Hesba Stretton - Fern\'s Hollow
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Hesba Stretton >> Fern\'s Hollow
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10 FERN'S HOLLOW
By HESBA STRETTON
Author of 'Jessica's First Prayer,' 'Alone in London' 'Pilgrim Street,'
'Little Meg's Children' etc.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. THE HUT IN THE HOLLOW
II. THE DYING FATHER
III. STEPHEN'S FIRST VICTORY
IV. THREATENING CLOUDS
V. MISS ANNE
VI. THE RED GRAVEL PIT
VII. POOR SNIP
VIII. STEPHEN AND THE GAMEKEEPER
IX. HOMELESS
X. THE CABIN ON THE CINDER-HILL
XI. STEPHEN AND THE RECTOR
XII. VISIT OF BLACK BESS
XIII. THE OLD SHAFT
XIV. A BROTHER'S GRIEF
XV. RENEWED CONFLICT
XVI. SOFTENING THOUGHTS
XVII. A NEW CALLING
XVIII. THE PANTRY WINDOW
XIX. FIRE! FIRE!
XX. STEPHEN'S TESTIMONY
XXI. FORGIVENESS
XXII. THE MASTER'S DEATHBED
XXIII. THE HOME RESTORED
FERN'S HOLLOW
CHAPTER I.
THE HUT IN THE HOLLOW.
Just upon the border of Wales, but within one of the English counties,
there is a cluster of hills, rising one above the other in gradual
slopes, until the summits form a long, broad tableland, many miles
across. This tableland is not so flat that all of it can be seen at once,
but here and there are little dells, shaped like deep basins, which the
country folk call hollows; and every now and then there is a rock or
hillock covered with yellow gorse bushes, from the top of which can be
seen the wide, outspread plains, where hundreds of sheep and ponies are
feeding, which belong to the farmers and cottagers dwelling in the valley
below. Besides the chief valley, which divides the mountains into two
groups, and which is broad enough for a village to be built in, there are
long, narrow glens, stretching up into the very heart of the tableland,
and draining away the waters which gather there by the melting of snow in
the winter and the rain of thunderstorms in summer. Down every glen flows
a noisy mountain stream, dashing along its rocky course with so many tiny
waterfalls and impatient splashes, that the gurgling and bubbling of
brooks come up even into the quietness of the tableland and mingle with
the singing of the birds and the humming of the bees among the heather.
There are not many paths across the hills, except the narrow sheep-walks
worn by the tiny feet of the sheep as they follow one another in long,
single lines, winding in and out through the clumps of gorse; and few
people care to explore the solitary plains, except the shepherds who have
the charge of the flocks, and tribes of village children who go up every
summer to gather the fruit of the wild and hardy bilberry wires.
The whole of this broad tableland, as well as the hills, are common
pasture for the inhabitants of the valleys, who have an equal right to
keep sheep and ponies on the uplands with the lord of the manor. But the
property of the soil belongs to the latter, and he only has the power of
enclosing the waste so as to make fields and plant woods upon it,
provided always that he leaves a sufficient portion for the use of the
villagers. In times gone by, however, when the lord of the manor and his
agent were not very watchful, it was the practice of poor persons, who
did not care how uncomfortably they lived, to seek out some distant
hollow, or the farthest and most hidden side of a hillock, and there
build themselves such a low, small hut, as should escape the notice of
any passer-by, should they chance to go that way. Little by little,
making low fences which looked like the surrounding gorse bushes, they
enclosed small portions of the waste land, or, as it is called,
encroached upon the common; and if they were able to keep their
encroachment without having their hedges broken down, or if the lord of
the manor neglected to demand rent for it for the space of twenty years,
their fields and gardens became securely and legally their own. Because
of this right, therefore, are to be found here and there little farms of
three or four fields a-piece, looking like islands, with the wide, open
common around them; and some miles away over the breezy uplands there is
even a little hamlet of these poor cottages, all belonging to the people
who dwell in them.
Many years ago, even many years before my story begins, a poor woman--who
was far worse off than a widow, for her husband had just been sentenced
to transportation for twenty-one years--strayed down to these mountains
upon her sorrowful way home to her native place. She had her only child
with her, a boy five years of age; and from some reason or other, perhaps
because she could not bear to go home in shame and disgrace, she sought
out a very lonely hiding-place among the hills, and with her own hands
reared rough walls of turf and stones, until she had formed such a rude
hut as would just give shelter to her and her boy. There they lived,
uncared for and solitary, until the husband came back, after suffering
his twenty-one years' punishment, and entered into a little spot of land
entirely his own. Then, with the assistance of his son, a strong,
full-grown young man, he rebuilt the cottage, though upon a scale not
much larger or much more commodious than his wife's old hut.
Like other groups of mountains, the highest and largest are those near
the centre, and from them the land descends in lower and lower levels,
with smaller hills and smoother valleys, until at length it sinks into
the plain. Then they are almost like children's hills and valleys; the
slopes are not too steep for very little feet to climb, and the rippling
brooks are not in so much hurry to rush on to the distant river, but that
boys and girls at play can stop them for a little time with slight banks
of mud and stones. In just such a smooth, sloping dell, down in a soft
green basin, called Fern's Hollow, was the hiding-place where the
convict's sad wife had found an unmolested shelter.
This dwelling, the second one raised by the returned convict and his son,
is built just below the brow of the hill, so that the back of the hut is
formed of the hill itself, and only the sides and front are real walls.
These walls are made of rubble, or loose, unhewn stones, piled together
with a kind of mortar, which is little more than clay baked hard in the
heat of the sun. The chimney is a bit of old stove-pipe, scarcely rising
above the top of the hill behind; and, but for the smoke, we could look
down the pipe, as through the tube of a telescope, upon the family
sitting round the hearth within. The thatch, overgrown with moss, appears
as a continuation of the slope of the hill itself, and might almost
deceive the simple sheep grazing around it. Instead of a window there is
only a square hole, covered by a shutter when the light is not urgently
needed; and the door is so much too small for its sill and lintels as to
leave large chinks, through which adventurous bees and beetles may find
their way within. You may see at a glance that there is but one room, and
that there can be no up-stairs to the hut, except that upper storey of
the broad, open common behind it, where the birds sleep softly in their
cosy nests. Before the house is a garden; and beyond that a small field
sown with silver oats, which are dancing and glistening in the breeze and
sunshine; while before the garden wicket, but not enclosed from the
common, is a warm, sunny valley, in the very middle of which a slender
thread of a brook widens into a lovely little basin of a pool, clear and
cold, the very place for the hill ponies to come and drink.
Looking steadily up this pleasant valley from the threshold of the
cottage, we can just see a fine, light film of white smoke against the
blue sky. Two miles away, right down off the mountains, there is a small
coal-field and a quarry of limestone. In a distant part of the country
there are large tracts of land where coal and iron pits are sunk on every
side, and their desolate and barren pit-banks extend for miles round,
while a heavy cloud of smoke hangs always in the air. But here, just at
the foot of these mountains, there is one little seam of coal, as if
placed for the express use of these people, living so far away from the
larger coal-fields. The Botfield lime and coal works cover only a few
acres of the surface; but underground there are long passages bored
beneath the pleasant pastures and the yellow cornfields. From the
mountains, Botfield looks rather like a great blot upon the fair
landscape, with its blackened engine-house and banks of coal-dust, its
long range of limekilns, sultry and quivering in the summer sunshine, and
its heavy, groaning water-wheel, which pumps up the water from the pits
below. But the colliers do not think it so, nor their wives in the
scattered village beyond; they do not consider the lime and coal works a
blot, for their living depends upon them, and they may rightly say, 'As
for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it
were fire.'
Even Stephen Fern, who would a thousand times rather work out on the free
hillside than in the dark passages underground, does not think it a pity
that the Botfield pit has been discovered at the foot of the mountains.
It is nearly seven o'clock in the evening, and he is coming over the brow
of the green dell, with his long shadow stretching down it. A very long
shadow it is for so small a figure to cast, for if we wait a minute or
two till Stephen draws nearer, we shall see that he is no strong, large
man, but a slight, thin, stooping boy, bending rather wearily under a
sack of coals, which he is carrying on his shoulders, and pausing now and
then to wipe his heated forehead with the sleeve of his collier's flannel
jacket. When he lifts up the latch of his home we will enter with him,
and see the inside of the hut at Fern's Hollow.
CHAPTER II.
THE DYING FATHER.
Stephen stepped over the threshold into a low, dark room, which was
filled with smoke, from a sudden gust of the wind as it swept over the
roof of the hut. On one side of the grate, which was made of some
half-hoops of iron fastened into the rock, there was a very aged man,
childish and blind with years, who was crouching towards the fire, and
talking and chuckling to himself. A girl, about a year older than
Stephen, sat in a rocking-chair, and swung to and fro as she knitted away
fast and diligently at a thick grey stocking. In the corner nearest to
the fireplace there stood a pallet-bed, hardly raised above the earthen
floor, to which Stephen hastened immediately, with an anxious look at the
thin, white face of his father lying upon the pillow. Beside the sick man
there lay a little child fast asleep, with her hand clasping one of her
father's fingers; and though James Fern was shaking and trembling with a
violent fit of coughing from the sudden gust of smoke, he took care not
to loose the hold of those tiny fingers.
'Poor little Nan!' he whispered to Stephen, as soon as he could speak.
'I've been thinking all day of her and thee, lad, till I'm nigh
heart-broken.'
'Do you feel worse, father?' asked Stephen anxiously.
'I'm drawing nearer the end,' answered James Fern,--'nearer the end every
hour; and I don't know for certain what the end will be. I'm repenting;
but I can't undo the mischief I've done; I must leave that behind me.
If I'd been anything like a decent father, I should have left you
comfortable, instead of poor beggars. And what is to become of my poor
lass here? See how fast she clips my hand, as if she was afeared I was
going to leave her! Oh, Stephen, my lad, what will you all do?'
'Father,' said Stephen, in a quiet and firm voice, 'I'm getting six
shillings a week wages, and we can live on very little. We haven't got
any rent to pay, and only ourselves and grandfather to keep, and Martha
is as good as a woman grown. We'll manage, father, and take care of
little Nan.'
'Stephen and I are not bad, father,' added Martha, speaking up proudly;
'I am not like Black Bess of Botfield. Mother always told me I was to do
my duty; and I always do it. I can wash, and sew, and iron, and bake, and
knit. Why, often and often we've had no more than Stephen's earnings,
when you've been to the Red Lion on reckoning nights.'
'Hush, hush, Martha!' whispered Stephen.
'No, it's true,' groaned the dying father; 'God Almighty, have mercy on
me! Stephen, hearken to me, and thee too, Martha, while I tell you about
this place, and what you are to do when I'm gone.'
He paused for a minute or two, looking earnestly at the crouching old man
in the chimney-corner.
'Grandfather's quite simple,' he said, 'and he's dark, too, and doesn't
know what any one is saying. But I know thee'lt be good to him, Stephen.
Hearken, children: your poor old grandfather was once in jail, and was
sent across the seas, for a thief.'
'Father!' cried Stephen, in a tone of deep distress; and he turned
quickly to the old man, remembering how often he had sat upon his knees
by the winter fire, and how many summer days he had rambled with him over
the uplands after the sheep. His grandfather had been far kinder to him
than his own father; and his heart swelled with anger as he went and laid
his arm round the bending neck of the old man, who looked up in his face
and laughed heartily.
'Come back, Stephen; it's true,' gasped James Fern. 'Poor mother and me
came here, where nobody knew us, while he was away for more than twenty
years; and she built a hut for-us to live in till he came back. I was a
little lad then, but as soon as I was big enough she made me learn to
read and write, that I might send letters to him beyond the seas and none
of the neighbours know. She'd often make me read to her about a poor
fellow who had left home and gone to a far country, and when he came home
again, how his father saw him a long way off. Well, she was just like
that when she'd heard that he was landed in England; she did nought but
sit over the bent of the hill yonder, peering along the road to Botfield;
and one evening at sundown she saw something, little more than a speck
upon the turf, and she'd a feeling come over her that it was he, and she
fainted for real joy. After all, we weren't much happier when we were
settled down like. Grandfather had learned to tend sheep out yonder, and
I worked at Botfield; but we never laid by money to build a brick house,
as poor mother always wanted us. She died a month or so afore I was
married to your mother.'
James Fern was silent again for some minutes, leaning back upon his
pillow, with his eyes closed, and his thoughts gone back to the old
times.
'If I'd only been like mother, you'd have been a hill-farmer now, Steve,'
he continued, in a tone of regret; 'she plotted out in her own mind to
take in the green before us, for rearing young lambs, and ducks, and
goslings. But I was like that poor lad that wasted all his substance in
riotous living; and I've let thee and thy sister grow up without even the
learning I could have given thee; and learning is light carriage. But,
lad, remember this house is thy own, and never part with it; never give
it up, for it is thy right. Maybe they'll want to turn thee out, because
thee art a boy; but I've lived in it nigh upon forty years, and I've
written it all down upon this piece of paper, and that the place is
thine, Stephen.'
'I'll never give it up, father,' said Stephen, in his steady voice.
'Stephen,' continued his father, 'the master has set his heart upon it to
make it a hill-farm; and thou'lt have hard work to hold thy own against
him. Thou must frame thy words well when he speaks to thee about it, for
he's a cunning man. And there's another paper, which the parson at
Danesford has in his keeping, to certify that mother built this house and
dwelt in it all the days of her life, more than thirty years; if there's
any mischief worked against thee, go to him for it. And now, Stephen,
wash thyself, and get thy supper, and then let's hear thee read thy
chapter.'
Stephen carried his basin of potatoes to the door-sill and sat there,
with his back turned to the dismal hut and his dying father, and his face
looking out upon the green hills. He had always been a grave and
thoughtful boy; and he had much to think of now. The deep sense of new
duties and obligations that had come upon him with his father's words,
made him feel that his boyhood had passed away. He looked round upon the
garden, and the field, and the hut, with the keen eye of an owner; and he
wondered at the neglected state into which they had fallen since his
father's illness. There could be no more play-time for him; no
bird's-nesting among the gorse-bushes; no rabbit-bunting with Snip, the
little white terrier that was sharing his supper. If little Nan and his
grandfather were to be provided for, he must be a man, with a man's
thoughtfulness, doing man's work. There seemed enough work for him to do
in the field and garden alone, without his twelve hours' toil in the
coal-pit; but his weekly wages would now be more necessary than ever. He
must get up early, and go to bed late, and labour without a moment's
rest, doing his utmost from one day to another, with no one to help him,
or stand for a little while in his place. For a few minutes his brave
spirit sank within him, and all the landscape swam before his eyes; while
Snip took advantage of his master's inattention to put his nose into the
basin, and help himself to the largest share of the potatoes.
'I mean to be like grandmother,' said Martha's clear, sharp voice,
close beside him, and he saw his sister looking eagerly round her. 'I
shall fence the green in, and have lambs and sheep to turn out on the
hillside, and I'll rear young goslings and ducks for market; and we'll
have a brick house, with two rooms in it, as well as a shed for the coal.
And nobody shall put upon us, or touch our rights, Stephen, or they shall
have the length of my tongue.'
'Martha,' said Stephen earnestly, 'do you see how a shower is raining
down on the master's fields at Botfield; and they've been scorched up for
want of water?'
'Yes, surely,' answered Martha; 'and what of that?'
'I'm thinking,' continued Stephen, rather shyly, 'of that verse in my
chapter: "He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth
rain on the just and the unjust." What sort of a man is the master,
Martha?'
'He's a bad, unjust, niggardly old miser,' replied Martha.
'And if God sends him rain, and takes care of him,' Stephen said, 'how
much more care will He take of us, if we are good, and try to do His
commandments!'
'I should think,' said Martha, but in a softer tone, 'I should really
think He would give us the green, and the lambs, and the new house, and
everything; for both of us are good, Stephen.'
'I don't know,' replied Stephen; 'if I could read all the Bible, perhaps
it would tell us. But now I must go in and read my chapter to father.'
Martha went back to her rocking-chair and knitting, while Stephen reached
down from a shelf an old Bible, covered with green baize, and, having
carefully looked that his hard hands were quite clean, he opened it with
the greatest reverence. James Fern had only begun to teach the boy to
read a few months before, when he felt the first fatal symptoms of his
illness; and Stephen, with his few opportunities for learning, had only
mastered one chapter, the fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, which
his father had chosen for him to begin with. The sick man lay still with
closed eyes, but listening attentively to every word, and correcting his
son whenever he made any mistake. When it was finished, James Fern read a
few verses aloud himself, with low voice and frequent pauses to regain
his strength; and very soon afterwards the whole family were in a deep
sleep, except himself.
CHAPTER III.
STEPHEN'S FIRST VICTORY.
James Fern did not live many more days, and he was buried the Sunday
following his death. All the colliers and pitmen from Botfield walked
with the funeral of their old comrade and made a great burial of it. The
parish church was two miles on the other side of Botfield, and four miles
from Fern's Hollow; so James Fern and his family had never, as he called
it, 'troubled' the church with their attendance. All the household, even
to little Nan, went with their father's corpse, to bury it in the strange
and distant churchyard. Stephen felt as if he was in some long and
painful dream, as he sat in the cart, with his feet resting upon his
father's coffin, with his grandfather on a chair at the head, nodding
and laughing at every jolt on the rough road, and Martha holding a
handkerchief up to her face, and carrying a large umbrella over herself
and little Nan, to keep the dust off their new black bonnets. The boy,
grave as he was, could hardly think; he felt in too great a maze for
that. The church, too, which he had never entered before, seemed grand
and cold and immense, with its lofty arches, and a roof so high that it
made him giddy to look up to it. Now and then he heard a few sentences of
the burial service sounding out grandly in the clergyman's strange, deep
voice; but they were not words he was familiar with, and he could not
understand their meaning. At the open grave only, the clergyman said 'Our
Father,' which his father had taught him during his illness; and while
his tears rolled down his cheeks for the first time that day, Stephen
repeated over and over again to himself, 'Our Father! our Father!'
Stephen would have liked to stay in the church for the evening service,
for which the bells were already ringing; but this did not at all suit
the tastes of his father's old comrades. They made haste to crowd into
a public-house, where they sat and drank, and forced Stephen to drink
too, in order to 'drown his grief.' It was still a painful dream to him;
and more and more, as the long hours passed on, he wondered how he came
there, and what all the people about him were doing. It was quite dark
before they started homewards, and the poor old grandfather was no longer
able to sit up in his chair, but lay helplessly at the bottom of the
cart. Even Martha was fast asleep, and leaned her head upon Stephen's
shoulder, without any regard for her new black bonnet. The cart was now
crowded with as many of the people as could get into it, who sang and
shouted along the quiet Sunday road; and, as they insisted upon stopping
at every public-house they came to, it was very late before they reached
the lane leading up to Fern's Hollow. The grandfather was half dragged
and half carried along by two of the men, followed by Stephen bearing
sleepy little Nan in his arms, and by Martha, who had wakened up in a
temper between crying and scolding. The long, strange, painful dream of
father's funeral was not over yet, and Stephen was still trying to think
in a stupid, drowsy fashion, when he fell heavily asleep on the bed
beside his grandfather.
He awoke by habit very early in the morning, and aroused himself with
a great effort against dropping asleep again. He could realize and
understand his position better now. Father was dead; and there was no
one to earn bread for them all but himself. At this thought he sprang
up instantly, though his head was aching in a manner he had never felt
before. With some difficulty he awoke Martha to get his breakfast and
put up his dinner in a basket which he carried with him to the pit. She
also complained bitterly of her head aching, and moved about with a
listlessness very different to her usual activity. 'I only wish I knew
what was right,' said Stephen to himself; 'they told us we ought to show
respect for father, but I don't think he'd like this. Perhaps if I could
read the Bible all through, that would tell me everything.'
This thought reminded Stephen that he had promised his father to read his
chapter every day of his life till he knew how to read more; and,
carrying the old Bible to his favourite seat on the door-sill, a very
pleasant place in the cool, fresh summer morning, he read the verses
aloud, slowly and carefully, rather repeating than reading them, for he
knew his chapter better by heart than by the printed letters in the book.
Thank God, Stephen Fern did begin to know it _by heart_!
It was not a bad day in the pit. All the colliers, men and boys, were
more gentle than usual with the fatherless lad; and even Black Thompson,
his master since his father's illness, who was in general a fierce bully
to everybody about him, spoke as mildly as he could to Stephen. Yet all
the day Stephen longed for his release in the evening, thinking how much
work there wanted doing in the garden, and how he and Martha must be busy
in it till nightfall. The clanking of the chain which drew him up to the
light of day sounded like music to him; but little did he guess that an
enemy was lying in wait for him at the mouth of the pit. 'Hillo!' cried a
voice down the shaft as they were nearing the top; 'one of you chaps have
got to carry a sack o' coals one mile.'
The voice belonged to Tim Cole, who was the terror of the pit-bank, from
his love of mischief and his insatiable desire for fighting. He was
looking down the shaft now, with a grin and a laugh upon his red face,
round which his shaggy red hair hung like a rough mane. There were only
two other boys besides Stephen in the skip, and as their fathers were
with them it might be dangerous to meddle with them; so Tim fixed upon
Stephen as his prey.
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