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James Tumbull slowly turned his face 'round again and his expression was both sad and shamefaced as he muttered, "There's no pot, at least nothin' left in it."

Matthew's mouth opened and shut, his eyes screwed up and his body bent further forward before he said, "Nothing in it? But gran dad left you fifty sovereigns. That's only seven years ago, and trade was good then."

"Aye, it was good then, but it stopped the following year and we had three black ones in a row, an' like you I was waitin' for them to pay up. Some of them never did. They couldn't 'cos their farms were sold up. It was then I had to dip into it. There was nothing in it long afore this happened." He pointed to his shoulder.

Matthew was speechless. He had always felt, in a way, that the business was secure because of the pot, which he thought his dad had been adding to over the years. This piece of news was like a cord

'round his neck; he felt he was being strangled, and not slowly either.

"I'm sorry, lad."

Matthew was turning away when he stopped and asked, "Does Mam know?"

"No; I wanted no misunderstandings; she got her weekly money, and that was that."

When he reached the bottom of the stairs his mother was waiting for him. One doubled-up fist in the hollow of her hip, the other hand holding her chin as if it were a handle, she demanded, "What's all the hurry for, what's happened? You seem to be in a tizzy."

"I'm in no tizzy." His voice was flat and he kept it so as he gave her the information.

"I'm taking on an apprentice. I went up to tell him.

I'm putting him over the stable; he'll eat with us. "

"You've what!" Now she had both fists on her hips and her voice was on the point of a screech.

"Did I hear aright? You're takin' on an apprentice with things as they are?"

"That's what I said."

"A-ahl" The exclamation came out on a long breath.

"It's one of that tribe I suppose. Well, let me tell you I'm havin'

none ..."

"You're givin' him his meat."

"Oh! am I?"

"Aye."

"Well, master" --she bridled"--I suppose you'll be givin' me an extra two shillings a week."

"I'm giving you nothing extra, you can all eat a bit less." He swept his gaze over his grannie and his aunt sitting idly, one each side of the fire, and was making his way out of the kitchen when his mother exclaimed with deep finality, "Well, if I don't get it from you begodi I'll have it out of the pot."

He laughed a harsh grating laugh before saying, "You'll be lucky. I'm going to tell you something, goin' to tell you all something. The pot's empty, an' it has been for years."

Now he had silenced them.

He went out into the yard again. He must go to the mill when the mood was on him because if he waited till the morrow his courage might fail him. He knew that old Watson did not want another apprentice but if he picked his words and made them imply, "You do this for me and I'll do what you've been at me to do for years," it would work.

He was mounting the cart when his mother came through the side door and, gripping the horse's bridle, stared up at him and ground out bitterly, "I'll go into the town and have the law put on her. I'll tell them she's a bad lot; indecent, having men up there. And I can prove that with you yourself. Don't you think you'll get the better of me in this."

In a flash he was down from the cart and facing her, and, his voice as bitter as hers, he said, "You lift your hand to her in any way and you'll potch yourself for life. I'll walk out of here as if you had never been, and leave the lot of you. Understand that now.

Understand.

I'll go off on the road, taking them all with me, and set up some place else. And don't think I can't do it, I could do it all right, any minute. "

As he drove away from her embittered gaze he thought to himself, Aye, he could do it all right, but he wouldn't.

It was late the following evening when he saw Cissie again. He had been in Jarrow all day and got the order for the cart. The man had wanted it made to his own dimensions for hawking coal round the towns, and the business and haggling had gone on for hours. He had returned home to a silent house, not only the women folk against him, but also his father blaming him for having given him away. And as he sat down to a cold scratched meal he thought grimly that there would be advantages in living at the mill;

the food would be good, the comforts would be those he had never experienced before, and Rose would be pleasant. Her face was homely when she smiled. She had smiled at him last night.

"You'll be over on Saturday, Matthew?" she had said with meaning in both her tone and eyes.

"I'll wait the meal for you at six." So tomorrow he would don himself out in his best coat, his good shirt and breeks and he would go to Rose and say . what would he say?

"Would it be too much to ask you to marry me. Rose?" He'd put it like that because at bottom he couldn't bear to hurt people, and not anyone handicapped in the way Rose was. But tonight he would go to Cissie, for besides giving her the news there'd be something he would ask of her, for the one and only time.

The dusk was deepening when he approached the cave. The children were all abed and there was no sound from them. Cissie was sitting on the stone wall. It seemed as if she were waiting; and before he got down from the cart she rose and went to meet him.

"I'm sorry I couldn't make it afore."

She looked up at him as she said, "That's all right." Then they walked together around the bluff of rock, and when he stopped abruptly, she too stopped.

"How is he?" he asked first.

"His leg's stiff," she said.

"He couldn't have gone in any case."

"I fixed them both up."

She joined her hands tightly against her breast as he went on, "Jimmy's to come to us, as I said, at two shillings a week, and William's to start with Miller Watson; but all I could get for him was one and six."

He did not say that he had had to bargain for the extra sixpence, or that the one and six a week had bonded himself for life.

He saw through the dim light that her eyes were full of tears, that her gratitude was making her dumb, and he had the desire, stronger than any he had yet felt in his life, to take her in his arms, to roll with her in the heather, to . When her hands came out to him, he took them both and pressed them into his chest, and when she said brokenly, "Oh, Matthewl I haven't any words to tell you me thanks," he drew her closer and, looking down into her eyes, he said, "I've got to tell you, you'll hear something in the next few days that, that might upset you, it's about something I've got to do. I've looked for a way out, but there isn't one. I'm caught in a cleft stick, I've got to do it. But this I want you to know. Me heart's yours, and as long as it's in me body it'll be like that. Now" -he paused and champed at the saliva in his mouth before, his lips scarcely moving, he asked, "Can I kiss you?"

It was some seconds before she closed her eyes and when his mouth touched hers they became still, their joined hands keeping their bodies apart, until of a sudden his arms going round her, he pressed her to him, and his lips covered her face like a ravenous man attacking food.

Then it was over as abruptly as it had begun. She was standing alone swaying on her feet and he was walking away, as he had done last night, only now he was running towards the cart, and she knew that this was the end of something that had hardly begun, for the news that she would hear during the next few days was that he was going to marry Rose Watson, and instinctively she also knew that William's apprenticeship had settled a matter that had been pending for a long time.

The first Sunday that the boys came home, their faces clean, their clothes tidy, they handed her their money, and William also proudly put into her arms a sack in which there were two loaves, a bag of oatmeal, some pig's fat, and a big hunk of cheese, and she didn't thank him for it, nor tell him to take back thanks to Mistress Watson, but he fully understood-she was too overcome with the generosity of the gift to say a word. But the rest of the family made their thanks very verbal.

Part of her heart rejoiced that the boys were back to their old selves again, or at the beginning of new selves, for they vied with each other in showing off to the rest and talking of their respective trades.

While William bragged of the twenty sacks of flour the mill had ground in one week, and demonstrated how he cranked the handle of the flour-boulter. Jimmy also demonstrated how he turned the great wooden wheel that worked the lathe. He talked of shell augers and spoon augers, and gave the impression that he managed the saw pit, not just standing down below guiding the great saw along the chalk mark, but up above taking full responsibility for the straightness of the cut. He spoke of the stink of elm and the pleasing smell of ash as if he had dealt with wood all his life.

It was a grand day for both of them and Cissie tried to joy with them.

It wasn't until late in the afternoon when she sat on the wall nursing the baby that she looked at Jimmy and realized how much she had missed him, for he was the only sensible one of them all she could talk to--Bella was a scatterbrain.

Jimmy was twirling a brown ringlet on the baby's forehead with his finger when he asked quietly, "You all right, our Cissie?" and she answered with forced brightness, "Aye, of course. Why shouldn't I be?

Three of you settled, and now I can get on with the wall. I must put a move on. " She patted the rough stones to her side.

"We didn't get much chance last week with gathering the last of the bilberries and the wortles, and the mushroom pickin'--we cleared twenty pounds of them.... Oh, I didn't tell you. I went into Shields and sold them at the big houses. I had only to go to three."

"All that way?" he said.

"Nigh on nine miles there and backl" She laughed at him, saying, "Well, we did it afore."

"Aye." He nodded; then stooping, he picked up a chip of sandstone and hurled it away into the distance, and with his back half turned to her he said, "Matthew's gonna marry Miss Rose from the mill. Did you know that?"

When he turned and looked at her her head was level, her eyes answering his; and then she said quietly, "Aye, I knew about it."

Again he picked up a stone and hurled it.

"I thought he had cottoned on to you?"

It was some time before she said, and as if speaking with the wisdom of years, "Well, how could he, with nine of us? And from what I can gather he's got his own problems."

"Aye, he has." He glanced sideways at her now, saying, "I don't like his mother, nor the old 'uns, but I like him." Then walking a few steps from her he asked, "Did you manage to get a rabbit this week?"

and after a moment she answered, "No, I'm no good at it. I can't hit them an' finish them off. But I miss the stew. It was a grand standby." She paused, "Do you think you could show Joe?"

He turned to her now, his eyes bright.

"Aye, I could. He's comin' up five, he should be able to knock a rabbit out. And another thing he should be able to do." He came up to her now, his face eager, his voice low.

"Get through a hole I've made in the bottom of the manor wall. The rabbits are getting' fly; there's so many hunting' them on the fells that they're taking to cover, they're not daft. An' just afore I started at the pit" -he paused as if the memory alone could frighten him, then went rapidly on, "I found some loose masonry at yon end of the manor wall that's covered with thicket, going Brockdale way, near the North Lodge, an' when I pulled the stones away I found I could get through. That's where I got that whopper, you mind the big 'un. I didn't let on, 'cos if the others had come along of me they would have made a noise and given us away."

She was standing now; she had the baby across her shoulder and was patting its back in evident agitation as she said, "Eeh! no. Jimmy, don't show him in there. He could be locked up if he was found catchin' rabbits on that land, the lord's."

"But nobody'll catch him in there--it's all thicket and bramble.

Anyway, if they chased him they couldn't get through the hole; I just made it big enough for me, and the gate's some way off an' the walls all five foot high and you can hardly see any bit of it for bramble.

The place is a real rabbit run. I came across it one day when I saw one boltin' into the scrub and I followed through a badger run an'

there was the rabbit's hole just this side of the wall, so I guessed it came up tother side. It was then I saw that the mortar had gone in parts from at ween the stones, an' it was easy to pull a few out. "

She stared at him for a moment, her hand on the back of the child's head now; then she asked, "You sure there wouldn't be any danger of the keepers catchin' him?"

"No." He laughed derisively.

"He would hear them comin' a mile off; it's a tangle I tell you, except for a path that runs at ween the bramble an' the wood, an' that's strewn with dry dead brittle an' anybody stepping on it would sound like the crack of a gun. No, there's no need to worry. Anyway, Joe's cute; he'll be smart will Joe when he grows. I'll go and get the trap." He ran a few steps from her, then turned, and, smiling broadly now, he cried, "I bet that once he gets the knack you'll never want more."

As she watched him running into the cave where the trap was hidden at the bottom of the chest she repeated to herself, "Never want more."

Because he was going to show Joe how to trap and kill a rabbit, they would never want more. She shook her head and smiled wearily.

But how was she to know that she was listening to a prophet?

It is a known fact that a devil of one generation can be the means of producing a saint for the next. This had happened in the house of Fischel, with one difference: it had taken a number of devils and a number of generations to produce a saint.

The long gallery on the first floor of the house showed the portraits of all the male Fischels; the first was given his title by Queen Elizabeth in 1573, together with Houghton Hall and land to the extent of three hundred acres in the County of Durham, such gift being for services rendered. The chroniclers had never stated the nature of the services, and the descendants, up to the present day, had not thought it expedient to probe this matter, although they were aware that it was only the timely death of the Queen in 1603 that saved the early Fischel from losing the generosity of his Queen, together with his head.