Half Brothers. Stretton Hesba
be discerned as not forming part of the barren scene about them. The low wooden roofs were loaded with heavy stones, telling of the tempestuous winds which swept the mountain slopes up here. But amid the rocks were little patches of sward, where a few sheep were browsing, and some goats were climbing the higher points to nibble any tuft of grass found growing there. A dozen children or so were loitering about listlessly until they caught sight of the extraordinary apparition of a visitor, and then they ran toward him with a savage howl that brought some half-clad, red-eyed women to the doors of the huts. He made haste to fight his way through the clamorous crew of children, and to address the nearest of them.
"I come from Cortina," he cried in a loud voice, "from Chiara Lello, who says her sister lives up here."
"That's Chiara's sister," answered the woman, pointing to another who stood in a doorway amid a cloud of wood smoke.
Trevor approached her, catching a glimpse of the dark and filthy interior of the hut, in which a goat and a kid were lying beside the wood fire. But he shrank from putting his foot inside it, and beckoned to the woman to come forward to him.
"Send these howling children away," he said.
She caught up a thong of leather and lashed it about them as if there was no other mode of dispersing them, and they scattered out of the way, yelping like dogs. Trevor looked on, wondering if any one of these almost naked and wholly filthy brood could be Sidney Martin's son.
"Tell me," he said, "which is the English boy."
Without a word the woman turned into the hut, and dragged out a child, with no clothing on but a ragged shirt scarcely reaching to his knees. The child's eyes were dazzled with the light, but they were red and weak; his skin was grimy with thick dirt, and his uncombed hair hung in matted tufts about his face and neck. No sooner did the other children see him than they began to howl and yell again; and the boy, tearing himself away from the woman's grasp, sprang like a monkey up the rocks, and having reached a safe height, looked down with a savage, uncouth grin upon those below him. The other children tried in vain to dislodge him by throwing stones at him; he had them at an advantage, and hit so many of them with the larger stones he hurled from above that they gave up the attack and went back to their sheep and goats.
"Good Heavens!" cried Trevor, with a sudden emotion of pity flooding his cold nature, "is it possible that this can be Sidney Martin's son?"
He sat down on a rock and looked around him. Here almost all traces of civilization were absent. These hovels were not fit for human habitation—hardly fit for pigs, he said to himself. Certainly there was a hideous crucifix erected in a conspicuous spot; but it was only a brutal and distorted representation of the central fact of Christianity, and appeared to partake of the savagery of its surroundings. There was nothing to be seen from this point but a gloomy circle of rocks, barren and hard and cold, upon which neither tree nor flower grew, and as his eye glanced round them it fell upon the nearly naked but vigorous form of Sidney's child, standing erect on a peak, and jabbering in some unknown and barbarous dialect. Chiara's sister shook her clenched fist at him, and screamed out some rough menace.
"What do you call the boy?" he asked.
"Martino," she said; "that was his father's name."
"Does he know anything? Does he learn anything?" Trevor inquired.
"He knows as much as the rest," she answered sullenly; "there's no schoolmaster up here. Besides, he is the child of heathen parents, though our good padre did baptize him. His mother was buried like a dog in the cemetery; only Chiara and the gravedigger went to her funeral, and no masses were said for her. Martino isn't like the child of Christian people. His mother is in hell, and his father will go there when he dies. It was very good of our padre to have him baptized."
"What does he do all day?" he asked.
"He lies by the fire or sits up there out of the way on the rock," she replied; "the other children will not play with him, and they are right. He's not a little true Christian like them."
"Poor little fellow!" cried Trevor passionately. He had had children of his own, whom he loved, and to whom he was a beloved father. It appeared monstrous to him that Sidney Martin's son should be here, among these barbarians, the object of their tyranny and persecution. If he had been any other boy Trevor would have borne him away at once, resolved not to leave an English-born child to such a fate. But if Sidney had actually been married this was his son and heir; heir to the large estates entailed by Sir John Martin on Sidney's eldest son. It was a secret of incalculable value to him. What was he to do?
This was a question not to be decided in a hurry. He must first see clearly how to turn it most fully to his own advantage. He was not altogether a bad man; but he had had a city training. Such an avenue to prosperity and power had never been open to him before, and he must be careful how he took his first step along it.
"Be kind to the little lad," he said, giving a gulden to the woman, "and when I come back you shall have ten of them before I take him away."
Ten gulden! The thought of so magnificent a sum had never entered into the head of Chiara's sister. She thought a good deal of the hundred and fifty kreutzers paid every month by Chiara; but ten gulden all at once! These English, heathen as they were, must be made of money.
She watched the foreigner as he retraced his way along the rocky path until he was quite lost to sight. She would indeed be kind to the child of people so rich and generous.
So for a few weeks Martino had the richest draught of goat's milk and the sweetest morsels of black bread, and the warmest corner by the fire. But she grew weary of indulgence as the months passed by, and the Englishman failed to return and redeem his promise.
CHAPTER XII.
A HALF CONFESSION.
Sidney Martin was suffering greatly under his fresh burden of anxiety. It seemed to him that all his future happiness or misery depended absolutely upon the result of Trevor's mission. He kept away from the house on Wimbledon Common, for he dared not trust himself in conversation with Margaret. That he loved her, and loved her with the profound, mature passion of manhood—how different from his boyish fancy!—made it impossible for him to approach her with calm friendliness, as he had done before her father's private talk with him, and his avowal that Margaret herself was far from being indifferent to him.
But now he had placed his secret in the hands of another, and must be prepared to acknowledge his boyish error. He must lose Margaret, if Sophy was alive. His imagination was busy in painting to him two lives, either of which might be his in the immediate future.
If Sophy was found he must own her as his wife, and make her the mistress of his house. He pictured her to himself as his wife, with her silly, affected, low-bred manners. His inward disgust at his own conduct exaggerated her faults, and painted her in the most repulsive colors. Her relations and friends would certainly flock about her; and, though he did not know them, he could not think of them as anything but ignorant and vulgar; for they were nothing but poor shopkeepers in a little market-town. He knew himself too well to resolve upon carrying on a continual conflict with the woman he had made his wife. He would leave her to follow her own way, while he took his; but her way could not fail to intersect his at some points; and he must be brought into contact with a vulgarity and folly which he loathed. His lot must be that bitter one of being linked indissolubly to a companion always at variance with him.
But possibly Sophy's long, persistent silence meant the silence of death. If so, his future promised to be bright and happy far beyond his deserts; for he frankly acknowledged to his own heart that he was unworthy of the prosperous happiness Sophy's death would insure for him. With Margaret as his wife, he might push his ambition to its farthest goal, and meet with no check or shock from her. If she had a fault, it was the transparent simplicity which made her almost too good for this work-a-day world. She had a charm which no other woman he