The Project Gutenberg eBook, Luke Barnicott, by William Howitt

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Title: Luke Barnicott

And Other Stories: The Story of Luke Barnicott--The Castle East of the Sun--The Holidays at Barenburg Castle

Author: William Howitt

Release Date: July 18, 2013 [eBook #43245]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUKE BARNICOTT***

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LUKE BARNICOTT.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

AND OTHER STORIES.

Twenty-Eighth Thousand.



CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.

CONTENTS

After Young Luke.

THE STORY OF LUKE BARNICOTT

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

The village of Monnycrofts, in Derbyshire, may be said to be a distinguished village, for though it is not a city set on a hill, it is a village set on a hill. It may be seen far and wide with its cluster of red brick houses, and its tall gray-stone church steeple, which has weathered the winds of many a century. The distant traveller observes its green upward sloping fields, well embellished by hedgerow trees, and its clumps of trees springing up amongst its scenes, and half hiding them, and says to himself as he trots along, "a pleasant look-out must that hamlet have." And he is right; it has a very pleasant look-out for miles and miles on three sides of it; the fourth is closed by the shoulder of the hill, and the woods and plantations of old Squire Flaggimore. On another hill some half-mile to the left of the village, as you ascend the road to it, stands a windmill, which with its active sails always seems to be beckoning everybody from the country round to come up and see something wonderful. If you were to go up you would see nothing wonderful, but you would have a fine airy prospect over the country, and, ten to one, feel a fine breeze blowing that would do your heart good. You would see the spacious valley of the Erwash winding along for miles, with its fields all mapped out by its hedges and hedgerow trees, and its scattered hamlets, with their church towers, and here and there old woods in dark masses, and on one side the blue hills of the Peak beckoning still more enticingly than Ives's Mill, to go there and see something wonderful. On another side you would see Killmarton Hall and its woods and plantations, and, here and there amongst them, smoke arising from the engine-houses of coal mines which abound there; for all the country round Monnycrofts and Shapely, and so away to Elkstown, there are or have been coal and ironstone mines for ages. Many an old coal mine still stands yawning in the midst of plantations that have now grown up round them. Many a score of mines have been again filled up, and the earth levelled, and a fair cultivation is here beheld, where formerly colliers worked and caroused, and black stacks of coals, and heaps of grey shale, and coke fires were seen at night glimmering through the dark.

Near this mill, Ives's mill, there is another hamlet called Marlpool, as though people could live in a pool, but it is called Marlpool, as a kettle is said to boil when only the water boils in it, because it stands on the edge of a great pool almost amounting to a lake, where marl formerly was dug, and which has for years been filled with water. The colliers living there call it the eighth wonder of the world, because they think it wonderful that a pool should stand on the top of a hill, though that is no wonder at all, but is seen in all quarters of the world. But the colliers there are a simple race, that do not travel much out of their own district, and so have the pleasure of wondering at many things that to us, being familiar, give no pleasure. So it is that we pay always something for our knowledge; and the widow Barnicott who lived on this hill near Ives's mill, at the latter end of the time we are going to talk of, used to congratulate herself when her memory failed with age, that it was rather an advantage, because, she said, everything that she heard was quite new again.

But at the time when my story opens, Beckey Barnicott was not a widow. She was the wife of Luke Barnicott, the millers man, that is, Ives's man. Luke Barnicott had been the miller's man at Ives's mill some time; he was a strapping, strong young fellow of eight-and-twenty. Old Nathan Abbot had the mill before Ives had it, and Luke Barnicott was Nathan Abbot's miller. There are many tales of the strength and activity of Luke Barnicott still going round that part of the country. Of the races that he ran on Monnycrofts' common side, and on Taghill Delves, amongst the gorse and broom and old gravel pits: of the feats he did at Monnycrofts and Eastwood wakes, and at Elkstown cross-dressing, where the old Catholic cross still stood, and was dressed in old Catholic fashion with gilded oak leaves and flowers at the wakes: of the wrestlings and knocking-down of the will-pegs, and carrying off all the prizes, and of jumping in sacks, and of a still greater jumping into and out of twelve sugar hogsheads all set in a row, and which feat Luke was the only one of the young fellows from all the country round that could do. Luke was, in fact, a jolly fellow when Beckey married him, and she was very proud of him, for he was a sober fellow, with all his frolics and feats, and Beckey said that the Marlpool might be the eighth wonder of the world, but her Luke was the ninth, because he could take his glass and be social-like, but never came home drunk. And, in fact, no millers get drunk. I can remember plenty of drunken fellows of