13

"Bless me," said the Duke, "you mean there was nothing left at all?"

He stepped into the charcoal burner's hut. The door was half off its hinges. Inside, the place was bare; as the man had said, completely ransacked.

"But what about the little gal's bracelet, eh? Have you noticed a small bracelet anywhere, my man?"

"No, sir. Most likely the thieves'll have taken it," said young Turveytop gloomily, but Sophie noticed him dart a sharp glance around the log walls, as if looking for possible hiding places.

"I believe—" she began, and then checked herself.

"Hark—what was that sound?" exclaimed the Duke.

Sophie turned her head, listening, and became very pale. Young Turveytop rushed to the door. The Duke, following, saw him dart across the clearing to where the open carriage stood, with the driver still on the box.

"Mizzle, you fool! Don't you know what that is?" Turveytop shouted at him, and threw himself onto one of the two carriage horses, slashing at the traces with a knife. In a moment he had galloped off down the track; an instant later the driver had followed him on the other horse.

"Hey! Come back! Stop!" shouted the Duke.

"Good gracious! What very extraordinary behavior! Sophie, what can be the meaning of it? Why have they taken our horses?"

Sophie cast a desperate glance around the open clearing. It was in a coign of the valley: on three sides the forest climbed steeply up an almost perpendicular slope. The fourth side, from which the baleful cry proceeded, was the way they had come.

"Sophie, child, why are you looking so anxious? What is the matter?"

"It is wolves, ma'am, and coming this way. We must take refuge in the hut until they are gone by" Sophie said, trying to maintain a calm voice and appearance.

"Wolves? But—Oh, those craven wretches!" exclaimed the Duchess.

'"Pon my soul! Have the men just made off and left us in the lurch? I shall write to The Times about this!"

"Please, ma'am—your Grace—please go into the hut!" Sophie was almost dancing with impatience; she practically pushed their Graces through the narrow doorway. The threatening, eager cry swelled louder and louder.

Sophie cast about for a weapon. The driver had gone off with his musket, but luckily some luggage had been fastened at the rear of the carriage. She seized a bunch of croquet mallets, a bag of billiard balls, and, as an after-thought, the Duchess' embroidery.

"Sophie! Make haste!" the Duchess called anxiously. Sophie ran back to the hut, where the Duke was vainly trying to adjust the broken door.

"Infernal thing!" he muttered. "Dangles kitty-corner-wise—any wolf could nip through the gap. Have you a notion how we could fix it, Sophie my lass? Ah, croquet mallets, that was well thought of—those should keep the brutes at arm's length."

"I think we can block the doorway—if your Grace would not object to my using your embroidery once again?"

"No, no, take it, take it by all means!" the Duchess cried distractedly.

Sophie quickly folded the massive piece of material into three, and hung it over the door hole, pegging it with slivers of wood into chinks in the log walls.

"What about the windows, my child?"

"My foster father made them small and high on purpose," Sophie said. "Ah! here come the wolves—you can hear the patter of their feet on the dead leaves—"

In spite of her calm and confident manner Sophie's heart beat frantically as the terrible howling swelled around the hut; it sounded like a hurricane of wolves. Soon the hut began to shake as wolves dashed themselves against the wooden walls. Sophie trembled for the precariously fastened tapestry, but the Duke, showing unwonted courage and resource, seized a pair of croquet mallets and stood guard behind it. Sometimes a shaggy head or a pair of glaring eyes appeared at the windows, but the Duchess and Sophie pelted these attackers with a vigorous rain of billiard balls until they dropped back again. Once a corner of the tapestry came loose, as a wolf hurtled against it, and the front half of its body thrust into the room, with fangs bared and slavering tongue, but the Duke and Duchess fell upon it simultaneously and belabored it with croquet mallets until it retreated, yelping, and Sophie with desperate haste pegged the curtain back in position.

How long the battle continued it would he hard to say; it seemed an eternity to Sophie—an eternity of darting from point to point, hurling a ball at one window, reaching up with a mallet to thrust back an attacker at another or strike at a paw that had found foothold on the sill. There was never an instant's rest. But at last the wolves, many of them hurt, evidently decided that this quarry was not to be easily captured. The whole pack ran limping off into the forest; Sophie, on tiptoe at the window, saw them disappear down the track the way they had come.

For many minutes longer none of the three in the hut dared to hope that the wolves had gone for good, but they took advantage of the lull to rest; Sophie and the Duke leaned panting against the walls, while the Duchess sat plump down on the floor and fanned herself with the Instructions for the Game of Billiards.

"Sophie! Sophie!" she sighed. "I do not know how it can be, but when we are with you we always contrive to run into such adventures!"

"Come, come, Hettie," his Grace said gruffly. "Admit that the lass always rescues us, too. It's thanks to Sophie we aren't vanishing down the gullets of twenty wolves at this instant. By Jehoshaphat, my child, you're a well-plucked 'un, and with your wits about you, too; you should ha' been a boy! I'd a thousand times sooner have you at my side in a pinch than that whey-faced Justin."

"Thank you, your Grace." Sophie curtsied absently, but her expression was worried. She knew they must not remain in the hut much longer, for the wolves might return, and night was not far distant.

Regardless of the Duchess's little shriek of dismay, she put aside a corner of the tapestry and slipped out of the hut. Many billiard balls were lying on the grass round about, and she hastily gathered up as many as would go into her skirt and passed them in to the Duke.

"Now, your Graces, I am going to run to the main road for help, so do you, pray peg up the tapestry again, and do not take it down until you hear me call."

"But supposing you meet with a wolf, my child?"

"I'll make him regret the day he was born," Sophie said grimly, taking another croquet mallet from the carriage. She picked up her skirts and ran like the wind. She met with no wolves along the path but to her dismay, as she neared the turnpike, she began to hear a sound of howling and snarling, mixed with terrified whinnies. She collected a number of small rocks into her skirt and went on cautiously.

Coming around a thicket she saw that, although the main body of the wolf pack had evidently gone elsewhere, half a dozen stragglers remained, and were attacking the baggage coach which still stood in the road. The coachman and one of the horses was missing—it was plain that he had followed the example of his cowardly companion and made off. The other three horses, half mad with fright, were rearing and striking out at the wolves with their hooves. Sophie lost no time in coming to their aid.

"Shoo! You brutes!" she shouted in a loud angry voice. "For shame! Leave the poor defenseless horses alone or it will be the worse for you! Attacking them when they are harnessed up, indeed!" and she followed this up with a hail of rocks, several of which, at such close quarters, found their targets and effectually startled and scattered the wolves. Before they could recover, Sophie rushed among them, whirling the croquet mallet around and around, striking first one, then another, until she won her way through to the coach and jumped up on the box. There, to her delight, she found the driver's blunderbuss, which in his fright he had forgotten to take. She discharged it among the wolves, and this completed their rout entirely; they made off at top speed. Sophie was so much amused at the doleful spectacle they presented as they fled that she burst out laughing, and then applied herself to soothing and making much of the three horses, who were sweating and trembling with fear.

After waiting a few moments to make sure the wolves did not return, Sophie mounted the leading horse, unfastened the traces, and made him gallop back along the track. Arriving at the clearing she harnessed him to the light carriage and called to their Graces to come quickly, for the way was clear.

When the Duchess saw that the wolves were indeed gone she embraced Sophie and allowed herself to be assisted into the carriage. The Duke followed, first taking down the tapestry from the doorway, "for," said he, "it's odds but it will be needed to save our lives some other time."

"Now, your Grace," said Sophie, "if you will but sit on the box with the blunderbuss, I've an errand that won't take a moment—"

"Oh, Sophie! Pray be careful!"

"It's quite all right, ma'am, I shan't be gone from your view." And indeed, Sophie merely crossed the clearing to a huge hollow oak on the far side, and put her hand into a small cavity halfway up the trunk. She felt about carefully inside, and her face broke into a smile.

"Ah!" she said. "I thought it was possible the thieves might not know about Turvey's hiding place. He never kept his treasures in the hut, for fear of fire."

She drew out a small bundle, wrapped in leather and tightly fastened. Handing it up to the Duchess, she jumped into the carriage and took the blunderbuss from the Duke, who shook up the reins. The affrighted horse needed no urging to leave the clearing, where the odor of wolf was still strong.

The Duchess, meanwhile, was exclaiming over Sophie's find, as she tried to undo the leather fastenings. "Only imagine its still being there. How clever of you to have remembered the place, Sophie dear! And how strange that Turveytop's nephew was not aware of it!"

"That wasn't his nephew!" Sophie said scornfully. "Turvey never had a nephew."

"That man was not his nephew? Who was he, then?"

"One of the thieves, I daresay, come back to have another hunt round. That was probably why he was so quick to make off."

"The wretch!" exclaimed his Grace in strong indignation.

As they had now reached the turnpike again, Sophie busied herself with unharnessing the horse and setting him back in the shafts of the baggage coach. This, being enclosed, would be the safer conveyance in which to complete their journey.

Sophie offered to drive, but the Duke, who had been a famous whipster in his youth, pooh-poohed this suggestion, telling her that she had done quite enough fire-eating for the time, and must now sit inside, rest, and prevent her Grace from falling into a fit of the vapors which might afflict her when she reflected on the perils they had passed through.

Her Grace at the moment was far from thinking of vapors; she was still eagerly tugging at the knotted leather thongs of the little packet. "How provokingly tight they are fastened! I am so impatient to see what is inside this little bundle, Sophie dear!"

Sophie, remembering the old man's treasures, watched with rather a sad smile. At last the knots were undone and the contents poured into the Duchess's lap. Her Grace stared at them, somewhat dismayed: instead of gold or jewels they consisted of a knotted root, shaped like a fist, some quartz pebbles, a few dried-up flowers and berries, a stone with a hole in it, and a sprig of white heather.

"But the bracelet?" exclaimed her Grace.

"Here it is, ma'am." And Sophie, with gentle fingers, delved to the bottom of the little heap and brought out something so black and tarnished that it might easily have been thrown away as rubbish.

"Mercy! Is that silver? It does not look like the second-best dinner service," the Duchess said, eyeing it doubtfully.

"Indeed it is silver, ma'am, and when I have polished it with hartshorn and spirits of wine you will be surprised at the difference," Sophie replied briskly, to cover the slight catch in her voice at the thought of the kind old man who had kept her treasure so carefully.

Fortunately both hartshorn and spirits of wine were at hand, since the Duchess never traveled without them, for fear of a faint, so, for the next twenty minutes, while the Duke drove them along at a fast canter, Sophie occupied herself with vigorous polishing.

"Now, ma'am, tell me if it is not much improved," she said at last, and held up a slender shining chain, at the end of which dangled a little shield. The Duchess took it with trembling hands. On one side of the shield the name SOPHIE was engraved; on the other side was a coat of arms between two names so tiny that it was impossible to read them.

"My quizzing-glass—where is it? Quickly, child. Why, that is the Battersea coat of arms!"

"Can you read the names, ma'am?" said Sophie, trembling.

"Wait a minute, wait—I can nearly see—this coach rocks about so—H E N—Hen—what is that next letter, can it be an R? Why yes, Henry! Henry Bayswater!" the Duchess read out in an astonished voice. "And Simone Rivière! Sophie! My child! My own dear husband's dead brother's long-lost child!"

And she enfolded Sophie in a suffocating embrace.

"But ma'am," Sophie said in a dazed voice. "Do you mean to say—How can this be?"

"Oh," said the Duchess impatiently, "depend upon it, it is somehow the fault of that wretched, careless Buckle. I thought it had been said that Henry and Simone had two children, but Buckle, when he came back from Hanover with the baby, swore the girl had died. In reality, I suppose, he lost you in the forest on the way to Chippings and was ashamed to confess. Only fancy, so you are Justin's sister! I declare, you look a thousand times more like the family than he does. No wonder I have always felt so drawn to you. No wonder you resemble the girl in the picture—she was your mother, Simone."

"Simone?" said Sophie, thinking hard. "That was my mother's name? And she had two children, a boy and a girl? Do you know, ma'am, I believe that Justin is not my brother—I believe I know who my brother is—"

The two of them had been so absorbed by their discoveries that they had not noticed the coach draw to a halt.

"Well, my lady," the Duke said, putting his head in at the window, "do you mean to stay there chattering all day, or had you not observed that we've reached Chippings and our good Mrs. Gossidge is waiting to welcome us?"

"But I'm that put about, your Graces," declared Mrs. Gossidge, a pleasant, rosy-faced woman, dropping a whole series of curtseys, "for, the weather being so bad, and not knowing your Graces was on the way, I've next to nothing fit to put on the table, bar a singed sheep's head and a dish of chitterlings—but there! I see you've brought Sophie with you, so I daresay she'll turn to and help me, having a light hand with the paste, if she hasn't learnt too many grand London ways."

"Put anything before us that you've got," said his Grace good-humoredly, "for we are devilish sharp-set—your singed sheep's head will do famously. Is Master Justin here?"

"No, your Grace, why, should he be?" Mrs. Gossidge looked bewildered. "Isn't he with your Grace, then? Mogg! Hold the horses still, do! and Sophie, bustle about then, girl! Take up her ladyship's things and then come and help me in the kitchen!"

"Wait a minute, Gossidge, wait—" the Duchess called. "Miss Sophie isn't—William! Only think what we have discovered—"

But Sophie, twinkling at her Grace, had jumped down and run upstairs with a load of knitting wools, while the Duke had hurried off to the stables, and Mrs. Gossidge had vanished to re-singe the sheep's head and get out all her jars of preserved whortleberries.