PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON. 2 FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made vayable to the order of THE LIVING AGE Co. Single copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents. Take thou our love to those dear hills As one who sleeps, and hears across his Where a Greek hand a Greek land tills, Where chains are worn but heads unbowed; dream The cry of battles ended long ago. Inland I hear the calling of the sea. I hear its hollow voices, though between My wind-worn dwelling and thy waveworn strand How many miles, how many mountains are! And thou beside the winter sea alone Art walking with thy cloak about thy face. Bleak, bleak the tide, and evening coming on; And grey the pale, pale light that wans Where still the self-same fight is fought That once our fathers fought and won When they the whole world's freedom bought Upon thy sands, O Marathon! Our fathers-e'en the same that gave Fly, O our Flag, since thou canst fly SELF. This is my chiefest torment, that behind brain, There sits and shivers, in a cell of pain, A central atom, melancholy, blind, Which is myself: tho' when spring suns And rich leaves riot in the genial rain, Free as a skiff before the dancing wind. Then he awakes, and vexed that I am glad, In dreary malice strains some nimble chord, Pricks his thin claw within some tin gling nerve; And all at once I falter, start, and swerve From my true course, and fall, unmanned Into gross darkness, tangible, abhorred. IN KEDAR'S TENTS.1 CHAPTER I. ONE SOWS. "If it be a duty to respect other men's claims so also is it a duty to maintain our own." It is in the staging of her comedies that Fate shows herself superior to more human invention. While we with careful regard to scenery place our conventional puppets on the stage, and bid them play their old, old parts in a manner as ancient, she rings up the curtain and starts a tragedy on a scene that has obviously been set by the carpenters for a farce. She deals out the parts with a fine inconsistency, and the jolly-faced little man is cast to play Romeo, while the poetic youth with lantern jaw and an impaired digestion finds no Juliet to match his love. on no Fate, with that playfulness which some take seriously or amiss, set her queer stage so long ago as 1838 for the comedy of certain lives, and rang up the curtain one dark evening fitter scene than the highroad from Gateshead to Durham. It was raining hard, and a fresh breeze from the south-east swept a salt rime from the North Sea across a tract of land as bare and bleak as the waters of that grim ocean. A hard, cold land this, where the iron that has filled men's purses has also entered their souls. moon There had been a great meeting at Chester-le-Street of those who were at this time beginning to be known as Chartists, and, the law having been lately passed that torch-light meetings were illegal, this assembly had gathered by the light of a waning long since hidden by the clouds. Amid the storm of wind and rain, orators had expounded views as wild as night itself, to which the hard-visaged sons of Northumbria had listened with grunts of approval or muttered words of discontent. A dangerous game to play, this stirring up of the people's heart, and one that may at any ment turn to the deepest earnest. the mo Copyright, 1896, by Henry Seton Merriman. Few thought at is time that the movement awakening in the working centres of the North and Midlands was destined to spread with the strange rapidity of popular passion-to spread and live for a decade. Few of the Chartists expected to see the fulfilment of half of their desires! yet to-day half of the People's Charter has been night demanded an extended suffrage, granted. These voices crying in the and poor alike to sit in Parliament. vote by ballot and freedom for rich Within the scope of one reign these demands have been granted. The meeting at Chester-le-Street was no different from a hundred others held in England at the same time. It dared not to pronounce it so. It might was illegal, and yet the authorities prove dangerous to those taking part in it. Lawyers said that the leaders high treason. In this assembly, as in laid themselves open to the charge of others, there were wire-pullers, playing their own game, and from the safety of the rear pushing on those in front. With one of these we have to curtain, and on the horizon of several do. With his mistake fate raised the lives arose a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. men time, insomuch as he was a gentlemanGeoffrey Horner lived before his radical. He was clever, and the world heeded not. He was brilliant, well educated, capable of great achievements, Here were the makings of a malconand the world refused to be astonished. tent. A well-born radical is one whom the world has refused to accept at his own valuation. A wise man is ready to strike a bargain with fate. The wisest are those who ask much and then take half. It is the coward who asks too little, and the fool who imagines that he will receive without demanding. Horner had thrown in his lot with the Chartists in the spirit of pique, which makes some men marry ine wrong woman because the right one will have none of them. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had declared himself as upholder of moral persua sion, while in his heart he pandered to those who knew only of physical force and placed their reliance thereon. He had come from Durham with a contingent of malcontents, and was now returning thither on foot in company with the local leaders. These were intelligent mechanics, seeking clumsily and blindly enough what they knew to be the good of their fellows. At their heels tramped the rank and file of the great movement. The assembly was a subtle foreshadowing of things to come -of Newport and the march of twenty thousand men, of violence and bloodshed, of strife between brethren, and of justice nonplussed and hesitating. The toil-worn miners were mostly silent, their dimly enlightened intellects uneasily stirred by the words they had lately heard, their stubborn hearts full of a great hope with a minute misgiving at the back of it. With this dangerous material Geoffrey Horner proposed to play his game. Suddenly a voice was raised. "Mates," it cried at the cross-roads, "let's go and smash Pleydell's windows!" And a muttered acquiescence to the proposal swept through the moving mass like a sullen breeze through reeds. The desire for action rustled among these men of few words and mighty arms. Horner hurriedly consulted his colleagues. Was it wise to attempt to exert an authority which was merely nominal? The principles of Chartism were at this time to keep within the limits of the law, and yet to hint, when such a course was safe, that stronger measures lay behind mere words. Their fatal habit was to strike softly. In peace and war, at home and abroad, there is but one humane and safe rule: Hesitate to strike; strike hard. Sir John Pleydell was a member of that Parliament which had treated the Charter with contempt. He was one of those who had voted with the majority against the measures it embodied. In addition to these damning facts he was a large colliery owner and a local Tory of some renown. An ambitious man, as the neighbors said, who wished to leave his son a peerage, Sir John Pleydell was known to be a cold, calculating speculator, originally a solicitor in Newcastle, pausing to help no man in his steady career of self-advancement. To the minds of the rabble this magnate represented the tyranny against which their protest was raised. Geoffrey Horner looked on him as a political opponent and a dangerous member of the winning party. The blow was easy to strike. Horner hesitated-at the cross-roads of other lives than his own-and held his tongue. The suggestion of the unknown humorist in the crowd commended itself to the more energetic of the party, wno immediately turned toward the byeroad leading to Dene Hall. The others, the minority, followed as minorities do, because they distrusted themselves. Some one struck up a song with words lately published in the Northern Liderator, and set to a well-known local air. The shooting party assembled at Dene Hall was still at the dinner-taie as the malcontents entered the park, and the talk of covers and guns ceased suddenly at the sound of their rough voices. Sir John Pleydell, a younglooking man still despite his grey hair and drawn, careworn face, looked up sharply. He had been sitting silently fingering the stem of his wine-glassa habit of his when the ladies quitted the room-and although he had shot as well as, perhaps better than any present, had taken but little part in the conversation. He had, in fact, only half listened, and when a rare smile passed across his grey face, it invariably owed its existence to some sally made by his son, Alfred Pleydell-gay, light-hearted débonnaire-at the far end of the table. When Sir John's thoughtful eyes rested on his motherless son a dull and suppressed light gleamed momentarily beneath his heavy lids. Superficial observers said that John Pleydell was an ambitious man; "not for himself," added the few rattled on the skylight of the square who saw deeper. hall, and the wind roared down the chimney. Among the men hastily arming themselves with heavy sticks and cramming caps upon their heads were some who had tasted of rheumatism but they never thought of an overcoat. "We'll know each other by our "What is that?" said Alfred Pleydeli, shirt-fronts," said a quiet man, who standing up. "The Chartists," said Sir John. Alfred looked round. He was a soldier, though the ink had hardly dried upon the parchment that made him one the only soldier in the room. "We are eleven here," he said, "and two men down-stairs. Some of you fellows have your valets, too-say fifteen in all. We cannot stand this, you know." As he spoke the first volley of stones crashed through the windows, and the broken glass rattled to the floor behind the shutters. The cries of the ladies in the drawing-room could be heard, and all the men sprang to their feet. With blazing eyes Alfred Pleydell ran to the door, but his father was there before him. "Not you," said the elder man, quiet, but a little paler than usual; "I will go and speak to them. They are probably running away by this time." the and Sir "Then we'll run after 'em!" answered Alfred, with a fine spirit, and something in his attitude, in the ring of his voice awoke that demon of combativeness which lies dormant in men of the Anglo-Saxon race. "Come on, you fellows!" cried boy, with a queer, glad laugh, without knowing that he did it, John stood aside, his heart warm with a sudden pride, his blood stirred by something that had not moved it these thirty years. The guests crowded out of the room, old men who should have known better, laughing as they threw aside their dinner napkins. What a strange thing is man, peaceful through long years, and at a moment's notice a mere fighting devil. "Come on; we'll teach them to break windows!" repeated Alfred Pleydell, running to the stick-rack. The rain was standing on a chair in order to reach an Indian club suspended on the wall. Alfred was at the door leading through to the servants' quarters, and his summons brought several men from the pantry and kitchens. "Come on!" he cried. "Take anything you can find, stick or poker-yes, and those old guns, use 'em like a club. Hit very hard and very often. We'll charge the devils. There's nothing like a charge. Come on!" And he was already out of the door with a dozen at his heels. The change from the lighted rooms to the outer darkness made them pause a moment, during which time the defenders had leisure to group themselves around Alfred Pleydell. A hoarse shout, which indeed drowned Geoffrey Horner's voice, showed where the assailants stood. Horner had found his tongue after the first volley of stones. It was the policy of the Chartist leaders and wire-pullers to suggest rather than demonstrate physical force. Enough had been done to call attention to the Chester-le-Street meeting, and give it the desired prominence in the eyes of the nation. "Get back! Go to your homes!" he was shouting, with upraised arms, when the hoarse shouts of his adherents and the flood of light from the opened door made him turn hastily. In a moment he saw the meaning of this development, but it was too late. With a cheer Alfred Pleydell, little more than a boy, led the charge, and, seeing Horner in front, ran at him with upraised stick. Horner half warded the blow, which came whistling down his own stick and paralyzed his thumb. He returned the stroke with a sudden fury, striking |