CHAPTER I.

A GIPSY'S WARNING.

Wonders will never cease.

Tom Bure had found something at last that had changed during the time he had been at the wars.

That something was the dainty little person of Bertha Colmore.

She was not at the Hall when Tom first came to Daddy Dan's cottage, but in two week's time both she and her mother arrived. Tom had permitted one long day and night to elapse before he paid a visit. He did not like to appear too precipitate. Then, with Meg in the bows of the boat, just as in the dear days of yore, he went paddling away along the beautiful broads, and finally stood on the green mossy bank not far from the Hall.

Lady Colmore was delighted to see him.

So was lovely Bertha. Yes; she was a very lovely, though very young, girl; pretty enough to be a queen, Tom thought.

Bertha said she was delighted to see Tom. That is how Tom knew she was.

He wouldn't have known else.

She approached him, not with a glad rush, as of old; she gave him no kiss, but only a little gloved hand. She had just come in from a walk, and she said:

"How are you, Lieutenant Bure? Mamma and I have been so pleased to hear about you always, and from you also, and we are delighted to see you."

Tom was asked to stay for dinner. He needed little persuasion.

After that meal, as they were passing along through the hall, Lady Colmore stopped Tom near to a picture. It was the portrait of a soldier of a bygone time.

"Strange," she said, "but, my dear Mr. Bure, you get more like that picture every day; and, now I come to think of it, he was a Bure, or some such name. He is my son's great-grandfather by the father's side." She laughed as she added, "It is just possible, you know, that you are some distant relation of ours."

Tom found himself in the conservatory with Bertha some time after this.

"It is cooler here, Lieutenant Bure," she said.

Then Tom found his tongue, and to some purpose too.

"Look here, Bertha," he said. "I'm not going to stand any more lieutenanting. So there! If I can't be Tom to you, as I used to be, I'll join the first ship I can get, and go off to the wars and get shot."

"Oh, Tom!"

"There! It's out at last. I'm always going to be Tom to you and nothing else."

And thereupon, in good old sailor fashion, he took his little sweetheart in his arms, and gave her a kiss.

The ice was broken, and the "lieutenanting" all done with from that day and date.

* * * * *

One morning, about three months after this, the old postman brought a letter or two for Tom. He had been walking in the garden with his foster sister, but he sat down in the arbour to open them.

"Why, Ruth," he cried all at once, "who do you think is coming here? You would never guess."

"Oh! but I do guess," she replied, blushing like the autumn roses that were clustering overhead. "It is Mr. Merryweather. I dreamt about him last night."

"Poor Jack Merryweather!" continued Tom, reading to himself. "Poor Jack!"

"Tom," said Ruth, laying a hand on his arm, "he isn't ill, is he?"

She was very pale now.

"No, no, Ruth, he isn't ill; but he'll never serve his country more. He has lost a leg. Just fancy honest Jack Merryweather making a dot and carrying one. Ah, well, I may lose my own next. It is all the fortune of war, Ruth."

In a week's time Jack arrived. The same old Jack as ever in mind and manners; the want of both legs couldn't have changed Merryweather a single little bit.

With him came Raventree, looking somewhat sickly, but very happy to meet his old friend again.

What a vast cargo of news each one of these three sailors had got stowed away under hatches. Dan and his wife were exceedingly pleased to see Merryweather again, though with the real live lord, Raventree, they didn't know well what to do, nor at dinner did Ruth or her mother know how to address him. "My lord," and "your lordship" were words that they thought it was but the proper etiquette with which to lard every sentence. It amused Merryweather and Tom Bure also.

"Lord Raventree, may I help your lordship to another tatie?"

"My lord, your lordship hasn't got a drop o' gravy."

"Does your lordship like the bishop's nose?"

But Raventree settled the difficulty in fine sailor-like fashion before the dinner was half finished.

"Now, mother," he said, laughing, "and you, my pretty sister Ruth, there isn't going to be any more 'lording' at this table; just call me Raventree, as Tom and Jack do, or Mr. Raventree if you like. If you don't I shall call you the Lady Brundell, and my sissy here the Princess Ruth, which title, seeing how modest and beautiful she is, would suit her to perfection. Now let us be all equal, all fair, square, and above board. The charm of spending a night or two in a delightful old-fashioned cottage like this lies in imagining I live here always, that there are no wild wars, no battles, no bo's'n's pipe to call me at the dark hour of a stormy midnight, and only cock robin's song to greet me of a morning. Don't dispel my dream, mother. I was young and foolish once, now I'm older and wiser. Once I thought it was a fine thing to be a lord. I'd as lief be a miller now, I think, if I could always live in a place like this. Do you quite understand, mother?"

"Yes, dear."

"Ah! that's better. Now I have a mamma and a mother both. Mamma lives at Raventree Court, mother lives in a sweet little cottage on the edge of a broad."

"Raventree," said Merryweather, "you're what old O'Grady would call 'a broth of a boy.'"

"His heart's in the right place," said Dan. "It would be better for this country if we had more lords like this one."

"Why don't you enter Parliament?" said Jack.

"Mamma wants me to," said Raventree. "But it isn't good enough. No, I shall fight my way to the poop cabin of a 90-gun ship, hoist my pennant, chase the French from the seas, and then----."

"Then what?" said Jack Merryweather.

"Why, come back and marry Ruth, of course, and live happy ever after."

"That I'm sure you won't."

"Why, Jack, why?"

"Why? Because a man can't marry his sister."

"To be sure," cried Dan, laughing. "It's agin' scripture."

But the ice was broken now, and a right merry evening was spent. Although, it must be confessed, the younger folks did most of the talking, Dan was content to sit and listen and smoke.

Merryweather rose to go at last.

"No, no, no," cried Dan emphatically, "you don't leave here to-night. The missus will stow you both in one room. I shan't even apologise for it. You've been in a smaller before."

So the matter was ended in that way, and Raventree and Jack stayed at Dan's cottage, not one day, but several days. It was getting near Christmas time, however, and Raventree determined to take his two friends with him to Raventree Court, and to hire a carriage with postillions for the purpose.

First, though, they all paid a visit to the Ashleys. The old man was delighted to see his pupil again, and Merryweather too.

"My eyes! though," he said, "you do stump along lovely with that timber toe o' yours. Nobody 'ud know you hadn't been born with it."

Raventree was greatly delighted with the curious home of the Ashleys, with room above room, or rather cave above cave.

And with the _Fairy_ too.

"Goin' round, I am," said Ashley, "day after to-morrow, to Yarmouth. Can't you young 'uns man the _Fairy_, and we'll leave the sons at home to fish?"

"Ah! we'll be delighted."

"Well, that's agreed. Help yourselves to more rum."

"I say, Ashley," said Merryweather, "pay any duty on this?"

"Never a penny," cried Ashley, laughing; "and what's more, I don't intend."

* * * * * * *

The next visit of the trio was to the Hall. Lady Colmore was her own proud self now, and, much to Raventree's annoyance, paid all her court to him--to the lord--leaving his friends, figuratively speaking, out in the dark and the cold.

But Raventree hoisted his topsails after a time, and stood right away on the other tack. He overhauled the saucy craft Bertha, and made violent love to her, greatly to her mother's delight.

"One never knows what may happen, dear," she told Bertha that evening. "Why, his lordship might come back some future day and marry you!"

"Please, mother," said Bertha, "I'd rather marry Tom."

"Tom was dragged up in a cottage, Bertha. You should study dignity, my love. There, go to bed, child; you are too young yet. Just let your mother think for you."

Our three friends had a delightful trip Yarmouth and back. Of course, they boarded the _Belle_, and it goes without saying that the skipper made his usual speech, beginning: "On this auspicious occasion," and ending with a strong recommendation to his mate to "splice the main-brace."

* * * * * * *

There were no railway trams in those days, be it remembered, but there were good coaches and horses; and just a week before Christmas, Raventree, with Tom and Jack, left Dan's cottage in an open carriage with four horses and a pair of postillions.

There was just one matter in which young Raventree delighted to assert his dignity, and that was the matter of equipage. It was certainly not for pride, however, albeit, he used to say, "What's the use of being a lord at all if you can't keep it up on shore?"

Raventree, being a sailor, loved horses, that was all, and he would have them too. Expense? That didn't signify, for once in a way. His mamma would pay. She loved her sailor boy. So right merrily they drove off from the cottage, Dan and Ruth standing on the rustic wee bridge, and waving their handkerchiefs to them as long as they were in sight, and Meg barking her hardest.

[Illustration: "Dan and Ruth stood on the rustic bridge, and waved to them as long as they were in sight."]

Those three sailors were all as happy as sailors could be. Two were young, and if Merryweather was not precisely a spring duck, his heart was as fresh as a boy's.

The last thing Dan and Ruth saw, before the bend of the road and the trees hid the carriage from view, was Jack waving aloft his wooden leg, with a handkerchief bent on to the top of it. He had unshipped it for the purpose.

Ninety miles they had to go, but the weather was fine and the roads were hard. The horses too were as good as gold, and the postillions smart, and small enough to be coxswains for an Oxford or Cambridge boat race.

They made the first five-and-twenty miles of their journey that day in fine style, and slept that night at a cosy little old-fashioned inn, in front of a market square, where they astonished the landlord by the sumptuousness of the dinner they ordered.

The landlord was a bit put about too, for he was quite unused to such an order at this season of the year.

But his wife came to his assistance. G----, Esq., of M---- Hall, was from home, but his cook wasn't. So a polite request brought her down to the inn, with the result that the dinner was a repast fit to place before a Russian Emperor.

Just about sunset, and before they sat down to table, Raventree and Tom were crossing the village green--a huge great park of a place, with a pump in the centre--when a couple of swarthy-looking, but by no means ill-favoured, gipsy men came up to them. One was carrying a dark-eyed little child.

"Good gentlemen," this man said, "it is near Christmas time, and we haven't much in the caravan yonder except five small children. We can't eat those."

He smiled pleasantly as he held out his hand.

Something yellow crossed his palm, and with blessings sounding in their ears our sailors marched on, and soon forgot all about it, for the time being.

* * * * * * *

"By-the-by," said Tom that evening to Merryweather, "did you ever hear anything more of that fellow Jones whom you thrashed so prettily on the sands?"

"Well," was the reply, "he volunteered, as we call it, and I took him in the ship with me as I had promised."

"And he showed his gratitude?"

"Yes; he nearly brained me with a capstan bar at Gibraltar, then jumped into the sea, and the men said he was sucked down in an eddy. I don't want any more gratitude like that."

In due time the carriage arrived safely at Raventree Court, which of course was all _en gala_. Tom thought that Lady Raventree was the most perfect lady he had ever seen, and his friend's sisters after the first few hours seemed positively his own. Never in all his life had he felt more completely at ease than at Raventree Court, and time appeared to fly on golden wings, so that three whole weeks went by like one long delightful dream.

No wonder that when good-byes were said at last, both Tom and Jack Merryweather had willingly promised that they would on no account make strangers of themselves.

The postillions were sorry to go. They had had a real good time of it, as the Yankees express it, and departed with tears in their eyes.

Crack went the whips, and away rolled the carriage, heading east once more--east with a little bit of south in it.

Thirty miles made their first day's journey, for the horses were as fresh as salmon, and although snow had fallen to some extent the roads were clear and hard, so the whole expedition, as Raventree called it, was as merry and happy as the traditional sand-boy.

Next day's run, however, would only be twenty miles, so an early start was not thought necessary. The sky looked thick and hazy, with the horizon closer aboard than Merryweather liked it.

"There is snow in the air," the landlord said; "but you can do it easily, gentlemen, if you push on. Good luck to you, and the safest of journeys."

A little way past the hostelry where they had stayed all night was a steep hill, that led upwards through a clump of trees. Raventree permitted the horses to slacken speed here, for the ground was somewhat slippery, and an accident would have been awkward.

As it was the animals had almost to claw their way uphill, stumbling often, but keeping on their feet.

By the time they reached the top they were well pumped, and Raventree called a halt. The steam rose from the animals' hides in the frosty air in clouds, while their sides heaved like billows.

"I think we can go on now, my lord," said the leading postillion at last. "'T won't do, your lordship, to let 'em get too cold."

"Right then," said Merryweather.

At that moment a man sprang from behind the trees, and placing a piece of rather dirty-looking paper in Raventree's hand, disappeared again as suddenly as he had come.

"Why, what is the meaning of this?" said Raventree, laughing, as he handed the note to Merryweather.

"Well," said the latter, "it's a warning from a friend, there is no doubt about that."

"_Look well to your priming as you pass through Blackmuir woods._"

"That's plain enough," said Raventree. "Why, how jolly! We're going to have a real adventure with footpads."

When they pulled up at the top of the next hill to breathe the horses once again--for the snow was now whirling round their heads in gusts that were almost suffocating--

"Boys," said Merryweather to the postillions, "where is Blackmuir wood?"

"Twelve mile far'er on, sir."

"Are your pistols loaded?"

"That they be, sir. We knows Blackmuir well."

Crack went the whips again, and it was evident the boys were not afraid of anything.