<h2> <SPAN name="X"> </SPAN> CHAPTER X. <br/><br/> <span class="small"> ALL DEAD AGAINST HIM. </span> </h2>
<p>"Now, do 'ee put on a muffler, sir," cried Mary, running out with her
arms full, as Mr. Oglander set forth in the bitter air, without
overcoat, but ready to meet everything. At the door was his old
Whitechapel cart, with a fresh young colt between the shafts, pawing
the snow, and snorting; the only one of his little stud not lamed by
rugged travelling. The floor of the cart was jingling with iron tools,
as the young horse shook himself; and the Squire's groom, and two
gardeners, were ready to jump in, when called for. They stamped a
little, and flapped their bodies, as if they would like a cordial; but
their master was too busy with his own heart to remember it.</p>
<p>"If we be goin' to dig some hours in such weather as this be," Mr.
Kale managed to whisper—"best way put in a good brandy flask, Mary,
my dear, with Master's leave. Poor soul, a' can't heed everything."</p>
<p>"Go along," answered Mary; "you have had enough. Shamed I be of you,
to think of such things, and to look at that poor Hangel!"</p>
<p>"So plaize your Worship, let me drive," said Cripps, who was going to
sit in front. "A young horse, and you at your time of life, and all
this trouble over you!"</p>
<p>"Give me the reins, my friend," cried his Worship; and Cripps, in some
dread for his neck, obeyed. The men jumped in, and the young horse
started at a rather dangerous pace. Many a time had Miss Grace fed
him, and he used to follow her, like a lamb.</p>
<p>"He will take us safe enough," said the Squire; "he seems to know what
he is going for."</p>
<p>Not another word was spoken, until they came to the gap at the verge
of the quarry, where the frosty moon shone through it. "Tie him here,"
said the master shortly, as the groom produced his ring-rope; "and
throw the big cloth over him. Now, all of you come; and Cripps go
first."</p>
<p>Scared as they were, they could not in shame decline the old man's
orders; and the sturdy Cripps, with a spade on his shoulders, led
through the drifted thicket. Behind him plodded the Squire, with an
unlit lantern in one hand, and a stout oak staff in the other; the
moonlight glistening in his long white hair, and sparkling frost in
his hoary beard. The snow before them showed no print larger than the
pad of an old dog-fox pursuing the spluttering track of a pheasant's
spurs; and it crunched beneath their boots with the crusty impact of
crisp severance. All around was white and waste with depth of unknown
loneliness; and Master Cripps said for the rest of his life, that he
could not tell what he was about, to do it!</p>
<p>After many flounderings in and out of hollow places, they came to the
corner of the quarry-dingle, and found it entirely choked with snow.
The driving of the north-east wind had gathered as into a funnel
there, and had stacked the snow of many acres in a hollow of less than
half a rood. The men stopped short, where the gaunt brown fern, and
then the furze, and then the hazels, in rising tier waded out of
sight; and behind them even some ash-saplings scarcely had a knuckled
joint to lift from out their burial. Over the whole the cold moon
shone, and made the depth look deeper. The men stopped short, and
looked at their shovels, and looked at one another. They may not have
been very bright of mind, or accustomed to hurried conclusions; and
doubtless they were, as true Englishmen are, of a tough unelastic
fibre. All powers of evil were banded against them, and they saw no
turn to take; still it was not their own wish to go back, without
having struck a blow for it.</p>
<p>"You can do nothing," said the Squire, with perhaps the first bitter
feeling he had yet displayed. "All things are dead against me; I must
grin, as you say, and bear it. It would take a whole corps of sappers
and miners a week to clear this place out. We cannot even be sure of
the spot; we cannot tell where the corner is; all is smothered up so.
Ill luck always rides ill luck. This proves beyond doubt that my child
lies here!"</p>
<p>The men were good men, as men go, and they all felt love and pity for
the lost young lady and the poor old master. Still their fingers were
so blue, and their frozen feet so hard to feel, and the deep white
gulf before them surged so palpably invincible, that they could not
repine at a dispensation which sent them home to their suppers.</p>
<p>"Nort to be done till change of weather," said Cripps, as they sat in
the cart again; "I reckon they villains knew what was coming, better
nor I, who have kept the road, man and boy, for thirty year. The Lord
knoweth best, as He always do! But to my mind He maneth to kape on
snowing and freezing for a month at laste. Moon have changed last
night, I b'lieve; and a bitter moon we shall have of it."</p>
<p>And so they did; the bitterest moon, save one, of the present century.
And old men said that there had not been such a winter, and such a
sight of snow, since the one which the Lord had sent on purpose to
discomfit Bony.</p>
<p>Mr. Oglander, in his lonely home, strove bravely to make the best of
it. He had none of that grand religious consolation which some people
have (especially for others), and he grounded his happiness perhaps
too much upon his own hearthstone. His mind was not an extraordinary
one, and his soul was too old-fashioned to demand periods of purging.</p>
<p>Moreover, his sister Joan came up—a truly pious and devoted woman,
the widow of an Oxford wine-merchant. Mrs. Fermitage loved her niece
so deeply that she had no patience with any selfish pinings after her.
"She is gone to the better land," she said; "the shores of bliss
unspeakable!—unless Russel Overshute knows about her a great deal
more than he will tell. I have far less confidence in that young man
since he took to wear india-rubber. But to wish her back is a very
sinful and unchristian act, I fear."</p>
<p>"Now, Joan, you know that you wish her back every time that you sit
down, or get up, or go to tea without her."</p>
<p>"Yes, I know, I know, I do. And most of all when I pour it out—she
used to do it for me. But, Worth, you can wrestle more than I can. The
Lord expects so much more of a man!"</p>
<p>Being exhorted thus, the Squire did his best to wrestle. Not that any
words of hers could carry now their former weight; for if he had no
daughter left, what good was money left to her? The Squire did not
want his sister's money for himself at all. Indeed, he would rather be
without it. Dirty money, won by trade!—but still it had been his duty
always to try to get it for his daughter. And this is worth a word or
two.</p>
<p>At the Oxford bank, and among the lawyers and the leading tradesmen,
it had been a well-known thing that old Fermitage had not died with
less than £150,000 behind him. Even in Oxford there never had been a
man so illustrious for port wine. "Fortiter occupa portum" was the
motto over the door to his vaults, and he fortified port impregnably.
Therefore he supplied all the common-room cellars, which cannot have
too much geropiga; and among the undergraduates his name was surety
for another glass. And there really was a port wine basis; so that
nobody died of him.</p>
<p>All these things are beside the mark. Mr. Fermitage, however, went on,
and hit his mark continually; and his mark was that bull's eye of this
golden age, a yellow imprint of a dragon. So many of these came
pouring in that he kept them in bottles without any "kicks," sealed,
and left to mature, and acquire "the genuine bottle flavour." When he
had bottled half a pipe of these, and was thinking of beginning now to
store them in the wood, a man coming down with a tap found him dead;
and was too much scared to steal anything.</p>
<p>This man reproached himself, ever afterwards, for his irresolute
conscience; and the two executors gave him nothing but blame for his
behaviour. People in Holiwell said that these two took a dozen bottles
of guineas between them, to toast their testator's memory; but
Holiwell never has been famous for the holy thing lying at the bottom
of the well. Enough that he was dead; and every man, seeing his
funeral, praised him.</p>
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