familiarly might, in any ordinary clearness of weather, look for
and find the eternal smoke-cloud of Manchester.
So the deserted smithy stood as it were spectator for ever of that
younger, busier England which wanted it no more. Human life
notwithstanding had left on it some very recent traces. On the
lintel of the ruined door two names were scratched deep into the
whitish under-grain of the black weather-beaten grit. The upper one
ran: 'David Suveret Grieve, Sept. 15, 1863;' the lower, 'Louise
Stephanie Grieve, Sept. 15, 1863.' They were written in bold
round-hand, and could be read at a considerable distance. During
the nine months they had been there, many a rustic passer-by had
been stopped by them, especially by the oddity of the name
_Suveret_, which tormented the Derbyshire mouth.
In a corner of the walls stood something more puzzling still--a
large iron pan, filled to the brim with water, and firmly bedded on
a foundation of earth and stones. So still in general was the
shining sheltered round, that the branches of the mountain ash
which leant against the crumbling wall, the tufts of hard fern
growing among the stones, the clouds which sailed overhead, were
all delicately mirrored in it. That pan was David Grieve's dearest
possession, and those reflections, so magical, and so alive, had
contrived for him many a half-hour of almost breathless pleasure.
He had carried it off from the refuse-yard of a foundry in
the valley, where he had a friend in one of the apprentices.
The farm donkey and himself had dragged it thither on a certain
never-to-be-forgotten day, when Uncle Reuben had been on the other
side of the mountain at a shepherds' meeting in the Woodlands,
while Aunt Hannah was safely up to her elbows in the washtub. Boy's
back and donkey's back had nearly broken under the task, but there
the pan stood at last, the delight of David's heart. In a crevice
of the wall beside it, hidden jealously from the passer-by, lay the
other half of that perpetual entertainment it provided--a store of
tiny boats fashioned by David, and another friend, the lame
minister of the 'Christian Brethren' congregation at Clough End,
the small factory town just below Kinder, who was a sea-captain's
son, and with a knife and a bit of deal could fashion you any craft
you pleased. These boats David only brought out on rare occasions,
very seldom admitting Louie to the show. But when he pleased they
became fleets, and sailed for new continents. Here were the ships
of Captain Cook, there the ships of Columbus. On one side of the
pan lay the Spanish main, on the other the islands of the South
Seas. A certain tattered copy of the 'Royal Magazine,' with
pictures, which lay in Uncle Reuben's cupboard at home, provided
all that for David was to be known of these names and places. But
fancy played pilot and led the way; she conjured up storms and
islands and adventures; and as he hung over his pan high on the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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