The Prophet's Mantle

'We really had better walk,' she was saying again, when the crowd round them was suddenly thrown into a state of disturbance and excitement, and they were pushed backwards against the wall.

'Oh, dear, what is it?' she cried.

'Look out, miss!' said a rough-looking man, in a fur cap, catching her shoulders, and pulling her back so violently that her hand was torn from her father's arm, and at the same moment the crowd separated to right and left.

Then she saw what it was. A pair of spirited carriage horses had either taken fright, or had grown tired of the commonplace routine of wood pavement and asphalte, and had decided to try a short cut home through the houses, utterly regardless of the coachman, who was straining with might and main at the reins.

Their dreadful prancing hoofs were half-way across the pavement, and the pole of the carriage was close to someone's chest—good heavens! her father's—and he, standing there bewildered, seemed not to see it. She would have sprung forward, but the rough man held her back.

'Papa! papa!' she screamed, and at the sound of her voice he started, and seemed to see for the first time what threatened him. He saw it too late—the pole was within six inches of his breast-bone. But someone else had seen it to more purpose, and at that instant the head of the off horse was caught in a grasp of iron, and the pair were dragged round, to the imminent danger of some score of lives, while the carriage was forced back on to a hansom cab, whose driver disappeared into the night in a cloud of blasphemy.

'Well, I'm damned!' remarked the gentleman in the fur cap, who had snatched the girl out of danger; 'it's the nearest shave as ever I see.'

It had been a near shave; but the old gentleman was unhurt, though considerably flustered, and immeasurably indignant.

'Hurt? No, I'm not hurt—no thanks to that fool of a driver; such idiots ought to be hanged. But I ought to thank the gentleman who saved me.'

As he spoke the young man came forward deadly pale and without a hat.

'I do hope you're not hurt,' he said, in a singularly low, soft voice, speaking with a little catching of the breath. It was he who had leaned against the wall in the theatre. His hands were evidently good for something better than twisting tobacco. 'I hope the pole did not touch you? I am afraid I was hardly quick enough, but I couldn't get through the people before.'

'My dear sir, you were quick enough to save me from being impaled against this wall; but I really feel quite upset. I must get my daughter home. She looks rather queer.'

She was holding his arm tightly between her hands.

'Do let's go home,' she whispered.

'I'll get you a cab,' said the hero. 'You'll probably get one easily now the mischief's done.'

'He's lost his hat,' observed the rescued one, as the other disappeared. 'Do you feel very bad, my pet? Pull yourself together. Here he comes.'

A hansom drew up in front of them, and their new acquaintance threw back the apron himself.

'You'd better take it yourself,' said papa. 'You seem rather lame, and your hat's gone.'

'It doesn't matter at all. I can get another cab in an instant. Pray jump in.'

'No; but look here. I haven't half thanked you. After all, you saved my life, you know. Come and see me to-morrow evening, will you, and let me thank you properly. Here's my card—I'm at Morley's.'

'I will come with pleasure to see if you are all right after it, but please don't talk any more about thanks, Mr—Stanley. Here's my card. Good night—Morley's Hotel,' he shouted to the cabman, and as they drove off he mechanically raised his hand to the place where his hat should have been. Have you ever seen a man do that when hat there was none? The effect is peculiar—much like a rustic pulling a forelock when t'squire goes by.

'I hope he will come to-morrow,' said Mr Stanley as the hansom drove off.

'Why, I think he's staying at our hotel, papa. I am almost sure I've seen him at the table d'hôte.'

'Dear, dear! How extraordinary.'

Clare was more than 'almost sure' in fact, she knew perfectly well that this handsome stranger was not only staying at the hotel, but that he in his turn was quite aware of their presence there. Of her presence he could hardly be oblivious, since his eyes had been turned on her without much intermission all through dinner every evening since she had been in town.

Before Clare went to her room that night she managed to possess herself of the slip of cardboard on which was engraved—Michael Litvinoff.

What an uncommon name! How strange that he of all people should have been the one to come forward at the critical moment.

Yes, but not quite so strange as it seemed to Miss Stanley; for Litvinoff had gone to the theatre for no other purpose than to be near her. It was not only to gaze at her fair face that he thus followed her; but because he was determined to catch at any straw which might lead to an introduction, and the fates had favoured him, as they had often done before, in a degree beyond his wildest hopes. He was well contented to have lost his hat, and did not care much about his bruised foot. These were a cheap price to pay for admittance to the acquaintance of the girl who had occupied most of his thoughts during the few days that had passed since he had first seen her.

'A very fair beginning. The gods have certainly favoured me so far; and now, O Jupiter, aid us! or rather Cupid, for I suppose he's the proper deity to invoke in an emergency like this.'

And Michael Litvinoff stretched out his slippered feet to the blazing fire in his bedroom.

'By-the-way, I might as well look at the address. I know it's somewhere down North.'

He rose, walked with some difficulty to the chair, where he had flung his great-coat, and took the card from one of its pockets. 'Mr John Stanley, Aspinshaw, Firth Vale.'

'By Jove!' he said, sinking into his chair again. 'Firth Vale—Firth Vale. That's in Derbyshire. Ah me!'

He thrust his feet forward again to the warmth, and leaning back gazed long into the fire, but not quite so complacently as he had done before it had occurred to him to make that journey across the room to his great-coat.

CHAPTER III.

THE NEW MASTERS

THE funeral was over, and Thornsett Mill was closed for the day. Fortunately the 'Spotted Cow' was not closed, so that the majority of the hands did not find themselves without resources. Added to the subtle pleasure which so many derive from drinking small beer in a sanded kitchen furnished with oak benches, there was to-day the excitement of discussing a great event, for to the average mind of Thornsett the death and burial of old Richard Ferrier were great events indeed. And then there appears to be something inherent in the nature of a funeral which produces intense and continued thirst in all persons connected, however remotely, with the ceremony. So John Bolt, the landlord, had his hands pretty full, and the state of the till was so satisfactory that it was a really praiseworthy sacrifice to the decencies of society for him to persist in not shortening by one fraction of an inch the respectfully long face which he had put on in the morning as appropriate to the occasion.

'Well, for my part, I'm sorry he's gone,' he said, drawing himself a pot of that tap which seemed best calculated to assist moral reflections. 'That I am! He was always a fair dealer, if he wasn't a giving one.'

'He was more a havin' nor a givin' one,' said old Bill Murdoch. 'Givin' don't build mills, my lad, nor yet muck up two acres o' good pasture wi' bits o' flowers wi' glass windows all over 'em. I never seen sic foolin'.'

'Surely a man's a right to do what he will with his own,' ventured a meek-looking man, who had himself a few pounds laid by, and felt acutely the importance of leaving unchallenged the rights of property.

'I'm none so sure o' that,' remarked Bill, who had a conviction which is shared by a few more of us, that one's superiority shows itself naturally and unmistakably in one's never agreeing with any statement whatever which is advanced by anyone else.

'There'll be more flowers than ever now, if Mr Roland has his way,' said Sigley the meek.

'D'ye think, now, Sigley, he'll be like to get that where Mr Richard is?' asked Bill. 'Mr Roland thinks too much o' flowers and singin', and book learnin', to give much time to getten o' his own way.'

'Mr Roland may be this, or he may be that,' Potters, the village grocer, observed, with the air of one clearly stating a case, 'but he can get his way where he cares to.'

'Tha's fond o' saying words as might mean owt—or nowt, for that matter. Can't tha say what tha does mean?'

'Tha'd know what I mean if tha weren't too blind to see owt. How about Alice Hatfield?'

'Gently, gently,' said Bolt. 'Tha was i' the right, Potters, not to name names, but when it comes to namin' o' names I asks tha where's tha proof?'

Here there was a general 'movement of adhesion,' and an assenting murmur ran round, while the mild man repeated like an echo, 'Where's your proof?'

'Her father don't think ther's proof,' said Sigley.

'A man doesn't want to prove the bread out of his mouth, and the roof off his children.'