Will of the Mill Part 19

"Don't worry about that," said the Vicar. "It looked horribly black after his threatenings about revenge. But there, that's all past, and thank Heaven you can congratulate yourself upon the good that has arisen out of to-night's dark work."

"Dark!" said Manners, wiping his black face. "I think we had too much light."

"Not enough to show how that fire broke out," said Mr Willows, gravely.

"I cannot understand how it was caused."

"Couldn't be a spark left by one of the flashes of lightning in the storms we have had lately, could it?" said Josh, innocently.

"No," said Will, mockingly; "but it might have been a star tumbled down."

"No, it couldn't!" cried Josh, angrily. "Such stuff! It must have been started somehow."

"Yes, my boy," said the Vicar, smiling; "but it is a mystery for the present."

"Let it rest," said Mr Willows. "I don't concern myself about that now. I have something else on my mind. I shall not rest, Carlile, till I have thanked that man for all he has done, and shaken him by the hand."

"Oh, he'll turn up soon, I daresay," said Manners. "Here, I know! he must have got himself drenched with water."

"Of course!" cried Will. "I saw him lower himself down into the hole to move the suction-pipe."

"That's it," said Manners, "and he's gone up to the cottage to have a change."

"At any rate," said the Vicar, "I feel thankful that the trouble has pa.s.sed, and I shall be seeing him back at his work to-morrow; eh, Mr Willows?"

"I hope so," was the reply. "Now then, we must have three or four watchers for the rest of the night, and those of you who are wet had better see about a change."

"Well, I'm one," said Manners, "for I feel like a sponge. I'm off to my diggings, but I shall be back in half an hour to join the watch."

"No, no," cried Mr Willows, "you've done enough. I'll see to that."

"Yes, yes," cried the artist; "I want to come back and think out my plan for a new picture of the mill on fire. It'll be a bit of history, don't you see, and I want to get the scene well soaked into my mind."

"It ought to be burned in already," said Will, laughing.

"Perhaps it is," said the artist, merrily; and he hurried away.

So much time had been spent that, to the surprise of all, the early dawn was beginning to show, and as it broadened it displayed the sorry sight of one end of the mill blackened--a very ma.s.s of smoking and steaming timbers.

"I say, Josh," said Will, "only look here! If the fire had got a little more hold and the wind had come more strongly down, the flames would have swept everything before them: the mill would have been like a burnt-out bonfire."

"Yes," said Josh; "and the house must have gone too."

"How horrid! But I say, why hasn't old Boil O been back?"

The man had his own reasons. Not only did he not show himself again after his work was done, but when in the course of the morning, impatient at his non-appearance, his employer left the busy scene where a clearance of the ruined part was going on, and walked up to the cottage with the Vicar, it was only to catch a momentary glimpse of the man they sought, as he glided across his garden and made for the woods, utterly avoiding all advances made by those who wished him well; and instead of the breach being closed by his conduct, the wound purified by the fire, his rage against his master and all friendly to the mill seemed to burn more fiercely than ever.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

DOINGS IN THE DALE.

"It's no use to bother," said Josh, when the state of affairs was being canva.s.sed. "Father says there's only one cure for it."

"What's that?" said Will.

"Time."

"I think," said Will, speaking seriously, "that your father, as he's a clergyman, ought to give old Boil O a good talking to."

"What!" cried Josh. "Why, he's been to the cottage nearly every day, trying to get the old man to listen; but it only makes him more wild.

Father says that he shall give it up now, and let him come to his senses."

"Yes, I suppose that's best," said Will. "Everybody's been at him. Old Manners says he got him one evening at the bottom of the garden, but, as soon as he began to speak, old Boil O turned upon him so fiercely that he had to cut away."

"Oh, yes, of course, I'm going to believe that!" said Josh. "Manners wouldn't run away from a dozen of him."

"Well," cried Will, "he pretty well startled me when I had a try. I'm not going to do it any more, I can tell you."

"My father's right," said Josh. "It only wants time."

But time went on, and the work-people from the nearest town were hard at work day by day rebuilding and restoring, so that by degrees the traces of the late fire began to disappear, while new woodwork, beams, boards and rafters, bearing ruddy, bright new tiles, gave promise that within another three months the night's mishap would be a memory of the past.

It was autumn--a splendid time for fis.h.i.+ng; a better time for the painter, the artist declaring that the tints of the trees and bracken, the glow of the skies, and the lovely mists that floated down from the hills and up from the well-charged falls were more glorious than any he had ever seen before.

His white mushroom, as Will called it, was always visible, and the boys spent much time with him when they were not reading with the Vicar up by the church, for Josh had declared that the message that had come from Worksop was about the jolliest piece of news he had ever heard.

Doubtless, the headmaster and his subordinates did not think the same, the news being the breaking out of an exceedingly virulent epidemic of fever, necessitating the closing of the great school about the time when the bulk of the pupils were to return.

Then rumours came that sanitary inspectors had condemned the whole of the arrangements there as being too old-fas.h.i.+oned to be tolerated, and instead of becoming once more a busy hive of study during the autumn term, the whole place had been put in the builders' hands, and rumour said that the school would not rea.s.semble until the spring, even if the builders were got rid of then.

"Well, I don't care," said Will. "I didn't want longer holidays, but it is much nicer reading and doing exercises up at the Vicarage than with old Buzfuz's lexicon over there. I'm learning twice as much, and quite beginning to like Latin now."

"Of course," said Josh, complacently. "My father used to be a famous college don before the Bishop gave him the living here."

"Yes, but he's never been don enough to bring old Boil O back to his senses. He's worse than ever now."

"Bring him back to his senses! I don't believe he's got any senses to bring back," said Josh. "It wants a very clever college don to put something straight that isn't there."

The boys were right about Drinkwater, for the man was more fiercely morose than ever. His efforts to avoid all who knew him, and spend the greater part of his time moping in the woodlands and high up the valley towards the headwaters of the stream, were so much waste of time, for all men and women too, and the children, for the matter of that, avoided him now as one who was ogreish and evil. Master, Vicar, the artist, and the two lads might cast away all idea of his guilt respecting the fire if they liked, but the work-people declared that his was the hand that fired the mill. Nothing would alter that in their stubborn minds, and no one knew better than James Drinkwater that this was so.

Consequently, he nursed up his blind grudge against the little world in which he dwelt, and became what Will called him--a regular wild man of the woods.

But a change was coming. The autumn rains were setting in, the woods were often dripping, the mosses holding the rain like so much sponge, and the shelter of a roof becoming an absolute necessity for the one who had sought it merely of a night.

"Yes," said Manners, one morning, "the cuckoo's gone long ago, the swallows are taking flight, and it is getting time for me to pack up my traps and toddle south."

"Oh, what a pity!" cried Will.

"Humph! Yes, for you. What will you chaps do? No one to play tricks with then."