Part 2

The outlaw laughed loud and long; but the mirth was strained, and jarred harshly upon the listener. ‘And that fiend is a friend of Luigi’s! Strange things happen in these times. Beware, Signor Maxwell—beware of that man, for he will work you mischief yet. It was by his orders you were arrested. He knows me by name, and as one of the Brotherhood only, so I did his bidding.’

‘Strange! And yet I have done him no harm.’

‘Not that you are aware of, perhaps. Still, no doubt you have crossed his path in some way. If I have a command in the morning to lead you out yonder to face a dozen rifles, I shall not be surprised.’

‘And you would countenance such murder?’

‘This morning, yes. Now, I am doubtful. You are my brother’s friend; I am Le Gautier’s enemy; I do not wish to help him.’

Three days passed uneventfully by, at the end of which time Maxwell had become a great favourite with the outlaw band. Following the lead of their chief, they treated him with every kindness; nor was he in his turn inclined to resent his captivity or chafe at this delay. His chief fear was for Enid; for Paulo Salvarini, though he was inclined to allow his prisoner every latitude, was firm upon the point of communication with the outer world; for, as he pointed out, he might after all be guilty of some great treachery to the League, and in that case must be answerable for anything that happened.

So the days passed on in that quiet spot, no further news coming to him till the morning of the fourth day. Then he was sitting at the door of his hut, watching the sunrise glowing on the distant hills, when Salvarini approached him, his face perturbed, and his whole manner agitated. ‘You are in danger,’ he whispered. ‘The orders have come, and you are proclaimed traitor. The men are mad against you, and declare you shall be brought out for instant execution. Ah! you have only seen the best side of their character; you have not seen them hungry for blood.’

‘Do they want to murder me?’ Maxwell exclaimed. ‘Cannot you’——

‘I am powerless now,’ Salvarini interrupted. ‘I will do what I can; but I fear nothing can save you now.’

‘Do not be afraid,’ said a calm voice behind. ‘_I_ shall save him!’

‘Isodore!’

‘Yes, Paulo Lucci; it is I.’

Maxwell looked up, and saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. For a moment he could only gaze in rapt astonishment. This, then, was the Empress of the League—the woman Visci had mentioned, whose lightest word could free his feet and clear his path for ever.

‘You have come in time,’ Salvarini said with a low obeisance. ‘An hour hence and our prisoner would have been no more.’

‘I am always in time,’ Isodore replied quietly.—‘I have come to deliver you from a great danger,’ she continued, turning to Maxwell. ‘Come; we must be in Rome at once, and away, or we may yet be too late. Hark! Are the wolves clamouring for their prey already? We shall see.’

It was light now, and from the plateau beyond came the hoarse yells and cries for revenge from the brigands. On they came towards the hut, clamouring for blood, and mad with the heat of passion. They rushed in, seized Maxwell, and led him out on to the level grass, while six of the party stepped back a few paces and cocked their rifles. The whole thing was so sudden that Lucci and Isodore were totally unprepared to resist. But the girl roused herself now, and quitting the hut, swept across the open space and placed herself in front of Maxwell.

‘Drop your arms!’ she cried. ‘Are you mad, that you do this thing? Ground your rifles, or you shall pay dearly for this indignity.’

Appalled by her gestures and the dignity of her voice, the desperadoes hesitated for a moment, and then one, more daring than the rest, raised his carabine to the shoulder, standing in the act of firing.

‘You may fire,’ Isodore cried. ‘Fire! and every hair of my head shall be avenged for by a life! Fire! and then pray for the mercy of heaven, for you shall not meet with any from the hand of man!’

The desperate men were amazed by this beauty and daring, the audacity of which appealed to their rude instinct. One by one they dropped their firearms, and stood looking sullenly in the direction of the scornful woman, standing there without a particle of fear in her eyes.

‘Who are you,’ cried one bolder than the rest—‘who are you, that come between us and justice?’

They all took up the cry, and bade her stand aside.

‘If she falls, I fall!’ Lucci exclaimed in a firm steady voice. ‘Go on your knees, and ask for pardon.—Madam,’ he continued, falling upon one knee, ‘I did not think my followers would have shown such scant courtesy to Isodore.’

At the very mention of her name, a change came over the mutineers. One by one they dropped their firearms, and came forward humbly to implore her forgiveness for their rashness, but she waved them aside.

Long and earnestly the three talked together, listening to the revelation of Le Gautier’s treachery, and how the final act was about to be played over there in England: how Le Gautier had confessed his treachery, and how, out of his own mouth, he was going to be convicted. Silently and slowly they wound their way down the mountain path, under Lucci’s guidance, out on to the plains, beyond which the sun lighted upon the house-tops of distant Rome. When they had got so far, Isodore held out her hand to the guide.

‘Good-bye. It will not be safe for you to come any farther,’ she said. ‘Rest assured, in the general reckoning your account shall not be forgotten.’

‘It will not,’ Lucci answered sternly. ‘I shall see to that myself. By the time you reach England, I shall be there too.—Nay, do not strive to dissuade me. I do not take my revenge from another hand. I shall run a great risk; but, mark me, when the time comes, I shall be there!’ Without another word he disappeared; and Isodore and Maxwell walked on towards the Eternal City both wrapped in their own thoughts. Mile after mile passed on thus, ere Maxwell broke the silence.

‘Do you think he will keep his word?’ he said half timidly.

‘Who, Lucci? Yes; he will keep his word; nothing but death will prevent that.—And now, you and I must get back to England without a moment’s loss of time.’

‘I cannot say how grateful I am,’ Maxwell said earnestly. ‘If it had not been for your bravery and courage’—— He stopped and shuddered; the contemplation of what might have been was horrible.

Isodore smiled a little unsteadily in answer to these words. ‘I owe you a debt of gratitude,’ she replied. ‘My memory serves me well. I was not going to allow you to die, when you would have perished rather than raise a hand against Carlo Visci.’

‘Indeed, you only do me justice. I would have died first.’

‘I know it; and I thank you for your kindness to him at the last. You were with him when he died. Things could not have been better. He was always fond of you. For that, I am grateful.’

‘But I do not understand,’ Maxwell faltered. ‘He did not know you except by reputation.’

‘I think you are mistaken. Am I so changed that you do not recognise your friend Genevieve?’

‘Genevieve! You? Am I dreaming?’

‘Yes; I am Genevieve; though much changed and altered from those happy old days when you used to come to the Villa Mattio. You wonder why I am here now—why I left my home. Cannot you guess that Le Gautier was at the bottom of it?’

‘But he professed not to know you; he’——

‘Yes, he professed to be a friend of yours. But until I give you permission to speak, not a word that Isodore and Genevieve are one and the same.’

‘My lips are sealed. I leave everything in your hands.’

‘And cannot you guess why you have incurred Le Gautier’s enmity?—No? Simply, because he aspires to the hand of Enid Charteris.—You need not start,’ Isodore continued, laying her hand upon the listener’s arm. ‘You have no cause for anxiety. It will never be!’

‘Never, while I can prevent it!’ Maxwell cried warmly.

‘It is impossible. He has a wife already.’

Only tarrying for one mournful hour to visit the cemetery where lay Carlo Visci’s quiet grave, Isodore and Maxwell made their way, but not together, to England, as fast as steam could carry them.

THE ORDNANCE SURVEY, ITS PAST AND FUTURE.

The Ordnance Survey is now a hundred years old, and it is expected, according to present arrangements, to be finished in 1890. That, in one sense, is a considerable time to look forward to; but there are several knotty and important questions connected with the completion of this great scientific enterprise which it would be well duly to weigh and consider beforehand. A suitable opportunity for calling attention to the results of this national undertaking is afforded by the publication of a popularly written volume, _The Ordnance Survey of the United Kingdom_ (Blackwood & Sons), by Lieutenant-Colonel T. P. White of the Royal Engineers, the executive officer of the Survey. An additional reason for noticing the matter at this stage may also be found in the amount of ignorance which prevails on the subject. To most persons, the Ordnance Survey only means some kind of measuring of the land; but they have little idea of the methods adopted for the purpose, of the multifarious ends served by the publication of the maps, of the difficulties which had to be overcome, and of the marvellous and unexampled accuracy with which the work has been carried on. There are indeed few things of which as a nation we may feel more proud than the accomplishment of this gigantic work; a noble illustration and monument of persistent perseverance, of infinite ingenuity of resource, and of general engineering skill.

A beginning was made, according to Colonel White, with the primary triangulation for the Survey in 1784 (the Annual Report says 1791), under the charge of General Roy, an able scientific officer, who had been associated with General Watson, thirty-six years before, in a survey of the Highlands made for military reasons, after the crushing of the rebellion of 1745. The idea of a scientific survey of the whole kingdom was first mooted in 1763; but for various reasons, nothing was done till twenty-one years later, when, in response to a proposal from the French government to connect the system of triangulation already existing in France with that about to be set on foot here, the work was at last begun. Hounslow Heath was selected as the base-line of that great system which has now overspread the land. It may not be unnecessary here to remark that the work of a cadastral survey is carried on by a series of triangles proceeding from a base-line—that is, a space of level ground usually about five miles long, which is measured by chain in the most exact manner—this forming the nucleus. From the two ends of this measured space a triangle is formed to some point at a distance, and the length of the two unknown sides computed by trigonometry. From this primary triangle, other triangles are formed, and calculated similarly, until there is a series of these like a network all over the country. Four or five other base-lines were also measured for verifying the correctness of the calculations—hence called ‘bases of verification’—notably that on Salisbury Plain, on which as a foundation the principal triangulation of the kingdom was eventually to rest.

It forms a remarkable illustration of the care and exactness with which the work has been done that the lengths of these base-lines calculated from the original one by trigonometry through all the intervening triangles, has been found to coincide within four inches with the lengths as actually measured by chain. A result like this reminds one of the yearly balancing by the system of double entry of the transactions of a great bank with branches all over the country, and where the totals on both sides, amounting to many millions, square to a farthing. These primary triangles, some of them containing sides one hundred miles long, are broken up into smaller ones, and these again subdivided; the latter, with sides from one to two miles, being then measured in the ordinary way by the surveyors. We have thus, from one or two measured spaces—it might be from one only—a triangulation worked out of the whole country, and its area and the relative geographical position of every spot on its surface fixed for all time. This principal triangulation, as it is called, was completed in 1852. What has been going on since is survey work.

The battle of the scales is another noteworthy point in the history of the Survey. When it was resolved, about the close of the last century, to publish maps based on the triangulation, the scale of one inch to a mile was adopted, and this embraced all England and Wales south of Yorkshire and Lancashire, these two counties being surveyed about 1840 on the six-inch scale, which had been adopted for the Irish Survey, and was now introduced into England. Afterwards, the scale was enlarged to twenty-five inches to a mile, and the four northern counties of England were so surveyed and published. It was then agreed to re-survey all those counties which had been done on the one-inch system. Some of these are completed, while others are still in progress.

In Scotland, the course of the Survey has not run very smoothly. The triangulatory work was begun in 1809, and went on with intermissions till 1823, when it was stopped for fifteen years, to allow the Irish Survey to be taken up. The latter was begun in 1824, and finished in 1842. But six-inch county maps have now been published of the whole of Scotland, one-inch maps of nearly the whole, and those on the twenty-five-inch scale also, with the exception of Midlothian, Fife, Haddington, Kinross, Kirkcudbright, Wigtown, which had been the earliest surveyed, and were completed before the larger scale was sanctioned. The uncultivated portions of Scotland, it may be added, are also excepted from the larger scale. These six counties, and Yorkshire and Lancashire, are thus the only counties in Great Britain whose maps are not published on the twenty-five-inch scale. Towns with populations over four thousand have been surveyed on a still larger scale, varying from one-five-hundredth, or a hundred and twenty-six inches to the mile, to one-ten-hundred and fifty-sixth, or about sixty inches to the mile. Edinburgh and thirteen other towns are done on the smaller scale, and forty-four other towns on the larger. In any future revision of the Survey, those towns and counties which have not been published on the larger scales will probably have priority.

It is needless to add that great delay and vexatious hindrance to the general efficiency and progress of the Survey have been caused by the vacillation and frequent changes made at the instance of the House of Commons. One session it would be in a liberal mood, and rule that the Survey should be carried on with all speed and on the most liberal scale; and at another it would rescind its good resolutions and pass others of a more economical kind. In 1851, for example, a Committee of the House of Commons, with the present Earl of Wemyss at their head, recommended that the six-inch scale in Scotland should be discontinued and the one-inch maps only published. Much dissatisfaction was felt in Scotland at this retrograde recommendation, and remonstrances from all quarters poured in to the Treasury on the subject. Three years afterwards, the twenty-five-inch scale was approved of; but an adverse vote was carried in the House of Commons two years later; and the question was not put to rest till 1861, when the latter scale was finally sanctioned; and since then, as Colonel White remarks, ‘parliamentary committees have troubled us no more.’ A recommendation to accelerate the progress of the Survey was made in 1880; and in the following year the working force was nearly doubled. As a result of this arrangement, it is expected that the work will be completed in 1890; this is on the supposition that the present numbers and organisation are kept up. From the last Annual Report, we learn that on the 31st of December 1885, there were employed 28 officers, 2 warrant-officers, 364 non-commissioned officers and sappers of the Royal Engineers, and 2846 civilians—total, 3240. This, presumably, includes all those connected with the production and publication of the maps at Southampton, the headquarters of the Survey.

Of the inestimable benefit to the nation at large of the Ordnance Survey there can be but one opinion among all persons capable of forming an intelligent opinion. It has proved of great value in a large number of matters of the highest public interest. Its necessity and importance in connection with the national defences are perhaps of primary interest; but there are numerous other departments where it has proved equally essential, such as for valuation purposes—facilitating the taking of the census; for drainage, waterworks, railways, and engineering works generally; for extension of town boundaries, and surveys for various purposes. As a practical example of the public advantage derived from the Ordnance Survey, Colonel White mentions that during the progress of the Redistribution of Seats Bill the enormous number of four hundred and fifty-three thousand maps were required for the Boundary Commissioners; and special duties of a similar kind were also rendered in 1868, and also to the Irish Church Temporalities Commission. These and other services of a more strictly scientific nature, as those rendered to geodesy and geology, afford ample testimony to the value of the labours of those engaged in this arduous and honourable service.

The all-important question remains, how are we to carry on this confessedly important work? We must not lose the benefit of what, through great toil and cost, has been already achieved. Valuable as have been the results, it is evident that many portions of the Survey are now obsolete. The triangulation portion of the work has of course been done once for all; but in a very large number of cases, especially in the suburbs of towns, the whole face of the country is changed. There are hundreds of districts which are presented in the Survey sheets as green fields, surrounded with trees and hedgerows, where now are densely populated towns or parts of towns. The hills and the rivers remain, but all else is changed. Glebe-lands, residential estates, farm-steadings have become streets and lanes, or perhaps have succumbed to the operations of the miner, or afforded space for a great industry of some sort. It is obvious, then, that the Survey, unequalled, it is believed, in any other country, should undergo periodical revision in order to keep pace with the progress of the nation, otherwise we shall find ourselves unable to cope satisfactorily with many questions and difficulties arising from time to time in a great country like our own. How, for instance, would the Boundary Commissioners in the instance already mentioned have performed their duties had there been no accurate survey of the country? And in the war-scare of 1858-9, Colonel White mentions that a great expense was incurred by the government of the day in getting special surveys of large districts hastily made, as at that time the twenty-five-inch scale was just begun; and it would have been still more had there been no force ready to undertake the duty. Imperfectly, then, as the case has been here stated, there is sufficient, we think, to demonstrate that there is a strong plea for a deliberate and favourable consideration of this important matter at no distant date.

It only remains to make acknowledgment to Colonel White for the use here made of many of the facts in his interesting volume. To those who feel any interest in the subject, and even to those who do not, his story of the labours of his comrades is worthy, in literary and other respects, of all commendation, and we venture to say will do much to popularise the subject.

WANTED, A CLUE.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.

‘“Companion required for a Young Lady. Must be cheerful, musical, and of good family. Salary, £60 per annum.”’ Such was the advertisement my aunt Margaret read out to me one morning, as we sat at breakfast in her neat little house in London.

I am the orphan daughter of a missionary, and my aunt’s was the only home I had ever known. For the past three years I had been resident governess in a wealthy family in Yorkshire; but my employers’ purse-proud arrogance was too much for my self-respect, and I had to leave, resolving if possible to try and obtain a post as companion.

Tempted by the excellent salary offered, I at once wrote to the address indicated. Promptly I received a reply, from Mr Foster of Great Gorton Hall, Westernshire. He stated that companionship was required for his step-daughter, Miss Thorndyke, a delicate girl of eighteen, who resided with him and his widowed sister, Mrs Morrell; her mother, his dear late wife, having died the previous year. He added that my acquirements and credentials were satisfactory; and requested to know whether I had ever been in Westernshire, and if I had any friends or connections there.

I replied that I was an entire stranger to the county and to all the people in it; and in a few days I was overjoyed at receiving the nomination to the post; for I was unwilling to be a burden on my aunt’s slender means.

Gorton Hall was a fine building of gray stone, standing in beautiful grounds, on the outskirts of a pretty country village. I was shown into a spacious drawing-room, where a middle-aged lady in black greeted me very pleasantly, introducing herself as Mrs Morrell. She kindly bade me be seated, and sent a servant in search of her brother.

Mr Foster was a fine-looking man, with iron-gray hair, and a keen and searching expression—a man whom I instinctively felt it would be dangerous to offend. His manner to me, like his sister’s, was courtesy itself. He explained the duties expected from me. ‘And one thing more I must add, Miss Armitage,’ he said in conclusion—‘although willing to concede everything reasonable, there is one thing I cannot permit in members of my household—gossiping with strangers concerning my family. I prefer that my daughter’s companion should have no friends or acquaintances in this neighbourhood; and I must request that during your residence here, you discourage any intimacy which people at Gorton or any of the neighbouring villages may seek to establish with you. I have seen so much mischief caused by gossip and tittle-tattle, that I am obliged to request this.’

The stipulation seemed a very reasonable one, and I readily acceded to it. Mr Foster then went on to speak of his step-daughter.

‘Our darling Edith is not so strong as we could wish, and indeed is frequently confined to the sofa. The doctor orders her to keep early hours and avoid all excitement; she therefore goes but little into society; but we hope the companionship of a bright and lively girl will prove beneficial. Keep her amused and happy, Miss Armitage, and we ask no more from you.’