CHAPTER V.

THE LAME SQUIRREL.

REFRESHED by a good night's rest, notwithstanding the discomforts of his new abode, Ned Franks rose on the following morning with a cheerful, thankful heart. He awoke with the verse on his lips—

"I bless the Lord who safe hath kept, Who did protect me while I slept. Lord! Grant when I from death awake, I may of endless life partake!"

Up sprang Ned from his rough bed, ready to forget and to forgive the "breeze" of the preceding day, and to set about his work in the spirit of the command, "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might."

After his morning prayer, and Bible reading, Ned begun in earnest to set things "ship-shape" in what he called his "little cabin." The loss of his left hand greatly increased the difficulty of labouring, but Ned Franks worked with a will, and therefore with good success. His only interruptions were from the little attentions required by a poor lame squirrel that the sailor had picked up on the previous evening, and which he nursed with the tenderness which seems peculiar to seamen. Ned carried it down with him when he went to breakfast in the kitchen, where he found his sister scarcely yet recovered from her fit of displeasure; but her sulkiness could not stand against the influence of his sunny good-humour.

"Come, Bessy, lass," cried the sailor, "let bygones be bygones, we'll have smooth water to-day. After I've set my cabin to rights, I'll see what's to be done in your garden; if we could only get the ground clear of weeds, it's a fine crop we might look for next year."

Bessy Peele grew so gracious that she not only filled her brother's wooden bowl almost to overflowing with hot bread and milk, but she examined his squirrel with interest, prescribed for its wounded leg, and filled an old basket with hay to make a bed for the sailor's new pet. The poor little creature seemed already to know its master—did not flinch from his hand, and let him warm it within his rough jacket.

"One could never harm a creature that trusted one," said Ned. "I'll nurse the squirrel till its leg is all right, and then give it its freedom again. 'Twould be hard to keep it in limbo, when it might enjoy itself in the woods."

Back went Ned Franks to his work; nor did he stop till he had wrought a wondrous change in the appearance of his dull little loft, by the help of a pail of whitewash which he had procured from the village.

"It's beginning to look all taut and trim," said the light-hearted tar, stepping back with the big whitened brush in his hand, to survey and admire his work. "When I've earned a little more ready rhino, I'll have a bit of bunting of the Union-Jack pattern over my bed, and stick a few pictures round the wall, to make the cabin quite smart. And I'll have my books up there aloft."

In default of a shelf, Ned had carefully ranged along the floor what he deemed his best earthly treasures, his Bible, and such works as the "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Saint's Rest," with a few other little books of a useful kind, from which the sailor had gleaned more knowledge than is usually possessed by one in his station of life.

Ned had made such good use of his time, that before dinner he had an hour to spare for the garden.

Bessy Peele, as she ironed out her linens, could hear Ned's manly voice behind the cottage singing blithely as a bird such sea-songs as "Poor Jack" and "The Arethusa." Ned Franks felt perfectly happy at his work; its very nature cheered him, for every weed that he pulled up, seemed to his mind like an emblem of some evil habit rooted out.

"God is ready to give us His sunshine and his dew," thought the sailor, "but He will have us to labour all the while; and though ours be but one-handed work as it were, He'll never refuse his blessing if He knows that we're doing our best. I did ill yesterday to be so angry with Bessy and her boy, because of their sly sneaking ways, just as I looked with scorn on the dirty loft and the weedy garden. 'One fault-mender is worth fifty fault-finders;' says the proverb. Maybe the great Pilot has guided me hither that I may take Dan Peele in tow, and get him out of the shoals of deceit, and show him that it's better to sail with the wind of truth right in our canvass, than to lose way by tacking about, and split on the rocks at last."

Dan, on coming home to the cottage for dinner, found the sailor sitting by the table, with the crippled squirrel on his knee.

"Ah! I say, where did you get that?" asked the boy.

"In the woods, yester evening," answered Ned.

"In the woods—what woods?" inquired Bessy, turning round from the fire-place, where she was stirring something in the saucepan.

"Those woods yonder, at t'other side of the road," said the sailor.

"Why, that's Sir Lacy's park!" exclaimed Dan. "Didn't you see the board up about trespassers being prosecuted?"

"I noticed no board," answered Franks; "it was getting dark, and I minded nothing but the squirrel. As I was cruising about on the road, I saw the little creature limping on the footway. Thinks I, 'the village boys will hunt it to death, or 'twill fall a prey to the weasels, so I'll catch it to save its life.' Easier said than done; lame as it was, the little squirrel nearly managed to get off, squeezing itself through a hole in the fence, and so getting into the wood, or park as you call it. But I was over, and after it in a minute."

"I don't know how you, managed to get over, maimed as you are," observed Bessy.

Ned Franks burst into a merry laugh. "A Jack-tar who is used to go aloft when 'tis blowing great guns, is not likely to make much of a bit of oak-fence," said he. "It was easy enough to climb over, but it was not easy to catch the squirrel; he led me a good long dance before I could clap my hand upon him."

"Then he did say right," exclaimed Dan thumping his fist on the table.

"He! What do you mean?" cried the sailor, looking at the boy with surprise.

"The gamekeeper did say right when he declared that he caught a glimpse of a sailor in the wood."

"Likely enough," said Ned Franks, "I hope that no one thinks that I was poaching."

"Something worse may be thought," cried Dan, winking mysteriously, like one in the possession of an important secret. "Maybe you don't know what all the village is talking of, that just after dark, half the panes in Lady Barton's hothouse were smashed, a lot of them coloured panes too, and that the constable's on the look out to catch whoever has done the mischief."

"I've heard nothing about it," said Ned Franks, as he stroked quietly the reddish brown coat of his little squirrel.

"But you're like to hear a great deal about it, a great deal more than you'd like to hear," cried Dan. "'Tis said all about that you've some bitter ill-will 'gainst the young master aboard the 'Queen,' and all his family too, and that you was angry at something that the lady said or did yesterday, and the gamekeeper saw you in the wood—and, of course, you was there for no good—and there's not a soul as doubts as you went there and smashed the glass out of spite."

"Some one has got up a fine story about me," said Ned, who more than suspected that the whole was his nephew's invention.

Bessy Peele looked alarmed. "I hope—I hope," she exclaimed, "that we're not agoing to get into another scrape with Lady Barton! Sir Lacy is a hard man, and never lets any one off; 'twould be a dreadful business, Ned, if you was to be sent to prison!"

Franks flushed indignantly, as if the very thought were an insult; but he only said, "There's little danger of that, Bessy, I never hove in sight of the house."

"How unlucky it was that you were in the park at all," began Dan, but his mother cut him short.

"What's the use, you simpleton, of saying a word about the park? Who need know that your uncle was there at all?"

"But the gamekeeper—"

"What of him?" interrupted Mrs. Peele. "He only guessed that he saw something like a sailor in the dusk, and even had he seen Ned as plainly as I do now, he's only one, and there's us three, you, I, and your uncle, as can say—and hold by it too, that he never stirred from that there chimney-corner from sunset to midnight!"

"Bessy!" exclaimed her brother, sternly.

"You don't mean to say," cried Bessy, "that with your ridiculous notions about truth, you'll run into a trap with your eyes wide open, and get yourself disgraced, and locked up in jail! What's the use, I should like to know, of your telling the world that you were in the woods hunting a lame squirrel like a boy!"

"I shall say nothing about the matter," answered Ned, "unless—"

"Hist! Hist!" exclaimed Dan, starting up. "If there ben't Sir Lacy himself, and the vicar, the constable, gamekeeper, and all! And they're coming here!" he added, in alarm.

"Oh, Ned, Ned!" exclaimed Bessy, "Whatever you do, don't own that you ever got in them woods."