Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1896 — A LOYAL LOVE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A LOYAL LOVE

RY J. BERWICK HARWOON.

CHAPTER VII. “Strike work’” shouted a powerful voice. “Gold is better than silver, and light than dark, and Gospel truth than vain imaginings. Down with shovel and bar and pick; down with spade and basket, lads and lasses, and give thanks, old and young, for the plenteous harvest of this day. For a harvest it is, full measure, and heaped up, and ready to be garnered, that lies ready to your hand.” It was Obadiah Jedson who spoke, and a picturesque figure did the aged captain of jet hunters present, as he suddenly appeared’standing on a flat-topped rock, the highest of a rugged reef of storm-beaten stones, at the foot of which some fifteen members of his company were busy at their usual toil on the sea beach. Beside him stood Don. The jet seekers, some straggling, others collected in a group with upturned faces, looked toward their captain, as if waiting to hear more. “What is it, captain?” asked one of the elder men, after a pause.' “Aught of good luck would be welcome here.” “Lads and lasses, ye remember my dream —the dream that on Thursday last I told you of?” “We do!” “We do!” “Yes, captain!” “Yes, Obadiah!” “Well we mind it!” Such were the eager replies. “A black tree, was it not. of which I told you?” demanded Obadiah, looking around him frowningly, as if to challenge a skeptic. “Ay, black as the Black Rood of Jeddart, or as the swart timbers of the Maiden of Halifax, that grim engine of earthly punishment, beneath the gleaming sword blade of which many an outlawed head has fallen in our forefathers’ time. Yes, a black tree. But fowls roosted in its branches, and bees hummed pleasantly among the flowers that encircled its trunk, and corn and wine and oil were stacked in plenty at its foot. The . black tree was the type of abundance. And lo! the dream is fulfilled. Last night, two miles from here, in Dutchman’s Bay, there was a landslip, which has laid bare black traces that a boy’s inexperienced eye might read as pointing to a mine—a jet pocket, where lies a buried tree not seen by mortal eye since England was a kingdom. The dream has come true. Quick to gather the fruits of it!” “Hurrah!” The cheering broke out irrepressibly, the shrill voices of the women and girls blending with the deeper shout of the men. And then tools and baskets tvere snatched up in a hurry, and there was a prompt movement in the direction of Dutchman’s Bay.

Seldom, indeed, did the opening up of a new vein of the precious fossil promise so well. There was a general rush, and many chips and some lumps of the freshly exposed jet were picked up, while there was a babble of voices. “It’s wonderful!” “It’s Obadiah’s dream, indeed!” “We’ll all be rich, rich as Jews!” “I wouldn’t take fifty gold sovereigns for my share, I know!” “What ago this is!” “Nobody like our captain!” Such were some of the exclamations of the sanguine and admiring. Obadiah himself was mute. He was a more experienced jet setter and g more educated man than any there, and he had seen from the first that the lie of the tree, some buried pine of untold ages ago, was toward the cliff. The fragments that peeped from the rubbush heaps or sparkled on the beach were but broken bits of the fossil conifer, laid to rest in some remote geological epoch beneath the sand and marl of the shifting coast line. He looked on, then, indulgently as the younger members of his band scrambled excitedly for black flakes and nodules amid the debris of the landslip, and waited to commence serious operations until Don and the party of volunteers under his orders should arrive with the ashen props, without which it would be suicidal rashness to attack the main fortress of the cliff wall. Presently Don and his party arrived, laden with the short, tough pillars of tenacious wood which Obadiah Jedson’s prudence had provided, and the assault on Nature’s fortress was commenced with a will. Gradually the rumor spread to cottage and farmstead and fisher’s hut along the sea shore that the jet hunters had hit upon an extraordinary mine, or, technically, “pocket,” of the valuable material for which they passed their lives in searching, and*that such a yield was forthcoming as, in the memory of man, the Yorkshire sea coast had never known. By and by exaggerated rumors were current as to the success of the explorers. They had gleaned five hundred pounds’ worth, it was reported, before dinner time—the early dinner hour of country bred toilers. They were picking up jet in lumps like those of Newcastle coal, and at a rate that would cheapen the value of it in Whitby and Scarborough for twenty years to come. The higher the social rank tne more slowly does gossip permeate toward the possessor of it. Every hind or fisherman in or near Beckdale had heard of the exceeding good fortune of Obadiah Jedson’s roving company hours before the news was conveyed to Woodburn Parsonage. And it was late in the afternoon when the rector himself, his wife, his children, and his beautiful ward, Violet Mowbray, appeared on the firm sea sand of the upper end of Dutchman’s Bay, where a crowd had collected, and where two coast guardsmen were, by their lieutenant’s orders, present to enforce order. One thing there was from which the spectators appeared to derive much satisfaction; Rufus Crouch was not one of the busy band of jet winners now engaged in driving their burrows, like so many rabbits in human shape, deep iifto the cliff. Rufus Crouch was absent. It must be presumed that the returned Australian gold digger had not conciliated the opinion of the neighborhood, so hearty was the chuckling and so sincere the delight of the crowd, as the probable disappointment of the traveled jet hunter was the subject of discussion. “Not a penny of it for old Rufus!” “Won’t Crouch be mad when he hears of it? a bumptious chap like that, who even » argues against Captain Obadiah himself.” “He’s up in London.” “Ha! ha! ha!” Late into the night the torches burned, and the work went on, until at last the wearied jet hunters desisted from their task, and fell asleep around their fires of wrick wood. CHAPTER VIII. Some ten days, or twelve, had elapsed since Rufus Crouch, ex-gold digger and present jet hunter, called so unexpectedly at the Mortmain mansion in Hyde Park. The morning was a bright and sunny one, with but a few lazy clouds of fleecy vhtteaeM sailing across the bine sky, as < ! V >' ’l, .

the Rector of Woodburn, with his family, returning after a week-day service from the church hard by, saw, slowly riding out of the parsonage garden, a gentleman, followed by a mounted groom. The stranger lifted his hat with a pleasant smile, and instantly dismounted and threw tne reins to his groom. “Mr. Langton?” he said, inquiringly. “Allow me to be my own introducer. My name is Mortmain—Sir Richard Mortmain—a neighbor of yours, since I have just arrived at Helston, and I have taken the liberty of coming across to call at the Rectory, emboldened' by the fact, Mr. Langton, of my father’s old friendship with yourself.” “Most happy to make your acquaintance, Sir Richard,” exclaimed Mr. Langton, genuine pleasure in his eyes and tone as he stretched out his hand in greeting. “Yes, I knew your father, the late Sir Richard, and was under no trifling obligations to him, as you are perhaps aware. It was he who, when my health broke down, presented me to the living of Woodburn here, of which you, of course, are the patron as he was. Allow me to introduce you to my wife, Mrs. Langton, as the son of a very old and kind friend, who will always be welcome under my poor roof.” So Sir Richard was made known to Mrs. Langton, and to pretty Violet Mowbray, and to the olive ’branches of the Langton family now at home —two girls and a boy, in the hobbledhoy stage of life. And Sir Richard smiled and bowed, and spoke very nicely and not too much, and acted his self-imposed part with consummate care and skill. Then followed a hearty invitation to luncheon at the parsonage. “You must break bread with us,” the rector insisted.” The groom and horses, therefore, were sent down to the village inn, while the baronet, becoming at each instant more and more at home with his kindly entertainers, walked on with them toward the house. Sir Richard was a bird of much brighter plumage than any that harbored near Woodburn, and, once that he found himself accepted at his own valuation, he did his very best that his singing should please the ears and tickle the imagination of his auditors. Then he talked of Helston, and of his own design to live there, to render the neglected old place trim and orderly, and to cultivate neighborly relations with those who had formerly been known to himself or his father. Lupchgon was over. The fernery, the tiny hot house, the exquisite peeps’ at the sea, which, through overhanging ivy-tan-gles and festoons of noisette roses, the different windows afforded, had been one and all exhibited and admired. Even the albums of photographs and rare seaweed on the drawing room tables had been surveyed. John Langton’s top ship, a model schooner, four feet long, of the construction and rigging of which the boy was very proud, though frank enough to own how much assistance he had received from “Mr. Don,” was next shown. “1 should never have got her so taut and smart by myself,” said the youngster; “but then, Don is such a fine fellow!” “And who is Mr. Don? A Spanish sailor, I presume, or possibly a Neopolitan, since they use the Spanish title there?” asked Sir Richard, trying not to yawn. Mr. Langton took it upon himself to answer. “It is difficult,” he said, with a smile, “to say what Mr. Don is, and what he is not. I never had a pupil to match him. He is the handsomest lad from here to Sunderland, and about the boldest. He is only a jet hunter, living by a precarious industry peculiar to our sea coast, but out of a crowd you would at once select him as a gentleman, though whence he came or what was the rank of his parents, no one knows. A fine fellow, Don!” “I am sure of it,” returned Sir Richard, with every appearance of interest. Then the baronet’s groom and horses came round to the door, and there was a hearty leave taking, with pledges of future friendship, and the visitor rode off gracefully toward his lonely home at Helston. “A good beginning,” he muttered. “1 saw the girl’s eyes glisten more than once. ?f I can touch her youthful fancy, and it is all right about the money, why, then!” and he rode on.

CHAPTER IX. In Dutchman’s Bay the work which had been begun some four or five days before went on, thanks to the authority which Obadiah Jedson was able to exercise over the members of his band. Rufus Crouch had returned to Woodburn, and had readily been received as a partner in the enterprise, as had also six or seven other absent jet hunters, who had come hurrying back from the north at the first tidings of the good fortune of their comrades. In the evening of the fifth day since the commencement of the mining operations the rector and his family strolled along the beach to Dutchman’s Bay, accompanied by Sir Richard Mortmain. The accomplished baronet had by this time succeeded in establishing something like intimacy between himself and the inmates of Woodburn Parsonage. Mr. Langton had been prompt iu returning the visit of the son of his former patron, and Sir Richard had willingly accepted his invitation to partake of tea and strawberries on that balmy summer’s evening, which witnessed the expedition to the jet mine. At the very mouth of the mine the party of visitors encountered a miner coming out, who shaded his eyes with his broad hand and peeped out into the twilight. A red-bearded man, this, brawny of limb and awkward of gait, and whose hairy face was dark w’ith heat and toil “Where are those ash planks?” he called out, in a hoarse, imperative voice. “Not come, eh? The lazy hound that sold them promised to cart them here before sundown; and if I were captain ” Here his restless eyes lit on Sir Richard Mortmain s impassive face, and with a growl like that of a bear disturbed in his lair, he made a half-sheepish, half-sullen attempt at a salute, and shambled away. Nothing in the baronet’s attitude or demeanor would'have told that he had ever ■een Crouch before. This is my young friend_Don— Mr. Don they style him, usually,” explained the c‘ c „. a ® Don came forward—“of whom Bir Richard, you have heard me speak, this gentleman, Don, is Sir Richard Mortmain, a neighbor of ours now.” Don flushed and breathless, took off his sailor’s cap that rested on his silken curls, and somehow Sir Richard Mortmain felt himself constrained to lift his own hat with as much of grave politeness as if he had just been introduced on the Pall Mall pavement to a social equal. “How came the cub to be a gentleman?” muttered the worldly baronet behind his dark mustache.

“I have heard a great deal of you, Mr. Don, since I have been in these parts,” smilingly remarked the baronet. “More, I fear, than I merit, Sir Richard, If yoyr information comes from my kind friend Mr. Langton here,” answered the young man; and there was something in the ring of his deep, rich voice that made the master of Mortmain feel, for the second time, as if he were face to face with his equal. (To be continued.)