THE PERILS OF A SPY.

It was a lovely day in autumn, one of those days when it seems happiness enough to be alive, and when a prisoner, however resolved and courageous his nature, might feel a great unwillingness to die.

But, strange to say, it is precisely on these days that it is found that men are most ready to die; for the notion that suicide is more common in bad weather than in good, has long been exploded by facts which tell quite a different tale.

Perhaps it is, that on these beautiful days the higher powers seem to be more beneficent, and the wretch overladen with misery thinks that he can trust more to their mercy, and that he may find on his exit from this life--

“An ampler ether, a diviner air, And fields invested with purpureal gleams; Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey.”

The building in which Realmah was a prisoner was raised some seven feet from the ground before the first floor commenced, and this slight elevation enabled him to look down on an open street that led to the water, and to see the men and women passing over the causeways, going to their work in the plain and the woods near the lake.

It did not, however, enable him to perceive a timid, slouching figure of a wayworn, haggard-looking young woman, who hovered near these groups of working-people, apparently engaged in collecting faggots.

Realmah looked long at the beautiful scene, with the blue water, the blue sky, the bright plains near the lake, the distant brown woods, and the quaint buildings which seemed somehow to harmonize with the scene; but these things did not console him; he might have said with a modern poet--

“I see them all so beautifully fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are.”

The buildings at Abinamanche, as at Abibah, were chiefly low, but there towered above them, in the most fantastic forms, vanes and weathercocks of every description. It was natural that people who paid so much attention to the four quarters--the east, west, north, and south--should delight in weathercocks. These fantastic ornaments, reflected in the waters, added a certain beautiful grotesqueness to the picture.

It was, however, something comic that most arrested Realmah’s attention. Perched upon three rocks, at about equal distances from each other, were three cranes, each resting on one leg. Whether there is something peculiarly comic in these solemn-looking birds, or whether Realmah happened to think of a proverb much in vogue amongst his countrymen--“The crane pretends to listen to his nymph, but all the while is looking sharply after his fish,”--I do not know, but a smile came over his countenance, which afterwards relapsed into melancholy, as he drew back from the aperture, and sat down upon the ground.

Meanwhile, and indeed all day long, the slouching figure of that young woman, before described, remained within sight, but beyond the ken, of the parties of labourers who were at work in the country near Abinamanche. She was observing how the women of the lower orders amongst the Phelatahs were dressed, and endeavouring to arrange her dress so as to resemble theirs, in order that she might pass in their company unnoticed into the town, when the shades of evening should come on.

At length the day’s labour was over, and the men and women began to troop over the causeways into the town. Now this travel-worn stranger went with them. She succeeded in passing unnoticed over the drawbridge, where the crowd was dense, but a different fate befell her when she got into the open streets.

The truth is, this poor stranger had made a great mistake in the arrangement of her dress. The maidens amongst the Phelatahs were distinguished from the matrons, and the matrons from the maidens, by slight distinctions in dress. She first copied the head-dress of one group, who happened to be all maidens, and then copied the way in which another group, who happened to be all matrons, wore their upper tunic; so that, in the eyes of a Phelatah, she made a most ridiculous and incongruous appearance,--dressing herself both as a matron and a maiden.

She had not gone far along the main street, which led from the drawbridge into the centre of the town (and which was called the Street of Primroses), before a boy spied out this strangely-dressed person, and shouted, “The little girl-wife! The little girl-wife!” There was soon a mob of boys and girls following her. This attracted the notice of the elder people, who were greatly scandalized at her appearance.

The crowd now thickened about her: questions were asked who she was, and whether she was mad. She implored to be allowed to go away; and her speech at once betrayed that she was not a Phelatah. They instantly concluded that she was a spy. The guards at the drawbridge were summoned, and by them she was carried off to the house of the eldest chieftain. He thought that this woman’s presence foreboded the approach of an enemy, and lost no time in calling together the council of the chiefs.

It was soon conjectured by them that her coming had something to do with Realmah; and it was resolved to confront the two, and to see if they could be surprised into any signs of recognition.

Realmah was accordingly sent for. He thought that his death was now imminent, and summoned up all his courage to meet his approaching doom.

When he was brought before the council, not a word was said to him. Gestures of high politeness passed between him and the great chiefs of the Phelatahs, but there was dead silence in the council-room.

Suddenly the captive was brought in between two guards, and all eyes were directed towards Realmah.

Now Realmah was a man of great craft and subtlety. Perhaps the only drawback to his greatness was, that he was so crafty and so subtle, for it is not the part of a great man to be crafty and subtle. But on this day it did him “yeoman’s service.” There was, it is true, a slight movement of the muscles near his mouth, but it was concealed by his beard, for these so-called savages, wiser than many civilized people, did not shave; and the two prisoners regarded each other apparently with stolid indifference.

The captive was Realmah’s Ainah.

Realmah, of course, had not failed at once to recognise the Ainah, worn though she was by toil and anxiety; but he felt that any recognition would be fatal to both of them.

“Who is this woman?” said the oldest chief of the Phelatahs to Realmah; and Realmah, without hesitation, replied, “She must be one of my people. Perhaps she brings offers for my ransom, though methinks” (and here he assumed an appearance of haughtiness) “my people might have sent some one of more dignity than this poor woman to negotiate the ransom of one of their chiefs. But speak to her; her words will soon show from whence she comes.”

This was a most artful reply on the part of Realmah. He comprehended the situation at once, or at least what he did comprehend was sufficiently near to the true state of the case to make his reply most judicious. He imagined that some effort for his rescue was about to be made by his fellow-countrymen, and that the good-natured Ainah (he had always recognised her good nature) had consented to come beforehand, and prepare him for any emergency. He had not attempted to conceal the fact of her being one of his countrywomen, because he felt that was sure to be discovered the moment that she spoke; and a wise man always makes up his mind to what is inevitable, and appears to welcome it.

The old chief then cross-questioned the Ainah. She was one of those people who have a great capacity for darkening their meaning by many confused words, and she told how she had come to seek for her husband, a common soldier amongst the Sheviri, who had been wounded, they told her, not killed; and what her mother-in-law had said to her, and what she had said to her mother-in-law; and what good people the Phelatahs were; and what a sad affair it was for her being without her husband; and that there was no fish in the house; and that the boys and girls in this town had been very rude to her--but boys and girls were a torment everywhere.

Then she said that she wondered, for her part, that near neighbours could not be friends; but it was all the men’s fault. They went out to fight, in order to amuse themselves, and to get away from their wives, and to throw all the burthen of the housework upon poor women. Here the chiefs could not help laughing, upon which the Ainah appeared to become more angry than ever, and dilated at large, in uncouth language, upon the various misdeeds and general misbehaviour of the male sex. She declared that, for her part (quite changing her story), she had come to look for her poor man, not that he was of any use to anybody, but perhaps he would be starved if he were left to himself; and so she supposed it was her duty to come, but she did not expect to be treated in this way. In fact, to use a modern phrase, she gave them all “a bit of her mind.”

Finally she succeeded in producing the impression on most of the chiefs that she was a shrewish little woman, who had been accustomed to scold her husband, and felt now the want of somebody to scold.

Realmah wondered at the ingenuity of the Ainah. Once, for a moment, their eyes met, whilst she was in the midst of her scolding harangue, and the incipient laugh that there was in the eyes of both of them might have betrayed them if some of the chiefs at that moment had not been remarking to each other jestingly that if this was a specimen of the female sex in Abibah, it was no wonder that the Sheviri fought pretty well, for anything would be better than going home to such a woman.

Still there were some amongst the chiefs who were not entirely convinced of the truth of this story. Their prudent counsel prevailing, it was eventually ordered that the Ainah should be conveyed to prison; and hints were thrown out to her of torture to be administered next day, if it was found that she had not told the whole truth to the Great Council.

Realmah was conducted back to his prison; and, after a short interval, the Ainah was taken to her place of durance, which was a room in the same building.

So far the Ainah’s enterprise, whatever it was, had not proved very successful.