him," said the other, knowing he talked idly.

"No. It goes deeper than money. Your father was always careless of it. There's some trouble eating at the heart of him. I have shared all his secrets, Roger, until now."

The son forgot his man's impatience of emotion. He heard the little break in his mother's voice, understood the forlornness of it. "He is not ashamed, at any rate," he said. "I know him, mother-he is not ashamed."

"That's loyalty, and I like you for it. But I think-I think he is ashamed. And we could help him through with it, you and I-if he would let us."

Roger thought of the half confession, worse than none at all, which the Squire had made to him last night as they walked down Barguest Lane. And he, too, knew that there was something very much amiss some where. "Has he told you of Oldroyd's offer?" he asked by and by.

"Yes. It has worried him." "He asked me to decide. We're going to decline it."

"What else? Surely there's no choice."

Again Roger felt that he had decided wisely, after all. The mills might smoke as they would; rents might go down, and landed prosperity recede at the bidding of men who needed water-power; but in their own house of Marsh these two were in full sympathy. And it is just this sympathy within the four walls of his home that makes fighting in the open, before and afterwards, a pleasant business for a man, as all strong and knowledgable women know.

"It will mean hardship, mother." "There are worse friends," she said quietly. "I have learned to thrive on rough weather, though your father despaired of me when he first brought me home as his wife."

And then, as their way was, they shut a trap-door on all worries. Roger had a good story, gleaned yesterday, about some moorside happening; and his mother had a better, told her this morning as she went into the dairy before breakfast to see how it went with the churning. They had a whole half-hour together-each moment counted by the mother, as a miser reckons up his gold-before the son, in his restless, go-afield way, remembered that a man would be waiting for him who had some ferrets to sell.

She watched him go-tall, brick-red of face, alert in every muscle-a son to be proud of-a countryman born and bred, who feared little except the God who made him. And yet she sighed. He was so heedless, somehow. He had no line of route to guide him across the new days that were coming. He could only recede, fighting step by step as her husband had done, from the smoke that was growing thicker every year round Marshcotes village.

She had had her high dreams of him, as every mother has of every son born to her in travail. She had pictured him-before and after he was born-as a son who would not be fighting always with his back to the wall, but as a leader of light cavalry, who would ride down from the hills at a stormy gallop and take the millcountry by assault. The dream was unpractical, absurd in detail; but underlying it there had always been a keen sense that, if she could point Roger's way for him, there would be a Holt at last who fought a winning, not a losing battle.

Upstairs, as it happened, lay the man who might one day, by his very weakness, put the battle-standard into Roger's hands. At the moment he thought little of his heir or of his wife. Gout was racking him, from his head to his swollen feet, and pain

is a great leveller of pride. He was remembering only that he was tried almost beyond human bearing, and that the big sin of his life lay heavy on him. In health and vigor he had sinned-sinned royally, to keep his house secure for the wife he loved and for the heir he idolized-sinned, not for himself, but for others. Now, in his weakness, he could remember no excuse of any kind for the deed that, to his own conscience, separated him from the company of honest men.

Mrs. Holt stayed on at the breakfast-table, looking out across the long, mullioned window-space. There was a Japonica, planted when Roger celebrated his first birthday, whose branches were hiding half the casement. Her thoughts went back to the days that had been-further back even than the planting of the Japonica -and she recalled her first-coming as a bride to Marsh House. The pleasant South had bred her, and her husband's people-his intimates, his tenantfarmers and his servants-all alike had chilled her, as a north wind does until one learns to grow warm by facing it. Even now, with many troubles closing round her, she smiled at the fanciful hardships that had been real to her. The folk here on the uplands had been so cold, at first, so reticent, that she had thought them all her enemies. She had learned instead that the moorland heart is not worn on the sleeve, but asks for leisure in which to approve a new-comer at his worth. Slowly, as the years went by, she had learned that feelings went deep, here in the north that trained its men and women to show a hard front to the weather. Little by little-true understanding seldom runs at flood, as come-and-go streams do she had grown into intimacy with her neighbors. She had learned that they were stanch and trusty. From that moment she had begun to wear rough LIVING AGE VOL. LXI. 3175

clothes, in keeping with the weather; and once, years ago, she had overheard a farmer mutter to his neighbor, after she had passed them with a greeting, that "Squire's wife began to wear her clothes, like, as Squire's wife should."

Looking back now along the past, she recalled that frank, easy-going criticism, and she realized how true and broad the judgment was. She could wear pretty frocks still, when need asked it, could play the great lady, with the traditions of her husband's race behind her; but she had learned that life went deeper than its ceremonies. She had always been honest, fearless; and the clothes she wore nowadays-which Roger in his innocence thought due to the poverty of their house were no more than the candid badge of her new faith. The heart and soul of her, no less than the body needing raiment, had faced the upland weather; and it was good to go in rough, thick homespun that did not fear the wind.

To-day, because she was harassed to the last edge of endurance, she saw past and future with a vision clear as the hill-lights between the edge of one storm and the coming of another. The South had spoiled and petted her, before her marriage. Few winds had blown there, and she had lived in a fairy-land where she was the spoiled queen in a land of make-believe. If she had been weaker, this country of the moors would have killed her, inch by inch, because it was so strong and dominant, so insistent on the creed that strong hearts only were needed in its midst. She had chosen to climb up the hills that fronted her, instead of dying gracefully before setting foot on them; and she had found that, with every upland step she took, a finer and a cooler air blew round her.

Once, when Roger was born, she had made a new world for herself

again. The baby was so soft and clinging, like the old, easy life she had sacrificed for love of the northcountry squire; and she had made much of the bairn, until he, too, began to ask to walk when he was a year old, and to climb trees when he was three. After that, her common-sense asserted itself. She learned-not

without travail, more bitter than childbirth-that the men bred on this countryside were swift for the open and the storm, like cock-grouse reared among the heather. In all things they were wild-in their loves, their hates, their despisal of life's hothouse shams. And she was here, glad after thirty years of insight to be among a virile and clean-minded folk. She could not forget, with a little glow of pride at the remembrance, that the men and women of her adopted country came more to her each year, asking counsel, sympathy, till she was tired of giving out and often went to bed dizzy with the effort of it all.

To-day, as she looked down the slopes that she had climbed since leaving the lowlands at bidding of the man she loved, she found only thankfulness that she stood where she did. The hardship and the stress had been worth while the long winters, the hard upper-crust of her husband's people that hid so sound a tendernessthe hot days of summer and the toil of hay-winning-all made up the round of discipline that she had trod. And the road did not seem hard at all just now; she remembered only that many flowers had grown on each side of the way.

Then again trouble closed round her. The tears were so thick across her eyes that she could not see the window-space in front. There was her husband, changed beyond recognition. There were debts, and an income that lessened year by year-and there was Roger, the one son she had,

round whom she had woven dreams so big and masterful that they should have been split up amongst six or seven strapping brothers. And Roger he was easy-going. She knew well enough that in other times—say, when the feuds swept the moors like a trumpet-call-he would have been a leader, quick to strike and slow to yield. But in these humdrum days he was content to grow hard and lean in the service of field-sports, content to come home o' nights, and eat like a plough-boy, and laugh at the millmasters who were creeping yard by yard up the moor's stubborn face.

She chided herself for her doubt of Roger. Making all due allowance for a mother's partiality, she knew that he was clean of mind and heart, a man popular among his fellows. She should have been content; yet somehow her heart was aching, because her dreams had aimed too high. With the good sense that she had learned from hardship, she knew that it was idle to laugh at the men who were building mills down yonder. They had come, and they would continue; was for her men-the men who stood for country air and not for steam-to go down and fight a useful battle. She had no plan of action. Women seldom have. But, close at her heart, there was a sense that Roger was not doing a man's work in this world of debts and strife that was closing round her.

it

She had sat at table longer than she guessed; and presently Roger came striding back from the stables, glanced into the room, and put his head in through the open window.

"Still there, mother?" he asked, with the old, infectious laugh. “I've bought those ferrets. They are good at their trade-with a nose as delicate as a lady's, as Jabe o' the Barns would say."

"You always do buy," said Mrs. Holt, crossing to the window-sill. She

was glad to see her big son again, though he had been absent less than half-an-hour. "When do we begin to save, Roger?"

"There's nothing to save on, mother. That's the joy of it. I'll come in and show you the spaniel. She has the bonniest nose from this to Pendle Hill -the old liar who sold her swore that he was speaking gospel truth-"

"Roger, I'm very tired," she broke in, with a sudden need to lean on him.

"Mother, I know. We're all tired. This filthy smoke is creeping into our lives" "Why let it creep?" she asked sharply. "Go down and do something, my dear."

"Anything you bid."

"Ah, but I don't know what to bid. You have to find out that-if you're a man at all."

She had wounded him. In some muddled way she knew that she had meant to wound him; but it hurt her none the less that he went out without a word. For the rest of the day she did not see him, until they met at supper-time; and then he was his old self, bringing a smell of fresh air with him and an appetite that was untouched by difficulties.

But that night he dreamed of battle, as his forbears had dreamed in the far-off days of feud. The scene was Eller Beck Mead, and it was a single combat between Phineas Oldroyd and himself. They struck and countered, hacked and hewed, as Phineas never could have fought in this present year of grace. And sometimes Oldroyd pushed him back; and again he held his own; and just as he was falling in the combat, Cicely came, slight and girlish, through a wood where the beech-leaves danced in crimson revelry.

"Strike!" she said, "As you love me, strike."

And Roger, in his dreams, drove in at Phineas Oldroyd and won his battle. And then he woke, and felt the dawn-wind strike through the open window.

"I'm due with lile Jack at eight," he muttered, half between sleep and waking. "I never felt less like hitting my birds."

Yet he shot well, as it happened, though a high wind was blowing and the pheasants were wild as the storm itself. Perhaps his mother's taunt had heartened him to prove that he could do one thing well, at least; at any rate, his luck was in to-day.

"You've done pretty well, Roger," said Lister, as they took their tired bodies down towards home.

"I couldn't help it, Jack. It came to me, like a prophet's mantle-and the birds were big as a haystack."

"I know. It's a queer feeling in the bones. There's nothing like it." They halted at the stile where they took separate ways.

"My lady mother doesn't think much of me," said Holt, showing his open wound at last. "She told me yesterday that I was only half a man -wanted me to go making money, to save the house. Jack, we've known each other fairly well. Do I seem the sort of man who could do anything with money, except spend it?"

"Yes," said Lister tranquilly, "if you had to make it for some one else. Left to yourself, you'd never make it."

Roger was in an odd mood. His father's trick of glancing over-shoulder, as if Barguest were not buried long since with old wives' superstitionsCicely's going to Brussels to learn parlor tricks-the growing load of debts-all had weakened his control of temper. And Lister's dry, half-contemptuous outlook upon life maddened him just now.

"Have you learned the way of