"Why not?"
"Don"t like to see dogs hurt," said Ram, who was dealing with an awkward knot.
"Oh, don"t you! Why, if your father had been along here with that rusty old gun of hisn, that he shoots rabbits with, and seen that dog scratching among them stones, know what he"d have done?"
"No."
"Well, then, I do. He"d have shot him. And if I ketches him ferretin"
about there again, I"ll drop a big flat stone down on him, and then chuck him off the cliff."
"If you do, I"ll chuck you down after him," said Ram.
"What?" cried the man, bursting into a fresh roar of laughter. "Oh, come, I likes that. Why, you pup! That"s what you are--a pup."
This was uttered with what was meant to be a most contemptuous intonation of the voice.
"Pups can bite hard sometimes, Jemmy," said Ram slowly; "and I shan"t have Miss Celia"s dog touched."
"Ho! Then he"s to come here when he likes, and show everybody the way into our store, is he? Well, we shall see."
"Yes; and you"d better go and see if they"ve gone."
"Ah, yes, lad, I"ll go and see if they"ve gone; and we needn"t quarrel "bout it, for it strikes me as little missus won"t come down here no more, I scared her too much."
Jemmy burst into another hoa.r.s.e fit of laughing, and went lumping off in his big sea-boots to see if Celia and her dog were well out of sight, before rejoining Ram to take the prisoner his repast.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
Three days pa.s.sed, and the idea of losing her companion was so startling to Celia, that she made no further journey toward the cliffs, in spite of several efforts made by Grip to coax her in that direction. But on the fourth day there was so mean and unsatisfactory a dinner at the Hoze, of the paltry little rock fish caught by the labouring men, that, as Celia watched her mother partaking of the unsatisfactory fare, and thought how easily it might have been supplemented by a dish of mushrooms and a blackberry pudding, she made up her mind that the next day she would go.
"I could be very careful, and not go near any of the slopes running down to the cliff, and I could make Grip keep with me. Yes, I will go," she said.
The next morning she partook of her breakfast quite early--a simple enough meal, consisting of barley bread and a cup of fresh milk from the Shackles" farm, and, taking a basket, she called Grip, who came bounding about her in a state of the most exuberant delight.
The dog"s satisfaction was a little damped as his mistress took her way toward the fir-wood, and he kept making rushes by another path. But it was of no use; Celia had made her own plans, and, as the dog could not coax her his way, and would not go alone, he had to follow her.
There was a reason for this route being chosen, for Celia did not care to be seen by Ram, or any of the men who might be pretending to work hard on Shackle"s farm, which was ill tended, and consisted for the most part of cliff grazing land; but somehow seemed to need quite a large staff of labourers to keep it in such bad order.
By pa.s.sing through the fir-wood, Celia meant to get out of sight of the cottages, and she went on, with the dog following sulkily behind, but reviving a little upon being given the basket to carry.
She trudged on for about a mile over the thin stony pastures, found a fair number of small, sweet, pink-gilled mushrooms where the turf was finest and richest, and gradually adding to her store of glistening bramble-berries till her finger-tips were purple with the stains.
The course she chose was down in the hollows between the hills, till at last she struck the one along which she had pa.s.sed after leaving Ram and his companion, and turned down here, believing that, if the boy selected it, there would be good reason for his so doing. She walked steadily on, finding a b.u.t.ton mushroom here and a bunch of blackberries there.
For one minute she paused, struck by the peculiar sweet and sickly odour of a large-leaved herb which she had crushed, and admired its beautifully veined blossoms, in happy ignorance of the fact that it was the deadly poisonous henbane, and then all at once she missed Grip.
"Oh, how tiresome!" she cried excitedly; and she called him loudly, but there was no reply. A gull or two floated about and uttered their querulous calls, otherwise the silence was profound, and, though she swept the great curved sides of the hollow, whose end seemed filled up by the towering hill, all soft green slope toward her, but sheer scarped and projecting cliff toward the sea, there was not so much as a sheep in sight.
With a great horror coming upon her, she hurried along towards the cliff, thinking of what Dadd had said, and picturing in her mind"s eye poor Grip racing along some seaward slope in chase of a rabbit, and going right over the cliff, she went on almost at a run, pausing, though, to call from time to time.
It was intensely hot in that hollow, for the sea breeze was completely shut off, but she did not pause, and rapidly neared the cliff now, her dread increasing, as she wondered whether Ram would be good enough to get a boat, and row along under the cliff to find the poor dog"s body, so that she might bury it up in the fir-wood behind the house, in a particular spot close to where she had so often sat.
No sign of Grip: no sound. She called again, but there was no cheery bark in response, and with her despondent feeling on the increase, she began to climb the side of the hollow, pa.s.sing unnoticed great cl.u.s.ters of blackberries, whose roots were fast in the stones, and the fruit looking like bunches of black grapes; past glistening white mushrooms, better than any she had yet seen, but they did not attract her; and at last she had climbed so high that she could see the blue waves spreading up and up to the horizon, and about a couple of miles out the white-sailed cutter, which was creeping slowly along the sh.o.r.e.
"I wonder where that midshipman is," she thought, forgetting the dog for the moment. "How strange that all was! Could it really have been a dream?"
"Yes, it must have been, or else he would have gone and told his captain, and they would have come and searched the cellar, and there would have been sad trouble."
She turned her eyes from the sea, and began to search the green slopes around, and then all at once she uttered a cry of joy as she could sight, on the highest slope right at the end of the valley, a white speck which suddenly appeared out of the earth, and then stood out clear on the green turf, and seemed to be looking about before turning and plunging down again.
It was quite half a mile away, and her call was in vain, and she began to descend diagonally into the hollow, the tears in her eyes, but a smile of content on her lips.
"Oh, you bad dog," she cried merrily, "how I will punish you!" and she stooped and picked a couple of mushrooms, quite happy again, and even sang a sc.r.a.p of a country ditty in a pretty bird-like voice as she came to a bramble clump, and went on staining her fingers.
By degrees she pa.s.sed the end of the hollow, leaving all the blackberries behind, and now, only pausing to pick a mushroom here and there, she began to ascend the slope toward where she had seen the dog.
"It is getting nearer the edge of the cliff," she said; "but it slopes up, and not down. Ah, I see you, sir. Come here directly! Grip!
Grip!"
The dog had suddenly made his appearance about fifty yards in front, right as it were out of the gra.s.sy slope, to stand barking loudly for a few moments before turning tail and plunging down again.
"Oh, how tiresome!" she cried. "Grip! Grip!"
But, as the dog would not come to her, she went on, knowing perfectly well that he had gone down one of the old stone pits, and quite prepared to stand at last gazing into a hole which inclined rapidly into the hillside, but was as usual provided with rough stones placed step-wise, and leading the way into darkness beneath a fern-fringed arch, while the whole place was almost entirely choked-up with the luxuriantly growing brambles.
"He has found a rabbit," she thought to herself, as her eyes wandered about the sides of the pit, and brightened at the sight of the abundant cl.u.s.ters of blackberries, finer and riper than any she had yet secured.
"I wish I was not so frightened of these places," she said to herself.
"Why, I could fill a basket here, and there can"t be anything to mind, I know; it is only where they used to dig out the stone."
A sudden burst of barking took her attention to the dog, who came bounding up the rugged steps right to her feet, looked at her with his great intelligent eyes, and, before she could stop him, rushed down again, where she could hear him scratching, and there was a sound which she knew was caused by his moving a piece of stone such as she could see lying at the side in broken fragments, and of the kind dug in thin layers, and used in the neighbourhood instead of tiles.
"Oh, Grip, Grip! And you know you can"t get at him. Come here."
"Ahoy!"
Celia was leaning over the rugged steps, gazing down into the darkness beneath the ferns, when, in a faint, smothered, distant way, there came this hail, making her nearly drop her basket as she started away from the pit.
The hail was followed by a sharp burst of barking, and the dog came bounding up again, to stand looking after her, barking again before once more descending.
Slowly, and with her eyes dilated and strained, the girl crept back step by step, as she withstood her desire to run away, for all at once the thought had come that perhaps some shepherd or labourer had fallen down to the bottom, and was perhaps lying here with a broken leg.
She had heard of such things, and it would be very terrible, but she must know now, and then go for help.
In this spirit she once more reached the entrance to the old quarry, and peered down, listening to the worrying sound made by the dog, who kept rattling one piece of stone over another, every now and then giving a short, snapping bark.
"Ahoy!" came again, as if from a distance, and a thrill ran through the girl, bringing with it a glow of courage.