



Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)






PECCAVI

BY E. W. HORNUNG

AUTHOR OF "THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN," "MY LORD
DUKE," "YOUNG BLOOD," ETC.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK  1901

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

All rights reserved

THE CAXTON PRESS
NEW YORK.




  CONTENTS

  Chapter                                         Page
  I.        Dust to Dust                             1
  II.       The Chief Mourner                       11
  III.      A Confession                            18
  IV.       Midsummer Night                         29
  V.        The Man Alone                           45
  VI.       Fire                                    51
  VII.      The Sinner's Prayer                     66
  VIII.     The Lord of the Manor                   77
  IX.       A Duel Begins                           89
  X.        The Letter of the Law                  100
  XI.       Labour of Hercules                     115
  XII.      A Fresh Discovery                      125
  XIII.     Devices of a Castaway                  131
  XIV.      The Last Resort                        137
  XV.       His Own Lawyer                         150
  XVI.      End of the Duel                        162
  XVII.     Three Weeks and a Night                186
  XVIII.    The Night's Work                       193
  XIX.      The First Winter                       209
  XX.       The Way of Peace                       230
  XXI.      At the Flint House                     249
  XXII.     A Little Child                         262
  XXIII.    Design and Accident                    275
  XXIV.     Glamour and Rue                        291
  XXV.      Signs of Change                        306
  XXVI.     A Very Few Words                       316
  XXVII.    An Escape                              323
  XXVIII.   The Turning Tide                       335
  XXIX.     A Haven of Hearts                      348
  XXX.      The Woman's Hour                       362
  XXXI.     Advent Eve                             378
  XXXII.    The Second Time                        390
  XXXIII.   Sanctuary                              397




PECCAVI

I

DUST TO DUST


Long Stow church lay hidden for the summer amid a million leaves. It had
neither tower nor steeple to show above the trees; nor was the
scaffolding between nave and chancel an earnest of one or the other to
come. It was a simple little church, of no antiquity and few exterior
pretensions, and the alterations it was undergoing were of a very
practical character. A sandstone upstart in a countryside of flint, it
stood aloof from the road, on a green knoll now yellow with buttercups,
and shaded all day long by horse-chestnuts and elms. The church formed
the eastern extremity of the village of Long Stow.

It was Midsummer Day, and a Saturday, and the middle of the Saturday
afternoon. So all the village was there, though from the road one saw
only the idle group about the gate, and on the old flint wall a row of
children commanded by the schoolmaster to "keep outside." Pinafores
pressed against the coping, stockinged legs dangling, fidgety hob-nails
kicking stray sparks from the flint; anticipation at the gate,
fascination on the wall, law and order on the path in the
schoolmaster's person; and in the cool green shade hard by, a couple of
planks, a crumbling hillock, an open grave.

Near his handiwork hovered the sexton, a wizened being, twisted with
rheumatism, leaning on his spade, and grinning as usual over the
stupendous hallucination of his latter years. He had swallowed a
rudimentary frog with some impure water. This frog had reached maturity
in the sexton's body. Many believed it. The man himself could hear it
croaking in his breast, where it commanded the pass to his stomach, and
intercepted every morsel that he swallowed. Certainly the sexton was
very lean, if not starving to death quite as fast as he declared; for he
had become a tiresome egotist on the point, who, even now, must hobble
to the schoolmaster with the last report of his unique ailment.

"That croap wuss than ever. Would 'ee like to listen, Mr. Jones?"

And the bent man almost straightened for the nonce, protruding his chest
with a toothless grin of huge enjoyment.

"Thank you," said the schoolmaster. "I've something else to do."

"Croap, croap, croap!" chuckled the sexton. "That take every mortal
thing I eat. An' doctor can't do nothun for me--not he!"

"I should think he couldn't."

"Why, I do declare he be croapun now! That fare to bring me to my own
grave afore long. Do you listen, Mr. Jones; that croap like billy-oh
this very minute!"

It took a rough word to get rid of him.

"You be off, Busby. Can't you see I'm trying to listen to something
else?"

In the church the rector was reciting the first of the appointed psalms.
Every syllable could be heard upon the path. His reading was Mr.
Carlton's least disputed gift, thanks to a fine voice, an unerring sense
of the values of words, and a delivery without let or blemish. Yet there
was no evidence that the reader felt a word of what he read, for one and
all were pitched in the deliberate monotone rarely to be heard outside a
church. And just where some voices would have failed, that of the Rector
of Long Stow rang clearest and most precise:

_"When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his
beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: every
man therefore is but vanity._

_"Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling: hold
not thy peace at my tears._

_"For I am a stranger with thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers
were._

_"O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go
hence, and be no more seen..."_

The sexton was regaling the children on the wall with the ever-popular
details of his notorious malady. The schoolmaster still strutted on the
path, now peeping in at the porch, now reporting particulars to the
curious at the gate: a quaint incarnation of conscious melancholy and
unconscious enjoyment.

"Hardly a dry eye in the church!" he announced after the psalm. "Mr.
Carlton and Musk himself are about the only two that fare to hide what
they feel."

"And what does Mr. Carlton feel?" asked a lout with a rose in his coat.
"About as much as my little finger!"

"Ay," said another, "he cares for nothing but his Roman candles, and his
transcripts and gargles."[1]

[Footnote 1: Transepts and gargoyles.]

"Come," said the schoolmaster, "you wouldn't have the parson break down
in church, would you? I'm sorry I mentioned him. I was thinking of
Jasper Musk. He just stands as though Mr. Carlton had carved him out of
stone."

"The wonder is that he can stand there at all," retorted the fellow with
the flower, "to hear what he don't believe read by a man he don't
believe in. A funeral, is it? It's as well we know--he'd take a weddun
in the same voice."

The schoolmaster turned away with an ambiguous shrug. It was not his
business to defend Mr. Carlton against the disaffected and the undevout.
He considered his duty done when he informed the rector who his enemies
were, and (if permitted to proceed) what they were saying behind his
back. The schoolmaster made a mental mark against the name of one
Cubitt, ex-choirman, and, forthwith transferring his attention to the
audience on the wall, put a stop to their untimely entertainment before
returning softly to the porch