



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




From Squire to Squatter
A Tale of the Old Land and the New
By Gordon Stables
Published by John F. Shaw and Co., 48 Paternoster Row, London.
This edition dated 1888.

CHAPTER ONE.

BOOK I--AT BURLEY OLD FARM.

"TEN TO-MORROW, ARCHIE."

"So you'll be ten years old to-morrow, Archie?"

"Yes, father; ten to-morrow.  Quite old, isn't it?  I'll soon be a man,
dad.  Won't it be fun, just?"

His father laughed, simply because Archie laughed.  "I don't know about
the fun of it," he said; "for, Archie lad, your growing a man will
result in my getting old.  Don't you see?"

Archie turned his handsome brown face towards the fire, and gazed at
it--or rather into it--for a few moments thoughtfully.  Then he gave his
head a little negative kind of a shake, and, still looking towards the
fire as if addressing it, replied:

"No, no, no; I don't see it.  Other boys' fathers _may_ grow old; mine
won't, mine couldn't, never, _never_."

"Dad," said a voice from the corner.  It was a very weary, rather
feeble, voice.  The owner of it occupied a kind of invalid couch, on
which he half sat and half reclined--a lad of only nine years, with a
thin, pale, old-fashioned face, and big, dark, dreamy eyes that seemed
to look you through and through as you talked to him.

"Dad."

"Yes, my dear."

"Wouldn't you like to be old really?"

"Wel--," the father was beginning.

"Oh," the boy went on, "I should dearly love to be old, very old, and
very wise, like one of these!"  Here his glance reverted to a story-book
he had been reading, and which now lay on his lap.

His father and mother were used to the boy's odd remarks.  Both parents
sat here to-night, and both looked at him with a sort of fond pity; but
the child's eyes had half closed, and presently he dropped out of the
conversation, and to all intents and purposes out of the company.

"Yes," said Archie, "ten is terribly old, I know; but is it quite a man
though?  Because mummie there said, that when Solomon became a man, he
thought, and spoke, and did everything manly, and put away all his boy's
things.  I shouldn't like to put away my bow and arrow--what say, mum?
I shan't be altogether quite a man to-morrow, shall I?"

"No, child.  Who put that in your head?"

"Oh, Rupert, of course!  Rupert tells me everything, and dreams such
strange dreams for me."

"You're a strange boy yourself, Archie."

His mother had been leaning back in her chair.  She now slowly resumed
her knitting.  The firelight fell on her face: it was still young, still
beautiful--for the lady was but little over thirty--yet a shade of
melancholy had overspread it to-night.

The firelight came from huge logs of wood, mingled with large pieces of
blazing coals and masses of half-incandescent peat.  A more cheerful
fire surely never before burned on a hearth.  It seemed to take a pride
in being cheerful, and in making all sorts of pleasant noises and
splutterings.  There had been bark on those logs when first heaped on,
and long white bunches of lichen, that looked like old men's beards; but
tongues of fire from the bubbling, caking coals had soon licked those
off, so that both sticks and peat were soon aglow, and the whole looked
as glorious as an autumn sunset.

And firelight surely never before fell on cosier room, nor on cosier
old-world furniture.  Dark pictures, in great gilt frames, hung on the
walls, almost hiding it; dark pictures, but with bright colours standing
out in them, which Time himself had not been able to dim; albeit he had
cracked the varnish.  Pictures you could look into--look in through
almost--and imagine figures that perhaps were not in them at all;
pictures of old-fashioned places, with quaint, old-fashioned people and
animals; pictures in which every creature or human being looked
contented and happy.  Pictures from masters' hands many of them, and
worth far more than their weight in solid gold.

And the firelight fell on curious brackets, and on a tall corner-cabinet
filled with old delf and china; fell on high, narrow-backed chairs, and
on one huge carved-oak chest that took your mind away back to centuries
long gone by and made you half believe that there must have been "giants
in those days."

The firelight fell and was reflected from silver cups, and goblets, and
candlesticks, and a glittering shield that stood on a sideboard, their
presence giving relief to the eye.  Heavy, cosy-looking curtains
depended from the window cornices, and the door itself was darkly
draped.

"Ten to-morrow.  How time does fly!"

It was the father who now spoke, and as he did so his hand was stretched
out as if instinctively, till it lay on the mother's lap.  Their eyes
met, and there seemed something of sadness in the smile of each.

"How time does fly!"

"Dad!"

The voice came once more from the corner.

"Dad!  For years and years I've noticed that you always take mummie's
hand and just look like that on the night before Archie's birthday.
Father, why--"

But at that very moment the firelight found something else to fall
upon--something brighter and fairer by far than anything it had lit up
to-night.  For the door-curtain was drawn back, and a little, wee,
girlish figure advanced on tiptoe and stood smiling in the middle of the
room, looking from one to the other.  This was Elsie, Rupert's
twin-sister.  His "beautiful sister" the boy called her, and she was
well worthy of the compliment.  Only for a moment did she stand there,
but as she did so, with her bonnie bright face, she seemed the one thing
that had been needed to complete the picture, the centre figure against
the sombre, almost solemn, background.

The fire blazed more merrily now; a jet of white smoke, that had been
spinning forth from a little mound of melting coal, jumped suddenly into
flame; while the biggest log cracked like a popgun, and threw off a
great red spark, which flew half-way across the room.

Next instant a wealth of dark-brown hair fell on Archie's shoulder, and
soft lips were pressed to his sun-dyed cheek, then bright, laughing eyes
looked into his.

"Ten to-morrow, Archie!  _Aren't_ you proud?"

Elsie now took a footstool, and sat down close beside her invalid
brother, stretching one arm across his chest protectingly; but she shook
her head at Archie from her corner.

"Ten to-morrow, you great big, big brother Archie," she said.

Archie laughed right merrily.

"What are you going to do all?"

"Oh, such a lot of things!  First of all, if it snows--"

"It is snowing now, Archie, fast."

"Well then I'm going to shoot the fox that stole poor Cock Jock.  Oh, my
poor Cock Jock!  We'll never see him again."

"Shooting foxes isn't sport, Archie."

"No, dad; it's revenge."

The father shook his head.

"Well, I mean something else."

"Justice?"

"Yes, that is it.  Justice, dad.  Oh, I did love that cock so!  He was
so gentlemanly and gallant, father.  Oh, so kind!  And the fox seized
him just as poor Jock was carrying a crust of bread to the old hen Ann.
He threw my bonnie bird over his shoulder and ran off, looking so sly
and wicked.  But I mean to kill him!

"Last time I fired off Branson's gun was at a magpie, a nasty,
chattering, unlucky magpie.  Old Kate says they're unlucky."

"Did you kill the magpie, Archie?"

"No, I don't think I hurt the magpie.  The gun must have gone off when I
wasn't looking; but it knocked me down, and blackened all my shoulder,
because it pushed so.  Branson said I didn't grasp it tight enough.  But
I will to-morrow, when I'm killing the fox.  Rupert, you'll stuff the
head, and we'll hang it in the hall.  Won't you, Roup?"  Rupert smiled
and nodded.

"And I'm sure," he continued, "the Ann hen was so sorry when she saw
poor Cock Jock carried away."

"Did the Ann hen eat the crust?"

"What, father?  Oh, yes, she did eat the crust!  But I think that was
only out of politeness.  I'm sure it nearly choked her."

"Well, Archie, what will you do else to-morrow?"

"Oh, then, you know, Elsie, the fun will only just be beginning, because
we're going to open the north tower of the castle.  It's already
furnished."

"And you're going to be installed as King of the North Tower?" said his
father.

"Installed, father?  Rupert, what does that mean?"

"Led in with honours, I suppose."

"Oh, father, I'll instal myself; or Sissie there will; or old Kate; or
Branson, the keeper, will instal me.  That's easy.  The fun will all
come after that."

Burley Old Farm, as it was called--and sometimes Burley Castle--was, at
the time our story opens, in the heyday of its glory and beauty.  Squire
Broadbent, Archie's father, had been on it for a dozen years and over.
It was all his own, and had belonged to a bachelor uncle before his
time.  This uncle had never made the slightest attempt to cause two
blades of grass to grow where only one had grown before.  Not he.  He
was well content to live on the little estate, as his father had done
before him, so long as things paid their way; so long as plenty of sleek
beasts were seen in the fields in summer, or wading knee-deep in the
straw-yard in winter; so long as pigs, and poultry, and feather stock of
every conceivable sort, made plenty of noise about the farm-steading,
and there was plenty of human life about, the old Squire had been
content.  And why shouldn't he have been?  What does a North-country
farmer need, or what has he any right to long for, if his larder and
coffers are both well filled, and he can have a day on the stubble or
moor, and ride to the hounds when the crops are in?

But his nephew was more ambitious.  The truth is he came from the South,
and brought with him what the honest farmer folks of the Northumbrian
borders call a deal of new-fangled notions.  He had come from the South
himself, and he had not been a year in the place before he went back,
and in due time returned to Burley Old Farm with a bonnie young bride.
Of course there were people in the neighbourhood who did not hesitate to
say, that the Squire