Uncle Silas J. Sheridan Le Fanu (good books to read for beginners .TXT) 📖

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 gatehouse 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 tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow be hanged! you’ll do it today, 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.”

XXXIV Zamiel

It was all vain my remonstrating. She vowed that by crossing the stepping-stones close by she could, by a shortcut, 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 midway, 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 folklore, 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 fear and surprise, almost fancying I saw in that wooden-legged old soldier, the forest demon who haunted Der Freischütz.

So he approached shouting⁠—

“Hollo! you⁠—how came you here? Dost ’eer?”

And he drew near panting, and sometimes tugging angrily in his haste at his wooden leg, which sunk now and then deeper than was convenient in the sod. This exertion helped to anger him, and when he halted before me, his dark face smirched with smoke and dust, and the nostrils of his flat drooping nose expanded and quivered as he panted, like the gills of a fish; an angrier or uglier face it would not be easy to fancy.

“Ye’ll all come when ye like, will ye? and do nout but what pleases yourselves, won’t you? And who’rt thou? Dost ’eer⁠—who are ye, I say; and what the deil seek ye in the woods here? Come, bestir thee!”

If his wide mouth and great tobacco-stained teeth, his scowl, and loud discordant tones were intimidating, they were also extremely irritating. The moment my spirit was roused, my courage came.

“I am Miss Ruthyn of Knowl, and Mr. Silas Ruthyn, your master, is my uncle.”

“Hoo!” he exclaimed more gently, “an’ if Silas be thy uncle thou’lt be come to live wi’ him, and thou’rt she as come overnight⁠—eh?”

I made no answer, but I believe I looked both angrily and disdainfully.

“And what make ye alone here? and how was I to know ’t, an’ Milly not wi’ ye, nor no one? But Maud or no Maud, I wouldn’t let the Dooke hisself set foot inside the palin’ without Silas said let him. And you may tell Silas them’s the words o’ Dickon Hawkes, and I’ll stick to ’m⁠—and what’s more I’ll tell him myself⁠—I will; I’ll tell him there be no use o’ my striving and straining hee, day an’ night and night and day, watchin’ again poachers, and thieves, and gipsies, and they robbing lads, if rules won’t be kep, and folk do jist as they pleases. Dang it, lass, thou’rt in luck I didn’t heave a brick at thee when I saw thee first.”

“I’ll complain of you to my uncle,” I replied.

“So do, and ’appen thou’lt find thyself in the wrong box, lass; thou canst na’ say I set the dogs arter thee, nor cau’d thee so much as a wry name, nor heave a stone at thee⁠—did I? Well? and where’s the complaint then?”

I simply answered, rather fiercely,

“Be good enough to leave me.”

“Well, I make no objections, mind. I’m takin’ thy word⁠—thou’rt Maud Ruthyn⁠—’appen thou be’st and ’appen thou baint. I’m not aweer on’t, but I takes thy word, and all I want to know’s just