Ships in the Bay (Historical Novel). D. K. Broster

upon without partial demolition, while the grass stubble, as she knew from experience, was apt to prove a prickly seat. However, as she penetrated further, her gaze lit upon a haycock on the further side of the field which seemed to have overbalanced in some way, and towards this pile she bent her steps. “I can leave the field by that further gate,” she told herself, “so that I am not going much out of my way. How sweet the hay smells!”

      She reached the haycock in question about the same time as Bran, who had loitered behind for some purpose of his own, and now rushed up panting.

      “Lie down, good dog!” adjured his mistress. “It makes me hot to look at you!”

      But the good dog did not lie down; far from it. Pricking his ears, he took a good sniff at Nest’s chosen seat and began to bark at it.

      Nest involuntarily took a step backwards and clutched her muslin skirts to her. Undoubtedly there was a mouse in the pile of hay. But she was brave; she did not flee, since it could only be a fieldmouse after all, which she did not dread nearly as much as the domestic variety; moreover, there was no other haycock so convenient. But how tiresome of the creature to have chosen this haycock, of all others! “Oh, Bran, pray stop!” she cried, for the animal’s barking was now of an unmitigated frenzy and he was in addition beginning to dance about and to scratch at the pile. “See, I’ll drive the mouse out for you!” And, with great daring, but with due precaution also, still holding her skirts very tightly and keeping as far away as possible, she stretched out her arm and poked the point of her new parasol into the yielding hay.

      Yet even as one eating cherry jam from which the stones are thought to have been removed and are not, Miss Meredith received a jarring surprise. The interior of the hay possessed quite different qualities from its exterior; it was by no means yielding; yet whatever lay within had not the stark solidity of stone or wood. She had poked something living . . . something, too, from the feeling of it, much larger than a rabbit or hare—creatures which would moreover have leapt out at a touch, if not before. . . . This, whatever it was, gave no sign, uttered no sound. But the whole neighbourhood resounded with Bran’s passionate barking. And at his mistress’s exclamation and backward movement he, doubtless from an instinct of protection, was stirred to something bolder than mere vociferation, and, making a spring at one end of the pile, he seized a bunch of hay in his mouth and shook it as if it were alive. Then, dropping it, he made a second fierce dash at the same spot as though he had found something better worth attack.

      And, in a sense, he had, for, to Nest’s equal amazement and terror, a human hand and wrist darted forth from the hay and, catching Bran by the collar, succeeded in holding him off, while at the same instant a violent earthquake movement convulsed the whole heap. Next moment the hay was falling back on all sides from about the figure of a disreputable young man who, wrestling with the infuriated dog, was endeavouring to get from his semi-supine position to his feet.

      “Bran! Bran!” cried his distracted mistress. “Bran, come a way! Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do?” For whether the individual emerging from the hay after the manner of Venus Anadyomene from another element were a haymaker of retiring tastes, or a bad character of some kind, she did not desire the growling and writhing Bran to rouse him to complete wrath by taking a piece out of his person.

      “Bran!” Desperate, Nest advanced, and with difficulty seizing the dog by his collar, tugged hard. Thus, her effort coinciding by luck with a vigorous thrust on the man’s part, she did succeed in pulling Bran away; and, more from fright than from any other motive, began to belabour him with the treasured sunshade, while the man, leaping to his feet the moment he was free of his assailant, disappeared like a flash round the nearest haycock.

      “You naughty dog!” exclaimed Nest, trembling all over. She beat him again, her tepid blows awakening no protest. “How dare you—when I was calling you off!” Bran, panting, rolled over on to his back and gave an exhibition of the most abject and foolish contrition. With shaking fingers Nest fastened to his collar the leash which she had fortunately brought with her, stood a moment to recover some of her composure, and then started to walk quickly over the stubble towards the gate which she had already observed and which she knew must give on to a little lane leading back to the road. All thoughts of sitting awhile in the hayfield had now left her; her one desire was to get out of an enclosure where every haycock might, for aught she knew, be instinct with—what? Of what sort was the apparition with hay in his hair who had struggled with Bran and vanished so quickly? She could not imagine; all that she had had time to receive was an impression of youth, dark-haired, dark-chinned, of odd, shabby clothes with hay adhering to them, and of hurry. But the man could not merely have gone to sleep there and the haycock then have collapsed on top of him; he had been too thoroughly concealed for that. And people did not conceal themselves, especially in such an unusual way, unless there was a reason for it . . . and the reason was always a disgraceful one. Besides, he had been alarmed at discovery . . . or perhaps alarmed at Bran . . . or both. Thank Heaven, indeed, that he had run off as he had! But what an adventure! What would Papa say? And Aunt Pennefather, who alternated very inconsistently between disapproving of her niece’s freedom of movement and denouncing in her mild, poetical way, the shackles imposed through immemorial ages upon the female sex?

      Nest came through the little gate, from the scent of the hayfield to that of the lady’s bedstraw and honeysuckle of the narrow lane, and she had closed the gate behind her before she became aware of a masculine figure. It was he, the man from the haycock, standing a little to her left on the opposite side of the lane, against the high bank of flowers, looking at her!

      The young lady’s heart thumped sickeningly; she backed by instinct against the gate behind her. Bran growled and tugged at the leash; but its loop was round his mistress’s wrist. Afterwards Nest wondered exceedingly why she had neither screamed nor run down the lane, which, since this alarming figure was on the further side of her, she could at least have tried to do.

      The man, however, seemed to realise that she was frightened, for he remained motionless, save that he pulled his forelock as a gesture of respect, while Nest stared with alarmed eyes at him and his attire—at his coarse check shirt, open at the throat, his white flannel waistcoat bound with black tape—he appeared to have no coat—his wide, short trousers of faded blue fustian, with six inches or so of bare ankle between them and his shabby brass-buckled shoes; and most of all she noticed the menacing-looking sheath knife which hung from his worn leather belt.

      “I . . . I won’t touch you miss!” he said rather hoarsely. “I only wanted to thank you for calling your dog off me.”

      “I thought . . .” began Nest, but her breath fluttered so much that she did not complete the sentence; nor indeed was she quite sure what she had meant the end of it to be. If anything, it was the expression of a hope that he had gone completely. Certainly she would have infinitely preferred that to his lingering to thank her!

      “I wasn’t doing any harm, miss,” went on the young man humbly. “I be come to these parts hoping to find work—on a farm, maybe.”

      “But surely,” began Nest, a little reassured by his still remaining at a distance, and also by a certain gentleness in his voice, which, though it held some kind of a country accent that she did not recognise, yet did not sound entirely uneducated, “surely you are not likely to find work——” (“by hiding under a haycock” was on her lips, but she dared not quite bring out the words. After all, if she angered him he might still attack her.)

      Something like a smile came round the mouth which was left revealed by the four days’ or so of dark growth on the upper lip and chin. “I can guess what you was goin’ to say, miss! I do—does—want work none the less. ’Tis hay harvest, and there be farms about here, and the hay scarce cut as yet.”

      “Some of the farmers here might indeed be glad of an extra labourer,” said Miss Meredith, considering the prospective applicant. He was undoubtedly young, and probably strong, though there was a gaunt look about his ill-shaven face.

      “Thank you, miss. I will go and try my luck, then . . . I suppose you couldn’t oblige me with the names of one or two likely farms?”

      “But