Chapter One.

“What insolence!”

John Grange’s brown, good-looking face turned of a reddish-brown in the cheeks, the warm tint mounting into his forehead, as he looked straight in the speaker’s eyes, and there was a good, manly English ring in his voice as he said sturdily—

“I didn’t know, Mr Ellis, that it was insolent for a man to come in a straightforward way, and say to the father of the young lady simply—yes, and humbly—‘I love your daughter, sir.’”

“But it is, sir, downright insolence. Recollect what you are, sir, only an under-gardener living at the bothy on thirty shillings a week.”

“I do recollect it, sir, but I don’t mean to be an under-gardener always.”

“Oh, indeed,” said James Ellis sarcastically, “but poor old Dunton is not dead yet, and when he does die, Mrs Mostyn is quite as likely to appoint Daniel Barnett to his place as you, and if she takes my advice, she’ll give the post to neither of you, but get some able, sensible man from Chiswick.”

“But, Mr Ellis—”

“That will do, John Grange,” said the owner of that name pompously. “I know what you are going to say. I am not ashamed of having been only a gardener once, but I am Mrs Mostyn’s bailiff and agent now, sir, and, so to speak, your master. Let me hear no more of this nonsense, sir. That will do. But one moment. Have you had the—I mean, does Mary—I mean, does Miss Ellis know that you were going to speak to me this evening?”

“No, sir,” said John Grange sternly. “I’m only an under-gardener, but I’ve heard that it was the proper thing to speak out openly first.”

“Then Mary does not know that you—I mean, that you think about her?”

“I hope and believe she does; sir,” said the young man warmly, and his eyes flashed, and a proud, joyful look came into his countenance.

“Then I beg you will not hope and believe anything of the kind, sir, again. My daughter will do precisely as I wish, and when I part with her, it will be to see her go to a substantial home. Good-evening!”

James Ellis tucked his walking-stick under his arm, took off his grey felt hat, drew a red silk handkerchief from the crown, rubbed his bald head, and made himself look hotter as he strode away, while after standing and watching him go toward the bailiff’s cottage just outside the park fence at The Hollows on the hill slope, a quarter of a mile away, the young man uttered a sigh and turned in at an open doorway in a high wall, whose top was fringed with young shoots of peaches, nectarines, and apricots, suggestive of the horticultural treasures within.

“What a slap in the face!” he muttered. “Under-gardener! Well, that’s all right. Give poor old Dunton’s place to Dan Barnett! Here, I can’t go in now, I must walk this off.”

John Grange pulled the open door to, so that it fastened with a snap, and turned off to make for the woods, where he could think alone.

His way was for a couple of hundred yards toward the pretty villa known as the bailiff’s cottage, and he had not gone half that distance when a sudden pang shot through him. For the place stood high, and he caught sight of two figures in the garden, one that of a man, the other that of some one in white muslin and a straw hat, coming toward the gate. The next minute the man was in the road, and half a minute later he was standing talking to Mrs Mostyn’s agent, while the white muslin that had been so plainly seen amongst the shrubs had disappeared into the cottage.

John Grange’s face grew dark with a look of despair, and he did not go off into the woods.

Dan Barnett, up there at the cottage talking to Mary, while he had been speaking to her father, and she had come down to the gate with her visitor.

Something very like a groan escaped the young man’s lips as he crossed the road to lean his arms upon the gate, and looked over into the park, feeling more miserable than ever before in his life.

“I’m a poor, weak fool,” he thought. “He’s good-looking, and knows the way to a girl’s heart. Better keep to my nailing and pruning. One from the father, two from Dan Barnett. Regular knock-down blows. Better get up again, go to work and forget it all—if I can.”

“Nice evening, John Grange. Drop o’ rain coming?”

“Eh? Yes, I think so, Tummus,” said the young man, turning to the dry, quaint old fellow who had spoken, and who now screwed up the bark on his face—it more resembled that than skin—showed three or four ancient, yellow teeth, and jerked his right thumb over his shoulder.

“I say—see that? Young Dan Barnett going courtin’, and now having it out with Miss Mary’s dad. You mark my words, Mr John, sir, if poor old Dunton dies, and Dan Barnett steps into his shoes, there’ll be a wedding yonder.”

“Think so, Tummus?” said John Grange, with a forced smile.

“Aye, that’s what I think, sir,” said the old man, and then showing his gums as well as his teeth, he continued, “and I thinks this ’ere too—that if I’d been a young, good-looking chap like some one I know, I wouldn’t ha’ let Dan Barnett shoulder me out, and stand in first with the prettiest and best young lady in these parts. Evening!”

“Here, hi! You!” came from behind them, and the person in question strode up, looking frowning and angry.

“You ca’ me, Mr Dan?”

“Yes; did you finish wheeling up that stuff?”

“Aye; I fishened it all ’fore I left work. Good-evening.”

He left the two young men standing together, and there was a peculiar, malicious look in the fresh-comer’s eyes as he gave John Grange a short nod.

“Mrs Mostyn say anything to you ’bout the cedar?”

“Yes; she said the broken stump was to be cut off to-morrow.”

“Then you’d better get the ladders and ropes ready first thing.”

“You mean we had better,” said John Grange quietly.

“No, I don’t. I’m not going to break my neck for thirty shillings a week. Heard how Dunton is?”

“Very bad. Doctor Manning was here again this evening.”

“Well, he’s nearly ninety—a man can’t expect to live for ever. Time he did go.”

John Grange walked away toward the head-gardener’s cottage to ask for the last news, and Daniel Barnett stood watching him with a frown on his rather handsome features.

“Poor old Dunton!” said John Grange to himself; “we shall miss him when he’s gone.”

“Hang him!” muttered Barnett, “that’s it. I saw him talking to the old man, but he hasn’t won yet. Insolence, eh? I like that. The Barnetts are as good as the Ellis’s, anyhow. Wait a bit, my lady, and I may take a bit of the pride out of you.”

Some men have a habit of thinking across the grain.

Chapter Two.

At seven o’clock next morning John Grange felt better when he stood with Daniel Barnett, old Tummus, and Mary Ellis’s father at the foot of the great cedar facing the house, a tree sadly shorn of its beauty by a sudden squall that had swept down the valley, and snapped off the top, where an ugly stump now stood out forty feet from the lawn.

Grange felt better, for in spite of his hectoring, triumphant manner, it was plain to see that Daniel Barnett had not sped well with Mary’s father, whatever might have been his success with the lady herself.

James Ellis was no longer young, and early work before breakfast had grown distasteful; still, he had come to see the broken stump sawn off.

The ladder had been raised, and got into position, but it was too short by ten feet, and there was an awkward climb before the man who went up could use the saw or attach the rope to keep the sawn-off stump from falling with a crash.

“Well,” said Ellis, “what are we waiting for?”

Old Tummus chuckled.

“Why when I first come to these here gardens five-and-forty years ago, I’d ha’ gone up there like a squirrel, Mr Ellis, sir; but these here fine new-fangled gardeners can’t do as we did.”

“Better go up now,” said Barnett.

“Nay, nay, my lad, sixty-eight’s a bit too ripe for climbing trees, eh, Master Ellis?”

“Yes, of course,” said the bailiff. “Come, get it done.”

“Do you hear, John Grange?” said Barnett. “Up with you. Better hitch the rope under that big bough, and saw the next. Make it well fast before you begin to saw.”

“I thought Mrs Mostyn told you to go up and cut it?” said Ellis pompously; “and I heard you tell her how you should do it?”

“Or have it done, sir. Here, up with you, John.”

John Grange felt annoyed at the other’s manner in the presence of the bailiff. There was a tone—a hectoring way—which nettled him the more that they were precisely equal in status at the great gardens; and, besides, there were Mary and old Tummus’s words. He had, he knew, let this rather overbearing fellow-servant step in front of him again and again, and this morning he felt ready to resent it, as the blood came into his cheeks.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” cried Barnett. “Up with you!”

“If it was your orders, why don’t you go?” retorted Grange.

Barnett burst into a hoarse fit of laughter, and turned to the bailiff.

“Hear that, sir? He’s afraid. Ha-ha-ha! Well, well! I did think he had some pluck.”

“Perhaps I have pluck enough,” said the young man, “even if it is an awkward job, but I don’t see why I’m to be bullied into doing your work.”

“I thought so,” continued Barnett, “white feather! Talk away, John, you can’t hide it now.”

Old Tummus showed his yellow stumps.

“He can’t do it, Mr Dan,” he chuckled. “You’re the chap to go up. You show him how to do it.”

“You hold your tongue. Speak when you’re spoken to,” said Barnett fiercely; and the old man chuckled the more as Barnett turned to John Grange.

“Now then, are you afraid to go up? Because if so, say so, and I’ll do it.”

John Grange glanced at the bailiff, and then stooped and picked up the coil of rope, passed it over his shoulder, and then seized the saw. He mounted the ladder, and clinging to the tree, stood on the last round, and then climbing actively, mounted the remaining ten feet to where he could stand upon a branch and attach the rope to the stump, pass the end over a higher bough and lower it down to the others. Then rolling his sleeves right up to the shoulder, he began to cut, the keen teeth of the saw biting into the soft, mahogany-like wood, and sending down the dust like sleet.

It was a good half-hour’s task to cut it through, but the sturdy young fellow worked away till only a cut or two more was necessary, and then he stopped.

“Ready below?” he said, glancing down.

“All right!” cried Ellis. “Cut clean through, so that it does not splinter.”

“Yes, sir,” shouted Grange; and he was giving the final cuts, when for some reason, possibly to get the rope a little farther along, Barnett gave it a sharp jerk, with the effect that the nearly free piece of timber gave way with a sharp crash, just as John Grange was reaching out to give the last cut.

Cedar snaps like glass. Down went the block with a crash to the extent the rope would allow, and there swung like a pendulum.

Down, too, went Grange, overbalanced.

He dropped the saw, and made a desperate snatch at a bough in front, and he caught it, and hung in a most precarious way for a few moments.

“Quick!” he shouted to Barnett; “the ladder!”

Ellis and old Tummus held the rope, not daring to let go and bring the piece of timber crashing down. Barnett alone was at liberty to move the ladder; and he stood staring up, as if paralysed by the danger and by the thought that the man above him was his rival, for whose sake he had been, only a few hours before, refused.

But it was only a matter of seconds.

John Grange’s fingers were already gliding over the rough bark; and before Barnett could throw off the horrible mental chains which bound him, the young man uttered a low, hoarse cry, and fell headlong through the air.

Chapter Three.

“How do you say it happened?”

Old Tummus was riding in the doctor’s gig back to The Hollows after running across to the village for help; and he now repeated all he knew, with the additions of sundry remarks about these new-fangled young “harticult’ral gardeners who know’d everything but their work.”

“Come right down on his head, poor lad,” he said; “but you’ll do your best for him, doctor: don’t you let him slip through your fingers.”

The doctor smiled grimly, and soon after drew up at the door in the garden wall, and hurried through to the bothy where John Grange had been carried and lay perfectly insensible, with Mrs Mostyn, a dignified elderly widow lady, who had hurried out as soon as she had heard of the accident, bathing his head, and who now anxiously waited till the doctor’s examination was at an end.

“Well, doctor,” said Mrs Mostyn eagerly, “don’t keep me in suspense.”

“I must,” he replied gravely. “It will be some time before I can say anything definite. I feared fractured skull, but there are no bones broken.”

“Thank heaven!” said Mrs Mostyn piously. “Such a frank, promising young man—such an admirable florist. Then he is not going to be very bad?”

“I cannot tell yet. He is perfectly insensible, and in all probability he will suffer from the concussion to the brain, and spinal injury be the result.”

“Oh, doctor, I would have given anything sooner than this terrible accident should have occurred. Pray forgive me—would you like assistance?”

“Yes: of a good nurse. If complications arise, I will suggest the sending for some eminent man.”

Many hours elapsed before John Grange opened his eyes from what seemed to be a deep sleep; and then he only muttered incoherently, and old Tummus’s plump, elderly wife, who was famed in the district for her nursing qualities, sat by the bedside and shed tears as she held his hand.

“Such a bonny lad,” she said, “I wonder what Miss Mary’ll say if he should die.”

Mary had heard the news at breakfast-time before her father had returned, but she made no sign, only looked very pale and grave. And as she dwelt upon the news she wondered what she would have said if John Grange had come to her and spoken as Daniel Barnett did on the previous evening.

This thought made the colour come back to her cheeks and a strange fluttering to her breast as she recalled the different times they had met, and John Grange’s tenderly respectful way towards her.

Then she chased away her thoughts, for her mother announced from the window that “father” was coming.

A minute later James Ellis entered, to sit down sadly to his breakfast, his silence being respected by mother and daughter.

At last he spoke.

“You heard, of course, about poor Grange?”

“Yes. How is he?”

“Bad—very bad. Doctor don’t say much, but it’s a serious case, I fear. Come right down on his head, close to my feet. There—I can’t eat. Only fancy, mother, talking to me as he was last night, and now lying almost at the point of death.”

He pushed away cup and plate, and sat back in his chair.

“‘In the midst of life we are in death,’” he muttered. “Dear, dear, I wish I hadn’t spoken so harshly to him last night, mother. Fine, straightforward young fellow, and as good a gardener as ever stepped.”

Mrs Ellis sighed and glanced at her daughter, who was looking wildly from one to the other.

“There; I’ll get back. Ah! Who’s this?”

It was Daniel Barnett, who had run up from the bothy; and Ellis hurried out to the door.

“What is it?” he cried anxiously.

“Old Hannah says, ‘Will you come on:’ She don’t like the looks of him. He’s off his head.”

Ellis caught his hat from the peg, and glanced at Daniel Barnett with a peculiar thought or two in his head as the young man looked quickly at the door and window.

Barnett caught the glance and felt uncomfortable, for though sorry for his fellow-worker’s accident, certain thoughts would intrude relating to his own prospects if John Grange were not at The Hollows.

They hurried down to the grounds, mother and daughter watching from the window, and in those few minutes a great change came over Mary Ellis’s face. It was as if it rapidly altered from that of the happy, careless girl, who went singing about the house, to the thoughtful, anxious woman. Even her way of speaking was different, as she turned quickly upon her mother.

“What was father so angry about last night?” she said. “Did he have a quarrel with poor Mr Grange?”

“Well, hardly a quarrel, my dear. Oh, it was nothing.”

“But he said he was sorry he spoke so harshly to him. Mother, you are keeping something back.”

“Well, well, well, my darling, nothing much; only young men will be young men; and father was put out by his vanity and conceit. He actually got talking to father about you.”

“About me?” said Mary, flushing, and beginning to tremble.

“Yes, my dear; and, as father said, it was nothing short of impudence for a young man in his position to think about you. I don’t know what’s come to the young men now-a-days, I’m sure.”

Mary said nothing, but she was very thoughtful all that day, and during the days which followed, for she had found out the truth about herself, and a little germ that had been growing in her breast, but of which she had thought little till Daniel Barnett came up and spoke, and made her know she had a heart—a fact of which she became perfectly sure, when the news reached her next morning of the sad accident in the grounds.

Chapter Four.

Old Hannah’s fears were needless, for the delirium passed away; and as the days glided by and poor Grange lay in his darkened bedroom, untiringly watched by old Tummus’s patient wife, James Ellis used to take the tidings home till the day when in secret Mary went up afterwards to her own room to sink upon her knees by her bedside, and hide her burning face in her hands, as if guiltily, while she offered up her prayer and thanksgiving for all that she had heard.

For the doctor had definitely said that John Grange would not die from the effects of his fall.

“Thank you, Tummus, old man,” said the patient, one evening about a fortnight after the accident; and he took a bunch of roses in his hand. “I can’t see them, but they smell deliciously. Hah! How it makes me long to be back again among the dear old flowers.”

“Aye, to be sure, my lad. You mun mak’ haste and get well and get out to us again. Dan Barnett arn’t half the man you are among the missus’s orchardses. And look here, I want my old woman home again. You mun look sharp and get well.”

“Yes: I hope the doctor will soon let me get up. God bless you, Hannah! You’ve been quite like a mother to me.”

“Nonsense, nonsense, boy; only a bit o’ nussing. Make haste and get well again.”

“Aye, she’d be a good nuss if she warn’t quite so fond o’ mustard,” said old Tummus. “It’s allus mustard, mustard, stuck about you to pingle and sting if there’s owt the matter. I like my mustard on my beef. And that’s what you want, Master John—some good slices o’ beef. They women’s never happy wi’out giving you spoon meat.”

“Hold your tongue, Tummus, and don’t talk so much nonsense,” said his wife.

“Nay, I arn’t going to be choked. I s’pose Mrs Mostyn sends you jellies and chicken-broth, and the like?”

“Yes, every one is very kind,” said Grange. “But look here, have you seen to the mushroom bed?”

“Aye.”

“And those cuttings in the frames?”

“You mak’ haste and get well, Master John, and don’t you worry about nowt. I’m seeing to everything quite proper, for I don’t trust Master Dan Barnett a bit. He’s thinking too much o’ finding scuses to go up to the cottage, and I know why. There, good-night. Get well, lad. I do want to see that bandage from over your eyes next time I come. Old Dunton’s mortal bad, they say. Good-night.”