CHAPTER II.

HOW A MYSTERIOUS COAL BARGE CAME TO THE "KING'S ARMS."

"You are late, girl," he said gloomily.

"Nay, father," answered Ruth, glancing from his face towards the still brilliant westward horizon. "'Tis not yet seven o'clock."

"Tush!" he rejoined impatiently. "I'll have no more of these gaddings. And hark you, young mistress, no more of these vanities neither;" and he looked as he spoke, in angry contempt at her dainty skirts. "In with you at once and lay them away. Or better still, cast them into the kitchen fire. And as for this," he went on, roughly clutching at her hawthorn wreath, and dragging it from her head, he flung it into the water, "Let that settle it."

[Sidenote: A gloomy end to May-day.]

Tears of grief and indignation sparkled into Ruth's eyes, as she watched the beautiful flowers whirled by the eddying tide into deep water; but by a strong effort she restrained herself, and only said in tones of gentle reproach, "'Twas my crown, father. They made me Queen of May."

"Queen! crown! forsooth! did they so?" he said, with a bitter smile. "How is it the very stones do not cry out against this restoring in our unhappy country of these mummings and pagan holidays? Is it not enough to be having queens--ay, and kings--of flesh and blood wantoning it at Whitehall, but we must be seeing modest maidens aping their antics, and behaving in this fashion?"

"Nay, Master Rumbold," said Lee, "our people desired to do Ruth an honour; and I think you should be proud."

"I should be prouder," returned Rumbold, turning irefully on the young man, "to see her in her winding-sheet, a pale white--Marry! and let me look at your face now, Mistress," he went on, snatching her roughly by the chin. "Ha! red as your gaudy flowers there! So! I guessed as much. And there has been romping, has there?"

"Nay, father; just a little turn or two at Hoodman Blind, and Hunt the Slipper."

"What next?" said Rumbold groaningly, and turning up his eye.

"And--and a measure," faltered the truthful Ruth.

"Dancing!" and now the stern eye glared.

"Only round--round the Maypole, father."

Rumbold's lips parted with a jerk, as if he was about to break into still sharper rebuke; but as his eye caught the expression of Lawrence's face he contented himself with reiterating his dismissal.

"Good night, father," said Ruth, lifting her face to his, but Rumbold did not, or affected not to see. He was standing absorbed in watching the approach of a big black coal-laden barge which now hove lumbering in sight through the middle span of the bridge.

[Sidenote: The queen's crown goes down.]

As the boat cleared into open stream again her huge black bows came athwart the poor drowning May garland, and swirled it deep down under water.

Whether the unfortunate wreath's destruction afforded Rumbold special pleasure, or that some other cause originated the grim smile slowly breaking on his gloomy lips, who shall say? The look at all events roused Lee's ire, and he said in tones of indignant reproach, which he seemed at small pains to conceal, "Your daughter bids you good-night, Master Rumbold."

The maltster started from his abstraction, and imprinting a cold kiss on Ruth's upturned brow, waved her away with a gesture of impatience, and resumed his contemplation of the barge.

Now, in Ruth's eyes coal-laden barges were things as ugly almost as they were common up and down their little silver Lea; and the rapt interest her father appeared to be taking in this one and particular specimen of its class, attracted her wonder and curiosity.

To her the boat seemed only more than a usually hideous one, by reason of its cruel destruction of her May crown; and partly in search of sympathy, partly in good-night, she stole a glance at Lawrence Lee. Alack! He had seemingly forgotten her very existence, so absorbed was he also in following the course of the barge. "And this," thought Ruth, swallowing back a rising lump in her throat, was "the end of the delightfullest day she had ever spent!" Truly, as once she had read somewhere in some dusty fusty old book, "a merry going out makes a mournful coming in," and she turned with lagging and sorrowful step up the grassy slope, pausing, however, within a few yards of the road, which was fringed with a thick growth of bracken and bramble, to cast one more wistful glance at Lawrence, and to see whether the odious barge had taken itself out of sight.

Nothing of the sort. There stood the young man with folded arms, and brows gloomily knit, watching the boat, which was now turning from midstream. A minute more, and it floated up to a standstill alongside of the water steps, near the bottom of the inn garden.

[Sidenote: Mysterious visitors.]

The willow boughs interlace and hang so heavily over the white wooden paling which skirts the garden by the water's edge, and cast such bewildering shadows in the now fast gathering darkness, that Ruth cannot be certain of the precise number of figures all wearing broad-brimmed slouch hats and long black cloaks, which rise, as she looks, from the depths of the barge, and springing in hot haste to the bank, as quickly disappear in the direction of the inn yard.

Two--three--five--seven, and Ruth, despite her chagrins, was beginning to smile at the vision she has conjured up of Mistress Sheppard's face when she should see this concourse of barge-men, coal-heavers, or whatever they might be, besieging her kitchen door. "A scurvy lot, quotha!" could not Ruth hear her grumbling over it all as plain as if she really spoke? "A scurvy lot! Each of them, of course, looking for his cup of her home-brewed cider for their invaluable aid of landing a few coals."

Suddenly the lean, thread-paper body of Mistress Sheppard's husband showed among the gooseberry bushes, describing, as it neared the steps, the acute angles which always marked his fashion of welcoming distinguished guests to his hostelry.

[Sidenote: Strange cargo.]

"Here!" at the same moment said a voice from the barge in low tones, but of which every syllable was audible to Ruth through the utter silence around. "Lend a hand, can't you?" and then rose up another figure, habited like the rest, but with the folds of his mantle flung far back over his shoulders, leaving his arms free to encompass a load covered with a large piece of tarry canvas. This man's burden, judging by his swaying gait, must have been of no light weight, "They're not feathers," he growled, as he laboured with it to the broad top of the barge's sides.

"All right!" eagerly said the voice of Rumbold as he advanced to the steps. "Come along in, quick, Colonel. We'll unload presently."

"That's as you please," returned the other. "But by your leave we'll be having these under cover at once. They were tempered Venice way; and your own pretty daughter wouldn't get so much harm from the night dews, as they would. By the by,--little Mistress Ruth, she is safe indoors and abed?"

"Ay," sullenly grunted Rumbold. "That's my affair, I doubt, Colonel Rumsey."

"No offence," returned the other. "I just ventured to ask the question, because I had a notion that I caught a glimpse of young Farmer Lee's brown jerkin among the yew trunks yonder as we were clearing the bridge."

"And what if you did? Isn't he one of us?" said the maltster, casting a careless glance round.

[Sidenote: A startling accident.]

"True," answered Rumsey, in rather lagging tones. "He's a necessary evil, as you explained, for the use his premises may be to us; but I'd as lief he'd been out of the bargain if't had been possible. He's but a stripling; and old heads are the only ones for our sort of work, depend upon't. There's what one may call a kind of touch-and-go slipperiness"-- The rest of what the speaker might be having to say was lost in a deafening clash of steel, while he himself disappeared totally from Ruth's range of sight, in what seemed a flash of blue lightning.

"Lookye, Colonel!" said Rumbold, when, after a brief interval, he had succeeded, with Master Sheppard's aid, in hauling Rumsey to his feet again and landing him safe on the top of the steps. "Half an inch more and you'd have been under water."

"'Twas those confounded nettles," growled the discomfited Rumsey, rubbing himself all over, and glaring vindictively behind him at the dank weed tangle all crushed into greenish mud under his heavy weight, while Rumbold and Sheppard busied themselves in hastily collecting the scattered contents of the fallen load. "Have you got them all?"

"Ay, ay," answered Rumbold. "Come along, Colonel. They're waiting for us."

"There were twelve," said Rumsey.

"Well, well, we can make another search presently," impatiently returned Rumbold. "There's no fear. The place hereabouts is haunted, the credulous yokels will tell you; and they'd sooner die than set foot in it after nightfall. So come. Have with you, Master Sheppard."

And followed by Sheppard the two walked towards the house.

[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee hesitates.]

And Lawrence? What has been his share in this unexpected scene? Hardly that of an amazed spectator, Ruth thinks, while she watches the hurried, half-stealthy nod of recognition bestowed on him by the new-comer, as the three men pass within a few yards of the spot where he is standing. Gloomily the young man returns their greeting, but he remains motionless as any stone statue, making no attempt to join them; and when they have disappeared he casts a wistful glance at his own little craft, where she lies moored in a fall flood of moonlight, and sighing so heavily that Ruth can hear the sound of it ever so distinctly in the silence, for not so much as a leaf is stirring now Then he turns, and, taking the narrow footpath leading to the front porch of the inn, is lost in its shadows.

[Sidenote: The postern gate.]

Ruth rose from her hiding-place, listening intently. All quiet at last; and gathering the tiffany skirts close about her, she sped like a lapwing through the brushwood towards a little postern-gate in the red wall, and tapped at it softly.