The Shadow of a Crime Part 80

"_I_ is to tumble the poppenoddles," cries the bullet-headed gentleman. And presently the rustic young gamester is tossing somersets for a penny.

In the middle of the meadow, and encircled by a little crowd of excited male spectators, two men are trying a fall at wrestling.

Stripped to the waist, they are treating each other to somewhat demonstrative embraces.

At a few yards' distance another little circle, of more symmetrical outlines, and comprising both s.e.xes, are standing with linked hands. A shame-faced young maiden is carrying a little cus.h.i.+on around her companions. They are playing the "cus.h.i.+on game."

At one corner of the field there is a thicket overgrown with wild roses, white and red. Robbie Anderson, who has just escaped from a rebellious gang of lads who have been climbing on his shoulders and clinging to his legs, is trying to persuade Liza Branthwaite that there is something curious and wonderful lying hidden within this flowery ambush.

"It's terrible nice," he says, rather indefinitely. "Come, la.s.s, come and see."

Liza refuses plump.

The truth is that Liza has a shrewd suspicion that the penalty of acquiescence would be a kiss. Now, she has no particular aversion to that kind of commerce, but since Robbie is so eager, she has resolved, like a true woman, that his appet.i.te shall be whetted by a temporary disappointment.

"Not I," she says, with arms akimbo and a rippling laugh of knowing mockery. Presently her sprightly little feet are tripping away.

Still encircled by half a score of dogs, Robbie returns to the middle of the meadow, where the wrestlers have given way to some who are preparing for a race up the fell. Robbie throws off his coat and cap, and straps a belt about his waist.

"Why, what's this?" inquires Liza, coming up at the moment, with mischief in her eyes, and bantering her sweetheart with roguish jeers.

"_You_ going to run! Why, you are only a bit of a boy, you know. How can _you_ expect to win?"

"Just you wait and see, little la.s.s," says Robbie, with undisturbed good humor.

"You'll slidder all the way down the fell, sure enough," saves Liza.

"All right; just you get a cabbish-skrunt poultice ready for my broken s.h.i.+ns," says Robbie.

"I would scarce venture if I were you," continues Liza, to the vast amus.e.m.e.nt of the bystanders. "Wait till you're a man, Robbie."

The compet.i.tors--there are six of them--are now stationed; the signal is given, and away they go.

The fell is High Seat, and it is steep and rugged. The first to round the "man" at the summit and reach the meadow again wins the prize.

Over stones, across streams, tearing through thickets, through belts of trees--look how they go! Now they are lost to the sight of the spectators below; now they are seen, and now they are hidden; now three of the six emerge near the top.

The excitement in the field is at full pitch. Liza is beside herself with anxiety.

"It's Robbie--no, yes--no--egg him on, do; te-lick; te-smack."

One man has rounded the summit, and two others follow him neck-and-neck. They are coming down, jumping, leaping, flying. They're here, here, and it is--yes, it _is_ Robbie that leads!

"Well done! Splendid! Twelve minutes! Well done! Weel, weel, I oles do say 'at ye hev a lang stroke o' the grund, Robbie," says Mattha.

"And what do _you_ say?" says Robbie, panting, and pulling on his coat as he turns to Liza, who is trying to look absent and unconcerned.

"Ay! Did you speak to me? I say that perhaps you didn't go round the 'man' at all. You were always a bit of a cheat, you know."

"Then here goes for cheating you." Robbie had caught Liza about the waist, and was drawing her to that rose-covered thicket. She found he was holding her tight. He was monstrously strong. What ever _was_ the good of trying to get away?

Two elderly women were amused spectators of Liza's ineffectual struggles.

"I suppose you know they are to be wedded," said one.

"I suppose so," rejoined the other; "and I hear that Ralph is to let a bit of land to Robbie; he has given him a horse, I'm told."

Matthew Branthwaite had returned to his station by Mrs. Ray's chair.

"Whear's Rotha?" says the old weaver.

"She said she would come and bring her father," said w.i.l.l.y from the gra.s.s, where he still lay at his mother's feet.

"It was bad manishment, my lad, to let the la.s.s gang off agen with Sim to yon Fornside."

Mattha is speaking with an insinuating smile.

"Could ye not keep her here? Out upon tha for a good to nowt."

w.i.l.l.y makes no reply to the weaver's banter.

At that moment Rotha and her father are seen to enter the meadow by a gate at the lower end.

Ralph steps forward and welcomes the new-comers.

Sim has aged fast these last six months, but he is brighter looking and more composed. The dalespeople have tried hard to make up to him for their former injustice. He receives their conciliatory attentions with a somewhat too palpable effort at cordiality, but he is only less timid than before.

Ralph leads Rotha to a vacant chair near to where his mother sits.

"A blithe heart maks a blooming look," says Mattha to the girl.

Rotha's face deserves the compliment. To-day it looks as fresh as it is always beautiful. But there is something in it now that we have never before observed. The long dark lashes half hide and half reveal a tenderer light than has. .h.i.therto stolen into those deep brown eyes.

The general expression of the girl's face is not of laughter nor yet of tears, but of that indescribable something that lies between these two, when, after a world of sadness, the heart is glad--the suns.h.i.+ne of an April day.

"This seems like the sunny side of the hedge at last, Rotha," says Ralph, standing by her side, twirling his straw hat on one hand.

There is some bustle in their vicinity. The schoolmaster, who prides himself on having the fleetest foot in the district, has undertaken to catch a rabbit. Trial of speed is made, and he succeeds in two hundred yards.

"Theer's none to match the laal limber Frenchman," says Mattha, "for catching owte frae a rabbit to a slap ower the lug at auld Nicky Stevens's."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughs Reuben Thwaite, rather boisterously, as he comes up in time to hear the weaver's conceit.

"There's one thing I never caught yet, Master Reuben," says Monsey.

"And what is it?" says the little blink-eyed dalesman.

"A ghost on a lime-and-mould heap!"

"Ha! ha! ha! He's got a lad's heart the laal man has," says Mattha, with the manner of a man who is conscious that he is making an original observation.

And now the sun declines between the Noddle Fell and Bleaberry. The sports are over, but not yet is the day's pleasure done. When darkness has fallen over meadow and mountain the kitchen of the house on the Moss is alive with bright faces. The young women of Wythburn have brought their spinning-wheels, and they sit together and make some pretence to spin. The young men are outside. The old folks are in another room with Mrs. Ray.