CHAPTER IV.

THE SQUIRE'S GRANDSONS.

WHILST the Squire had been giving old Bluff his deserts in the farm parlour, his three grandsons—none other than the boys whose mother Dick had thought so beautiful—had left the grounds by a winding path that skirted the plantation and emerged on to a fieldway leading into the road a few hundred yards above the farm. Turning to the left hand of the farm, this road ran round the foot of a piece of rising ground. Probably the man who first made a cart-track there, found it pay better to go a little way round than to make his beasts drag their burdens over the hill. But there was a shorter cut for pedestrians almost opposite the pathway from the Manor House; and for this the boys were bound.

Just as they were in the act of crossing the stile, who should come round the bend but the Squire, whose next business took him up that very road. The boys saw him at once. Two of them—the two taller ones—ran forward to meet him, the other following at his quickest pace. The Squire was a favourite with his grandsons. He was such a boy amongst them, although he had been born over eighty years before them; and yet withal he was so grand and courtly.

Will and Sigismund dashed forward, but the Squire looked beyond them to the cripple, who was exerting himself manfully to show equal appreciation of his aged relative.

"Bravo, Hal, bravo!" cried he, applauding with his gold-headed cane.

Will and Sigismund faced about, looking half-ashamed, as if they felt it was almost mean to have taken such an advantage of their afflicted brother. But the Squire did not exactly intend that. It would have been altogether too hard for boys with strong legs to give up using them because their brother limped on irons. It was rather that the Squire had a very tender spot in his heart for Hal, and that he saw in the boy's brave, invincible spirit an earnest of what the man would be.

"God grant that he may grow to be a man!" he often uttered in his heart. And it really seemed that Hal was growing stronger year by year.

Meanwhile Hal, flushed and out of breath, was up with them.

"Where are you going, grandfather?" asked he eagerly, as he swung himself round to walk by the Squire's side, Sigismund making way for him.

"Up to the cottages by the wood gate," replied his grandfather, laying one hand on his shoulder. "Almost out of bounds for you, eh?"

But Hal shook his head. "Why, I've been right into the wood, you know; last autumn, nutting."

"Ah, to be sure!" acquiesced the old gentleman.

"But what are you going there for, grandfather?" questioned Hal, who was noted for his inquisitive spirit. Impertinent, some good people would have said; but not so his grandfather.

"How can a boy learn what he doesn't know, if he may not ask a question?" he would say. "A spirit of inquiry is one of the first requisites to learning." So now he answered without reserve.

"To see about having one put in repair for Farmer Bluff," said he.

"For Farmer Bluff?"

The question was from all three at once.

The Squire nodded gravely. "For Farmer Bluff," repeated he. "He has to leave the Manor Farm."

"To leave?"

"Why, grandfather?"

This was Hal's question. Hal always came straight to the point, as if he had a right to know; and his grandfather seldom, if ever, put him off.

"Because," answered he, "the time has arrived when he must make way for a better man."

"But surely, grandfather," said Hal, "you won't turn him away, after all the years he has been bailiff. Why! Ever since mother first brought us to live with you."

"Ay, and before that," broke in the Squire regretfully. "When I thought your poor father would have been Squire after me. Twenty-seven years Farmer Bluff has lived on that farm; but—"

"But it isn't fair to turn him out because he's getting old, grandfather," interrupted Hal, with a bold familiarity that no one else would have dared to use towards the old gentleman.

"Tut, tut, lad," rejoined the Squire. "Who said was because he was too old?"

"Well, grandfather," put in Sigismund, who according to size would be the next youngest to Hal, "you said 'a better man.'"

"Better doesn't always mean younger," said Hal eagerly; "does it, grandfather?"

"Nor does younger mean better," returned the Squire. "I always like to think of my eighty-four years as a token of God's favour."

"Good people generally live to be old, don't they?" suggested Sigismund, straying from the point at issue. "In the Bible they did."

"Steady living is conducive to longevity;" replied the old man. "That is to say, those who live sober, temperate lives give their constitutions the fairest chance of withstanding natural decay, and of escaping the ravages of disease by which so many are prematurely cut off."

"Is that why Farmer Bluff has the gout?" queried Hal. "Because he has been intemperate?"

"Very likely," replied the Squire. "It is quite certain that at the present time he is aggravating the complaint and forfeiting my esteem by the childish obstinacy with which he persists in drinking beer, when he knows it is as good as drinking so many pains and twinges. But you mustn't run away with the notion that God always rewards virtue with long life; for that is not His greatest gift."

Hal asked no more questions just then. They had crossed the stile during this conversation, and were climbing the pathway up the hill towards the wood, where there was plenty to claim the attention of boys.

Larks were rising from the tussocks; finches darted in and out the hedge; and as they got nearer to the wood, wild rabbits, all tail, frisked about their burrows. Once or twice a grey rat ran out of his hole, and sat upon his haunches in the track, staring stupidly before him until they were quite close; then doubling suddenly, and disappearing in the ditch.

Will and Sigismund were full of excitement, running and jumping and leaping; but Hal kept by his grandfather, swinging himself along at an even pace that agreed very well with the old gentleman's step; and so they reached the gate of the wood, and the cottages in one of which the Squire intended his bailiff to live rent free.

There was already a noise of carpenters at work, and a cheery sound of men talking over their saws and planes. Hal followed his grandfather inside, and went round, listening with great interest to all that passed between him and the workmen. But the other boys stayed outside, overrunning the garden, and talking to the gamekeeper, who lived next door. Finally they strayed into the wood, which was only separated from the garden by a ditch, dry summer and winter alike. By the time the Squire had finished giving his orders, they were quite out of sight and hearing.

At length, the Squire sent the keeper down the clearing after them. Hal was standing by his side, resting on his crutches. The Squire, looking down at him, saw that his face wore a thoughtful look, and fancied he was tired.

"Better go inside and sit down on Champion's sawstool," suggested he kindly; "it's a long way back, and you and I aren't so young as those two madcaps. Eh?"

At that instant, however, Will and Sigismund appeared, talking gaily to the man as they advanced.

The Squire beckoned, and they set forward at a run, giving the stout old Velveteens a good view of their soles, and leaving him to follow at his sober pleasure. But Hal had already seized his opportunity.

"Grandfather," said he, moving nearer.

The old man faced about.

"Grandfather, I was wondering if I could make Farmer Bluff see how silly it is to keep on having gout?"

"To keep on drinking beer?—Hardly," quoth the Squire, "since his doctor fails. People usually believe their medical man, if anybody, when they are in pain."

"And I mean," added Hal, anxious to gain his point before the others came up, "if he left off having gout, should you still be obliged to turn him out of the Manor Farm?"

"Why, no," answered the Squire; "not if he showed himself capable of doing his duty as bailiff of the estate. But the fact is, I can't be Squire and bailiff too at my age; and if I could, I shouldn't long be able to, because—things don't go on for ever and a day, Hal."

Just then the other two boys cleared the ditch, and bounded up, with a ready apology for having kept their grandfather waiting; then, passing in at the back door, they all went through to the road again.

On reaching the front door, the Squire suddenly remembered something he had meant to say, and stepped back again. Hal waited with him, but Will and Sigismund ran straight out.

In the middle of the road a boy was standing, looking this way and that, as if undecided in which direction to go. Seeing two lads his own age, he at once advanced.

"Can you tell me where I am?" asked he.

"By the gate of the wood," answered Will, pointing past the cottages to the red-painted gate.

"Is this beyond the common?" asked the boy.

"Most certainly," was Will's reply.

"Then I'm where I've no business," rejoined the boy, who was none other than Dick Crozier. On leaving his new acquaintance, Bill the Kicker, he had wandered on by the right-hand road, until his way had met that of the Squire and his grandsons by the cottages.

Apart from Hal, Dick did not recognise them as the Manor House boys. Hal no sooner appeared in the doorway, however, than their identity flashed upon him. The next minute, the Squire himself emerged, tapping the ground briskly with his cane as he walked, as an indication that time was short and they must get forward without delay.

Perceiving Will in conversation with a strange boy, he stopped short; whereupon Will explain that Dick had lost his way.

The Squire inquired where he came from, but this Will had not yet asked; so the Squire turned to Dick himself.

"Your name, my boy?" asked he.

Dick had no sooner recognised Hal than it flashed upon him that the grand old gentleman with the gold-headed cane was none other than the Squire himself; and although not more troubled with bashfulness than most boys of his age, he was just a trifle flustered at the discovery. Nevertheless, he answered straightforwardly enough,—

"Crozier, sir."

"Crozier; a son of my new tenant, surely?" said the Squire in his courtly way. "I am always pleased to make the acquaintance of a tenant, Master—"

"Dick, sir."

"Master Dick; and as we're all going one way, we will proceed together, if you please."

So they set off, Dick and Hal walking on either side of the Squire, the other two a pace or two in front.

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