Mehalah. S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
charm? You cannot want it!'
'It brings luck, and saves from sudden death. I wish to give it to George.'
'No, Mehalah! This will not do. You must keep it yourself.'
'It is mine, is it not?'
'No, child; it is promised you, but it is not yours yet. You shall have it some future day.'
'I want it at once, that I may give it to George. He has made me a present of this red kerchief for my neck, and he has given me many another remembrance, but I have made him no return. I have nothing that I can give him save that medal. Let me have it.'
'It must not go out of the family, Mehalah.'
'It will not. You know what is between George and me.'
The old woman hesitated and excused herself, but was so much in the habit of yielding to her daughter, that she was unable in this matter to maintain her opposition. She submitted reluctantly, and crept out of the room to fetch the article demanded of her.
When she returned, she found Mehalah standing before the fire with her back to the embers, and her hands knitted behind her, looking at the floor, lost in thought.
'There it is,' grumbled the old woman. 'But I don't like to part with it; and it must not go out of the family. Keep it yourself, Mehalah, and give it away to none.'
The girl took the coin. It was a large silver token, the size of a crown, bearing on the face a figure of Mars in armour, with shield and brandished sword, between the zodiacal signs of the Ram and the Scorpion.
The reverse was gilt, and represented a square divided into five-and-twenty smaller squares, each containing a number, so that the sum in each row, taken either vertically or horizontally, was sixty-five. The medal was undoubtedly foreign. Theophrastus Paracelsus, in his 'Archidoxa,' published in the year 1572, describes some such talisman, gives instructions for its casting, and says: 'This seal or token gives him who carries it about him strength and security and victory in all battles, protection in all perils. It enables him to overcome his enemies and counteract their plots.'
The medal held by the girl belonged to the sixteenth century. Neither she nor her mother had ever heard of Paracelsus, and knew nothing of his 'Archidoxa.' The figures on the face passed their comprehension. The mystery of the square on the reverse had never been discovered by them. They knew only that the token was a charm, and that family tradition held it to secure the wearer against sudden death by violence.
A hole was drilled through the piece, and a strong silver ring inserted. A broad silk riband of faded blue passed through the ring, so that the medal might be worn about the neck. For a few moments Mehalah studied the mysterious figures by the fire-light, then flung the riband round her neck, and hid the coin and its perplexing symbols in her bosom.
'I must light a candle,' she said; then she stopped by the table on her way across the room, and took up the glass upon it.
'Mother,' she said sharply; 'who has been drinking here?'
The old woman pretended not to hear the question, and began to poke the fire.
'Mother, has Elijah Rebow been drinking spirits out of this glass?'
'To be sure, Mehalah, he did just take a drop.'
'Whence did he get it?'
'Don't you think it probable that such a man as he, out much on the marshes, should carry a bottle about with him? Most men go provided against the chill who can afford to do so.'
'Mother,' said the girl impatiently, 'you are deceiving me. I know he got the spirits here, and that you have had them here for some time. I insist on being told how you came by them.'
The old woman made feeble and futile attempts to evade answering her daughter directly; but was at last forced to confess that on two occasions, of which this evening was one, Elijah Rebow had brought her a small keg of rum.
'You do not grudge it me, Mehalah, do you? It does me good when I am low after my fits.'
'I do not grudge it you,' answered the girl; 'but I do not choose you should receive favours from that man. He has to-day been threatening us, and yet secretly he is making you presents. Why does he come here?' She looked full in her mother's face. 'Why does he give you these spirits? He, a man who never did a good action but asked a return in fourfold measure. I promise you, mother, if he brings here any more, that I will stave in the cask and let the liquor you so value waste away.'
The widow made piteous protest, but her daughter remained firm.
'Now,' said the girl, 'this point is settled between us. Be sure I will not go back from my word. I will in nothing be behoven to the man I abhor. Now let me count the money.' She caught up the bag, then put it down again. She lit a candle at the hearth, drew her chair to the table, seated herself at it, untied the string knotted about the neck of the pouch, and poured the contents upon the board.
She sprang to her feet with a cry; she stood as though petrified, with one hand to her head, the other holding the bag. Her eyes, wide open with dismay, were fixed on the little heap she had emptied on the table—a heap of shot, great and small, some penny-pieces, and a few bullets.
'What is the matter with you, Mehalah? What has happened?'
The girl was speechless. The old woman moved to the table and looked.
'What is this, Mehalah?'
'Look here! Lead, not gold.'
'There has been a mistake,' said the widow, nervously, 'call Abraham; he has given you the wrong sack.'
'There has been no mistake. This is the right bag. He had no other. We have been robbed.'
The old woman was about to put her hand on the heap, but Mehalah arrested it.
'Do not touch anything here,' she said, 'let all remain as it is till I bring Abraham. I must ascertain who has robbed us.'
She leaned her elbows on the table; she platted her fingers over her brow, and sat thinking. What could have become of the money? Where could it have been withdrawn? Who could have been the thief?
Abraham Dowsing, the shepherd, was a simple surly old man, honest but not intelligent, selfish but trustworthy. He was a fair specimen of the East Saxon peasant, a man of small reasoning power, moving like a machine, very slow, muddy in mind, only slightly advanced in the scale of beings above the dumb beasts; with instinct just awaking into intelligence, but not sufficiently awake to know its powers; more unhappy and helpless than the brute, for instinct is exhausted in the transformation process; not happy as a man, for he is encumbered with the new gift, not illumined and assisted by it. He is distrustful of its power, inapt to appreciate it, detesting the exercise of it.
On the fidelity of Abraham Dowsing, Mehalah felt assured she might rely. He was guiltless of the abstraction. She relied on him to sell the sheep to the best advantage, for, like everyone of low mental organisation, he was grasping and keen to drive a bargain. But when he had the money she knew that less confidence could be reposed on him. He could think of but one thing at a time, and if he fell into company, his mind would be occupied by his jug of beer, his bread and cheese, or his companion. He would not have attention at command for anything beside.
The rustic brain has neither agility nor flexibility. It cannot shift its focus nor change its point of sight. The educated mind will peer through a needlehole in a sheet of paper, and see through it the entire horizon and all the sky. The uncultured mind perceives nothing but a hole, a hole everywhere without bottom, to be recoiled from, not sounded. When the oyster spat falls on mud in a tidal estuary, it gets buried in mud deeper with every tide, two films each twenty-four hours, and becomes a fossil if it becomes anything. Mind in the rustic is like oyster spat, unformed, the protoplasm of mind but not mind itself, daily, annually deeper buried in the mud of coarse routine. It never thinks, it scarce lives, and dies in unconsciousness that it ever possessed life.
Mehalah sat considering, her mother by her, with anxious eyes fastened on her daughter's face.
The money must