mark Eden gazed, unseen; for the old man was intent upon his fishing, and just then he struck, and after a little playing, drew in and unhooked a finely-spotted trout, which he was about to transfer to his basket, when he was checked by a greeting from the back.

“Morning, Master Rayburn. That’s a fine one.”

“Ah, Mark, boy, how are you?” said the old man, smiling. “Yes: I’ve got his brother in the basket, and I want two more. Better come and help me to eat them.”

“Can’t to-day.—Quite well?”

“Yes, thank God, boy. Well for an old man. I heard you were back from school. How’s that?”

“Bad fever there. All sent home.”

“That’s sad. Ought to be at work, boy. Better come and read with me.”

“Well, I will sometimes, sir.”

“Come often, my boy; keep you out of mischief.”

“Oh, I shan’t get into mischief, sir.”

“Of course not; idle boys never do. Not likely to get fighting, either. I see young Ralph Darley’s at home. Fine chance for you,” said the old man, with a sarcastic ring in his voice, as he slipped his trout into the basket.

“Is he?” cried the lad excitedly.

“Oh yes; he’s up at the Cliff. Now then, why don’t you fill your pockets with big stones to throw at him, or cut a big club? Oh, I see, though. You’ve mounted a skewer. Pull it out, and try if the point’s sharp. I suppose you’re going down the river to lay wait for him and kill him.”

“There, you’re as bad as ever, Master Rayburn,” cried the lad, flushing, and looking mortified. “Last time I saw you it was just the same: laughing at, and bantering, and sneering at me. No wonder my father gets angry with you, and doesn’t ask you to the Tor.”

“Yes, no wonder. Quarrels with me, boy, instead of with himself for keeping up such a mad quarrel.”

“It isn’t father’s fault, sir,” cried the lad quickly. “It’s the old feud that has been going on for generations.”

“Old feud! Old disgrace!” cried the fisherman, throwing away the worm he was about to impale on his hook, to see it snapped up at once by a good fish; and standing his rod in the water, like a staff to lean on, as he went on talking, with the cold water swirling about over his knees, and threatening to wet his feather-stuffed breeches. “I’m ashamed of your father and Ralph’s father. Call themselves Christian gentlemen, and because a pair of old idiots of ancestors in the dark ages quarrelled, and tried to cut one another’s throats, they go on as their fathers did before them, trying to seize each other’s properties, and to make an end of one another, and encouraging their sons to grow up in the same vile way.”

“My father is a gentleman and a knight, sir,” cried Mark Eden hotly; “and I’m sure that he would never turn cut-throat or robber if he was left alone.”

“Of course; and that’s what Sir Morton Darley would say, or his son either; and still the old feud is kept up. Look here, boy; suppose you were to run against young Ralph now, what would happen?”

“There’d be a fight,” cried the lad, flushing up; and he drew in his breath with a hiss.

“Of course!” sneered the old man.

“Well, he never sees me without insulting me.”

“And you never see him without doing the same.”

“But—”

“But! Bah! I haven’t patience with you all. Six of one; half a dozen of the other. Both your families well off in this world’s goods, and yet miserable, Fathers, two Ahabs, longing for the other’s land to make a garden of herbs; and if they got it, a nice garden of herbs it would be! Why, Mark Eden, as I’m a scholar and a gentleman, my income is fifty pounds a year. My cottage is my own, and I’m a happier man than either of your fathers. Look about you, boy—here, at the great God’s handiwork; wherever your eyes rest, you see beauty. Look at this silvery flashing river, the lovely great trees, the beautiful cliffs, and up yonder in the distance at the soft blues of the mountains, melting into the bluer skies. Did you ever see anything more glorious than this dale?”

“Never,” cried the lad enthusiastically.

“Good, boy! That came from the heart. That heart’s young and soft, and true, as I know. Don’t let it get crusted over with the hard shell of a feud. Life’s too great and grand to be wasted over a miserable quarrel, and in efforts to make others wretched. And it’s so idiotic, Mark, for you can’t hurt other people without hurting yourself more. Look here, next time you, spring boy, meet the other spring boy, act at once; don’t wait till you are summer men, or autumn men. When you get to be a winter man as I am, it will be too late. Begin now, while it is early with you. Hold out your hand and shake his, and become fast friends. Teach your fathers what they ought to have done when they were young. Come, promise me that.”

“I can’t, sir,” said the boy, frowning. “And if I could, Ralph Darley would laugh in my face.”

“Bah!” ejaculated the old man, stamping the butt of his rod in the water. “There, I’ve done with you both. You are a pair of young ravens, sons of the old ravens, who have their nests up on the stony cliffs, and you’ll both grow up to be as bad and bitter as your fathers, and take to punching out the young lambs’ eyes with your beaks. I’ve done with you both.”

“No, you haven’t, Master Rayburn,” said the lad softly. “I was coming to see you this evening, to ask you to go with me for a day, hunting for minerals and those stones you showed me in the old cavern, where the hot spring is.”

“Done with you, quite,” said the old man fiercely, as he began to bait his hook with another worm.

“And I say, Master Rayburn, I want to come and read with you.”

“An untoward generation,” said the old man. “There, be off! I’m wasting time, and I want my trout, and thymallus, my grayling, for man must eat, and it’s very nice to eat trout and grayling, boy. Be off! I’ve quite done with you.” And the old man turned his back, and waded a few steps upstream.

“I say, Master Rayburn,” continued the lad, “when you said ‘Bah!’ in that