No name

1
Father Leaves
IN THE HOT July sun Washington's Union Station seemed like a vaulted oven. Joan felt the heat more than the other Mitchell children because she rushed around so. She could see little sweat drops glistening on her nose when she shut one eye. She tried it first on the left side and then on the right. It made her forget about Daddy. Joan hated "good-bys" and this one was going to be terrible, worse even than when Uncle Jim had left. Daddy hadn't been drafted very long yet, and the Mitchells had hoped he would have a long period of training first, like Uncle Jim. But the Navy needed electrical engineers so badly that they had made Daddy a lieutenant right away and after a few weeks' training he had been assigned to a ship. Now his family was seeing him off.
A lot of other people seemed to be leaving at the same time as Daddy. The station was full of uniforms, weeping ladies and shrieking children. Joan hoped Mother wouldn't cry. She knew Grannie would, but Grannie was so old Joan felt sure people would understand and forgive her. Besides, there were strangers who were sobbing too, and Joan appeared to be the only one who blushed for them. One soldier had to take leave of a dog, and the dog didn't understand. He was a strong dog and he was dragging a red-eyed lady around on a leash. When the soldier tried to rush past the ticket collector, the dog gave a howl and bounded after him, tripping up Daddy with the leash. Luckily Daddy was able to catch his balance in midair.
"Dogs!" he muttered in a tone of rage. Daddy hated dogs.
"I'm so sorry," began the lady on the leash, but the dog didn't wait for her to finish. He whisked her off and she soon vanished in the crowd.
"Dogs!" repeated Father, almost sounding like one himself, he growled so. "Useless parasites of civilization, objects of slobbering sentimentality, verminous vandals...."
"Daddy, don't say such bad words!" cried Joan, shocked. Daddy's blue eyes twinkled down on her.
"Joan," he said, "I know you and I warn you. Don't you go filling my house with animals while I'm gone. I don't want to come back to a zoo! And especially, no dogs! Do you hear?"
"Yes, Daddy," said Joan meekly, though with a heavy heart. Joan loved animals and longed for a pet, but Daddy said five children were noise, confusion and expense enough.
"Hurry, John!" cried Mother, who was trying to keep her youngest daughter from being trampled underfoot. "We're late!"
Joan's heart skipped a beat. What if Daddy missed the train and let the ship go off without him? Would he be courtmartialed? They were very strict in the Navy.
"Daddy! Daddy! Hurry!" she cried, tugging at his uniform.
But Daddy was as calm as ever. Now they were shoving past the ticket collector and there beside the platform stood the train, panting to leave. Lieutenant Mitchell took a hasty farewell of his family. First Grannie, then Mother, who held Baby Timmy, then Joan, Patsy, Peter and Angela. The train was already in motion when he jumped on, his cap at a rakish angle.
"Don't forget your gun!" shouted Peter after him. "And shoot first, hear?"
"And bring back a baby-orphan from Europe!" yelled Patsy. Daddy was already too far off to hear, which was just as well, thought Mother. She had enough children to take care of at present.
"You take Peter and Patsy, Grannie, will you?" she said. "And watch out for those luggage carts. Joan! You hold Angela."
Another train thundered into the station, oozing passengers, who pushed past Mother and unsettled her pretty new hat with the red cherries. It dropped over one ear, giving Mother a wild look as she clutched Timmy and tried to watch over the other children as well.
"Take care!" she cried, but Joan had already caught Angela before the child could fall off the platform.
Angela was the beauty of the family and she had need to be, as Mother often remarked grimly. If she hadn't been so cherubic, with long blond curls, wistful blue eyes and the most enchanting little legs in the whole wide world, she'd surely have been disowned long ago! She was more trouble than the rest of the family put together. Now she set up a howl as Joan attempted to force her to follow the family procession.
"My shoe!" she screamed. "My li'l shoe!" Joan looked down. Yes—Angela was walking on one sock and one shoe.
"Mother! Mother!" cried Joan. "Wait!" Mother heard her, notwithstanding the roar and rumble of traffic.
"What is it?" she asked, turning around.
"Angela has lost her shoe."
"Oh my goodness," sighed Mother. "And I've spent my last shoe stamp. We'll just have to find it." She gazed around at the shuffling crowd.
"Grannie!" she cried. Grannie had gone on, not noticing the interruption, but Peter pulled her to a standstill.
"Mother is calling you."
"Yes, what?" said Grannie. She was thinking of Daddy and it was hard to make her understand.
"Shoe? Which shoe?" she asked.
"Never mind," said Mother. "You go on with Peter and Patsy; we'll find you in the waiting room. I've got to hurry and look for that shoe."
So Grannie walked on with her portion of the Mitchell family, while Mother straightened her hat, settled Timmy firmly on her arm and ran back to Joan and Angela, who each wanted to go in a different direction. Poor Joan's face looked like a radish.
"It's no use," she cried bitterly. "I can't do a thing with her." And with melancholy eyes she watched a bead of sweat roll down her nose and jump off at the tip.
"My shoe!" cried Angela in a heartbroken voice. "The pretty li'l one!"
"Where did you lose it?" asked Mother, peering around in vain.
"Down there," said Angela, pointing a fat little finger at the tracks. "I threw him."
"You threw it?" cried Mother indignantly. Joan couldn't help laughing, and after casting an angry look at her, Mother had to laugh, too. The little white shoe perched jauntily on one of the gleaming steel tracks.
"How shall we ever get it back?" sighed Mother.
"Why don't you ask a porter?" suggested Joan.
"I see one there," and she was off, presently returning with a redcap, who took in the situation at once.
"I'll have it for you in a jiffy, ma'am," he promised, lowering himself to the tracks while Joan watched anxiously for possible trains. The porter picked up the shoe, dusted it on his sleeve, and leaped back on to the platform with astonishing agility.
"Now don't go losing it again, honey," he told Angela as he bent to put the shoe back on her foot. Angela rewarded him with a golden smile. The porter flashed his teeth at her and straightened up again.
"Lawdy, ma'am!" he cried, rolling his eyes and pointing at Timmy, who sat still as an angel on Mother's arm. "That chile is eating your hat!" Mother hastily lowered Timmy to look at him. The baby gazed back at her complacently, his face smeared with red paint. In his hands he held the pretty bunch of imitation cherries, several of them obviously missing.
"Goodness, I hope they're not poisonous!" cried Mother, trying to clean Timmy's face with her handkerchief.
The redcap laughed. "I don't reckon so, ma'am," he murmured consolingly. "They're just paper and paint; he'll never notice it. It was your hat I was thinking of, such a pretty hat, too. Give me the boy, I'll tote him for you; you look plumb tuckered out." And the good-natured porter took Timmy and put him on his shoulder. Timmy gazed triumphantly down on Mother.
"That is a relief," sighed Mother gratefully, fanning herself with her plucked hat.
"Where were you all fixing to go?" asked the redcap.
"To the waiting room," said Mother, hurrying to keep up with his long strides. "I have more children there, waiting with my mother-in-law."
"Whew!" whistled the porter. "How are you all going to get home?"
"In a taxi, I suppose," said Mother wearily. She couldn't face the long bus journey after all this. It meant changing into another bus, half-way, too.
"You'll need a moving van," the redcap told her. He pushed ahead, Timmy crowing with delight at seeing so much of the world. Mother and Joan followed, with Angela between them.
When they arrived at the spacious waiting room with its ocean of seats, Mother asked: "Do you see Grannie anywhere?" Joan peered around.
"No," she said.
"I wonder where she went?" murmured Mother.
"There's a lady's waiting room further on," the porter pointed out helpfully. "Perhaps she went there."
"Yes . . ." said Mother. "That will be it," and she made a motion to go on, but Joan had caught sight of a glass counter and cried:
"Oh! Look at the lovely toys!"
"Hush!" cried Mother warningly, but it was too late, Angela had heard.
"Which toys?" she cried, pulling herself loose and streaking off in the direction Joan had pointed.
"Oh dear, I'm sorry," said Joan. Mother shrugged her shoulders. It couldn't be helped, and slowly they followed Angela, who was already squatting on the floor before the counter, wrapped in bliss.
"Oh! see? Look at the pussy, oh, the sweet pussy! Oh Mommy, Mommy, I want the pussy! I want that pussy, Mommy, that cute li'l pussy!" Angela jumped to her feet again and skipped up and down in a frenzy of joy, her curls flying, her eyes blazing blue fire.
"How much is it?" Mother asked timidly of a very superior lady who sat behind the counter, slowly chewing gum with an air as if the toys were no concern of hers.
"Oh, that..." she said, looking down her nose at the true-to-life fur kitten of Angela's choice.
"Two-ninety-eight," she announced.
Mother was aghast. "For that little thing?"
"Oh, Mother, buy it for her!" pleaded Joan. "She likes it so much."
"But I can't," said Mother wildly, remembering the few dollar bills in her slender purse which still had to yield the taxi's fare as well as the porter's tip. "I just can't."
Angela looked incredulous. She couldn't have that pussy? Unbelievable! She sat down on the ground and started a howl which seemed to come from the toes of her little feet, winding its way through her chubby body and exploding from her rosy lips with the force of a blackout siren. Even the lady behind the counter stopped chewing and took notice.
"She can't do that here," she remarked in an injured voice, frowning down on what she could see of Angela through two layers of glass.
"Oh, can't she?" echoed Mother bitterly.
But Joan had already taken the matter in hand. Seemingly heedless of Angela, she studied the pussycat with cold disdain.
"I don't like that pussy," she said loudly. "I bet it can't walk, or scratch, or mew, or even purr." Angela stopped screaming and listened. She had been disappointed in toys before. Was this pussy, perhaps, not as perfect as it seemed?
"It is, too, a neat pussy," she said defiantly.
But Joan perceived that her words had taken effect. "Santa Claus has much neater pussies..." she began. "And look... there's Grannie!" Yes, there was Grannie, who had waxed impatient and had sallied forth, remembering that Mother might have meant the general waiting room after all.
"Oh, I'm so glad you're all right," she cried, seeing the little group before the glass counter. "I was afraid something had happened to you."
"And I," began Mother, but she was interrupted by shrieks from Peter and Patsy, who had discovered the toys, while Angela ran to her grandmother and poured out her woes.
"Mommy won't buy the li'l pussy," she said, pointing to the kitten.
"Oh, I'll pay for it," said Grannie immediately, opening her bag.
"Grannie dear, you mustn't," cried Mother, alarmed. "It's two-ninety-eight."
"Buy me something, buy me something," cried Peter, Patsy and Joan, dancing around like wild Indians.
"Don't you all want a taxi now?" asked the porter, growing impatient at last. But Grannie had approached the glass counter, fumbling with her purse, and Mother sighed.
"You'd better give the baby to me if you are in a hurry," she told the porter. "I can see we won't be through here for some time. Please, Mother," she begged, laying a hand on Grannie's shoulder, "Don't ruin yourself. Let me pay for this; I can take it out of next month's allowance."
But Grannie was stubborn. "I don't have to go to the hairdresser now John and Jim have both left," she said. "I'll wash my own hair and be rich." Mother couldn't say anything after that, for Angela had grabbed her pussy and run away with it like a dog with a bone, doubtless fearing that Grannie might change her mind. She was half-way down the huge room before Mother caught up with her.
"I want candy," she announced as her eyes lit on a slot-machine. Mother got her some.
"It's all wrong," she thought. "The child is being spoilt, but we've got to get home some time," and she walked quickly back with a now radiant Angela.
Grannie was sitting triumphantly on a bench with Timmy on her lap. The redcap had gone and the other children were blissful with presents. Joan and Patsy had each chosen a children's magazine and Peter was zooming a little wooden airplane about.
"I paid for everything," crowed Grannie, "even for the porter."
"You shouldn't have done it," murmured Mother, but she felt relieved and began to cheer up. "Come along, chickens," she said. "Peter, don't fly that plane, it might hit someone."
But Peter had already let it go and it did hit someone, a fat gentleman who looked annoyed and crushed it with his foot. Peter picked up the wreck and wept over it. The other children gathered around to mourn with him.
"Come along," cried Mother. "I still have to cook dinner! It was your own fault, Peter. I told you not to fly it here, it's too dangerous."
"I had to," Peter defended himself. "In a war you can't just stay home because it's safer!"
"Perhaps that man was an anti-aircraft gun," suggested Patsy.
"No, he looked more like a barrage balloon," remarked Joan.
"Yes," agreed Peter, and a smile shone through his tears. He lovingly wrapped the remains of his plane in his handkerchief, with a vague idea of "gluing" them when he got home.
"Come, children!" cried Mother from afar. "We have to get a taxi!"
"A taxi? Are we going in a taxi? Oh boy!" And the children ran like hounds after a scent.
"May I sit in front? May I? May I?"
"Peter may," Mother decided, "because he was good about his wrecked plane."
They still had to find a taxi, however. There was a crowd waiting and there weren't enough taxis to go around. People had to double up. But, as Joan remarked, the Mitchells were double already, and when they at last had their taxi they filled it completely. Peter and Patsy were squeezed in front with the driver, congratulating each other on their luck.
"We see all the new things, and in the back they see only old things," Patsy summed up. Then they took the driver into their confidence and told him that their Daddy had gone to the war.
"Why don't you go to the war?" asked Patsy. "You're a man, too."
"They won't have me," grumbled the taxi driver. "I'm too old."
"Oh." The children looked at him. He did look rather old with wrinkles in his face and whitish kind of hair. Not as white as Grannie's, but white as a spider's web. Grannie's was white as a Christmas tree angel.
"It's like me," said Peter. "I'm too young." The taxi driver's face grew still more wrinkled as he gave Peter a sideways glance.
"I guess you are, at that," he admitted. "How old are you?"
"Six," said Peter. "And anyway, I've to look after my family."
"Oh," said the driver. "You've a family, have you?"
"Well, all of us," explained Peter, sweeping his arm around and hitting Patsy in the face. Patsy protested, but Peter paid no attention.
"I'm the only man in the family, the only one that can talk. It's a big... a big... what was the word Daddy said, Patsy?"
"I don't care," sulked Patsy. "You hit me."
"Well, anyway," Peter went on hurriedly, "I've a lot of expendents."
"Dependents, you mean," chuckled the taxi driver. "Or is it expenses?" Peter thought it better to let it go. That was the trouble with new words—they were very attractive, but people were always asking what they meant.
"Daddy had to go to the war because people were making so many mistakes," he explained, changing the subject.
"Yes," said Patsy. "I guess we'll win soon now."
"It can't be too soon for me," sighed the taxi driver. "I've got two sons in Italy."
They were nearing Chevy Chase circle and soon the children cried:
"Here we are! Here we are!" as the taxi stopped in front of a comfortable stucco house, which looked rather the worse for wear. Several dolls and a toy gun lay scattered over the front steps. While Mother paid the driver Grannie lifted Timmy out and the other children stumbled on to the sidewalk without assistance. The house looked cold and empty, and Joan remembered that it was Cora the maid's day off.
She skipped up the steps and went to open the door. She pulled at it and pushed and kicked. She rattled the knob. It wouldn't open. Patsy and Peter came and pushed and rattled and kicked, too, but it didn't help. The door was definitely locked. Oh, well! They ran to the back door and tried it. No, sir, locked, too. Then they went to the cellar door. Also locked. Joan thought this must be the very first time since they lived in the house that all the doors were locked at the same time. The children ran back to the front again. Mother was coming up the steps, loaded with Timmy, and Grannie came puffing after her.
"The doors are locked!" cried Peter.
"Oh!" Mother sat down on a step and tried to open her bag while balancing Timmy on her knee.
"I'll take him," said Joan eagerly, grasping her fat little brother in her strong arms and lifting him up.
"Oh dear," cried Mother, rummaging frantically through her bag and scattering ration books, fountain pen, spectacles, stamps and letters around her. "Oh dear, how stupid, how ridiculous—whatever shall we do?"
"What is it, Mother?" cried the children. Mother looked ready to burst into tears. She wiped her forehead, pushing her hat back, the sorry hat without its cherries, and glanced up at the closed house.
"Oh, nothing," she sighed. "Only—Daddy has the key."
 

Introduction
During the preparation of the 4-Sight Edition of the Catholic Authors Series for Grades 7 to 10, our staff was engaged in selecting authentic literature that clothes truth in the splendor of beauty and, by its inherent perfection, purifies the heart of man, impels the will, and exalts to action.

We read practically all the books by Catholic authors for the junior high school level. We were hard put to find enough artistically valid books for a full-blown reading program. It is incontrovertible that we have a growing number of Catholic authors invincible in their Faith and increasingly indisputable in their art who do not invent escapes from reality but dramatize the seizure of it. We gave their work complete and grateful treatment in 4-Sight.

But these books were oases. Hundreds of others were unalleviated sand. The number of books that should not have been written is staggering. Laid end to end they should lead from wherever they are to an attic.

In desperation, we dug into our bag of out-of-print books. We remembered Outlaws of Ravenhurst from our recent youth. To our delight, we could recall plot, characters, incidents. Now, we opened it again.

Here was manna in our desert. The men were manly, the women womanly. And the boys were not self-righteous Horners sitting in corners-sugarplums pulling other sugarplums out of a pie and eating them without relish. Here were clean, poignant parallels of Tarsicius and Sebastian and Campion; here were other Christs and other crucifixions-and, yes, here was Judas.

Clearly, this was not the work of a hagiographer turned storyteller and perpetrating vicious portraits of the saints as people born with holy water in their veins that immunized them to concupiscence.

Here was struggle between good and evil, beginning in the center of men's hearts and spreading out in concentric, enveloping circles. In miniature was the recurring and current conflict of the world: Christ against antichrist, and the Mother of God recognized in her practiced historic role of saving men in the imminence of their peril and making them strong out of weakness.

What a contrast to the many books full of pasteboard boys and girls threatened by transparent plots of butter-milk villains! What a relief it was to find no invertebrate heroines simpering in synthetic halos, enumerating their novenas to assorted saints with the sweet stoicism of dowagers unveiling their operations, and negotiating lachrymose conversions right and left.

Here were boy and man standing in the full stature of body-spirit, choosing between good and evil and coming to grips with the devil. No secularism here, relegating God to the periphery of grace before big meals. Here Christ in the heart of His Mother was the center-the Catholic center of living. These were total Christians living their Faith to the hilt of their claymores. What an exhilarating departure from "how Joe and Harry spent their vacation" circumscribed by a canoe, several unconvincing catfish, and abominable prose-running the emotional gamut from A to B with a narrative temperature that couldn't incubate the egg of a wren.

Furthermore, we had always been saying that a man becomes what he reads: he reads mush and you can pour him through a keyhole; he wrestles with giants and becomes a king. Here, reading a book within a book, the hero meets God's nobility and grows to the stature of early Christians who stood heaven-high in the Colosseum.

The plot cascaded down the jagged rocks of the Highlands, suspense was keyed like a fiddle string, and the people didn't talk like characters in novels. The story had a heart that was warm, palpitating, compassionate, and capable of refreshing indignation.

This was high adventure, indeed. This was a book. We contacted the author, Sister Imelda. Where could we procure copies of Outlaws of Ravenhurst? We were told we couldn't. The book was not in print. Why hadn't it been reprinted? Publishers had been asked to reprint it but refused to.

But it must be reprinted! We'd publish it ourselves -all right? Certainly, delighted, decidedly delighted! Would she simplify the dialect for youngsters who read while they run the bases, but retain the good smack of Scotch ( dialect) ? Yes, she had already done that.

Had she considered telescoping several chapters and poising that twelfth climax on a precipice edge? Very well.

Would she delete a few things that might irritate fastidious critics who write with scalpels? Yes.

Could the story be dropped like a hot iron at the finish? Certainly.

Could we begin at once? At once.

Sister Imelda is delightful.

Here is Outlaws of Ravenhurst, revised, reset, illustrated-"for God and Our Lady!"

Truth is compelling when it is real-ized. It is realized when seen. It is seen when it is em-bodied, incarnated, act-ualized. Literature at its best is truth clothed in the splendor of beauty, capable of impelling vacillation from ('Not yet, O Lord," to "Now!" We believe this book to be truth in raiment becoming it.

GEORGE N. SCHUSTER, S.M.

Contents

INTRODUCTION VII

Chapter I. THE GRAY-CLOAKED STRANGER I

Chapter 2. BROWN-HEAD GOES FISHING 5

Chapter 3. UNCLE ROGER 16
Chapter 4. WHEN MEN PLAY MARBLES 22
Chapter 5. CASTLE RAVENHURST 33
Chapter 6. BY THE OLD FIREPLACE 44
Chapter 7. MY FRIEND GODFREY 58
Chapter 8. THE RUIN IN THE WOOD 70
Chapter 9 .THE MERCY OF A COWARD 84
Chapter 10. SECRET OF THE FIREPLACE 95
Chapter I I. RETURN OF LANG-SWORD 105
Chapter I2. LAST STAND OF THE OLD EARL 117
Chapter I3. GUARDIANS OF THE KING 129
Chapter I4. GLORY OF THE BITTER END 143
Chapter I5 .SPLINTER OF THE LANG-SWORD 155
Chapter I6. ESCAPE 160
Chapter I7. SECRET PASSAGES 166
Chapter I8. SIR JAMES OF GORDON 172
Chapter I9. MUCKLE JOHN 188
Chapter 20. GORDON FOR GOD AND OUR LADY 195
Chapter 2I .ROCK RAVEN NO MORE 206
Chapter 22. IN THE HOLLOW OF GOD'S HAND 212
Chapter 23. OUR LADY'S HOME 224

Chapter I

THE GRAY - CLOAKED STRANGER

NIGHT LAY on the long swelling waves of the Chesapeake Bay: no wind, no star, a murky darkness. The spars of an unlighted ship loomed through the fog and sank into fog again. Stealthily, from the bulky gloom of the deck, a dory slid on oiled ropes to the somber waters. Two seamen followed. Then down the ropes came an object which seemed to be a man with a bundle, wrapped in a long gray cloak. The dory pulled off and was swallowed by the fog.

For an hour the ship swung at anchor, still no light aloft or alow, and no sound save the dull lapping of the waves. Then from the stern a bell began to toll. One slow, booming tone rolled off and died away before the next followed. As if drawn out of the fog by the bellts deep calling, the dory came gliding back again. Two seamen were at the oars. The anchor sobbed up from the sea's grip. The tide was offshore and the ship floated out with the current, unlighted, silent, back into the white smother from which it had come.

Keen and marrow-searching, the morning wind rose along the shore of Maryland. Dense fog became a fine, drizzling rain turning to sleet. Breasting it along lonely ways among the sand dunes, hurried a lean, bent man carrying a bundle under his cloak - a long, muddied, threadbare garment as gray as rain-soaked ashes.

The bundle was hard to manage. It seemed to move of its own accord. Once in a while a sound came out of it, a wailing cry, "Dunkie Teewee! Take Dordie out."

"Sh!" the man would whisper. His tone was a stern command, but his eyes glowed with great love. The bundle would sniffle a moment or two, then grow quiet. After hours of tramping, the man found a nook where the forest met the last sand dunes. Here, crouched between a low bank and a tree, with his own body shielding the bundle from the sleet, the man opened his cloak and loosened the sailcloth and the plaid shawl within. A fat fist slipped out of the opening, then a i tousle of brown curls, a gurgling laugh, and a piping voice, "Dood Dunkie Teewee! Take it all off!"

"Hush!" came the man's low command in atone that would have been menacing except that it was so deeply kind. "Drink." He drew a flask from his cloak.

The child drank, but all the while he stared over the bottle's rim at the man-a wise, wide, baby stare. His eyes were blue and deep as the sea, with a flash in their depths that in the turning of an instant might be fun or fury; just now the eyes shone with a puzzled and half-angry trust.

Even in this short time the little fist which guided the flask was growing blue though it gripped with deft strength-a swordsman's right hand still in the making. The stranger hastened to enclose the baby in his warm coverings. He wound the cloak about himself and his bundle, left the shelter, and hurried on through the stinging sleet.

By midafternoon they had reached the top of a rough knob. Here the man seemed to be expecting someone. Placing himself in a spot well screened by the under- brush, he kept a constant eye on a little path which wound around the base of the hill.

It was almost sundown before the expected one arrived, a gentle old man on a steady-going bay horse. His round, low-crowned hat, sober clothing, and great saddlebags gave him the appearance of a missionary passing from one Mass station to another. If the man of the gray cloak was expecting the meeting, this other person evidently was not; yet the stranger studied the missionary's face with a look of recognition and relief. Then, turning sharply, he slipped off in an opposite direction across the hill and down the other side until he reached the path at a point where the horseman must soon pass.

Here the stranger took his queer bundle from beneath his cloak and propped it up against a stump. He loosened the wrappings from the baby's face and pressed upon the Ilittle brow one long, long kiss. The child awoke and cried out to him. The gray-cloaked figure whirled and darted up the hill into a thicket. Perhaps he feared the horseman would come before time. Perhaps he could not trust himself further lest he fail to carry out his plan.

The child, left suddenly alone, cried out at first as if it were some game; then, cross from weariness, he screamed and struggled with his coverings. At last, as if too weary to battle longer, his voice dropped to a convulsed sobbing, "Dunkie! Dunkie Teewee!"

Far up the slope the stranger knelt between a ledge and a twisted mass of brush and vine. His clenched hands were outstretched on the rock, gripped upon each other till the fingernails bit into the lean flesh. His hollow, weather-furrowed face was set by the clenched will behind it, but his eyes were wet with an agony of love and longing.

I Why the Princess has a Story about Her

There was once a little princess whose father was king over a great country full of mountains and valleys. His palace was built upon one of the mountains, and was very grand and beautiful. The princess, whose name was Irene, was born there, but she was sent soon after her birth, because her mother was not very strong, to be brought up by country people in a large house, half castle, half farmhouse, on the side of another mountain, about half-way between its base and its peak.

The princess was a sweet little creature, and at the time my story begins, was about eight years old, I think, but she got older very fast. Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night-sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue. Those eyes you would have thought must have known they came from there, so often were they turned up in that direction. The ceiling of her nursery was blue, with stars in it, as like the sky as they could make it. But I doubt if ever she saw the real sky with the stars in it, for a reason which I had better mention at once.

These mountains were full of hollow places underneath; huge caverns, and winding ways, some with water running through them, and some shining with all colours of the rainbow when a light was taken in. There would not have been much known about them, had there not been mines there, great deep pits, with long galleries and passages running off from them, which had been dug to get at the ore of which the mountains were full. In the course of digging, the miners came upon many of these natural caverns. A few of them had far-off openings out on the side of a mountain, or into a ravine.

Now in these subterranean caverns lived a strange race of beings, called by some gnomes, by some kobolds, by some goblins. There was a legend current in the country, that at one time they lived above ground, and were very like other people. But for some reason or other, concerning which there were different legendary theories, the king had laid what they thought too severe taxes upon them, or had required observances of them they did not like, or had begun to treat them with more severity, in some way or other, and impose stricter laws; and the consequence was that they had all disappeared from the face of the country. According to the legend, however, instead of going to some other country, they had all taken refuge in the subterranean caverns, whence they never came out but at night, and then seldom showed themselves in any numbers, and never to many people at once. It was only in the least frequented and most difficult parts of the mountains that they were said to gather even at night in the open air . Those who had caught sight of any of them said that they had greatly altered in the course of generations; and no wonder, seeing they lived away from the sun, in cold and wet and dark places. They were now, not ordinarily ugly, but either absolutely hideous, or ludicrously grotesque both in face and form. There was no invention, they said, of the most lawless imagination expressed by pen or pencil, that could surpass the extravagance of their appearance. But I suspect those who said so, had mistaken some of their animal companions for the goblins themselves - of which more by and by. The goblins themselves were not so far removed from the human as such a description would imply. And as they grew misshapen in body, they had grown in knowledge and cleverness, and now were able to do things no mortal could see the possibility of. But as they grew in cunning, they grew in mischief, and their great delight was in every way they could think of to annoy the people who lived in the open-air-storey above them. They had enough of affection left for each other, to preserve them from being absolutely cruel for cruelty's sake to those that came in their way; but still they so heartily cherished the ancestral grudge against those who occupied their former possessions, and especially against the descendants of the king who had caused their expulsion, that they sought every opportunity of tormenting them in ways that were as odd as their inventors and although dwarfed and misshapen, they had strength equal to theIr cunning. In the process of time they had got a king and a government of their own, whose chief business, beyond their own simple affairs, was to devise trouble for their neighbours. It will now be pretty evident why the little princess had never seen the sky at night. They were much too afraid of the goblins to let her out of the house then, even in company with ever so many attendants; and they had good reason, as we shall see by and by.

THE YOUNGEST REBEL
CHARLOTTE DARRINGTON was writing her copy when her brothers, Joseph and George, pounded up the stairs. They rushed into the schoolroom.
"Charlotte, come to the parlor this instant. Old Harry is back from the American war with a bullet wound in his chest. He has brought a box of gifts from Papa, which is going to be unpacked as soon as Mamma has read Papa’s long letters, sheaves of them. And Old Harry has a special gift from himself, for you. Lucky girl, you always were Old Harry’s favorite!"
Down went Charlotte’s pen, and scamper, scamper went Charlotte’s feet, with Joseph and George scurrying after.
There in the parlor sat Old Harry in his red coat, beaming all over his face. He was not really old, but after he went to the war, his place as gardener at Thorndale Hall was taken by his son, Young Harry. Now he was at home again, glad to be in England once more. The box of gifts stood on the table in front of him, and on his knees, in a wrapper of coarse canvas, lay the parcel containing the special gift for Charlotte.
Mrs. Darrington was asking Old Harry questions about his wound, and promising to send to the nearest town for medicines and comforts that could not be obtained in the country. Her eyes kept wandering to the packet of letters she held. Charlotte knew that she was counting the minutes until she was free to read what Papa had written.
Joseph and George began to drum on the box. Mamma said pleasantly:
"After all, we will open the box first. We know that dearest Papa was alive and well when he wrote the letters—and we couldn’t wish for better news than that! So you shall not be kept waiting, my dears."
"Thank you, Mamma," said Joseph, George and Kitty the youngest. Charlotte did not speak. She was thinking, Mamma is the kindest, most unselfish person in the world. She puts everybody before herself.
Old Harry made short work of the fastenings. Out of the box came treasures for everyone in Thorndale Hall, from little kitchenmaid, Sukey, to the governess, Miss Pipkin.
The gifts were of fine Indian workmanship: bows, arrows and headdresses for the boys; purses, mats, carved spoons, scarves, bead ornaments and basketry for the rest. Charlotte had a purple-and-white flower basket, with a necklace of purple and white stones to match.
At last the box was empty, and only Charlotte’s special present remained to be unpacked. With proud looks, Harry unpicked the stitches round the canvas wrapper. Beneath the canvas was a layer of wadding, and under that was a miniature patchwork quilt. Old Harry unrolled it.
A little waxen face looked up at Charlotte, a resolute little face with a sparkle of defiance about it, despite its dimples and laughter curves. The eyes were brown, and brown too was the straight silky hair that was cut in a fringe across the forehead. Harry drew out the owner of the face, and laid in Charlotte’s arms a doll with a small American painted paper flag pinned to the bodice of its brown dress. Its body was of pink kid, with beautifully fashioned hands and feet.
"Oh, Harry, thank you a thousand, thousand times!" exclaimed Charlotte. "This is by far the prettiest doll I ever saw. She’s as real as if she were alive. How I shall love her! And what fine shops they must have in America!"
"She didn’t come out of no shop," said Harry, grinning. "No, missy, that doll once belonged to a little rebel girl, as lived in Virginny in a big owd house summat like Thorndale Hall, as full of rebels as an egg is full of meat. The family, they had to skip when we British come that way. ‘Redcoats,’ they call us, or ‘Scarlet Lobsters’ when they want to be downright insulting. Well, arter we’d rushed the house, we took a look ’round, see? And fust thing I spied was this here little creature a-sitting on a chair staring at me as bold as brass. Oho! says I to myself, this young lady shall up and come along of us Redcoats. She’ll suit Miss Charlotte to a T, as the saying goes."
"Oh-h-h!" said Charlotte. She met her mother’s eyes, and saw that she too was distressed. Not knowing what next to say, Charlotte kissed the doll.
Harry was delighted. "That’s how that should be! I knowed what I wor about when I laid hands on that reb doll!"
At this moment the butler, Gregory, came to say that the rest of the household had assembled in the servants’ hall.
"Pooh! What a fuss about a trumpery doll!" scoffed George. "Now if Harry had given you the rebel ball that was dug out of his chest, that would have been worth having! He’s got it. He asked the surgeon to keep it for him. He’s going to have it mounted in crystal and silver, to be an heirloom for Young Harry. I wish it was mine, I do!"
If Charlotte had been able to pay attention to anything save the rebel doll, she would have said, "Ugh, how horrid!" But she was still looking sorrowfully into Mamma’s sorrowful face.
"I think, my dear Charlotte," her mother said, "that for the present at any rate you must keep the doll. Its poor little owner would prefer to know that her treasure was in loving hands. Perhaps we’ll find some way of sending the doll back when this dreadful war comes to an end, as we pray God it may. Carry her up to the schoolroom, my love, and make her acquainted with the other dolls."
"I do believe she understands what you say, Mamma!" said Charlotte. "She looks as if she did. I never saw a doll like her. I am glad her hair is the same color as mine. And she is every bit a rebel, for all she is so young."
"The youngest rebel in the world, I should say," said her mother, smiling.
Charlotte carried the rebel doll to the schoolroom, which was also the playroom.
"My dears," she said to her assembled dolls, "this is a young friend who has come all the way from America to see you. Friend, I said, Rosalba! Not enemy," Charlotte added with a stern glance at her biggest doll, who was flopping sideways with her face averted from the stranger.
Rosalba did not respond.
"This is Clarissa, that is Evelina, and here are Susanna and Laurence," said Charlotte. "Laurence is named for my Uncle Laurence, who was badly wounded in the war last autumn, in a skirmish. He was sent home to England, and since Christmas he has been living at the White Priory in Marton Green with Grandpapa and Grandmamma. The doctors say he will not be fit to rejoin his regiment before the summer. Laurence, how often must I tell you not to slouch? It is most unmilitary."
Charlotte bent forward to straighten Laurence. Then she began to undress the weary traveler.
"I wonder how you lost your shoes and stockings and cap, my dear," said Charlotte; "but I suppose I shall never know. And how could your mamma forget you when she and the others escaped from the house? Perhaps the alarm was so sudden that she was hurried away without being allowed a moment to run and fetch you. Oh, poor little girl!"
Charlotte did not like thinking about the American girl. Her eyes filled with tears, and she talked fast to keep herself from crying. "Oh, what’s this? I declare, there’s writing on the back of the flag, done by a person about as old as I am!"
Charlotte had unpinned the flag on the doll’s dress. It was painted only on the upper side. On the reverse, she read:
Go home, Redcoats!
I stand for my country.
Go home, Redcoats!
My name is Patty.
I am Patty’s dearest Patty.
"So you are Patty’s Patty," said Charlotte. "What a dear, little funny name! I like it."
The schoolroom windows looked east to the gray sea, foaming under a bitter late February wind. Charlotte turned from the windows to face the west.
"Patty in America," she said aloud, "I am sorry to say that I have your Patty. There’s nothing I can do about it, but I promise you that you shall have her again some day, if I can contrive it. In the meantime I will take great care of her."
After that, Charlotte brushed the doll’s hair. It was real hair, she noticed. She felt sure that it had once belonged to Patty across the sea.
"There you are, Patty dear," she said, as she tucked the rebel up in the bed that belonged to Rosalba. "All comfy, aren’t you? Have a good long rest after your journey." Rebel Patty looked up at Charlotte, a puckish smile on her face.
Charlotte had just gone down to join her mother in the parlor when a maid came bringing a letter from the Rector of Tumblesand Bay, to whom Joseph, George and about a dozen other boys went for lessons every day, as there was no school near Thorndale Hall. He had been ill for a week, unable to teach his pupils.
"Oh, this is frightful!" said Mamma, after she had read the letter. "Mr. Whittaker is so much worse that the doctor has ordered him perfect rest for the next six months. He is going away tomorrow, and in his absence the services will be taken by a clergyman who does not wish to teach boys!"
"Hurrah, hurrah!" shouted Joseph and George. "Holidays for six months! Hurrah!"
Mamma did not echo the "Hurrah!" She looked sober over the thought that the boys would miss so much school.
"I tell you what, Mamma!" said Joseph. "This is all that young rebel’s doing. She’s plotted it, nobody knows how, just to upset the house!"
That made Mamma laugh, in spite of her trouble.
"I shall ask Miss Pipkin to teach you and George for a few days until I can make other arrangements," she said.
Joseph and George looked glum. Miss Pipkin was Charlotte’s and Kitty’s governess. She was away for the day in Gippeswich, where she was choosing schoolbooks.
Before the boys had opened their mouths to protest, Gregory came in with a letter on a salver. "From Captain Templeton, madam. The messenger is waiting for an answer."
Captain Templeton was Uncle Laurence. Looking a little alarmed, Mamma opened the letter. The children knew why she was alarmed. No sooner were the Christmas holidays over than Grandpapa and Grandmamma had fallen ill. Though not yet recovered from his war wounds, Uncle Laurence had been nursing them, helped by another married sister, the children’s Aunt Sophy, who had left her own home to come to his aid.
"My dears," said Mamma, when she had read the letter, "Uncle Laurence has sent bad news. Aunt Sophy has had to leave the White Priory at a moment’s notice, for your poor Cousin Marcus has been thrown in the hunting field and will need his mother for a long while to come. Uncle Laurence cannot manage the nursing all by himself. He wants me. I shall have to go to the White Priory tomorrow, leaving you in Miss Pipkin’s care."
A dreadful howl went up. "Leave us with Miss Pipkin, Mamma! Mamma, you can’t!"
"I must," said Mamma.
"This is the rebel’s work again, I’ll be bound!" Joseph shouted, his fist in the air. "She’s a menace, that’s what she is! Oh, Mamma, tell Uncle Laurence you’re stopping here!"
Mamma shook her head and sat down to answer Uncle Laurence’s letter.
To lose Mamma for an unknown length of time was a terrible prospect. After they had recovered from the first shock, Kitty, and even George, began to think of the rebel doll with respect mingled with fear.
"I shouldn’t wonder," said George, "if there weren’t great goings-on in the schoolroom tonight, after the house is asleep. That rebel will get up and fight the other dolls, I’m sure she will. In the morning you’ll find legs and arms and flaxen wigs and sawdust and stuffing all over the floor!"
"Do you really think so, George?" asked little Kitty anxiously.
"It might be as well to build a barricade round her for the night," said George, "so that she can’t do any harm."
George built the barricade that evening, with help from Joseph, who happened to be at a loss for something to do. Rosalba’s bed was put on the floor by one of the windows. In front of it, Joseph and George built a stockade of chairs with legs pointing outward, upward and inward in such a way that the rebel doll would find much difficulty in climbing out to attack the English dolls, and even more difficulty in running for shelter if she should be defeated. For extra security, Joseph and George locked the doors of the clothespress in which the Darrington dolls had been hidden, and they balanced the schoolroom bell and a wooden basin on the top of it so that Patty could not shake the door without sounding an alarm and giving herself a cold bath.
Then they went to bed and to sleep. An hour later they were awakened by a crash, a noise of clattering and rumbling, accompanied by frantic yells.
Joseph and George jumped out of bed and ran to the schoolroom, whence the noise came. Charlotte and Kitty followed, trembling. Mrs. Darrington hurried up the stairs. Men and maids flocked after her, carrying candles and pokers.
A dire sight awaited them. Floundering in a sea of tangled chairs by a badly broken window lay Miss Pipkin, who had come into the room in the dark intending to put a parcel of newly purchased schoolbooks in the press. She was screaming at the top of her voice, and she went on screaming for some time after she had been picked out of the tangle, smoothed down, anointed with arnica, and plentifully supplied with burnt feathers, aromatic essences and glasses of water.
When she stopped screaming, she was so angry that she vowed she would leave the house by the London coach the next morning. Nothing would induce her to remain in a situation where she was so abominably treated. As for teaching and taking charge of those impudent practical jokers, Joseph and George, she would sooner jump over the moon.
The four Darringtons did their best to explain, but Miss Pipkin refused to listen to what they said. Mamma apologized, pleaded, remonstrated, all in vain. Miss Pipkin went to her room in a rage, and they could hear her pulling out boxes and drawers as she packed for going away.
Rebel Patty had not been injured when chairs, bell, basin and Pipkin tumbled around her brown head. Calm and unmoved she lay, with the impish smile still there.