ran to meet and protect his grandson, who was now speeding along the banks of the Marlpool in a narrow larch copse that bordered the path's side, and was not two hundred yards from his grandfather, when Welland met and turned him. Young Luke wheeled like a hare, and dashing through the pool, for he could swim like a fish, reached the other side before Welland and his neighbours could recover from their surprise. Old Luke was in the midst of them; he aimed a blow at Welland which felled him to the ground, and then he dealt his blows round him with such effect, that five or six great fellows lay sprawling on the earth. Old Luke was too furious to speak at first, but he at length burst out with, "Shame on you, cowards! murderers!" Luke had such a reputation for strength and skill in the arts of wrestling and boxing that, though an old man, not one of the fellows whom he had felled dare touch him. But, meantime, Welland was up again, and scouring through the copse along the pool-side like a maniac. His tall wife was running along the other side of the pool after the lad. Old Luke threw off his mealy jacket and ran too. It was many a day since he had run before, but every one was amazed at the speed with which he went. Down the hill towards Askersick well, in the direction of the Hillmarton plantations, went Welland and his wife; down followed old Luke, stout and elderly as he was, but with a vigour that seemed wonderful. The young fugitive was seen to leap the fence into the plantations; Welland and his wife were seen to crush through the fence after him, and soon after old Luke followed headlong through the gap, and all disappeared.

The people of the Marlpool stood on their hill watching this chase, and when the flyers rushed into the plantation some ran down in that direction. But the chasers were lost for nearly half an hour, when young Luke was seen flying along the side of the Hillmarton dams—large reservoirs of water that stretched in a chain along the valley amongst woods and copses—and Welland was fagging after him like a dogged blood-hound after a tired stag, or rather fawn. But pursuer and pursued appeared dead beat with fatigue when they disappeared behind a mass of trees. No old Luke, no Doll Welland were seen anywhere, for that wily woman, as old Luke pursued through the plantation, had seized a pole that lay on the ground, and, standing amongst some bushes, suddenly poked it between the old man's legs as he ran, and caused him to tumble forward and fall with a heavy dash on the ground, where, exhausted by his unwonted exertion, and stunned by the shock, he lay breathless and almost senseless. The huge woman then, as he lay on his face on the earth, coolly seated herself upon him, and kept him there whilst her husband pursued the boy.

Meantime the young men from the Marlpool, running in the direction in which they had seen Luke and his pursuer, at length found Welland seated on the bank of the lake, intently watching a part of the water where a mass of reeds grew, and where the boughs of the wood overhung the water.

"Where's Luke?" cried the young men. "He's there!" said Welland, red and panting, and scarcely able to bolt the words from his chest. "He's in the reeds!" Some of the young men ran round into the wood, and looked down into the reed bed by climbing along the boughs of the trees, but nothing was to be seen there. "He's not there, Welland!" they shouted, but Welland stoutly maintained that he was there; he saw him go in, and that he could not go out again without his seeing him. To make all sure, one young fellow stripped and swam to the reeds, and beat all amongst them, and declared that there was no Luke there. "Oh! the cunning beggar is lurking somewhere up to the nose in the water!" shouted Welland; but the young man paddled all about, declared the place very deep of mud, but to the certainty nothing human was there. At this Welland rose up in great wrath but after going round into the wood, said, moodily, "The young scamp has done me again, but I'll settle him yet." And with that he turned homewards, and the young men with him.

Old Luke had before this recovered his breath somewhat, and, rolling his incubus from him with wonderful ease, had risen up and gone towards the dams, followed by the virago, who furiously abused him all the way, and flung stones and masses of turf at him. When old Luke reached a keeper's lodge near the dams, old John Rix, who lived there, told him Welland and a lot of men had gone up the field towards the Marlpool. Luke then hastened back, with the vengeful grenadier of a woman still following and saying all the evil things she could think of. She upbraided the old man for his bringing up of both this young Luke and of his father. "Bad crow, bad egg!" she said. "Old rogue! you were no great shakes, I reckon, in your young days, and the son was no better; no good came to him; and as for this wicked boy, he'll come to the gallows, I'll warrant, if a tree be left in the country to make one on."

Old Luke went on, as King David did in his time when Shimei was hailing stones and curses on him in his trouble, and took no notice. But he was mightily troubled in his mind as he went on in silence. All his former troubles with his son were brought back upon him, and he wondered how it was that he was so much the more afflicted than other people with his children. He began to think that he must have been a much more wicked man than he had thought himself, and so he said, "Let her talk; may-happen I've desarved it." But when he got home, and heard that young Luke had been chased into the lake by Welland, and that he could not be found, he sat down in his chair, and never stirred or spoke for an hour. Poor old Beckey, who had enough to bear of her own, was terribly frightened, and laid hold on him, and shook him, saying, "Luke, man! Luke, speak! what ails thee? Hast a gotten a stroke?" But Luke neither spoke nor stirred, but continued looking hard on the ground. The poor woman was in the greatest distress, and began to call, "Peggy! Peggy! come here! Peggy Smith."

But at that old Luke suddenly rose. "Hold thy tongue! dunna bring anybody here. They've killed the lad, an' they've killed me!" and, giving a deep groan, he began to stagger upstairs, and soon undressed himself and went to bed. There was an end of old Luke. The violent agitation of his mind; the violent exertion that he had made; the fall that he had got; and, no doubt, the abuse and upbraidings that the great virago had heaped upon him, all had done their part. He never spoke after he was in bed: a stroke of apoplexy had indeed fallen on him, and, though the doctor came and bled him, he only opened his eyes for a moment, and then died.

When the death of old Luke was made known, there was a great sensation, and the more so that nothing further was seen or heard of young Luke. A great revulsion in the public mind took place immediately. These transactions were the sole topic of conversation, not only in Marlpool and Monnycrofts, and Shapely, but in every hall and hamlet and solitary farm-house, the whole country round. They were the theme of discussion in every ale-house, and at every barber's and blacksmith's shop, and in every street-parliament far and near. They got into the local newspapers, and assumed a variety of shapes the farther the rumours spread. The Marlpoolians and Monnycroftians who had called young Luke all manner of names as the most incorrigible of scapegraces, now pitied him as a very ill-used and persecuted lad. "Why, all lads are full of mischief," said Mrs. Widdiwicket of the Dog and Partridge public-house. "I would not give a potato for a lad without a bit of mischief in him. Poor lad! it was only his spirit, and what sort of a man is to grow out of a boy without a spirit?" "True," said old Pluckwell, the gardener, as he took his evening pot, "what's weeds in one place is flowers in another. Why, they tell me flowers here are weeds in other countries; and, as to this Luke, he must ha' grown into a prime spaciment with cultivation."

"Just so," said Nasal