“’Tis a question which to drown,” said Mr. Sage.

He smoked his churchwarden and looked down between his knees where a mother cat was gazing up at him with green eyes. She purred, rolled half on her back and opened and contracted her forepaws with pleasure, while she suckled two kittens.

Mr. Sage’s daughter—a maiden of twelve—begged him to spare both squeaking dabs of life.

“They’m so like as two peas, faither—braave li’l chets both. Doan’t ’e drown wan of ’em,” she said.

“Thicky cat’s been very generous of chets in her time,” declared Mr. Sage. “If such things had ghostesses, you might see a whole regiment of ’em—black an’ white, tabby an’ tortoiseshell—down-along by the river come dark.”

“Even I shouldn’t be feared of a chet’s ghostie,” declared little Milly Sage.

But she had her way. One kitten, when it could face the world alone, was given to a friend who dwelt some miles distant at Princetown; the other grew into a noble tom of bold tabby design and genial disposition. His mother, feeling him to be her masterpiece, passed gently out of life soon after her son reached cat’s estate. She had done her duty to the feline community, and Milly mourned for her a whole week. But Mr. Sage did not mourn. He much preferred the young tom, and between the cat and the old man, as years passed by, there waxed a friendship of remarkable character.

“I call un ‘Corban,’” said Mr. Sage, “’cause he was a gift—a gift from my little girl when she was a little ’un. ’Twas her own ram cat, you mind, but as the creature growed up, it took that tender to me that Milly said as it must be mine; an’ mine ’tis; an’ what he’d do wi’out me, or what I’d do wi’out he, be blessed if I know.”

He spoke to his next-door neighbour and personal crony, Amos Oldreive, a gamekeeper and river-watcher for many years. Now this man was honourably retired, with a small pension and a great rheumatism, the reward of many a damp night on behalf of the salmon in Dart’s ancient stream.

At Postbridge these old people dwelt—a hamlet in the heart of Dartmoor—a cluster of straggling cots beside the name-river of that region, where its eastern branch comes tumbling through the shaggy fens beneath Cut Hill. Here an elderly, disused, packhorse bridge crosses Dart, but the main road spans its stream upon a modern arch hard by. The lives of Sage and Oldreive had passed within twenty miles of this spot. The keeper knew every tor of the waste, together with the phases of the seasons, and the natural history of each bird and beast and fish sacred to sporting. His friend’s days were also spent in this desolate region, and both ancients, when necessity or occasion drove them into towns, felt the houses pressing upon their eyes and crushing their foreheads and the air choking them. At such times they did their business with all speed, and so returned in thankfulness to the beech-tree grove, the cottages and those meadowlands of Postbridge by Dart, all circled and cradled in the hills.

Noah Sage and his next-door neighbour quarrelled thrice daily, and once daily made up their differences over a glass of spirit and water, sometimes consumed in one cottage, sometimes in the other. Their conditions were very similar. Noah had an only daughter; Amos, an only son; and each old man, though both had married late in life, was a widower.

The lad and lass, thus thrown together, came naturally to courtship, and it was a matter understood and accepted that they should marry when young Ted Oldreive could show a pound a week. The course of true love progressed uneventfully. Milly was plain, if good health, good temper and happy, honest eyes can be plain; while Ted, a sand-coloured and steady youth of a humble nature, leaning naturally upon distinction of classes for his peace of mind, had not a rival or an enemy in the world. Mr. Sage held him a promising husband for Milly, and Ted’s master, appreciating the man’s steadfast qualities, gave promise of the desired number of shillings weekly when Ted should have laboured for another six months at the Vitifer tin mines near his home.

Little of a sort to set down concerning these admirable folks had arisen but for the circumstance of the cat ‘Corban.’ Yet, when that beast had reached the ripe age of eight years and was still a thing of beauty and a cat of mark at Postbridge, he sowed the seeds of strife, wrecked two homes, and threatened seriously to interfere with the foundation of a third.

It happened thus: gaffer Oldreive, by reason of increasing infirmities, found it necessary to abandon those tramps on the high Moor that he loved, and to occupy his time and energies nearer home. Therefore he started the rearing of young pheasants upon half an acre of land pertaining to his lease-hold cottage. The old man built his own coops and bred his own hens, as he proudly declared. Good money was to be made by one who knew how to solve the difficulties of the business, and with greatly revived interest in life, Amos bought pheasants’ eggs and henceforth spent his time among his coops and foster mothers. The occupation rendered him egotistical, and his friend secretly regretted it; nor would he do likewise when urged to make a similar experiment.

“Doan’t want no birds my side the wall,” he said. “I’ve got a brave pig or two as’ll goody into near so much money as your pheysants; an’ theer’s ‘Corban,’ he’d make short work of any such things as chicks.”

Oldreive nodded over the party wall and glanced, not without suspicion, at ‘Corban,’ who chanced to be present.

“Let ’em taste game an’ it grows ’pon ’em like drink ’pon a human,” he said.

‘Corban’ stretched his thighs, cleaned his claws on a block of firewood, and feigned indifference. As a matter of fact, this big tabby tom knew all about the young pheasants; and Mr. Oldreive knew that he knew.

Sage, on the other hand, with an experience of the beast extending from infancy, through green youth to ripe prime, took it upon him to say that this cat was trustworthy, high-minded and actuated by motives he had never seen equalled for loftiness, even in a dog.

The old keeper snorted from his side of the wall.“A dog! You wouldn’t compare thicky, green-eyed snake wi’ a dog, would ’e?”

“Not me,” answered the other. “No dog ever I knawed was worthy to wash his face for un. An’ he’m no more a green-eyed snake than your spaniel, though a good deal more of a gen’leman.”

“Us won’t argue it then, for I never knawed any use for cats myself but to plant at the root of a fruit-bearin’ tree,” said Mr. Oldreive, cynically.

“An’ I never seed no use for dogs, ’cept to keep gen’lefolks out of mischief,” answered Sage, who was a radical and no sportsman. He puffed, and grew a little red as he spoke.

Here, and thus, arose a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. Noah Sage stumped indoors to his daughter, while ‘Corban’ followed with pensive step and a general air as though one should say, “I forgive, but I can’t forget.”

Three days later Mr. Oldreive looked over the wall, and his neighbour saw him, and put a hasty foot on some feathers.

“Marnin’, Sage. Look here—what I wants to knaw be, whether your blasted cat have took wan o’ my phaysants, or whether he haven’t?”

“Might have, might not, Amos. Better ax un. Here he be.”

Green-eyed innocence marked the fat round face of ‘Corban.’ He leapt upon the wall and saluted the breeder of pheasants with open-hearted friendship.

“What be onder your heel, neighbour?”

“Why—a bit of rabbit’s flax ’twas, I think. My sight ban’t so good as of old nowadays.”.

“Rabbit’s flax! ’Tis a phaysant’s feathers! Get away, you hookem-snivey Judas, or I’ll hit ’e over the chops!”

This last threat concerned ‘Corban,’ who was rubbing his whiskers against Mr. Oldreive’s waistcoat.

The ancient Sage puffed out his cheeks and grew as red as a rose.

“Ban’t the way to speak to any respectable, well-thought-upon domestic animal, an’ you knaw it, Amos.”

“Domestic!” echoed Mr. Oldreive, bitterly. “About so domestic as a auld red fox I sent off wi’ a flea in his ear two nights since. Domestic! He pretends to be to gain his private ends. Just a savage, cruel, awnself [119] beast of prey, an’ no better. Can’t shutt foxes, ’cause they’m the backbone of England; but I can shutt cats an’—an’—”

“Stop theer!” roared the other ancient. He trembled with passion; his under jaw chattered; he lifted his legs up and down and cracked the joints of his fingers.

“To think I’ve knawed ’e all these years an’ never seed through to the devilish nature of ’e! ’Tis sporting as makes men all the same—no better’n heathen savages.”

The other kept calm before this shattering criticism.

“Whether or no, I doan’t breed these here phaysants for fun, nor yet for your cat’s eatin’. No call to quarrel, I should hope. But keep un his own side the wall if you please, else he’s like to have an onrestful time. I give ’e fair warning.”

“Perhaps you’d wish for me to chain un up?”

“Might be better—for him if you did.”

“I doan’t want you in my house to-night,” said the owner of ‘Corban’ suddenly. “You’ve shook me. You’ve shook a friendship of more’n fifty year standing, Amos Oldreive, an’ I can’t abear to look upon your face again to-day.”

“More shame to you, Noah Sage! If you reckon your mangy cat be more to you than a gude Christian neighbour, say so. But I ban’t gwaine to fall down an’ worship thicky varmint—no, not for twenty men, so now you knaw.”

“So much for friendship then,” answered Noah Sage, wagging his head.

“So much for a silly auld fool,” replied Amos Oldreive, rather rudely; and they left it at that, and each turned his back upon his neighbour.

Not a word was exchanged between them for three days; then the keeper sent in a message by Milly, who trembled before her parent as she delivered it.

“Mr. Oldreive sez that ‘Corban’ have killed two more of his li’l game-birds, faither. An’ he sez that if so be as he goes for to catch puss in theer again, he’ll shutt un! Doan’t ’e look so grievous gallied, dear faither! I’m sure he never could do it after bein’ your friend fifty year, though certainly he was cleanin’ his gun when he spoke to me.”

“Shutt the cat! If he do, the world shall ring with it, God’s my judge! Shutt my cat—red-handed, blood-sucking ruffian! Shutt my cat; an’ then think to marry his ginger-headed son to my darter! Never! the bald pelican. You tell him that if a hair o’ my cat be singed by his beastly fowling-piece, I’ll blaze it from here to Moretonhampstead—ess fay, I will, an’ lock him up, an’ you shan’t marry his Ted neither. Shutt my—Lord! to think as that man have been trusted by me for half a century! I cream all down my spine to picture his black heart. Guy Fawkes be a Christian gen’leman to un. Here! ‘Corban’! ‘Corban’! ‘Corban’! Wheer be you to, cat? Come here, caan’t ’e, my purty auld dear?”

He stormed off, and Milly, her small eyes grown troubled and her lips drawn down somewhat, hastened to tell Ted Oldreive the nature of this dreadful discourse.“He took it very unkid,” she said. “Caan’t deny as poor faither was strung up to a high pitch by it. Such obstinate, saucy auld sillies as both be. An’ if faither’s cat do come to harm, worse will follow, for he swears I shan’t have ’e if Mr. Oldreive does anything short an’ sharp wi’ ‘Corban.’”

Ted scratched his sandy locks as a way to let in light upon slow brains.

“’Tis very ill-convenient as your cat will eat faither’s game-birds,” he said; “but knawin’ the store your auld man sets by the gert hulkin’ tabby, I’m sure my auld man never would ackshually go for to shutt un.”

“If he does, ’tis all off betwixt you an’ me—gospel truth. Faither’s a man as stands to his word through thunder,” declared Milly. “An’ I ban’t of age yet, so he can keep me from you, an’ he will if Mr. Oldreive kills ‘Corban.’”

“Tu late for that,” answered Ted, very positively. “The banns was up last Sunday, as your faither well knaws. An’ who be he to stand against an anointed clergyman in the house of the Lard? Us was axed out to Princetown for the first time last Sunday; an’ I get my pound a week after midsummer, as I’ve told your faither. Then us’ll take that cottage ’pon top of Merripit Hill, an’ auld men must fight theer awn battles, an’ us shall be out o’ earshot, thank God.”“Us be meeting trouble halfway, I hope,” she answered. “I’m sure I’ll keep a eye ’pon ‘Corban’ day an’ night so far as I can; but you knaw what a cat is. They’ve got theer own ideas an’ theer own affairs to look arter. Why, if you set p’liceman ’pon ’em, they’d only laugh at un. ‘Corban’s’ a cat as be that independent in his ways. He’ll brook no meddlin’ with—’specially of a night.”

“Well caution un, for he’ve got a ’mazin’ deal of sense. I hope he won’t be overbold for his skin’s sake, ’cause my faither’s every bit so much a man of his word as Mr. Sage; an’ what he says he’ll stick to. He’ve had to shutt a gude few score o’ cats in his business; an’ he’ll add your tabby to the reckoning, sure as Judgement, if any more of his phaysants be stolen.”

Thus, with common gloom of mind, the lovers separated and the clouds thickened around them. Their parents were no longer upon speaking terms, and tragedy hung heavy on the air. Then, in the deep and dewy silence of a June night, with Dart murmuring under the moon and the new-born foliage of the beech trees whispering their silky song, there burst upon the nocturnal peace vile uproar of gunpowder. Somebody had fired a gun, and the noise of it woke a thousand echoes and leapt with reverberations thrice repeated along the stone crowns of Hartland and Stannon and huge Broad Down.Gaffer Sage rushed to his window, but could see nothing more than a puff of white smoke rising lazily under the moon. Trembling with dark misgivings, he crept back to bed, but slept no more. ‘Corban’ usually came to the old man’s chamber at dawn, when Milly opened the house; but though she was stirring before five o’clock on the following morning, no ‘Corban’ bolted into the cottage when she unbarred the door; no familiar friend padded and purred “Good morning” to Mr. Sage; neither did ‘Corban’ appear at breakfast—a course very unusual with him.

Noah could not eat his meal for anxiety. He pushed away his tea, rose and walked into the garden. Upon the other side of the wall Amos Oldreive was casting grain to his young pheasants.

“Where’s my cat to?” asked Noah Sage, bluntly. “I heard your gun explode last night. Did you shutt un? I’ve a right to knaw.”

Mr. Oldreive was clearly nervous and ill at ease, his sallow face needing wiping before he replied. But his eyes shone defiance; he pointed at the pheasants ere he answered.

“A month ago there was four dozen of ’em,” he said; “now theer be ezacally three dozen an’ two. An’ as for your cat, maybe I have shutt un, an’ maybe I have not, so now.”

“You ought to be stringed up for it, you grizzly, auld, crook-back coward! I knaw very well you done it; an’ you’ll awnly be sorry once, and that’s for ever. Doan’t suppose you’ve heard the last of this. But I must take thought afore I gets upsides with you.”

He turned, went into the house and spoke to Milly. The man had aged strangely in five minutes, his voice grew squeaky and unsteady.

“He’ve—he’ve shutt un. He’ve shutt my cat!”

Then Mr. Sage took his stick an’ walked out upon the Moor to reflect and to consider what his life would be without his treasure. He wept a little, for he was not a man of strong intellect. Then his painful tears were scorched up, and he breathed threatenings and slaughter.

He tramped back to Postbridge with a mind made up, and bawled his determination over the party-wall at Amos Oldreive’s back.

“Your son shan’t have my darter now—not if he travels on his naked knees from here to Exeter for her. No darter of mine shall marry the child of a dirty murderer! That’s what you be; an’ all men shall knaw it; an’ I pray God your birds’ll get the pip to the last one among ’em, an’ come they grows, I pray God they’ll choke the man as eats ’em; an’ if I weern’t so auld an’ so weak in the loins, be gormed if I wouldn’t come over the wall this minute an’ wring your skinny neck, you cruel, unlawful beast!”

Mr. Oldreive looked round and cast one glance at a spot ten yards’ distant, where the black earth looked as though newly upturned, near an apple tree. But he said not a word, only spat on his hands and proceeded with his digging.

A dreadful week passed, and Mr. Sage’s mingled emotions and misfortunes resulted in an attack of gout. He remained singularly silent under this trial, but once broke into activity and his usual vigour of speech when his old friend sent him a dozen good trout from Dart, and a hope that his neighbour would let bygones be bygones. These excellent fish, despite his foot, Mr. Sage flung one by one through his bedroom window into Amos Oldreive’s front garden; for what were trout to him with no ‘Corban’ to share them?

Behind the scenes of this tragedy Ted and Milly dwelt dismally on their own future. He clung to it that if the banns could but be asked a third time without interference, Mr. Sage was powerless; Milly, however, believed that she knew better.

“I be only eighteen,” she explained, “an’ faither’s my guardian to do as he will with me until I come of age.”

So they were troubled in secret until a sudden and amazing solution to the great problem came within a week of ‘Corban’s’ exit. The only apparent way to be Ted’s wife was opened through lying, and Milly rose to the necessary heights of untruth without a pang. She felt that good must come of her evil conduct—good not only to herself, but to her unhappy father. His bereavement had cost him dear. He still preserved a great, tragical silence, but from time to time hinted of far-reaching deeds when his foot should be strong enough to bear him up.

There came a day when Milly walked to Princetown, and, entering into the house of certain friends there, rubbed her eyes and stood astounded and open-mouthed before the spectacle of ‘Corban.’ It was no feline apparition that she saw, but a live cat, with bold tabby markings of alternate rabbit-brown and black—a cat with strong, flat nose, cold and healthy; four good, well-defined tiers of whisker on either side of his countenance; green eyes, that twinkled like the twin lamps of a little train when seen by night, and a tail of just proportion and brave carriage.

“Lard save us!” cried Milly; “however did ’e come by this here cat, Mrs. Veale? I had Mr. Oldreive’s own sacred word as he’d shutt un dead an’ buried un onder his apple tree.”

“That’s our butivul puss; an’ you should knaw how us come by it if anybody do, my dear, for you bringed it here in a basket from Postbridge when you was a li’l maid six year agone.”

Milly’s active mind was working too rapidly to allow of any reply for some moments. Then she told Mrs. Veale of the recent tribulation at home, and in ten minutes an obvious plot was hatched between them.

“’Tis a peace-loving cat, an’ if you butter its paws an’ treat it a bit generous in the matter of food, ’twill very likely settle down along with you. Of course, you shall have un for such a Christian purpose as to bring them two dear auld men together again. An’ the more cheese you can spare un, the more like he is to bide with you.”

So Mrs. Veale; and Milly answered:—

“‘Corban’ was fond o’ cheese, tu, an’ his mother afore him! ’Twas a family failing, no doubt.”

She scanned the cat narrowly and it mistook her attention for admiration, and purred in a soft, guttural, elderly way, and bent itself into a bow against her knee and showed much natural goodness.

“So like t’other as two peas!” declared Milly, not remembering that she had made exactly the same remark when this cat and its late brother were born. “Faither’s sight ban’t strong enough to part ’em if awnly this one behaves well,” she added.

It was decided that the girl should come early on Sunday morning for her tabby peacemaker, and meantime Mr. Oldreive and his son were to be acquainted with the plot. As for Amos, he was an easy man, and had not slain his neighbour’s poaching cat excepting under grave provocation. Ever since the deed he had regretted it, but he had never confessed to the actual crime excepting in the ears of Milly and Ted. Nobody had officially announced the death of his cat to Mr. Sage. Therefore, Milly hoped he would accept the stranger as his own, and suffer peace to return amongst them. The Oldreives, much cowed by Noah’s attitude and frightened by his illness, gladly promised to do all they might for his daughter, and when Sunday came, she started for Princetown after an early breakfast and left her father behind her. He was in better health again, and she noticed, as an unusual circumstance, that he appeared very full of his own affairs upon that morning, and clearly desired her room more than her company.

With a heavy basket she set off homeward by nine o’clock. Inside the wickerwork a new ‘Corban,’ after protesting once or twice at the narrowness of its quarters, curled round nose to tail, abandoned itself to the freaks of chance and digested an ample breakfast.

But midway between Princetown and Postbridge, where the road traversed the high Moor and stretched like a white thread between granite hills and glimmering marsh-lands, from whence the breeding plover called, Milly nearly dropped her basket. For along the way, in a borrowed market-cart behind his own brown pony, came her father.

“Why, where on airth be you drivin’ to, my auld dear?” she asked; and Mr. Sage, puffing and growing very red, made answer:—

“I be gwaine up-long to Princetown to holy worship.”

Now this was an action absolutely unparalleled. “To church! What for?”

“If you must knaw, ’tis that I may forbid your banns wi’ Ted Oldreive. No use to fret nor cry. I be firm as a rock ’pon it; an’ I be gwaine to deny them banns afore the face of the Lord an’ the people.”

“Why ever should ’e do such a cruel thing, dear faither?”

“Because no blood o’ mine be gwaine to mix wi’ that murdering villain’s.”

“He never told you he shot ‘Corban.’”

“D’you doubt it? Don’t the whole of Dartmoor know it?”

“Let me get up in the cart an’ sit beside you,” said Milly. “I want for you to look in this here basket.”

She leapt from the step to the driving-seat beside her father; then opened the basket. Grateful for this sudden light and air, her burden gazed out, yawned, showed perfect teeth, black lips, and a pink mouth; then jumping boldly on to Mr. Sage’s scanty lap, rubbed against him and purred deeply, while its upright tail brushed his chin.

“God’s goodness!” cried the old man, and nearly fell out into the road.

“Somebody must have took un to Princetown,” said Milly, outwardly calm though her heart beat hard. “Theer I found un none the worse, poor twoad. Now he’s twice ‘Corban,’ dear faither, an’ twice my gift to ’e.”

The old man was entirely deceived, as anybody even of keen sight might well have been. The curious friendship of the cat also aided his delusion. He stroked it, and it stood up and put its front paws upon his necktie and rubbed noses.

“Glory be! Now us’ll go home-along,” said Mr. Sage.

His dim eyes were dimmer for tears; but he could not take them off the creature. His hands also held it close. Milly picked up the reins and turned the brown pony homeward, much to his surprise and joy.

And ‘Corban’ II., as though ’specially directed by Providence, played its part nobly, and maintained the imposition. Mr. Sage begged Amos Oldreive’s pardon, and Amos, for his part, calmed his conscience by assuring Noah that henceforth his cat was more than welcome to a young pheasant whenever it had a mind to one. A little strangeness on the part of the returned wanderer seemed natural in Mr. Sage’s opinion. That he had apparently developed one or two new habits was also reasonable in a cat with as much new experience of the world. And meantime the wedding preparations were pushed on.

At the end of the week Ted Oldreive came home from Vitifer for Sunday; and he expressed joy at the sight of ‘Corban,’ once more the glory of his old haunts.

But the young man’s face changed when Noah and the cat had departed in company, and a look of frank alarm made Milly tremble before danger.

“Why, what’s amiss, sweetheart?” she asked, nervously. “All danger be past now, an’ the creature’s settled down as homely an’ pleasant as need be.”

“Matter enough,” said Ted; “’tis a ewe cat!”

“A ewe cat! Oh, Ted, doan’t say that!”

“’Tis so; an’ God send her doan’t have chets ’fore we’m married, else Postbridge won’t hold your dear faither—nor Dartymoor neither.”