A drizzling rainy day. A day on which nothing could be seen but a wavering veil of minute dust of water. A drizzle that was wetting, and which penetrated everywhere. The air was warm, laden with moisture, oppressive, and depressing. From a window could be seen nothing beyond a hedge. Trees seemed to be bunches of cotton wool; the drizzle crawled or was drawn along by a damp wind over the grass along the hedge, beading every blade and twig with the minutest drops of moisture. The shrubs, the plants stooped, unable to support the burden deposited on them, and shot the impalpable water-dust down on the soil in articulate drops.

Although the drizzle was excluded by roof and walls from the house, the moisture-charged atmosphere could not be shut out, and it made the interior only less wretched than outside the house. The banisters, the jambs of the door, the iron locks were bedewed, and the hand that touched them left a smear and came off clogged with water. The slates of the floor turned black, and stood with drops, as though the rain had splashed over them. Wherever there was a stone in the wall of a slatey or impervious nature, it declared itself by condensing moisture, sweating through plaster and whitewash, and sending tears trickling down the walls. The fireirons became suddenly tarnished and rusty. The salt in the cellar and salt-box was sodden, and dripped brine upon the floor, as did the hams and sides of bacon hung up in the kitchen. The table-linen and that for the beds adhered to the fingers when touched.

Anthony stood at the window in the hall looking out, then he went to the fire; then took down a gun from over the mantel-shelf, and looked at the lock and barrel; stood it in the corner of the fire, and resolved by and by to clean it. Then he went to the window again, and wrote his initials on the window-pane, or tried to do so, and failed, for the condensation of moisture was not inside but without, on the glass.

He had nothing to occupy him; no work could be done on the farm, and employment or amusement lacked in the house.

Where was Urith? She might come and talk to and entertain him.

What is the good of a wife, unless she sets herself to make home agreeable to her husband, when he is unable to go out-of-doors?

Where was Solomon Gibbs? He might have talked, fiddled, and sung, though, indeed, Anthony had no relish just then for music, and he knew pretty well all the topics on which Uncle Sol had aught to say. His anecdotes had often been retailed, and Anthony loathed them. He knew when Sol was preparing to tell one, he knew which he was about to produce, he was acquainted with every word he would use in telling his tale.

Anthony had grown irritable of late with Sol, and had brushed him rudely when he began to repeat some hacknied anecdote. On such a day as this, however, even Uncle Sol were better than no one.

At length, Anthony, impatient and out of humour, went upstairs and called Urith. She answered him faintly from a distance.

"Where are you hidden? What are you about?" he called.

"In the lumber-room," she replied.

He followed the direction of her voice, and came to a sort of garret full of every kind of discarded article of domestic use, old crocks that had lost a leg, broken-backed chairs, a dismantled clock, corroded rushlights, bottles that were cracked, a chest of drawers which had lost half the brass handles by which the drawers could be pulled out.

In the obscurity, dishevelled, covered with dust, and warm with her exertions, stood Urith. She put her hand to her face, and pushed her strayed hair from her eyes.

"I want thy help, Tony," she said. "I have been searching, and at length, I have found it. But I cannot carry it forth myself."

"Found what?"

"O—how can you ask? Do you not see what it is?"

It was an old, dusty, cobweb-covered, wooden cradle. "What do you want, Urith, with this wretched bit of rummage?"

"What do I want it for? O—Tony, of course you know. It is true I shall not need it immediately—not for some months, but I shall like to have it forth, and clean it well, and polish its sides, and fit it up with little mattress and pillows, and whatsoever it need, before the time comes when it is required to be put in use."

"I will not have this wretched old cradle," said Anthony. "It is not meet for my son—the heir to Hall and Willsworthy."

"You are reckoning too soon—" laughed Urith. "Perhaps you may have a daughter, not a son."

"A daughter! I do not want a maid; no—I shall never forgive you, if it be not a boy. Urith, My—everything depends on that. When there is a new Anthony Cleverdon, my father can hold out in his obstinacy no longer. He must give way. An Anthony Cleverdon of Willsworthy, and not of Hall! It would go against all his pride, against his most cherished ambition. It cannot, it shall not be. Urith, a boy it must be, and what is more, he shall not lie in that dusty, cobweb-clad pig-trough. It would not become him."

"But, Tony," laughed Urith, "it was mine, I was rocked in that. It was not so bad that I could not sleep therein."

"Oh, you!" he spoke disparagingly in tone. "You were only heiress of Willsworthy, but my young Anthony will be something much different from that."

"I want my child to lie in the same crib in which I was rocked. It will be a pleasure to me."

"I will not have it. This is too mean."

"What does it signify?"

"If it does not signify, then let me go and buy a new cradle."

"No," said Urith. "No—there I lay when a poor little feeble creature; and there, in the same, it shall lie when it comes."

"I will go into Peter Tavy to the carpenter, and order a new cradle."

"I will not use it if you do. We have not the money to waste on luxuries. A child will sleep as well in this as in a painted cradle."

All at once, Anthony flushed to the roots of his hair. A thought had struck him, that if he bought a new cradle he must do so with his wife's money. He had nothing of his own. He was her pensioner. There stood at his side an old rusty bar of iron; in his anger and disgust he grasped this, raised it, and brought it down on the cradle, breaking down its side.

"Anthony!" exclaimed Urith. "Anthony! you would not have done that had any love, any respect remained in your heart for me. You would have loved the little crib in which I was laid, if you loved me."

He did not answer her. Ashamed at his own conduct, embittered at her opposition to his wishes, discontented with his lot, he left the garret and descended the stairs.

On reaching the hall, he found Solomon Gibbs there; he had been out in the rain, and had come in very wet. His face was red and moist, proclaiming that he had been drinking, but he was not intoxicated, only hilarious. He had cast his hat on the table, a broad-brimmed felt hat that had absorbed the rain like a sponge, and was now giving it forth in a stream that made a puddle on the table and ran over the side, dripped on to a bench, and having formed a slop there fell again to the floor, there producing another pool. The water ran off Uncle Sol's dress and oozed from his boots that were rent, and had admitted water within, which now spirited forth from the gaps at every step. Solomon had taken down a single-stick, with basket handle, from the wall, and was making passes, wards, and blows in the air at an imaginary opponent, and, as he delivered his strokes, he trilled forth snatches of song:—

Then he whacked from right to left—

He fell to the ward.

"Come on, Tony lad! 'Tis cursed moist weather, and no fun out of doors. I've been to the Hare and Hounds, but no one there, and not even I can drink when there be no comrades with whom to change a word. Come, Tony, take a stick and let us play together, perhaps it will dry me, for I am damp, uncommon damp."

"Take your hat off the table," said Anthony, in ill-humour. He was accustomed to order and cleanliness in his father's house, and the ramshackle ways of Willsworthy displeased him; Uncle Sol was a prince of offenders in disordering and befouling everything. "Take your hat off. We shall have the board spread shortly, and how can we eat off it when it is slopped over by the drainage of your dirty beaver?"

"Nay, Tony, boy; let it lie. See—here I be. I will stand on the defence, and you take t'other stick; and, if you beat me off, you shall remove my hat; but, if I remain master, you shall pull off my boots. Can't do it myself, by heaven, they be so sodden with water."

"I will make you both remove your hat and kick off your own boots," said Anthony, angrily. "Dost think because I have married the niece that I am abased to be the uncle's serving-man? 'Fore heaven, I'll teach thee the contrary."

He went to the wall, took down a stick, and attacked Solomon Gibbs with violence.

Uncle Sol, for all the liquor he had drunk, was sober enough to be able to parry his blows, though handicapped by his drenched garments, which weighed on his shoulders and impeded rapid movement.

Anthony was not an accomplished single-stick player; he had not a quick eye, and he had never possessed that application to sports which would render him a master in any. Satisfied if he did fairly well, and was matched with inferiors who either could not or would not defeat him, he had now small chance against the old man, who had been a skilful player in his youth—who, indeed, had stuck to his sports when he ought to have held to his studies.

The old man held the stick between his hands over his head jauntily—carelessly, it seemed—but with perfect assurance; whereas Anthony struck about at random and rarely touched his antagonist. Anthony was in a bad temper—he faced the window; whereas Uncle Sol stood with his back to the light, and to the table, defending his soaked hat. Anthony was the assailant; whereas Sol remained on the defensive, with an amused expression in his glossy face, and giving vent at intervals to snatches of melody—showing his unconcern, and heightening his opponent's irritability, and causing him every moment to lose more control over his hand and stick.

Once Anthony struck Uncle Sol on the side, and the thud would have showed how dead with wet the old man's coat was, even had not water squirted over the stick at the blow.

"Well done, Tony! One for thee!" Then Mr. Gibbs brought his stick down with a sweep, and cut Anthony on the left shoulder.

The sting and numbness roused Anthony's ire, and he made a furious attack on his antagonist, which was received with perfect equanimity and the hardly-broken strain of—

With ease, and without discontinuing his song, Sol caught a blow levelled at his skull, dealt with such force that Tony's hand was jarred by it.

Down came Sol's stick on his antagonist's right shoulder.

"There, there! You are no match for me," laughed the old man. "Will you give over—and pull off my boots?"

"Never!" shouted Anthony, and struck at him again, again ineffectually.

"Look out, Tony! save your head!"

The old man, by a dexterous back-handed blow, struck up Anthony's staff, and with a light stroke he touched his ear. He had no intention to hurt him, he might have cut open his head had he willed; but he never lost his good-humor, never took full advantage of the opportunities given him by the maladroitness of his antagonist.

It was exasperating to the young man to be thus played with, trifled with by a man whom he despised, but who he felt was, at all events at single-stick, his master.

"Hah!" shouted Anthony, triumphantly. His stick had caught in Sol's wig, and had whisked it off his skull, but instantly the old man with a sweep of his staff smote his stick from the hand of Anthony, leaving him totally disarmed.

"There, boy, there! Acknowledge thyself vanquished."

Then the old fellow threw himself down on the bench, with his back to the table.

"Come, lad, pull off my boots."

"I will not," said Anthony, savagely, "you had unfair odds. You stood with your back to the window."

"I was guarding my hat. Leave it where it lies, dribble, dribble—drip, and take my place on the floor, and try another bout, if thou wilt. Come on, I am ready for thee."

Mr. Solomon Gibbs stood up, resumed his single-stick, and stepped into the midst of the hall. Anthony, with face on fire with annoyance and anger, stooped for his own weapon, and then took the place with the table behind him, where previously Mr. Gibbs had stood.

"Ready!" called Sol. "Come along! so be I."

Another bout, staves whirling in the air, feet dancing forward, backward, to this side, then to that.

Reports as of pistols, when the sticks met.

Anthony was no match for the old gentleman even now that he had the advantage of the light. Sol was without his wig, he had not resumed it, and his shaven pate exhibited many a scar, the mark of former encounters in which he had got the worst, but in which also he had acquired his skill.

"My foot slipped!" said Anthony, as, having dealt an ineffectual blow from which Uncle Sol drew back, Anthony went forward to his knee, exposing himself completely to the mercy of his antagonist. "It is that cursed wet you have brought in—not fair."

"Choose a dry spot," said Sol.

"You have puddled the whole floor," answered the young man.

"Then it is equal for both of us. I have given thee many advantages, boy."

"I want none. I will have none."

His eye was on the old man's bald head; the sting of the blows he had received had exasperated him past consideration of what was due to an aged man, the uncle of his wife. The blows had numbed in him every sense save anger. He longed to be able to cut open that smooth round skull, and so revenge his humiliations and relieve his ill-humour. But he could not reach that glossy pate, not smite which way he would, so dexterous was the ward of Uncle Sol, so ready was his eye, and quick his arm in responding to his eye.

Not an advantage of any kind could he get over his adversary; he rained his blows fast, in the fury of his disappointment, hoping to beat down his guard by mere weight of blows; and Uncle Sol saw that he was blinded with wrath and had lost all sense of play, having passed into angry earnest. Then he twirled the stick from Anthony's hand once more, so that it flew to the ceiling, struck that, and fell by the hearth.

Mr. Gibbs laughed. "Mine again, Tony, boy!" He cast himself into the settle by the fire, stretched forth his legs, and said, "Come, pull off my boots."

Anthony stood lowering at him, panting and hot.

Sol sang lustily, with his hands in his pockets and his legs extended.

"Come, lad, down on your knees, and off with my boots."

Anthony did stoop, he went on one knee, not on both, and not to pull off the old man's boots, but to pick up his single-stick, whirl it round his head, and level a blow at the head of the undefended Uncle Sol; the blow would have fallen, had not Urith, who had entered the room at the moment, sprung forward, and caught it in her hand.

"Coward!" she exclaimed, "coward!—my uncle! an old man! I hate you. Would God I had never seen you!"

He had hurt her hand, he saw it, for she caught it to her bosom, then put it to her mouth, but her eyes glared at him over her hand like white lightning.

"A scurvy trick, lad—did not think thee capable of it," said Uncle Sol. "Has he hurt thee, child?"

He stood up.

Anthony flung the single-stick from him with an oath, put his hand to his brow, stood for a minute confronting Urith, looking into her fiery eyes, without exculpation, without a word. Then he turned, took up Uncle Sol's hat, without observing that it was not his own, flung it on his head, and went forth.